Parashat Devarim (5760)

With God's help, on the eve of the holy Sabbath, Parashat Devarim, 5760

On Tisha B'Av, the election of a president, evolution, nationalism, and… the weekly Torah portion

In this week's Torah portion, the book of Deuteronomy begins, in which Moses reviews forty years of the history of the Jewish

people under his leadership. Moses describes wanderings marked by failures, sins, rebellions, and frustrations,

that end with the punishment of the entire wilderness generation, who would die there and not enter the land. Many people try

to look back and summarize their lives before their death, to draw conclusions, and to pass the legacy on to the next

generation.

There are two salient characteristics of the summary in the book of Deuteronomy: a. Although this book is an inseparable

part of the Torah, it was spoken entirely by Moses, in his own words. The one who summarizes the events is the person

who was party to their occurrence. b. Although almost none of those who underwent these events was alive at the time of

the summary, Moses speaks in the second person. He describes matters as though those standing before him are the very ones

who experienced the events.

It seems to me that the same principle underlies both of these phenomena. Few are those wise enough

to learn from others' experience; generally a person can draw lessons only from what he himself has undergone.

If one wishes to draw lessons from events that happened to others, he must

put himself in the place of the people who experienced them, and perhaps in that way he can truly internalize the

conclusions that arise from them. With respect to Passover, our Sages tell us: 'In every generation a person is obligated

to see himself as though he went out from Egypt' (Passover Haggadah). The memory of formative events in any

society, joyful no less than disappointing, cannot be complete without a sense of identification with what

happened and with those who experienced it.

These days we are in the period of 'the Three Weeks,' during which we suffered (in two different eras) the destruction of two

Temples. There is a strong sense that these days are utterly meaningless for

the general public, ostensibly because the Temples symbolize meanings that do not speak to a

secular public. In my view, this is only a partial explanation, for the destructions involved events of

great significance on the national plane as well.

At the root of this phenomenon lies the disconnection from the past that characterizes our society. In other nations,

the attitude toward earlier generations is natural and self-evident. No Frenchman would

hand over to foreign rule sites that hold a foundational place in French national consciousness, and certainly not

with the indifference, or even enthusiasm, with which we do so. Anyone who tries to protest this on

national grounds, grounds of history and identity, and not on security or economic grounds, generally merits

the pitying shake of the head reserved for the poor soul who lives entirely in the past, speaks in irrelevant terms, and wants

to endanger our security and well-being for their sake. It seems that among the Jewish people it is difficult to create identification with the past on

a national basis alone, and religious dimensions of identification are needed as well.

This phenomenon arouses difficult feelings among many people with national sentiment, especially in the religious community.

What a decline! The Jewish people has lost, beyond its connection to Judaism, even the national identification

that every normal nation has with its heritage. For my part, however, I also have a positive feeling about this phenomenon.

Perhaps like Rabbi Akiva, who, when he saw the Temple in its ruin and foxes walking through it, said: 'They were all weeping,

and Rabbi Akiva was laughing' (Makkot 24b).

It seems to me that if there truly is such a disconnection from our national past, then apparently we really are still

Jews. Unlike the Briton, the Jew is not willing to pay for secular national (nationalist?) values

with 'blood, sweat, and tears' (see the previous issue: 'With Nothing Worth Dying

for'), and he is indeed right. The way out of this situation, for one who is dissatisfied with it, is not to be found

in creating hollow and false national identification, but in a return to the basic identity of the Jewish people,

its religious identity.

The primordial yearning for national symbols, such as an anthem, a president, and the like, truly evokes pity. I

feel that these institutions and their like represent a low evolutionary stratum of human existence.

A person, or a society, like any self-respecting herd, feels a need to create for itself figures

of identification and herd symbols that lack any real content. The problem that arises here is that our intellect is apparently

evolutionarily ahead of this primal, undeveloped emotion, and many of us understand

that these symbols are indeed devoid of content and value. In the United States this may perhaps work, but not in Israel.

The concentration of Jews here is (still!) too high for that.

These symbols sometimes function in truly grotesque ways. A clear and timely example of this

is the election of a scheming politician (and sometimes rather less than that) as an 'apolitical,' 'elevated

above the people' president, after an intensive campaign in which he explains to everyone why he ought to be their symbol

(together with a few dubious political deals). After his election he delivers lofty speeches

seasoned with quotations from the classical sources (I do not mean specifically Moshe Katsav, who seems exceptional

in his sincerity on this point), as is also customary when signing peace agreements on the lawns of 'Camp-Whatever.' Because of

these noble deeds, everyone is obliged to respect him and relate to him with admiration as the 'unifier of the people,' and

other such sentimental and childish phrases.

Naively, I thought that in the democratic age we had already moved beyond this inferior developmental stage, but it seems

I was mistaken. The only rational alternative to this primitivism is a

'fundamentalist' return to a higher religious world (fundamental = basic, foundational). Only in such terms

can a Jew truly identify with his people, its nationhood and past, and with abstract concepts and symbols,

and invest them with value-laden content and meaning.

Have a peaceful Sabbath

This may be placed for respectful disposal in any synagogue or Torah academy. Comments and responses are welcome.

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