August 2015

            One of the recurring themes of the upcoming Rosh Hashana holiday liturgy is the enthroning of God as king/sovereign.  There is a whole section of the service titled Malchuyot, traditionally translated as ‘Kingship’, and more modernly as ‘Sovereignty.’  The central concept of the section is that, every year on the first day of the New Year, we re-coronate God as King/Sovereign over our lives, our world, our universe.

            We Americans are not used to ‘king’-talk.  This nation began as a rejection of the idea of a single person holding power over the wishes of the majority of the people.  From a colonial system based on sovereignty vested in an individual, our founders established a system in which sovereignty was vested in the people.  In theory, at least, our constitutional system vests sovereignty in the people.

            So what is a ‘sovereign’?  The sovereign is the entity (person or group) in whom supreme and ultimate authority to govern is vested.

            Based on our conversation in our Sunday Chat about God, it seems appropriate to recognize God as Sovereign.  One of the attributes of god-hood in general, as we discussed, is that God is – or gods were –  the central element in the lives of the people. 

            One of the ways we talked about for understanding the God concept, especially when we are trying to get past the many anthropomorphisms of the Bible, is that God can be, among other things, a label for that bundle of values and ideas by which our Jewish tradition encourages us to live our lives.

            And when we look at these two concepts – ethics and values important to how we live our lives, and enthroning of God at the center of our lives – then it makes perfect sense to combine them.  We can now understand the Malchuyot prayers of the Rosh Hashana liturgy as metaphor:  once again, we mindfully put our ethics and values at the very center of our lives.  We ‘enthrone’ them as the source of how we live our lives.

            This is a very good example of what  can become a general rule for our finding meanings in the Bible and the liturgy that we haven’t found before.  So much of it doesn’t work for us when we try to understand it literally.  But when we take it as metaphor, it can suddenly make a lot of sense, and bring new and powerful meanings to our lives.

            Thus, Rosh Hashana becomes one of the many tools that our tradition provides to us for waking up from our daily routines, and remembering that we are human being, created in the Divine Image, and partners with God in bringing order out of chaos, in completing the ongoing process of tikkun olam, fixing a broken world and completing Creation.

            Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt – how…he surprised you on the march when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear.  Therefore…you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!  Deut. 25:17-19

            I have always found the somewhat convoluted language of this passage at the end of this week’s Torah portion a bit amusing:  remember to forget Amalek!

            Who is Amalek?

            In Exodus 17, Amalek is a tribe of nomads in the Sinai desert, who attacked the Israelites, who have just been freed from four hundred years of slavery.  According to the tradition, the Amalekites did not confront the Israelites directly, which would have allowed young men of military age to defend the rest of the people; instead, they preyed upon the weak, the infirm and the aged who, because of their conditions, lagged behind the main body of the Israelites.  This went on until Moses instructed Joshua to gather a force of men to go after the Amalekites and defeat them.

            Because of the cowardly actions of the Amalekites, who were “undeterred by fear of God,” the name of this tribe was to be blotted out of history as not worthy of being remembered – a terrible fate to the biblical mind, to be forgotten forever.

            Of course, the name of Amalek was not blotted out of history, as witness its presence in our Bible!

            But this idea of blotting out the name of Amalek has an echo in our customs in, of all  places, the Jewish festival of Purim! 

            Purim is the story of Esther, the Jewish young woman who hides her identity when she is chosen out of all the beautiful women of Persia to be the queen.  When a new prime minister, by the name of Haman, is appointed, he manipulates the King into allowing him to kill all the Jews.  In order to save her people, Esther reveals her Jewish identity to the King, telling him that Haman is threatening her, too, when he threatens the Jews.

            So what does this have to do with Amalek, you ask?

            Well, in the Scroll of Esther (3:1), Haman is described as an Agagite, a descendant of one Agag.  Agag was the king of Amalek when King Saul was commanded to wipe out the Amalekites for what they did to the Israelites on their way out of Egypt centuries before (1 Sam. 15).  Saul leaves King Agag alive, but is then confronted by the Prophet Samuel for not obeying God and wiping out all the Amalekites.  Samuel kills Agag with Saul’s sword; but the damage seems to have been done:  Agag leaves descendants, one of whom will be Haman the Agagite of the Book of Esther.

