Over the years, I have found that the best commentary to what happens in any given week is to be found in the 3,300-year-old text of the Torah portion.
By AHARON WEXLERAn explosion caused by a police munition is seen while supporters of US President Donald Trump gather in front of the US Capitol Building in Washington, US, January 6, 2021(photo credit: REUTERS/LEAH MILLIS)
When I was a boy in yeshiva, I remember my rebbe telling me what his rebbe told him – that if you really want to know what is happening in the world and gain a real perspective on the week’s news, you should read the parshat hashavua (weekly Torah reading). Over the years, I have found that the best commentary to what happens in any given week is to be found in the 3,300-year-old text of the Torah portion.As we read last week of God’s command to Moses to take the shoes off his feet for he was standing on hallowed ground, the US Capitol was invaded by a mob. To see the riffraff enter the holy of holies of American democracy and trample it like a conquered football locker room was heartbreaking. The image of the bare-chested man wearing war paint on his face and horns on his head, was a pagan throwback that I believe really embodied who these hooligans were.Growing up as a religious person, I had a deep and profound sense of the “holy.” Some things were just separate from the mundane and had to be treated as different. But not just different. They were not fragile objects per se demanding gentle care, they were holy objects that required a reverence to them. Many decades ago, when I was in synagogue, I saw a young boy drop a prayer book that was too large for his small hands. His father ran over to pick up the book, kissed it and then handed it back to his hands. I remember thinking even then that the father, in the way he returned the book, gave his son something much more than the siddur itself. In some sense, the father handed over to the boy a sense of eternity and a sense of the holy.Till this day, even as a self-proclaimed Maimonidean rationalist, I still can’t help but kiss holy books that fall to the ground, and set upside-down books right-side up. I do not think God actually cares about the position of a book. This sense of holiness is not about God, it is about us – what it does for our own sense of the world and our relationship to it.ONE OF the minor characters in Tanach is the tragic figure of Uzzah ben Avinadav. The Ark of the Covenant had been housed in Avinadav’s house and his family acted as guardians for this holiest artifact in Jewish life. King David decided that it was time to collect the Ark and bring it to Jerusalem. With great pomp and circumstance the Ark was placed on a new wagon as a parade of music and dancing accompanied it to its new abode. As the wagon made its way over the rough roads of ancient Judea, the wagon stumbled and Uzzah ben Avinadav instinctively put forth his hand to steady the ark and prevent it from falling. At that moment God struck Uzzah and he was killed on the spot. Somehow, some way, even this was an affront to God and the holiness of the Ark.The seeming injustice here, of a man being punished in such a terrible manner for the “crime” of trying to steady the ark and keep it from falling proved too much even for King David, who marked and named the spot of the offense. David feared moving the ark again and even delayed its further movement to Jerusalem.The story always stuck out in my mind as an example of unfairness. Uzzah really was trying to be a good guy and then boom, God strikes him dead for just trying to help. Later in life, I think of the story in a different way. I think the point is to instill in us that no matter how much we can try to approach God and the divine in our service of Him, we are always going to face an unbridgeable abyss between us. Learning that there are things that are holy and sacrosanct is an important tool for us to navigate the world.Those people who trampled the holy symbols of the United States deserve the wrath of the people. And for those of us who would never do such a thing, it is important that the lessons learned be passed down to Americans for all generations. It should serve as a refresher course to citizens of every country that there are things that are holy and sacred grounds that should be treated as such.Even in a post-modern world, we would do well to not slaughter every sacred cow and allow certain things in our lives to remain untouchable. It is healthy to have symbols and it is to our detriment that we trample on them .The writer holds a doctorate in Jewish philosophy and teaches in post-high-school yeshivot and midrashot in Jerusalem.
Related Tagsking david of israel
if(catID != 151){
var cont = `Take Israel home with the new Jerusalem Post Store
