HOW MANY HAMANS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB?

It’s Adar, the month of joy and happiness.  So this week, we begin with a joke.  How many fishermen does it take to change a lightbulb?  The answer:  Only one, but you should have seen the size of that lightbulb, it was unbelievable.

Beginning this Wednesday evening, March 4, we celebrate the holiday of Purim. Purim is a wild and happy holiday, with the reading of the biblical melodramatic Book of Esther, the invitation to actually make noise in synagogue with each mention of Haman’s name, the free exchange of gifts to family and friends, and the noshing on all sorts of candies and hamantaschen.  Given all that, it may seem strange to preface this holiday with a Shabbat dedicated to remembering Israel’s most dreaded enemy:  Amalek.  But this Shabbat is Shabbat Zakhor, the Sabbath of Remembering, the Shabbat when we are enjoined to remember what Amalek did to us during our 40 year trek in the wilderness, quote, “how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear” (Deuteronomy 25:18) unquote.
 

The connection between this Torah portion and the holiday of Purim is that Amalek is presumed to be the ancestor of Haman.  But something deeper is going on here.  We are supposed to remember what Amalek did to us.  Well, what did Amalek do to us?  Amalek surprised us, cut us down, and took advantage of the weak and weary among us.  That, according to the Torah, but I ask again—what did Amalek do to us?  Did Amalek make us bitter and withdrawn, or did the Amalek experience change us in some other way?   The Torah is asking us to remember much more than the trauma of Amalek’s viciousness.
 

All this is a little eerie.  How can we remember that which we weren’t present to experience?  But here, too, the Torah challenges us spiritually.  We weren’t there?  We haven’t experienced Amalek?  My friends, there is an Amalek in every generation, launching attacks on our sanity, dignity, and humanity.  This should not surprise us.  What should surprise us, what should delight us is the resilience of the human spirit to bounce back, to rise higher than any of the low lives who would turn this world into a living hell.  Our sacred Jewish mythologies teach us that happiness is far stronger than hatred, and that love of God will eventually displace the racists and the bigots, the tyrants and the dictators, all the people who like Amalek, live “undeterred by fear of God.”   How do we remember what Amalek did to us?  We remember what happened, we give ourselves a few days to reflect, and then we gather to celebrate with great joy and happiness our refusal to let the Amaleks define for us what it means to be a decent or loving human being.
 

How many Hamans does it take to change a lightbulb?

Decent human beings change lightbulbs.  Hamans live in darkness.

DIRTY DANCING WITH IRAN

 

John Boehner, as speaker of the House of Representatives, holds a very important position in the hierarchy of American politics.  Should anything happen to the president, and the vice president is unable to take over, it’s the speaker of the house who is next in line.  The irony of that succession should be apparent to all, for if there are any two political actors more at odds with one another in government these days, its Mr. Boehner and the president.  That’s, in part, what makes Mr. Boehner’s invitation to the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to address congress March 3 so exacerbating for the president.  The president and the prime minister really do not see eye to eye, and the president claims that the invitation to the Israeli prime minister was made without consulting the White a House, a breach of protocol, if only unwritten.  On top of that, some in Israel believe that Mr. Netanyahu is using the address to congress to bolster his own popularity back home just prior to national elections.  And so the whole thing is sort of messy—Boehner is perhaps trying to embarrass the president, the prime minister may be using the speech as political clout, and the once behind-closed-doors tension between the Israeli and American leaders is suddenly glaringly thrust into the public eye.  Then again, these decisions are rarely neat and clean.  Politics can get down and dirty—that’s for sure.  But this entire episode should move us to ask—Just why does the president care that the representative of one of America’s closest allies, Israel, addresses congress, even if he wasn’t consulted.