            This is the origin of the custom of booing loudly when Haman’s name is mentioned during the reading of the Scroll of Esther, on Purim, in order to drown out his name.  We thus fulfill the commandment in this week’s Torah portion to wipe out the name of Amalek from history.

            Moral of story:  because Saul didn’t fulfill God’s command to wipe out the Amalekites, the Jewish People faced possible annihilation almost a thousand years later.

            The lesson for us:  we can’t know what the ultimate impact of even our least actions will be in the future.  We are therefore called on to live by God’s teachings, so that – at least hopefully – there is a better chance of a good result.

            So – don’t forget to remember to forget! 

            In less than three weeks, we will celebrate the New Year on the Hebrew calendar with the holiday of Rosh Hashana, followed ten days later by Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

            This month leading up to Rosh Hashana is called Elul.  There are no holidays during Elul; but the entire month has been connected by the tradition to those ten days that begin the new year.

            One of the names for the ten day period that begin with Rosh Hashana and end with Yom Kippur is Aseret Yamei HaT’shuva, the Ten Days of Repentance.  It is an annual exercise in self-improvement, looking back on the year that has just ended, and recognizing where we have ‘missed the mark’ in trying to live up to the potentials with which we have been endowed.

            In preparation for that exercise, during the month of Elul we are called upon to engage in a cheshbon nefesh, literally an accounting of the soul:  have we lived up to our obligation to do our best, in exchange for all that we have been given?

            Ideally, we should be engaging in such thoughts every day.  Some try to do so as part of their bedtime ritual, looking back on the day and judging how well they did.  The great advantage of such a practice is, of course, that the day’s events are still fresh in our minds.

            But let’s face it:  remembering to do that every night is difficult, and I would guess that few people remember to do so.  The Torah, therefore, sets aside one day a year for all of us to come together and support each other as we try to account for an entire year.

            By calling on us to begin our cheshbon nefesh, our accounting of the soul, during the entire month leading up to the Ten Days, the tradition gives us a total of forty days to prepare.

            The liturgy of Yom Kippur tells us that God forgives any sins we have committed only against God, just because we ask to be forgiven.  But the liturgy also teaches that, if a sin we have committed resulted in hurting or harming another person, God will not forgive that sin until we go to the person we have harmed and ask for their forgiveness. 

            This is probably the second most difficult task of our soul accounting.  I often think that the most difficult is when someone else has hurt us, and that person comes to us and asks us to forgive them.  Sometimes it is difficult to give up the feeling of being wronged, of blaming the other person and thinking of ourselves as victims, or as better than the person who sinned against us.         

            But one of the central ideas of our Jewish tradition is that we should try very hard to emulate God; and, as noted above, if God forgives when someone asks, we should be willing to do so as well.  It is an act of chesed, of mercy, to do so; and we will feel a whole lot better when we let go of our hurt and anger.  This will allow both the person who sinned, and the person who was sinned against, to experience spiritual growth, and to enter the new year with a clean slate, ready to more closely live up to the potential God has given us to be partners with God in tikkun olam, in fixing this seriously broken world in which we must live.

            It is Elul, time to begin our accounting of the soul, to seek and grant forgiveness, and to prepare for the new year that is about to begin. 

            I have often said that Judaism has something to say about everything.  From time to time, I will use this blog to set out my understanding of what Judaism has to say about an issue that is before us as Americans, as Jews, or just as human beings.  Although I certainly have my own opinions about these issues, I will do my best to present both sides of the issue from the Jewish tradition.

            The death penalty has been much in the news in recent weeks, from the Boston Marathan bombing case, to last week’s decision in the Holmes case in Aurora.

            So what does Judaism have to say about capital punishment?  Does/should a state have the right, or even duty, to put someone to death for a crime that person has committed?

            Some religious opponents of capital punishment begin by pointing to the Ten Commandments, which, in many English translations include:  “Do not kill.”  These opponents say that this should apply to the state as well as to individuals.  The problem with that argument is that the common English translation is wrong.  The original Hebrew is: Lo tirtzach, which clearly means “Do not murder.”  If it said “do not kill,” the Hebrew would have been:  Lo taharog.

