Parashat HaShuvah - Lech Lecha - "A voice of Strength." Genesis 12:1-17:27, Haftarah, Isaiah 40:27-41:16

Abram, later to be called Abraham, took his wife, family and all his possessions and left his homeland for a land he did not know.  Parasha, Lech Lecha, is just the beginning of his journey, and in so doing we find out quickly that Abram is a man of conviction and a voice of change, but also a voice of strength. 

Abram was born and lived in the Ur of the Chaldees, which is Southern Iraq today, and his father was Terah, a descendant of Noah’s son Shem.  After leaving the Ur of the Chaldees with his father, Abram became the leader of the family after his father died on their travels in Haran (modern day Turkey). Perhaps at that point Abram considered going back to the only place he knew, until he heard God’s voice that said, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing.” I do not think Abram processed this idea of a blessing as just receiving a reward based on his merit, but he came to realize this was about a sense of divine purpose for the betterment of others.

Dr. Henry Slominsky, a former dean emeritus of the New York School of Hebrew Union College‐Jewish Institute of Religion, teaches that the lesson that emerged from Abram has everything to do with God’s failure and success that is based on human action or inaction. This idea is reflected in a Midrash (Sifrei Devarim 346) that says, “I am God, when you are My witnesses, and if you are not My witnesses I am not God."  Abram learned that what his world would become was based on him.  Abram came to realize that his connection to the gods he knew was just about their veneration, but the dignity of God that was a blessing to all people was based on the equality of honor.  God's justice for people became Abram's justice for others.  

While Abram’s attitude about the gods of his homeland is really not revealed in Genesis, we learn in another Midrash (Berayshit Rabbah 38) that when Terah (his father) left his son (Abram) is charge of the family business one day (an idol shop) Abram conveyed to its customers the folly of idols, mere carvings that can be destroyed as fast as they were made.  When Terah returned to the family business, he asked why he saw smashed idols all over the floor. Abram responded by saying that a certain woman came into the shop and offered a meal-offering of flour to the various idols when one idol rose up and said, “I shall eat first, and another one said: I shall eat first. This big idol, who was standing among them, got up and took the club and shattered them.’ He [Teraḥ] said to him: ‘What, are you mocking me?” 

Abram is saying the following: idols don’t speak, in fact they don’t do anything, only people can do for people.  Later in this same parasha we find a story about this very attitude when Abram and his nephew Lot are in conflict over land ownership. In response Abram recognizes the potential problem and elects to seek peace between their families. Abram who could have stood on his family power, according to Robert Alter, was “polite” but firm when he said, “if you go north, I will go south; and if you go south, I will go north.”  In other words when Abram sought peace he suggested what we might call the first “two-state solution,” something that was based on Abram's ability to bless his nephew Lot, one person to another, equity for both.  

But the Abram of peace is also the Abram of conviction.  When rival kings engage in battle Lot is swept up in the fight and taken hostage.  Abram managed to rescue his family member in the cover of night, the Sfrono teaching, “this was also part of the subterfuge, preventing the kings from realizing that they were facing insignificant numbers of opponents.”  In this case Lot’s humanity led Abram as opposed to mutual peace because he realized that in those Kings he did not have partners in peace. Yes, we can make that connection with the minions of Hamas who do not desire to be partners of peace with Israel for a viable two-state solution, but in general like with Abram, we must use of voice in what we do to be a voice of change, a voice of peace, but also a voice of strength.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Adam Ruditsky

Parashat HaShuvah - Noach - "A Moral Conundrum." Genesis 6:9--11:32. Haftarah, Isaiah 54:1-55:5

Parsahat Noach begins with telling us about Noah: “This is the line of Noah.—Noah was a righteous man; he was blameless in his age; Noah walked with God.”  Noah lived at a time when humanity was evil, analogous to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah who we read about in a few weeks.  In the story God decides to destroy the world because of perpetual evil and tells Noah, the only righteous person left, to build an Ark so when this judgment comes as a storm upon the world, only he and his family alone would survive while all others will perish.  While there is violence in the opening chapters of Genesis, such as the murder of Abel by his brother Cain, here in this parasha we see the first “battle” with mass casualties; the weapon of this war is a deadly flood where God does battle with evil.  But this is also the first time experiencing what we call “collateral damage.”

Are we to think that each and every person who perished in the flood was evil?  Most Jewish texts seem to deal with the reason as opposed to the ethics or morality of needless deaths.  In the Talmud (Sanhedrin 57a) the rabbis concluded that the reason for the flood was that “Wherever “corruption” is mentioned, it must refer to illicit sex and idolatry. Illicit sex, as it is written [remove it from your midst] Lest you corrupt yourselves.”  There are other texts to consider regarding the flood, but in general both here and with other “wars” to follow, they were primarily religious in nature. Yet, in the same way we show compassion for the death of the Egyptians during our Passover seders, in a Midrash (Gen. R. 32:7) God mourns the deaths that will follow because of the flood, both of the wicked and the innocent.  Because of the loss of life the wars of Torah are to be mourned and not just celebrated.

