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05/27/2022

LAMENTATION:
Uvaldi
By Rabbi Azriel C. Fellner

Is It the silent scream that wakes us,
The voiceless cry that shakes us?
Is it the that moment when breath ceases
And the lungs within our conscience
Begs for air?

But there is none.

It is a darkness that no light dispels,
A chaos from which no order can be made
A terrifying invisible landscape with no horizon
Nothing upon which to tread.

And all is dead.

The children, oh the children whose screams
Cries and breaths ceased in that terrifying darkness. Air no longer there
where lungs once breathed.

Now is endless darkness, horizonless.

And we, who remain,
imagine the faceless children
The fractured features, featureless,
Bereft, bereaved, broken and beaten.

Is it the children? Is it us?

Both.

All of us vanquished.

Them in the cold image we envision
The bitter burial of the too, too young.
And us frozen in moral paralysis
The unethical desert devoid
From which nothing can grow.

For nothing seems to wake us,
Nothing seems to shake us
As we slowly slide into delirium
Accepting of one abomination after another.

05/27/2022

06/17/2021

Essays on the Weekly Torah Reading
Rabbi Azriel C. Fellner

HUKKAT

FROM GRIEF TO ANGER

“And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water, and the community and their beasts drank.” (Numbers 20:11)

Moses loses his sister and brother in this week’s Torah portion, Hukkat, and while we are told that at Aaron’s death all Israel mourned, it is astonishing to note that at Miriam’s death there is no public mourning. She dies, is buried on the spot, and then Israel complains that there is no water to drink. The rabbis associate Miriam’s death with a dearth of water, explaining that as long as Miriam was alive water was available through her merit. Now that she has died there is no water. Belatedly, they realize that they had taken for granted her quiet, unruffled support during her lifetime, but instead of remembering her as the blessing she was and taking time out for a proper grieving period, they turned their grief into anger. There was no water, they complained and turn on Moses.

Moses, too, did not grieve for his sister’s death—or, at least, no mention is made of his taken time to mourn her death. Instead, Scripture let’s us know that Miriam’s death and the subsequent lack of water became an immediate concern for Moses who assumed responsibility for his people. His own emotional needs were eclipsed by the demands of Israel.

Could it be that even God did not recognize Moses’ all too human need to step away from the daily responsibilities of leadership? Certainly God could have intervened, and asked Joshua, Moses’ assistant, to get the water that the people needed. But He didn’t. Moses was left alone to deal with the people’s frustration. There was no time or place for Moses to indulge in his sense of loss for a sister who saved his life, years ago in Egypt, and who sang and danced at the Reed Sea.

There seems to be a callousness in this story that demands explanation. Israel does not mourn at the death of Miriam and Moses is given no time to grieve for his sister. Grief turns to anger, anger that he, Moses, could not suppress. And so, when God told him to speak to the rock to bring forth water for the thirsty people, instead Moses became enraged. “Listen you rebels,” Moses uncharacteristically shouts, “shall we get water for you out of this rock?” (Numbers 20:10) And then Moses strikes the rock twice, water gushing out for the people to drink.

Most of the commentaries point out that the word “we” refers to Moses and Aaron, as though to imply that they are the authors of the miracle, thereby diminishing God’s power in the eyes of the people. Other commentaries suggest that Moses’ loss of temper led not only to the diminution of God’s power, but also to the lessening of Moses’ and Aaron’s stature within the community. Yet, one wonders. It is not altogether clear that God punished Moses for his lack of control at the rock, or his hitting the rock instead of speaking to it. Both Moses and Aaron knew that their years of leadership were coming to an end.

There is something else in what I think was Moses’ grief that turned into anger. The demands of the people never end. And life moves forward implacably regardless of the death of a sibling. The needs of his flock, the movement toward the Promised Land, the requirement of Moses to deal in diplomacy and war as they approach the border of Canaan—and on top of it all, there is his sister, his beloved Miriam, the girl turned woman who cared for him, who suddenly dies. She is the last of a generation, known only to this generation in her old age. And the people do not mourn her, as they will Aaron who provided the daily sacrifices, the blood of redemption, the food for the sacred occasions. She provided what was invisible to them and took for granted: water from a well. And she gave them that gift of water, unobtrusively, without fanfare, a mother to Israel. And when she dies only then does this new generation realize what a treasure she had been.

