[This dvar Torah is dedicated to Neria Ofan.]
"I accuse you of believing that liberty and independence is a once-and-for-all acquisition. As a result , your liberty is a stunted and specious thing, full of tinsel, affluence and emptiness. So you have entered the era of calculation. You are no longer capable of making sacrifices for this shadow of the liberty that once existed, only compromises. Let that territory over there be abandoned, as long as prosperity persists for a while on the soil where we set our feet."
That sounds like it might be the fighting words of accusation from some right-wing settler, possibly from Gush Katif. Especially so, if you replace the word "liberty" in "this shadow of the liberty" with the word "land"; the country of Israel is now only a "shadow " of the country (with a shadow of the security) that existed before we turned 42% of the West Bank over to the PLO, so that it could shoot and bomb us from there. But the words are not those of a settler, or even of a Jew, or even a non-Jew viewing the State of Israel. They are 35-year-old words from the pen of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He was accusing America of buying off the USSR (which was only later labeled by Ronald Reagan as "the evil Empire"). The US was selling Eastern Europe to the Soviets as the price of being left in "peace and quiet", the two words used by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a Wednesday night Yom Ha'atzmaut television interview.
I've written before that it is immoral for one Jew to sacrifice another Jew, as our Left is doing to the Jews of Gush Katif, to buy "peace and quiet". Solzhenitsyn used simple human logic to arrive at his conclusion. I would like to probe the depths of this scapegoating, in the light of the Omer period we are now in and of Israel Independence Day.
The Gemara, Menachos 65a, mentions two arguments that the rabbis had with the Sadducees. The arguments seemingly have nothing to do with one another. But Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook (in Mishpat Kohen, and quoted in the Harav Kook Haggada, page 297) says there is a connection between the two.
The first dispute was whether an individual could bring the daily Korban Tamid sacrifice: the Sadducees said yes, the Chachamim (rabbis) said no.
To Rabbi Kook, this means that the Sadducees, champions of the individual, denied the existence of a Jewish tzibbur, a collective, national whole. Though an individual has a soul, and many individuals can band together as partners to form a nation, the Sadducees denied the existence of the nation as an entity (separate from the individuals comprising it) possessing a National Soul, National Will, National Holiness. But the Chachamim, capable of seeing the Nation, therefore said that only the Nation can bring a National sacrifice, and not an individual.
The second dispute was over the Omer sacrifice and the dating of Shavuot. In last week's parsha, Emor, we read (Vayikra 23,15): "And you shall count for yourselves from the day after Shabbos, from the bringing of the Omer sacrifice, seven weeks" and that will lead to the holiday of Shavuos. The Sadducces said that Shabbos in the verse meant the first Shabbos after Pesach; thus, the Omer count always began on a Sunday, and Shavuos did as well, fifty days later. The Chachamim said that Shabbos in the verse referred to the first day of Pesach, no matter what day of the week it fell on; thus Shavuos, too, could fall on any day of the week , not necessarily Sunday.
Rabbi Kook saw this as an argument paralleling the first one about the Tamid sacrifice. The rabbis looked at Pesach and felt that, though its precise date (the 15th of the month of Nissan) was determined by when they, the human court (Sanhedrin), declared the new moon and Rosh Chodesh, this day of Pesach possessed as much holiness as a day declared holy by God, the Sabbath. And so, Pesach could be called "Shabbos". The rabbis were declaring the equality of the Torah sheba'al peh (oral Torah), which the Sadducees denied and which was always subject to approval by the public (Avoda Zara 36b, "hagoi kulo", "the whole nation"), to the written Torah, which has many more private, individual aspects.
Pesach and the other two holidays are days of national unity, with the nation as a whole coming to the Temple in Jerusalem. By calling the holiday "Shabbos", the rabbis were saying that Pesach is to the National Soul, what Shabbos is as an institution for the individual, his home and his family.
This national aspect of the Torah of the rabbis is seen in the progression of the 49 days of the Omer. The Kabbalah sees in these days 49 individual character aspects, which each individual works on to improve so that the duly united nation (comprised of these perfected individuals) may be worthy of Kabbalat HaTorah, accepting the Torah, on the holiday of Shavuos. This holiday also represents Malchus, God's Kingship, with Kabbalat HaTorah being our acceptance of the King's Law. And Shavuos is the holiday of David HaMelech, whose human kingship over the nation is a derivative kingship, from the Kingship of God.
Today, we in Israel have our modern Sadducees. They, too, deny the authority of rabbis. More so, the Left is the champion of the individual: Meretz /Yachad began as the Citizen's Rights Movement. Another example: In November, 2000, the head of the Israel Law Association addressed the new members of Israel's Bar Association and declared that the purpose of the Israeli justice system is to "protect the individual and his rights from abuses by the State" (not, as one might think, to do justice). Like the Sadducees of old, the Left sees only individuals, no National Soul, no National holiness and no National land.
If the French were threatened by another country, but could buy them off with Paris, would they surrender Paris? But our Left is so blind that they don't see a Nation, a band of brothers, only individuals who can be coldly lopped off and traded, as long as peace and quiet and "prosperity persists for a while on the soil where we set our feet."
Solzhenitsyn was rewarded by the Soviet Communists for his moral stand, with a long, cold trip to the Gulag, the Siberian prisons for political prisoners. Now, our champions of the rights of the individual are not only violating the property rights of the settlers of Gush Katif, but are jailing people who threaten protests against the Disengagement. Neria Ofan and Noam Federman have received administrative detention, which is imprisonment with no formal charges, no trial, no appeal. The government's might is being used as a club, with the threat of putting others in detention and jail if they protest the perfidy of Disengagement. One can only hope that our protests will open the eyes of the prime minister and his government, so that they do tshuva and not carry out this evil Disengagement Plan.
