Re'eh 5771 - Covenant & Conversation - Thoughts on the weekly parsha from Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks

Listen to these stories. Behind them lies an extraordinary insight into the nature of Jewish ethics:

Story 1. Rabbi Abba used to bind money in his scarf, sling it on his back, and place it at the disposal of the poor. [Ketubot 67b]

Story 2. Mar Ukba had a poor man in his neighbourhood into whose door socket he used to throw four coins every day. Once the poor man thought, "I will go and see who does me this kindness." That day Mar Ukba stayed late at the house of study and his wife was coming home with him. As soon as the poor man saw them moving the door [to leave the coins] he ran out after them, but they fled from him and hid. Why did they do this? Because it was taught: One should throw himself into a fiery furnace rather than publicly put his neighbour to shame. [Ketubot 67b]

Story 3. When Rabbi Jonah saw a man of good family who had lost his money and was ashamed to accept charity, he would go and say to him, "I have heard that an inheritance has come your way in a city across the sea. So here is an article of some value. Sell it and use the proceeds. When you are more affluent, you will repay me." As soon as the man took it, Rabbi Jonah would say, "It's yours is a gift." [Vayikra Rabbah 34:1]

These stories all have to do with the mitzvah of tzedakah whose source is in this week's parsha:

If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need . . . Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land. [Deut. 15: 7-8, 10-11]

What we have here is a unique and still remarkable programme for the elimination of poverty.

Ekev 5771 - Covenant & Conversation - Thoughts on the weekly parsha from Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks

What is the real challenge of maintaining a free society? In parshat Ekev, Moses springs his great surprise. Here are his words:

Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God . . . Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery . . . You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." . . . . If you ever forget the Lord your God . . . I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. (Deut. 8: 11-19)

You thought, Moses says to the new generation, that the forty years of wandering in the wilderness were the real challenge, and that once you conquer and settle the land, your problems will be over. The truth is, that it is then that the real challenge will begin. It will be precisely when all your physical needs are met -- when you have land and sovereignty and rich harvests and safe homes -- that your spiritual trial will begin.

The real challenge is not poverty but affluence, not insecurity but security, not slavery but freedom. Moses, for the first time in history, is hinting at a law of history. Many centuries later it was articulated by the great 14th century Islamic thinker, Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), by the Italian political philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), and most recently by the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson. Moses is giving an account of the decline and fall of civilizations.

Va'etchanan 5771 - Covenant & Conversation - Thoughts on the weekly parsha from the Chief Rabbi

It is one of the great stories of all time, and Moses foresaw it three thousand years before it happened. Here he is speaking in this week's parsha:

See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this is your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people" . . . What other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today? (Deut. 4: 5-8)

Moses believed that there would come a time when the idea of a nation founded on a covenant with God would inspire other nations with its vision of a society based not on a hierarchy of power but on the equal dignity of all under the sovereignty and in the image of God; and on the rule of justice and compassion. "The nations" would appreciate the wisdom of the Torah and its "righteous decrees and laws". It happened. As I have argued many times, we see this most clearly in the political culture and language of the United States.

To this day American politics is based on the biblical idea of covenant. American presidents almost always invoke this idea in their Inaugural Addresses in language that owes its cadences and concepts to the book of Devarim. So, for instance, in 1985 Ronald Reagan spoke of America as "one people under God, dedicated to the dream of freedom that He has placed in the human heart, called upon now to pass that dream on to a waiting and hopeful world."

In his Inaugural in 1989, George Bush prayed: "There is but one just use of power, and it is to serve people. Help us to remember it, Lord. Amen." In 1997 Bill Clinton said: "The promise we sought in a new land we will find again in a land of new promise."

George W Bush in 2001 said, "We are guided by a power larger than ourselves who creates us equal in His image." In 2005 he declared, "From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth."

Devarim 5771 - Covenant & Conversation - Thoughts on the weekly parsha from Chief Rabbi Lord

Why does the book of Devarim have the structure it does: a mix of history, law, recollection and anticipation?