            The difference between killing and murder is not just one of semantics.  Killing is a fact:  a life – in our discussion, a human life – is ended.  Murder is a legal conclusion that some killings are unlawful.  Some killings, such as in self-defense, are considered lawful.

            In fact, the Torah prescribes a death penalty thirty-six times, for violation of certain commandments, including murder, kidnapping, adultery, blasphemy, even working on Shabbat, or striking or cursing your father or mother.  The Torah even specifies different methods of execution for different crimes.  So, at least in principle, the Torah would appear to approve of the use of capital punishment.

            But as I learned many years ago in law school, making laws is an exercise in drawing lines.  Two hundred years ago in England, you could be executed by hanging for stealing a loaf of bread.  Today, the line on capital punishment has moved so far that, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), 19 states and many other countries (including the UK) have banned the death penalty completely; and other jurisdictions severely limit it to what are often called “special circumstances,” such as the killing of a police officer (seen as an attack on society as a whole).

            One of the reasons for this change is the fear of putting an innocent person to death.  Again according to the DPIC, more than 150 people, previously sentenced to death, have been exonerated of their crimes and freed from prison since 1973.

            This fear of putting an innocent person to death was a serious concern of the rabbis of our tradition.   They were so concerned, that they built up major procedural roadblocks against it.  They reminded themselves,  and us, a number  of times that even an accused or convicted criminal is created in the Divine Image, and we human beings must be absolutely certain of guilt before executing someone.

            The Torah itself, in Deuteronomy, requires that the death penalty be imposed only on the testimony of at least two eye-witnesses.  And in order to be certain that those eye-witnesses take their testimony very seriously, the Torah commands that they be the ones to carry out the execution, if the defendant is convicted on their testimony.  For obvious reasons, close relatives of both the victim and the accused could not be among the witnesses.

            The Talmud takes it even further:  in a capital case, again as a safety check, the testimony of the witnesses must fully corroborate each other.  And it isn’t even enough that the testimonies about the act itself match; the witnesses must also establish that the defendant was warned before the act that committing the crime could result in the death penalty, and the defendant must calmly indicate that he is aware of that, but chooses to commit the act anyway! 

            The court would also appoint special investigating judges, some to look for evidence of guilt, and others to look for evidence of innocence.  These investigators would then report their findings to the rest of the court.

            Perhaps the most unusual court rule was that, if the judges all voted unanimously to convict, then the defendant was not executed; there was a concern that, on a court of at least 23 judges, if not even one judge voted for acquittal, then perhaps there hadn’t been enough of an effort to find exculpatory evidence.

            And on days when the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish court in Jerusalem, would vote on capital cases, all of its members were required to fast, to emphasize the seriousness of what they were doing.

            Some rabbis of the Talmud so disliked capital punishment that they said that a Sanhedrin that condemned someone to death once in seven years would be considered a bloodthirsty court; others said a court that condemned someone to death even once in seventy years was a bloodthirsty court!  This was not a unanimous opinion: the Talmud does quote one rabbi as saying that such an attitude would have increased the number of murderers in Israel!  But this last rabbi was clearly in the minority.

            What effect has all this had in modern American Judaism?  The Reform Movement has been on record since 1959 as opposed to capital punishment; the Conservative Movement issued an opinion in 1960 saying “we regard all forms of capital punishment as barbaric and obsolete.”

            Orthodox opinions follow the above-cited procedural blocks against imposition of capital punishment from the Torah and Talmud.  They generally state that, since the Torah provides for capital punishment in so many cases, is isn’t immoral in and of itself; but the cases in which it could be safely and properly imposed are so rare as to be, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.

            In this and in other issues that I will be presenting in this blog, we don’t necessarily have to agree.  But I suggest that if we are taking our covenantal obligations seriously, we should at least be aware of what our sources and our traditions have to say, as we make up our own minds.  Some very wise people have struggled with these issues over the last four thousand years; there is no need for us to reinvent the wheel as we struggle with them today.