Imagine what Moses felt and saw. Not only did he lose someone he loved, he saw Israel as unfeeling, interested only in quenching their thirst, not even aware that their leader was full of sorrow. Little wonder he exploded in anger. Little wonder he struck the rock, expressing his grief, by bringing forth the one thing that his sister could do so effortlessly—provide water.

Often we are careless with our spiritual leaders. As a community we are demanding and we overlook that they, too, the rabbis, the teachers, the guides have their hearts broken. But life and needs and demands and everyday challenges require attention and the personal heartache is suppressed when the people come for help. And personal grief and loss is swallowed up by the immediacy of the moment’s needs.

06/09/2021

Essays on the Weekly Torah Reading
Rabbi Azriel C. Fellner

KORAH

KORAH, DATAN AND AVIRAM
A Puzzling, Confusing Narrative

The description of the Korah and Datan/Aviram rebellion (Numbers 16: 1-35) is a confusing narrative. Korah appears in our story together with Datan and Aviram and two-hundred fifty elders only to reappear in separate narratives.

For example, Korah’s rebellion against Aaron, and the “populist” assertion thrown against Moses that "all the community are holy and why should you raise yourselves up above the Lord’s congregation"(Numbers 16:3) is a ringing challenge against the priestly/religious authority of both Moses and Aaron.

On the other hand, Datan and Aviram bitterly attacked Moses for not having brought Israel to the Promised Land. Instead Moses took Israel out of Egypt which they described as a land of milk and honey only to have the people doomed to die in an arid and empty wilderness! Moses has led all Israel astray, they claim. He has duped his people, relegating to himself management and control over the destiny of the Israelites which he has mishandled. (Numbers 16: 12-14)

Thus we can detect two separate rebellions, one by Korah and his cohorts and one by Datan and Aviram, and the challenge is trying to understand why these separate stories are interwoven, one with the other, so much so that the thirty-five verses are, in fact, a hopelessly confusing narrative.

Attempts are made both by the Sages and by Medieval commentators to patch together the narratives, creating back stories for Datan and Aviram and for Korah. For example the Talmud in Nedarim 64b suggests that Datan and Aviram were the two men who struggled with one another when the young Moses, then prince in the Egyptian court, came upon them and tried to pry them apart. One of them calls out to Moses saying, "who made you chief and ruler over us?" (Exodus 2:14) Connecting that story with Datan and Aviram is a clever linkage, for in the present narrative they also accuse Moses of" lording" it over them. (Numbers 16: 13)

In the case of Korah’s defiance the Midrash fashions all sorts of legends and accounts in which Moses is seen as an abuser of power, a gouger, and a man who made Korah, during the Levitical purification period, appear foolish. (B'midbar Rabbah 18:4)

But then, as the stories are melded together, one wonders how the punishments by God are played out. Were the incense pans to be brought to the Tabernacle immediately or the next morning? Who are the chieftains who came with Korah? Were they elders of the tribes or themselves Levites? And what is it about the donkeys that Moses claims never to have taken? No one ever accused him of taking anything of value to begin with. And among many other issues regarding the text, where and how did Korah die? We are not sure whether Korah was swallowed in the famous earthquake together with Datan and Aviram, or whether he was consumed by fire together with the two-hundred fifty rebellious elders.

It’s impossible to tell.

Deconstructions and reconstructions of the various elements in the rebellions have been attempted by modern biblical scholars, and the various components of the stories through these reconstructions make it clear that the Sacred Author(s) wove together an intricate and sometimes puzzling narrative. (1)

The deconstruction of the narratives by these scholars has been interesting and clarifying, to be sure. But the question for me has always been not that there are several stories combined. My question is this. Why weave together these stories at all? The Sacred Author(s) must have known that the Korah story is, from a formal point of view, difficult if not incomprehensible. They were as canny a group of story tellers and law-givers as any in the ancient world. Did they have a reason to mingle and dissolve together two narratives? Is there a purpose to the confusion?

At its basic level, the Korah rebellion was religious in nature. The question of who is holy and holiness is not limited to the priesthood. Why do Moses and Aaron and his family arrogate unto themselves the cloak of sanctity, Korah asks? Everyone is holy, Korah proclaims. We should all have access to the sanctity ascribed to you.

