Parashat Shemot (5760)

With God’s help, on the eve of the holy Sabbath, Parashat Shemot, 5760

Indifference and Caring

In our portion the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt begins. Moses, who is exempt from this bondage because he is

in Pharaoh’s house, goes out to inquire after the welfare of his suffering brothers. Already at this point we see Moses’ concern

and his unwillingness to ignore the suffering of his brothers even though, ostensibly, the matter does not personally affect him.

When Moses goes out, he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, and responds by killing the Egyptian.

There is a progression here in the depiction of the caring Moses, who takes upon himself the risk, and the loss of

his status, in order to correct the injustice that he sees being done to one of his brothers. The next situation,

in which Moses asks the Hebrew who is striking another Hebrew, ‘Why do you strike your fellow?’, reveals concern also for wrongs

within the people, among the sufferers themselves. One of the virtues of Moses our teacher is that he is not

prepared to see injustice and remain silent.

After Moses realizes that the matter has become known, he flees to Midian, and begins to shepherd the flock of

Jethro, the priest of Midian. A lamb runs away from the flock, and Moses chases after it, and when he realizes that the lamb was

thirsty and exhausted, he carries it in his arms. We see here compassion toward an animal. This compassion

is not expressed only on the emotional level, in Moses’ heart; he gives it

practical expression, and carries the lamb on his shoulders back to the flock. The Midrash says that by virtue of the involvement and concern

that Moses felt toward everything around him, he was chosen to be the leader and savior of Israel.

In these days things are taking place in our country that ought to awaken all of us to concern

and involvement, and yet society as a whole is indifferent and silent. It seems as though nothing can

get the people of Israel out of their television armchair into real action. At times one may perhaps see

a certain shake of the head, which expresses the pinnacle of concern that we can expect from the average Israeli

citizen. The Israeli citizen leaves his home to act mainly when the matter touches his wallet, and then one can

expect rather violent actions, which astonishingly receive legitimacy among the public as a whole.

Sometimes, nevertheless, one can discern that same sorrowful shake of the head, saying that they should not have

used so much violence, but one can understand them, for they are fighting for their livelihood.

When certain groups go out to demonstrate against a wrong, or an injustice that touches ideology,

then everyone demands strict observance of law and order, for in today’s Israel ideology,

and wrongs that pertain to the plane of ideas, are not really important. True, democracy obligates

us to allow these strange (benighted!?) creatures to express themselves as well, but of course in this case

we will not tolerate any deviation from proper order.

A demonstration by workers of Israel Aircraft Industries, students, or other factories and sectors, and certainly

by development towns, the unemployed, and the like, is received with relative understanding, even when it is accompanied

by considerable violence. By contrast, demonstrations of ‘Zo Artzeinu’, or a demonstration for the sake of the Sabbath, or

against desecrations of the dead carried out by archaeologists, receive an altogether different treatment. Here

there is an uncompromising demand for strict observance of law and order. Even the ‘sacred cow’ of

freedom of expression is not really important in these cases.

I would like to emphasize that this argument does not concern a specific worldview. Even someone who opposes

the aims of these demonstrations, or the justice of them, can understand that a group protesting matters

that trouble it on the ideological level is entitled to at least the same degree of understanding as those who demonstrate

for their money.[1]

This phenomenon points to an internal indifference that exists within us, and to a lack of concern toward every

ideology whatsoever. What matters is material existence, which is certainly something I do not

disparage, but the ideological-value plane is not perceived as something important for which one should fight, or

at least allow others to fight, for. I do not understand why the share of

ideology and values should be diminished, while only money wins sympathy and legitimacy. The Japanese say

that if a person has only two small coins, the Western man will buy two slices of bread with them, whereas

the Japanese man will buy one slice and one flower. He sees to it that he has how to live, but also what

to live for.

On Monday of this week I was at a demonstration against the disgrace now taking place on the Temple Mount, as the Muslim Waqf

treats the nation’s holy places as if they were its own, and nobody utters a peep. It is worth paying attention

to the fact that this matter lies within a near wall-to-wall national consensus. There is here a violation of the

Antiquities Law, and of planning and licensing laws, an injury to national values (and not necessarily

religious ones!), and irreversible destruction of archaeological assets supposedly dear to everyone. When

a religious group ostensibly harms an archaeological value, everyone cries out; whereas here, where the value

of highest order in our entire country stands before destruction and ruin, everyone is silent.

