Here it is again: the weekly Torah portion. Last week, Moses reluctantly agreed to be the liberator of his people. Now, he meets Pharoah face to face with the demand (memorialized in a famous black spiritual): “let my people go.”
Moses and Aaron duel with Pharoah’s wise men in a sort of showdown of magic tricks. Also in this passage are the plagues God inflicts on the Egyptians. The objectification and weaponization of nature in this passage is not at all typical of the Torah and raises the question of whether it (or the ensuing exodus) were meant to be taken literally.
By the way, these Torah portions have their own rss feed, in case you want to syndicate them in your newsreader. The rss link is here. You can also view all the prior portions here. Commentary is welcome, below… |inline
Hamas suprised even itself with its success in the local council elections last year, winning not only Gaza, but also Fatah strongholds like Qalqilia and Nablus in the West Bank. Legislative candidate Sheikh Ahmad Haj Ali said then that “the angels must have been voting with us.” Indeed, if God involves Himself in electoral politics, He seems to have declared for the Palestinian militant Islamist group, which has now swept the national legislative elections, despite the fact that Israel has killed much of its top leadership and imprisoned many candidates. Haaretz reports:
Unofficial results in the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council indicate a crushing victory for Hamas, which seems to have garnered an absolute parliamentary majority after cleaning up in almost every constituency.
The unconfirmed results show that Hamas has captured almost all of the 16 constituencies in the West Bank and Gaza, in particular the Jerusalem district, where Hamas won all four seats allocated for Muslim candidates.
This seems like a good time to offer some excerpts from a report released last week by the International Crisis Group. The report, called Enter Hamas: The Challenges of Political Integration, deals with the impact of a Hamas victory on Israeli-Palestinian relations and recommends a new approach to the Palestinian Authority by the international community…
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This is the best thing I’ve read all month. From the Christian Science Monitor:
About 10,000 young Jews from 29 countries will enjoy a generous gift this winter: a vacation to Israel - with the Israeli government and Jewish philanthropies picking up the tab for transportation, food, and lodging.
Those who fund the trips say the opportunity to experience Israel is the birthright of every Jew. But to donors’ chagrin, handfuls of young activists have used the trips in recent years to volunteer for pro-Palestinian organizations in the West Bank - some of which directly oppose the Israeli government and Zionist ideology.
Here’s a bit more about Taglit-Birthright Israel, which sponsors the free Israel vacations, and its new competitor, Birthright Unplugged…
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As promised, here are the next two radio pieces by reporter and medical student Seema Jilani. She culled these from tapes she made traveling around the West Bank with the Jewish American Medical Project. There is a weath of amazing source material here - Palestinian and Israeli voices direct from the heart of the conflict, talking about things that are not discussed in media reports. I hope that readers will take a few minutes to listen to the reports - they are unique and wrenching…
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Here is this week’s Torah passage. It’s the first in the book of Exodus. For radicals and revolutionaries, this section is like a community organizing manual from the ancient world. It deals quite astutely with the situation and behavior of the oppressed and their reaction to those who would lead them.
The situation of the Israelities in Egypt, as described here, provides a paradigm for any minority living in a state that fails to safeguard its rights. Many countries today treat ethnic minorities as aliens. Israel is one of them. These populations are disenfranchised, disempowered and vulnerable. Human rights abuses are common under such circumstances.
Here, the Egyptian majority is threatened by the growth of the Israelite population. “Behold,” says the new Pharoah; “the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there befalleth us any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land.” The Egyptians then implement stringent measures to curtail the rights of the Hebrews and limit the growth of the population - not unlike those we now impose on the Palestinians.
Also quite instructive in this passage is the education of Moses, a Hebrew by birth, but raised as an Egyptian in the royal household. He is outraged at the suffering of his people, but feels incapable of leading them. He turns to his bother Aaron, who was raised among the Israelites and knows their culture.
Feel free to leave your own comments on the passage in the comments section below…
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Most Americans see the Occupied Territories through the lens of the media. It’s hard to connect with the Palestinian people, or to grasp what it’s really like to live from day to day under an oppressive military occupation.
That’s why I’m very proud to be able to present this series of audio reports from the West Bank and Gaza by Seema Jilani. Seema is a medical student at Baylor University in Houston, and also a reporter for radio station KPFT there. She travelled to the Occupied Territories in January of 2005 with the Jewish American Medical Project. The group lived and worked in the territories for two weeks - visiting clinics and hospitals, seeing patients, collecting stories and information.
Everywhere we went, Seema had her tape recorder. She recorded at checkpoints, clinics, city streets, playgrounds and cemeteries. Her tapes capture the sounds and voices of Palestinian life: casual conversations, heartrending stories, expressions of fear, anger and hope… |inline
My daughter thoroughly enjoys the Shabbat observance. She can recite the prayers on her own now. We often bless the bread half a dozen times, since four-year-olds take great pleasure in repetition- and, after all, God cannot be praised too often. She also, and I hope this is not a great sin, has her own little shabbos candles. Ours are in nice silver candlesticks on the middle of the table and hers are in a smaller candle holder by her plate, so that she can watch them up close.
This week, however, she decided she wanted to put the candles out so she could light them again. “Absolutely not,” I said. Hazard aside, Jewish law prohibits extinguishing the Sabbath lights. Not that we’re so strict about Jewish law around here, but that one seemed important.
Later I got to thinking about the plethora of laws governing activity on the Sabbath - what you can and cannot carry, whether it is a sin to hand someone a piece of fruit, etc. - and it occurred to me that behind the myriad injunctions on personal action is a very simple meaning… |inline