What the president may be most concerned about is what Mr. Netanyahu is going to say, and what he will probably say is that the United States is inches away from cutting a deal with a country that has consistently threatened Israel and the west.  That’s right.  Word on the street is that Mr. Obama is now willing to concede to Iran certain limited nuclear capabilities.  Should Iran, a country that has repeatedly voiced its sworn commitment to destroy Israel, be given even limited nuclear capabilities?  Is that a wise move on America’s part, Iran having threatened America as well?  According to Mr. Netanyahu, it is an exceedingly risky agreement and exposes the west, particularly Israel, to eventual nuclear attack.  It was Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister’s policy of appeasement that allowed an untrustworthy and power-hungry Hitler to throw Europe into a devastating World War.  Is Mr. Obama about to commit the same error in conceding nuclear power to a bellicose and belligerent Iran?

These are important questions that all of us need to ask as we listen to the viewpoints of pundits and commentators more in the know than any of us.  But this I will say.  If I were Binyamin Netanyahu, and I felt that my closest geopolitical ally was about to make a mistake that throws my country into jeopardy, I’d be on a plane to talk to congress as well at the first invitation.  My first and foremost duty is not to Mr. Obama, but to my country.  It just so happens in this case, as in so many cases when it comes to dealing with the Middle East, the interests of Israel and America are closely aligned, although clearly the president in this case doesn’t see it that way.

Oh, well—as I said earlier, politics can get pretty down and dirty.  By the same token, I cannot think of anything more down or dirty than conceding to Iran any nuclear capability in exchange for some promise that it’s going to behave in the future.  Mr. Netanyahu—welcome to America.  Go to congress and speak the truth.

 

TEN COMMANDMENTS? NO SUCH THING!

Our parashah of this week, Yitro, is known above all else as home to the Ten Commandments, which is odd only because The Ten Commandments may not exist.  Now I realize that is a terrible thing to hear, and my intent is not to disturb anyone’s faith, and for sure someone will take me to task for it, but hear me out.  In parashat Yitro, nowhere is there a reference to Ten Commandments. Moses knows that God is going to speak, that the voice will be heard from a thick cloud covering Mount Sinai, that all the people—not just Moses—will hear it, that the people need to be pure when the communication happens and no one should venture up the mountain.  When the day of the great revelation arrived, there was fire on the mountain, it smoked, it quaked, the blare of a horn resounded throughout the camp, and when the critical moment arrives, the text reads:  God spoke these words saying (Exodus (20:1).  Nowhere in our parashah is this revelation referred to as the Ten Commandments, which should lead us to ask:  Are there really Ten Commandments at all?

There are certainly some scholars who would argue that the parsing of this section of Torah, which itself covers 13 verses, into Ten Commandments, may be good marketing but lousy scholarship.  One could argue that there are more than ten rulings in this passage.  But the point is that at no point are they ever referred to as commandments.  It is only later in the Torah (Exodus 34:28) that this sacred engraving is referred to as Aseret Hadevarim, meaning the Ten Sayings or Speakings or Statements, that we understand that ten is a critical number, but still—no reference to commandments. 

The Torah is teaching us something of great significance here.  The commandments themselves are not earth shattering.  The idea of Shabbat is certainly unique to the Israelites, and the idea f having one God is that message of monotheism, Israel’s gift to the world, but there were certainly already laws against murder, theft and false testimony.  What made the Ten Commandments unique was more than content, it was its source.  It was the idea that these ideas were spoken by God and not merely the invention of the human heart or head.  In Rabbinic Hebrew, we refer to this section of Torah as the Aseret HaDibrot, the Ten Speakings.  We focus not on the idea of commandment, but on the idea of divine communication—God speaks to us and gives us the guidance as to how to conduct our lives. 

Some claim that God no longer speaks to us.  Our biblical ancestors were luckier than we, in that regard.  But is that true?  Does God no longer speak to us or have we grown deaf to the voice of God?  If you are waiting for the word of God to materialize as do the words of an anchor on the evening news, you’ll never hear the word of God.  But if you begin to connect the dots of your experiences living in the real world, in real time, and begin to see the pattern of which of your decisions and activities create peace and growth, and which do not, the intangible word of God will crystallize before you.

Aseret Hadibrot—Ten Speakings were given to the people of Israel. The eleventh is for you and you alone.