"I accuse you of believing that liberty and independence is a once-and-for-all acquisition. As a result , your liberty is a stunted and specious thing, full of tinsel, affluence and emptiness. So you have entered the era of calculation. You are no longer capable of making sacrifices for this shadow of the liberty that once existed, only compromises. Let that territory over there be abandoned, as long as prosperity persists for a while on the soil where we set our feet."
That sounds like it might be the fighting words of accusation from some right-wing settler, possibly from Gush Katif. Especially so, if you replace the word "liberty" in "this shadow of the liberty" with the word "land"; the country of Israel is now only a "shadow " of the country (with a shadow of the security) that existed before we turned 42% of the West Bank over to the PLO, so that it could shoot and bomb us from there. But the words are not those of a settler, or even of a Jew, or even a non-Jew viewing the State of Israel. They are 35-year-old words from the pen of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He was accusing America of buying off the USSR (which was only later labeled by Ronald Reagan as "the evil Empire"). The US was selling Eastern Europe to the Soviets as the price of being left in "peace and quiet", the two words used by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a Wednesday night Yom Ha'atzmaut television interview.
I've written before that it is immoral for one Jew to sacrifice another Jew, as our Left is doing to the Jews of Gush Katif, to buy "peace and quiet". Solzhenitsyn used simple human logic to arrive at his conclusion. I would like to probe the depths of this scapegoating, in the light of the Omer period we are now in and of Israel Independence Day.
The Gemara, Menachos 65a, mentions two arguments that the rabbis had with the Sadducees. The arguments seemingly have nothing to do with one another. But Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook (in Mishpat Kohen, and quoted in the Harav Kook Haggada, page 297) says there is a connection between the two.
The first dispute was whether an individual could bring the daily Korban Tamid sacrifice: the Sadducees said yes, the Chachamim (rabbis) said no.
To Rabbi Kook, this means that the Sadducees, champions of the individual, denied the existence of a Jewish tzibbur, a collective, national whole. Though an individual has a soul, and many individuals can band together as partners to form a nation, the Sadducees denied the existence of the nation as an entity (separate from the individuals comprising it) possessing a National Soul, National Will, National Holiness. But the Chachamim, capable of seeing the Nation, therefore said that only the Nation can bring a National sacrifice, and not an individual.
The second dispute was over the Omer sacrifice and the dating of Shavuot. In last week's parsha, Emor, we read (Vayikra 23,15): "And you shall count for yourselves from the day after Shabbos, from the bringing of the Omer sacrifice, seven weeks" and that will lead to the holiday of Shavuos. The Sadducces said that Shabbos in the verse meant the first Shabbos after Pesach; thus, the Omer count always began on a Sunday, and Shavuos did as well, fifty days later. The Chachamim said that Shabbos in the verse referred to the first day of Pesach, no matter what day of the week it fell on; thus Shavuos, too, could fall on any day of the week , not necessarily Sunday.
Rabbi Kook saw this as an argument paralleling the first one about the Tamid sacrifice. The rabbis looked at Pesach and felt that, though its precise date (the 15th of the month of Nissan) was determined by when they, the human court (Sanhedrin), declared the new moon and Rosh Chodesh, this day of Pesach possessed as much holiness as a day declared holy by God, the Sabbath. And so, Pesach could be called "Shabbos". The rabbis were declaring the equality of the Torah sheba'al peh (oral Torah), which the Sadducees denied and which was always subject to approval by the public (Avoda Zara 36b, "hagoi kulo", "the whole nation"), to the written Torah, which has many more private, individual aspects.
Pesach and the other two holidays are days of national unity, with the nation as a whole coming to the Temple in Jerusalem. By calling the holiday "Shabbos", the rabbis were saying that Pesach is to the National Soul, what Shabbos is as an institution for the individual, his home and his family.
This national aspect of the Torah of the rabbis is seen in the progression of the 49 days of the Omer. The Kabbalah sees in these days 49 individual character aspects, which each individual works on to improve so that the duly united nation (comprised of these perfected individuals) may be worthy of Kabbalat HaTorah, accepting the Torah, on the holiday of Shavuos. This holiday also represents Malchus, God's Kingship, with Kabbalat HaTorah being our acceptance of the King's Law. And Shavuos is the holiday of David HaMelech, whose human kingship over the nation is a derivative kingship, from the Kingship of God.
Today, we in Israel have our modern Sadducees. They, too, deny the authority of rabbis. More so, the Left is the champion of the individual: Meretz /Yachad began as the Citizen's Rights Movement. Another example: In November, 2000, the head of the Israel Law Association addressed the new members of Israel's Bar Association and declared that the purpose of the Israeli justice system is to "protect the individual and his rights from abuses by the State" (not, as one might think, to do justice). Like the Sadducees of old, the Left sees only individuals, no National Soul, no National holiness and no National land.
If the French were threatened by another country, but could buy them off with Paris, would they surrender Paris? But our Left is so blind that they don't see a Nation, a band of brothers, only individuals who can be coldly lopped off and traded, as long as peace and quiet and "prosperity persists for a while on the soil where we set our feet."
Solzhenitsyn was rewarded by the Soviet Communists for his moral stand, with a long, cold trip to the Gulag, the Siberian prisons for political prisoners. Now, our champions of the rights of the individual are not only violating the property rights of the settlers of Gush Katif, but are jailing people who threaten protests against the Disengagement. Neria Ofan and Noam Federman have received administrative detention, which is imprisonment with no formal charges, no trial, no appeal. The government's might is being used as a club, with the threat of putting others in detention and jail if they protest the perfidy of Disengagement. One can only hope that our protests will open the eyes of the prime minister and his government, so that they do tshuva and not carry out this evil Disengagement Plan.