Datan and Aviram, on the other hand, verbally attack Moses’ administration of the people’s political and social welfare. You took us out of Egypt, they proclaim. And like many a political antagonist, they subvert the truth and call for the overhaul of Moses’ leadership. When Moses further proclaims that he has never taken a donkey from the people, or wronged them in any way, what Moses is saying, and what is often a common charge against public officials, is that he has never been on the take, using public funds or taken materiel to enrich himself.

Two stories: one is a rebellion against Moses and Aaron within the framework of the religious arrangement of priesthood and tabernacle; the other is a rebellion based on political and social issues and upon the administration of the people’s welfare.

If that is so, then why not tell the stories separately? Korah and the Elders and Datan and Aviram have separate agendas, describe each rebellion as a discrete act of dissension.

It seems to be a deliberate attempt by the redactor to superimpose both the religious together with the social/political not to confuse but to reveal, if only subliminally, that these stories share something in common which when taken together are greater than if they were told separately.

Israel’s destiny was shaped by an historic event, the Exodus, and its inner life will be shaped by its laws, its values and its call to be an am segulah a special people and a holy nation. Both spheres, the external historic and the internal spiritual were to be valued in combination. It will never be enough for the Children of Israel to pay homage to and draw wisdom from its historic association with freedom from slavery and to create a nation state based solely upon the Exodus from Egypt and the promise that it would establish itself in a land flowing with milk and honey.

The commandments, the human values and the spiritual depth which brings a person or a nation to a level of sanctity, equity and social justice, and which was embedded in the lives of the priesthood and Levitical tribes, and which they were responsible both as servants of the people and teachers of the nation, could best be expressed in a land of their own where the political and social life of the people lies in combination with the holy and the sacred.

It was this combination of history and social institutions as sacred, and the sanctity of the sanctuary through which a priesthood (later to be translated after the destruction of the Second Temple to all the people) would imbue a nation with religious and humane values was—and still is— a unique model and an exemplar.

The rebellion of Korah and the elders was a blow against Moses and Aaron and against the sanctity of the nascent priestly institution. Datan and Aviram’s subversion of the history of the Israelite nation and the promises made to them concerning the future, when taken together, would be a lesson to all who read what seems to be a confusing account. The two stories—perhaps awkward—balance two vital elements in Jewish history: Exodus and Commandment, a holy and sacred life within the civic life of the Jewish People nurtured by the Torah and the sages who came after. One without the other is not enough.

And even during the long diaspora, Jews prayed for a return to the land, turned their hearts to Jerusalem when they prayed and longed for a time of return and rebuilding.

To the Sacred Author both stories were, in a way, indistinguishable from one another and when the final redaction was made the rebellion of Korah and the elders was slipped into the narrative of Datan and Aviram. While the Israelites were frightened by both the earthquake and the fire which consumed the elders, they would eventually realize the essential truth in both narratives. Israel’s history without the laws of sanctity would be like a body without a soul. And the laws and sacred statutes without a land would be like a painting without a frame.

(1) See, for example, the articles in TheTorah.com by the editors of TABS and the carefully analyzed pieces by Professors David Frankel and Israel Knohl. (https://www.thetorah.com/series/korah-datan-and-abiram-case-study

Project TABS Editors

06/03/2021

Essays on the Weekly Torah Reading
Rabbi Azriel C. Fellner

SH’LAH-L’KHA

FROM HORMAH TO GRANDEUR

The story of the “spies” sent by Moses to reconnoiter the Land of Canaan is a major turning point in the lives of the Israelites. The men who went to the Holy Land and brought back a mixed report regarding the beauty and fecundity of the land also described how the inhabitants of the land were large in size and formidable. The cities they traveled through are fortified and large and populated by powerful tribes, including the Amalekites with whom Israel had already clashed.

Under ordinary circumstances the report would have elicited from the men of Israel a clear-eyed view of what needed doing. The military would require further training, the population would have been aroused to meet the challenge, and the faith of the people as a whole would need strengthening. The report should have stimulated within them a desire to show themselves up to the task of overcoming whatever obstacles came their way. They would show both God and Moses—and especially themselves—that the faith God had in them was justified.

