Parshat Hashavua: July 23/24 2010
Civilization and the Jews
Drash on Parshat Vaethanan: Shabbat Nachamu
Rabbi Dr John Levi AM
Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Beth Israel, Melbourne, Australia
Can we be commanded to love? That is exactly what happens in this week’s revolutionary Torah portion.
Our reading begins with the Ten Commandments which implies that we have and the freedom to choose how to behave as civilized human beings. Then follows that dramatic sentence beginning with the word Sh’ma ,”Listen” or “Understand”. We are told to listen and learn that God is one. Of course, it is much easier to believe that there are many powers governing the universe. After all, human beings are complex and life is not always easy. However the concept of the unity of God is the single thread that binds all of past Jewish historical experience together. And following the Sh’ma comes the familiar sentence “You shall love the Eternal your God with all your heart (mind) and your soul and with all your might.”
We tend to say those words almost automatically. On this Shabbat we need to take the time to think about them.
One God implies that One intelligence suffuses the universe and that human beings are able to sense God’s presence. It says that creation is not cold and heartless. We can understand that we are finite and yet the abiding human yearning for justice, love, freedom and knowledge are spiritual clues to the Infinite nature of God. Finite we may be but we can learn to love God with all our mind, soul and being.
This Shabbat Nachamu acknowledges that , despite catastrophic set-backs ,hope in a better future can never be lost. Tzion b’mishpat tifdeh. “Zion shall be redeemed with justice”. (Isaiah 40:27) In other words, justice will win in the end. It is a deeply Jewish response to defeat and I hope with all my heart that it is true.
Over the last couple of weeks Liberal Jews have celebrated our two hundredth birthday. On 17 July 1810 the first Reform religious service was held at a purpose built Jewish school synagogue in Seesen Germany. Local Orthodox rabbis attended the service, instrumental music was played, prayers in Hebrew and in the vernacular were read and a sermon was preached. Since then, of course, we have grown intellectually and physically and we constitute a Jewish majority in the Diaspora. We are a silent majority in Israel who have been alienated by the ruthless use of political coercion and blackmail.
We can see the worst of this abuse of power on You Tube’s eight minute record of the dramatic arrest of Anat Hoffman, Director of the Israel Religious Action Centre, who was charged by the police for the “crime” of carrying a Torah at the Western Wall.
That is the Torah which contains the words of the Sh’ma and the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments are universal. The Sh’ma does not say “Hear, O Orthodox Jews..” It does not even say “Hear, O male Jews”. The Temple, was rebuilt only to be destroyed again and again and its site is sacred to all Jews. No one should feel threatened by either the prayers of men or women who stand beneath its ancient walls.
We have to believe that the return of the Jewish People to Zion will be redeemed with justice. We are comforted by that hope.