The sages knew that Devarim had a clear structure. Elsewhere in the Torah some rabbis used the principle of semikhut haparshiyot -- that we can learn something from the fact that passage Y occurs immediately after passage X. Others however did not, because there is a rule, ein mukdam umu'achar baTorah, meaning, the Torah does not always follow a strict chronological sequence. So we cannot always attach significance to the fact that the passages are in the order they are. However, everyone agrees that there is precise order and structure in the book of Devarim (Berakhot 21b). But what is the order?

Second: the sages originally called Devarim Mishneh Torah, a "second law". Hence the Latin name Deuteronomy, which means, the second law. But in what sense is Devarim a second law? Some of the laws Moses states in the book have appeared before, others have not. Is it a repetition of the laws Moses received at Sinai and the Tent of Meeting? Is it something new? What exactly is the meaning of Mishneh Torah?

Third: what is the book doing here? It represents the speeches Moses delivered in the last month of his life to the generation who would cross the Jordan and enter the Promised Land. Why is it included in the Torah at all? If the Torah is a history book, then we should proceed directly from the end of Bamidbar, the arrival of the Israelites at the banks of the river Jordan, to the book of Joshua, when they crossed the river and began their conquest of the land. If the Torah is a book of law, then Devarim should just be a collection of laws without all the historical reminiscence and prophecy it contains.

What kind of book is Devarim and what is its significance to the Torah as a whole.

Masei 5771 - Covenant & Conversation - Thoughts on the weekly Torah portion from the Chief Rabbi

The book of Bemidbar draws to a close with an account of the cities of refuge, the six cities -- three on each side of the Jordan -- set apart as places to which people found innocent of murder, but guilty of manslaughter, were sent.

In early societies, especially non-urban ones that lacked an extensive police force, there was always a danger that people would take the law into their own hands, in particular when a member of their family or tribe had been killed.

Thus would begin a cycle of vengeance and retaliation that had no natural end, one revenge-killing leading to another and another, until the community had been decimated, a phenomenon familiar to us from literature, from the Montagues and Capulets of Romeo and Juliet, to the Sharks and Jets of West Side Story, to the Corleones and Tattaglias of The Godfather.

The only viable solution is the effective and impartial rule of law. There is, though, one persisting danger. If Reuben killed Shimon and is deemed innocent of murder by the court -- it was an accident, there was no malice aforethought, the victim and perpetrator were not enemies -- then there is still the danger that the family of the victim may feel that justice has not been done. Their close relative lies dead and no one has been punished.

Mattot 5771 - Covenant & Conversation - Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks speaks on the weekly Torah portion

Pinchas 5771 - Covenant & Conversation - Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks speaks on the weekly Torah

Embedded in this week's parsha is one of the great principles of leadership.
The context is this: Moses, knowing that he was not destined to lead the next generation across the Jordan into the promised land, asked God to appoint a successor.
He remembered what happened when he was away from the Israelites for a mere 40 days. They panicked and made a golden calf. Even when he was present, there was a rebellion on the part of Korach and others against his leadership. The possibility of rift or schism if he died without a designated successor was immense. So he said to God:

"May the Lord, the God who gives breath to all living things, appoint someone over this community to go out before them and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in. Let the Lord's people not be like sheep without a shepherd." (Num, 27: 16-17)

God duly chose Joshua, and Moses inducted him. One detail in Moses' request, however, always puzzled me. Moses asked for a leader who would "go out before them and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in."
That, surely, is saying the same thing twice. If you go out before the people, you are leading them out. If you come in before the people, you are bringing them in. Why then say the same thing twice?


The answer comes from a direct experience of leadership itself.

Balak 5771 - Covenant & Conversation - Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks on the weekly torah portion

A People that Dwells Alone?

The dictionary defines epiphany as "a sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something; a comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization." This is the story of an epiphany I experienced one day in May, 2001, and it changed my perception of the Jewish fate.

It was Shavuot, and we were in Jerusalem. We had gone for lunch to a former lay leader of a major Diaspora community. Also present at the table was an Israeli diplomat, together with one of the leaders of the Canadian Jewish Community.

