DEVARIM/ DEUTERONOMY

The Oven that Coiled like a Snake

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow & Rabbi Phyllis Berman
from their book TALES OF TIKKUN: NEW JEWISH STORIES TO HEAL THE WOUNDED WORLD
Copyright by the authors

On a warm spring evening in the town of Yavneh, dinner had just begun in the home of Imma Shalom and her husband Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. Now Imma Shalom was, as her name said, “Mother Peace.” When people came to her with arguments to settle, she would often say, “In my parents’ house I learned the Torah that ‘Both these words and those words are words of the Living God.’ But this is not enough. For if God is One, these words must somehow mean one thing. Let us learn the wisdom of this Unity.” So she would gently show how two different ways of understanding Torah could be brought into harmony.

Dear Friends,

One of the most interesting studies of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) that I know is a book by Evan Eisenberg, The Ecology of Eden. It is a fusion of history, anthropology, ecology, and archeology with his own spiritual exploration.

It gives an ecological grounding to the spiritual struggle of the Western Semitic peoples in the face of the emergence of imperial monocrop agriculture in Sumeria. That spiritual struggle resulted, Eisenberg suggests, in the birth of Torah.

The Torah does not include Eco-Judaism; the Torah IS Eco-Judaism.

Eisenberg casts a sardoniceye not only on ancient empires, but also on those in seats of power today. (In this he echoes one book of the Bible: the Scroll of Esther, which is a funny and bitter critique of arrogance in power.) Below is his sardonic Torah commentary on Shofetim and on passages from Genesis, the Gospels of Matthew and John, and Ecclesiastes -- which he calls "THE KING GEORGE VERSION" of the Bible.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

The Torah portion that early asserts, "Justice, justice shall you pursue" (which means "Just ends by just means," said the rabbis) is deeply concerned with putting limits on political and military power. (Deut.16: 20)

The "perek hamelekh" (passage on the king; Deut 17: 14-20), puts constitutional limits on royal power: the king may pile up no horse-chariots for an aggressive war; no wealth out of payoffs for favors; no series of sexual conquests. He must not "send the people back into Mitzrayyim" – the Narrow Place of slavery -- to pay the costs of his army. He must drink in precisely the teachings that limit his powers and empower the poor, by both reading them and writing his own copy of them.

Jacob Bender, 9/17/2003

This week parsha includes these verses:

hen the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are about to invade and occupy, and He dislodges many nations before youhe Hitties, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations much larger than yound the Lord your God delivers them to you and you destroy them, doom them to destruction: grant them no terms and giver them no quarter.(Deut. 7:1-2).

The ideology expressed here is not an uncommon in the Bible, for later on in Deuteronomy we read the following:

When the Lord your God has cut down the nations whose land the Lord God is giving you, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their towns and homes(Deut. 19:1). nd when the Lord your God delivers [the town] into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword(Deut. 20:13).

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

In the Dangerous Doorways

Twice in the Torah, we are taught to place upon our doorways (for which the Hebrew is "mezuzot") some words that "I [God] command you this day." These words are also to appear between our eyes, upon our hands, and upon our gates.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

At Every Boundary, ONE.

Twice in the Torah, we are taught to place upon our doorways (for which the Hebrew is "mezuzot") some words that "I [God] command you this day." These words are also t

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Ki Tetze is a portion of great compassion (Deut 21: 10 to 25:19):

Compassion for the poor person who cannot redeem a debt-pledge, for your neighbor who might fall from the unprotected roof of your house, for your enemy whose sheep has wandered away, for a mother bird who is sitting on her eggs. –- Then suddenly there is this puzzling, paradoxical command:


“Remember what Amalek did to you on the road as you came forth from Mitzrayyim, the Narrows: how he met you on the road and smashed the stragglers among you, all who were enfeebled in your rear, when you were faint and weary. For he did not revere the Divine Creative Power.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

THE SH'MA AND ITS SECOND PARAGRAPH

How do we understand what traditional siddurim (prayer-books) treated as the second paragraph of the Sh'ma?

This passage of the Siddur comes from Deuteronomy 11: 13-21.

In quite direct translation, it says:

"If you hear, yes hear (shamoa tishma'u) the commandments/ connections (mitzvot) that today I command you/ connect you to, to love YHWH your God and to work for Him [sic] with all your heart and all your breath/spirit/soul, then I will rain upon the earth in its right-time, autumn-rain and spring-rain, and you will gather in your grain, your wine, and your olive oil. I will give grass in your fields for your cattle. And you will eat and be satisfied.