Instead the “spies’” mixed report revealed the weaknesses of the People of Israel. It was clear that they were not ready for the challenges that lay ahead. The faith they had in one another, and worse, the faith they had in Moses and in God was deeply flawed. The people were not ready. As Maimonides points out, the rigors of a wilderness journey were required to toughen them and to make them come face to face with the sad fact that they themselves would never see the Promised Land. Their generation would die in the wilderness; their children would cross the Jordan. Moses and Aaron would also never cross into Canaan; Joshua, Moses’ successor, will complete the journey.

A forty-year sojourn, moving from place to place, would now begin. The daily work of strengthening and buttressing the people’s sense of destiny would also now begin, but not before the people try to overcompensate for their sense of failure. Without consulting Moses, they muster troops to begin a pitched battle and force their way into Canaan. Moses warns them, recognizing that their military advance is but a desperate attempt which will end in catastrophe. And it does. “And the Amalekites and the Canaanites who dwelt in that hill country came down and dealt them a shattering blow at Hormah.” (1) (Numbers 14: 45)

Wounded both physically and spiritually, the story of the “spies” comes to an end in utter and total defeat. The word “Hormah” refers not just to a geographical location but metaphorically to a place of inner desolation, the place from which there can no further decline. “Hormah” is the perfect word to end this story of turmoil and collapse.

But, of course, it does not—cannot—end there. The next chapter begins with the majestic announcement “When you enter the land that I am giving you to settle in. . .”(Numbers 15: 2) The juxtaposition between “Hormah” (spiritual and military collapse) and Israel’s continuation as a people with a destiny and a future is neatly interpreted by Don Isaac Abravanel, (Bible commentator, financier 1437-1508) as well as other commentators. The chapter ending with “Hormah” is followed by Moses’ “promise to the wilderness generation that their children will enter the Land and will inherit it. For they were fearful and said, ‘who knows what will happen after forty years. Perhaps our children will also sin.’ Therefore God went out of His way to console them and began to declaim commandments specific to the Land of Israel, so that the (wilderness generation) will know that obviously they (their children) will enter the Land.” (2)

The rebuilding process for the wilderness generation was not easy, however. There would be further rebellions, both individual and national. Near the end of this Torah portion a man decided to publicly desecrate the Sabbath and in the following Torah reading, Korah will initiate a rebellion against Moses and Aaron. There will be more plagues. Even Moses will run afoul of God’s commandment to speak to a rock to bring forth water, and instead struck it in anger. (Numbers 20: 7-11) Borders manned by Edomites and Amorites will be closed to the Israelites. Their beloved high priest, Aaron, will die marking a passage from one era to another.

There will be other wars, in one of them Israelite captives will be taken. Israel will be subject to the blandishments of a soothsayer, and the seductive temptations of Midianite women. Punishment is followed by forgiveness.

Effectively, sometimes dramatically, a skein of laws, commandments, narratives and geographical locations are woven together. The story of the “spies” recedes into memory. Moses ages and a decision is made to choose Joshua as the next leader. All the while Israel moves from one location to another seeing their children grow, a new generation told where they will eventually stake their tribal properties. Time passes, the nation grows and matures and a landmark decision is made awarding women without male benefactors to inherit land on their own.

Finally, Israel encamps in the Plains of Moab and the book of Numbers comes to a close, not without additional rules and regulations.

Israel’s maturation is an uneven road of conflict and commitment, collapse and rebirth. The beautiful encampment of endless tents viewed by the gentile prophet Balaam and the corruption which tested the nation become almost emblematic of Israel’s continual spiritual rise and fall, temptation followed by redemption.

The attitude of the “spies” is succinctly encapsulated by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in his lecture “Singularity of the Land of Israel.” The Rav says of the men sent to search out the land, “With grandeur looking down on them, all they could see was the mundane.” (3) They lacked the vision of what awaited them when they would begin their life as a sacred people on a sacred land.

I think that the “entire” Book of Numbers, B’Midbar, is the story of the transformation of the mundane and limited horizon of a once enslaved people into a nation attached to a land filled with sacred grandeur. Moving past Sinai into the wilderness, Israel’s “Hormah” was the desolate bedrock from which they began to grow and rebuild themselves—not without pain and loss, but with a growing sense of grandeur and purpose.