Still this war, whose weapon for the ancients was the flood, was between good and evil. In response to what happened Alexander Heidel (Christian Theologian) wrote, “the moral or ethical motive is almost completely absent,” and in like fashion J. David Bleich (Jewish Law/Ethics Professor at Yeshiva University) teaches, “there exists no discussion in classical rabbinic sources that takes cognizance of the likelihood of causing civilian casualties in the course of hostilities legitimately undertaken as posing a halakhic or moral problem.”

Michael Walzer, a political theorist at Princeton University in New Jersey, writes that Torah does not speak to the sensibilities of modern warfare regarding rules of engagement. Walzer makes two points.  First, there is a big difference between needless killing and collateral damage, something that was called the “double-effect” by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas provided the early church (12th Century) a doctrine of ethics for war, something Walzer suggested should be incorporated by Israel to address the reality of civilian deaths during times of combat.  Second, a reminder that Israel’s wartime ethic is based upon what is called “tahor ha-neshek,” or purity of arms, which says: “The soldier shall make use of his weaponry and power only for the fulfillment of the mission and solely to the extent required; he will maintain his humanity even in combat. The soldier shall not employ his weaponry and power in order to harm non-combatants or prisoners of war, and shall do all he can to avoid harming their lives, body, honor and property.”   While collateral damage is unavoidable Israel is charged with the duty to protect innocent life.

What we can take away from the Torah, the Bible or classical Jewish texts, is that although the complexities of modern warfare is not mentioned, the highest Jewish value of honoring life is, Jewish or otherwise.  While yes there are “rules from Torah” during war they are limited to the principles they provide more so than policies.  But the moral conundrum says the following: it is never just for people to die but in war death can be justifiable. Do mistakes happen, yes, are they avoidable, not in active war but we must try, is war necessary, yes and depends.  Yet, with all the tangibles and intangibles of war in mind, it is an anathema to me that Israel is held in juxtaposition with Hamas over the issues of the moral value of life. The tragedy of the hospital deaths are heartbreaking and devastating, and if Israel did this they would admit to it.  Instead, both Israel and Hamas are being held to the same standard - who should be believed - as if there is a moral equivalency between Israel who values life and Hamas who exists to kill.  Like God who mourned the deaths of innocents before the flood, Israel’s pursuit to eliminate evil will always mourn the innocent lives that will unfortunately perish. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Adam Ruditsky 

Parashat HaShuvah - Berayshit: "At the Start - When it all Began - The Politics of Creation." Genesis 1:1-6:8, Haftarah 1 Samuel 20:18-42

Rashi reflects on the question by Rabbi Isaac, why does the Torah begin with creation and not in Exodus 12 when Israel received its first command as a nation?   Rashi answers that by saying “All the earth (would know that it) belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it and gave it to whom He pleased” (Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 187).

In that same spirit, there is a problem we must contend with, and that is in the same way the entire world was created by the hand of a Universal God, so too was the whole of humankind.  In therefore says in Genesis 1:27-28, “And God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness … And God created humankind in the divine image, creating it in the image of God — creating them male and female.”  So when it says, בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ, in God’s image according to the Divine likeness humanity was fashioned, does that include Hamas and its militants who have done and continue to aspire to commit atrocities and evil against all Jewish people?

According to the Torah’s narrative when creation was completed by God we read in Genesis 2:1-3, “On the seventh day God finished the work that had been undertaken: [God] ceased on the seventh day from doing any of the work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy—having ceased on it from all the work of creation that God had done. Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created. When God made earth and heaven.” The biggest difference between the initial six days of creation and the Shabbat is at the end of each day God is to have said, “It is Good.” But with the Shabbat no such comment is made since God could be silent on a day that was "divinely" sanctified as holy, all were “naked and unafraid,” it was a day of total peace, a day that forecasted a future time where the “Lion and the Lamb” will exist in peace together. 

But peace is in the hands of the very people whom God fashioned to maintain it.  Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah coined the phrase “Harshut B’yado,” (הרשות בידו), which means “The authority is in his hand,” or what we call “Fee-will.”  Yes, the people of Hamas and its militants are created in the Divine Image, yet they have chosen based on their free-will to stand up for evil, hate and despicable acts of savagery. They chose to be evil, but we must not give into our base animal nature to also hate and despise those, like the Palestinians, who are also victims to the evil of Hamas. We must never lose our humanity and our ability to cry over bloodshed; both for those who must die and those who die collaterally. This is a true test of our deepest human values.

The day of Shabbat will come where we too can be silent because we have finished our work, either because our years have been concluded in this world or world peace has been achieved. But until then we must not be silent, we must stand opposed to and be vocal about ways to eliminate acts of evil while not letting our humanity slip below the threshold of what is right and just, even when the choices are hard if not impossible. Every Jew must take ownership of what happened, the politics of creation remind us we must speak goodness in our world by not remaining silent to the evil we see around us, saying the words once more, "Never Again."  Am Yisrael Chai!

Shabbat Shalom and Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan,

Rabbi Adam Ruditsky,