I would have expected that at this demonstration the entire people of Israel would be present, wall to wall, some for

national reasons, some for archaeological reasons, and some for religious reasons, each according to his own considerations. More precisely,

I would have expected that there should have been no need at all for such a demonstration, since the government (which, as we recall, represents

all—of us!!!) ought to have been attentive to public sentiment (even if to its own members the matter

apparently does not touch), and not allowed this disgrace.

And we are silent!

On the radio news they announced that there had been a demonstration by the Right against the Waqf’s excavations on the Temple Mount,

and indeed the public that was there was ‘the Right’ (that is, knitted skullcaps. Today there is no other Right). Why

should such a consensus matter be connected to the Right?

Let us speak in sectoral terms, not national ones. Let us speak on a small scale. Why do the civil rights of people

who are religious and want to pray on the Temple Mount (something to which I personally, incidentally, object) fall short

of the rights of the Muslims? Why are they able to behave with brutal violence as though the Mount were

theirs, while Jews are at best permitted to go up as tourists? They turn us into tourists

in our own land, under our own rule and sovereignty, and even that only by the grace of the Waqf. How do you,

the ‘enlightened’ secular person, live with such a reality?

Do we really fear that someone will divide Jerusalem, or are we merely paying lip

service? Jerusalem has long been divided (in fact since it was captured), even from the

sovereign point of view. At present we have no sovereignty over the part that is the very heart of the nation and the land, about which

poets wrote and toward which we prayed throughout the generations. Beyond that, today there is in Jerusalem freedom of worship

for all religions except the Jewish religion. The only place in the free world where there is no freedom of worship

for Jews is their own state, and that in the place most sacred to them.

And we are silent!

There is here, on the one hand, a lack of emotional concern, and on the other, a lack of commitment to action and involvement.

My claim is not against the government but against the public. In this case the government acts in the cultural atmosphere

that prevails among the public.

In a condition of overall national weakness of this sort, no diplomatic step of any kind should be taken,

and that is true regardless of one’s worldview regarding the peace process as such. Even those who support

the process ought to understand that it is not right to pursue it from such a starting point. This is not a ‘peace

of the brave,’ but a peace of the weary, the feeble, the indifferent, and those without a national backbone. Peace

is surely made from a position of strength and not from weakness. Even if the reader thinks that it is possible to return

territories in exchange for a true peace, it seems that in the current situation we are not acting correctly. Fear and

unwillingness to confront the issue are what drive us, and that is an exceedingly dangerous situation.

They are cutting our national body into slices (and I am not speaking specifically about the Land of Israel) and we

sit secure, complacent, before our flickering, mesmerizing, stupefying screens, and with a kind of

childish indifference we stare and remain silent. A private individual who remains indifferently silent while pieces are cut from his body

is in some kind of state of death, or at least degeneration. So it is also with the national body. A nation

that is silent in the face of such situations is a dead nation. We would do well to pinch ourselves to make sure that we are still

alive and existent. Everything here turns into calculations of real estate, or security and economic risks.

There are no longer national values, national honor, and other characteristics of a living and breathing nation, which

no nation ever relinquishes even if that may cost money, and perhaps even blood. We do not permit

Jews to pray in the place for which they longed throughout the generations, and we do not halt the disgrace and humiliation

(national, and not only religious) that are taking place these days on the Temple Mount, out of considerations of anxiety and fear,

and out of considerations of attractiveness for economic investment, and the like. Apparently the antisemites really were right

that the Jew need be struck only in his pocket.

At the beginning of the week I had already written a piece on the weekly portion dealing with the paradoxes of prophecy, and other

matters both important and amusing. In the wake of yesterday’s demonstration I felt that I could no longer

deal with other, ‘academic’ (relatively speaking), topics, and therefore I wrote these words. I hope

that the reader of these lines will not respond with the shake of the head mentioned above, but will draw

practical conclusions. Let each person act in the manner and the directions that he believes in, but we have had enough already of

childish indifference. Let us learn something from Moses our teacher, something about commitment to values and personal

involvement.

Arise, shake yourselves awake, wretched people, a people of slaves bloated with satiety (!). Enough of silence and indifference!

A peaceful Sabbath

This may be left for respectful disposal at any synagogue or religious seminary. Comments are welcome.

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[1] It is interesting that, according to the stereotype currently accepted in society, the ultra-Orthodox are greedy for money, that all

they care about is money, whereas the broader public is a value-driven public, in whose world there are also things

other than money. It is worth noticing that many times, when certain groups demand money, they

do so for educational, value-laden aims that cannot be realized without money. By contrast,

the demonstrations of students, workers in various factories, cooperative villages, development towns, and the like,

are conducted for the sake of the private pocket (whose importance, as stated, I do not disparage).

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