The conversation turned to the then forthcoming -- now notorious -- United Nations' Conference against Racism at Durban. Though the conference would not take place until August, we already knew that it and the parallel gathering of NGOs would turn into a diatribe against Israel, marking a new phase in the assault against its legitimacy.

The diplomat, noting that the conversation had taken a pessimistic turn, and being a religious man, sought to comfort us. "It was ever thus," he said, and then quoted a famous phrase: "We are am levadad yishkon, the people that dwells alone."
It comes from this week's parsha. Bilam, hired to curse the Jewish people, instead repeatedly blesses them. In his first utterance he says to Balak king of Moab:

How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the Lord has not defied? From the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, it is a people that dwells alone, not reckoned among the nations. (Num. 23: 8-9)

Hearing these words in that context I experienced an explosion of light in the brain. I suddenly saw how dangerous this phrase is, and how close it runs the risk of being a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you define yourself as the people that dwells alone, you are likely to find yourself alone. That is not a safe place to be.

Chukkat 5771 - Covenant & Conversation - Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks speaks on the weekly torah

Chukkim are Judaism's way of training us in emotional intelligence, above all a conditioning in associating holiness with life, and defilement with death. It is fascinating to see how this has been vindicated by modern neuroscience. Rationality, vitally important in its own right, is only half the story of why we are as we are. We will need to shape and control the other half if we are successfully to conquer the instinct to aggression, violence and death that lurks not far beneath the surface of the conscious mind.

Korach 5771 - Covenant & Conversation - Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks speaks on the weekly torah portion

When we read the story of Korach, our attention tends to be focused on the rebels. We don't give as much reflection as we might to the response of Moses. Was it right? Was it wrong?

It's a complex story. As Ramban explains, it is no accident that the Korach rebellion happened in the aftermath of the story of the spies. So long as the people expected to enter the Promised Land, they stood to lose more than gain by challenging Moses' leadership. He had successfully negotiated all obstacles in the past. He was their best hope. But as a result of the spies, that whole generation was condemned to die in the wilderness. Now they had nothing to lose. When people have nothing to lose, rebellions happen.

Shelach 5771 - Covenant & Conversation - Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks' thoughts on weekly torah portion

Covenant & Conversation - Shelach 5771 - Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks on this week's Torah portion

Behaalotecha 5771 - Covenant & Conversation

Behaalotecha 5771 - Covenant & Conversation

Naso 5771 - Covenant & Conversation

Bamidbar 5771 - Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks gives thoughts on the weekly torah portion

In English, the book we begin this week is called Numbers, for an obvious reason. It begins with a census, and there is a second count toward the end of the book. On this view, the central theme of the book is demography. The Israelites, still at Sinai at the beginning of the book, but on the brink of the Promised Land by its end, are now a sizeable nation, numbering 600,000 men of an age to embark on military service.

Bechukotai 5771 - Covenant & Conversation

Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks delivers this week's Covenant & Conversation - Behukotai 5771

There is one aspect of Christianity that Jews, if we are to be honest, must reject, and that Christians, most notably Pope John XXIII, have begun to reject. It is the concept of rejection itself, the idea that Christianity represents G-d's rejection of the Jewish people, the "old Israel".

This is known technically as Supersession or Replacement Theology, and it is enshrined in such phrases as the Christian name for the Hebrew Bible, "The Old Testament." The Old Testament means the testament, or covenant, once in force but no longer. On this view, G-d no longer wants us to serve Him the Jewish way, through the 613 commandments, but a new way, through a New Testament. His old chosen people were the physical descendants of Abraham. His new chosen people are the spiritual descendants of Abraham, in other words, not Jews but Christians.

Behar 5771 - Covenant & Conversation

Emor 5771 - Covenant & Convorsation

Kedoshim 5771 - Covenant & Conversation

Kedoshim 5771 - Covenant & Conversation

Acharei Mot 5771 - Covenant & Conversation

Acharei Mot 5771 - Covenant & Conversation

Metsora 5771 - Covenant & Conversation

Metsora 5771 - Covenant & Conversation