1)The Hebrew word “Hormah” appears nine times in Scripture suggesting not only utter physical destruction but metaphorically referring to an inner, psychological desolation, as well.
2)Don Isaac Abravanel, Commentary on the Torah, Arbael Edition, Jerusalem, 1979, B’Midbar, p 76
3)Reflections of the Rav, Lessons in Jewish Thought, adapted from Lectures of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik by Rabbi Abraham R. Besdin, Alpha Press, Jerusalem 1979, p 123

05/27/2021

Essays on the Weekly Torah Reading
Rabbi Azriel C. Fellner

B’HA-ALOT’KHA

GATHER FOR ME

Leadership is never easy. Leaders need to sublimate their own desires for the needs of the people he/she leads. The hours are often long and the demands heavy. Indeed that word heavy appears many times in the Torah, the heaviness of the burden, of responding to the needs of the people.

Indeed, Moses’ life has become wretched. The people complain about the lack of meat, the quality of the food given to them in a miraculous manner, and generally grumble and moan, their cries of disappointment endless, like the wilderness itself. There is in the opening verses of Chapter Eleven a kind of interminable bellyaching on the part of the Israelites about their condition.

Moses, finally has had enough and complains to God, I alone cannot bear this people, for they are too heavy for me. (Numbers 11: 14) The image is sharp. It is as though the Israelites have perched themselves on Moses’ shoulders as he carries them through the wilderness. He also compares himself to a nanny who carries a yowling infant on her lap. He wants it to end. Even death would be preferable. And if You would deal thus with me, Moses exclaims, kill me. . .(Numbers 11: 14) It’s an astonishing request; but it comes from deep within, from a leader who has had a meltdown. After all, Moses, despite his intimate relationship with God, is all too human. He obviously is in need of help.

Immediately the Torah tells us that God asks Moses, Gather for Me seventy of Israel’s elders whom you know (i.e. people you know to be reliable, honest, righteous) elders and officers of the people and bring them to the tent of meeting and let them take their place with you. (Numbers 11: 16) These people will now share Moses’ burden. Part of Moses’ authority will now be apportioned to them. Thus, Moses will feel less harried. And through this sharing of authority and leadership, the beginning of an organized community takes shape, over and above the various placements of the tribes in their appointed locations. (Numbers Chapter 2) Now there will be cabinet members as well as legal decisors, as it were, reporting back to Moses, each member responsible to and for the people he serves.

There is, however, something which requires some examination. When God responds to Moses’ call for help, the Torah says Gather for Me seventy elders. . .Was it really for God that Moses calls forward men who would be of help to him? Why does the Torah say, Gather for Me? Certainly, God does not need burden sharing. Moses does. The phrase for Me should rather have read, Gather for yourself those who can help you and share your burden.

The Ohr Ha-Hayim (Morrocan rabbi, Hayim Ibn Attar, 1696-1743) suggests that the phrase for me means that God Himself will ratify the appointment of the elders; their tasks will be Divinely affirmed. Once you have appointed them Moses, and they have been passed by Me, then they will become your elders and officers.

The Sifrei (Babylonian Legal Midrash, 200 C.E.) goes a step further. The Sifrei interprets the phrase for Me, as saying that the word Me means that whatever is associated with Me (God) must be such that it will endure forever. Moses, in other words, did not just appoint people who would assist him in leading and teaching the people and share his burdens. Moses was creating an institution that needed to endure, something that would survive beyond the present generation. It was to be the precursor of the Sanhedrin, the Sifrei clarifies and illustrates.

Moses’ task here in our Torah portion was more than burden sharing. It was the creation of something enduring.

This is the second time we read of Moses’ requiring assistance. Earlier in the Book of Exodus, 18: 13-27, the decision to have help was motivated by Jethro who saw his son-in-law working endless hours and who suggested that Moses get some support from others. What happened then, just before the giving of the Ten Commandments, did not have Divine ratification. Though it was an excellent idea and Moses followed through on Jethro’s suggestion, it did not carry the kind of institutional weight which is reflected in the phrase for Me and which to the Sifrei meant something permanent and sacred.

Institutions which are created for the greater good, which transcend time and whose purpose goes beyond the momentary and the mundane will endure. But when an institution no longer concerns itself with what is best for the people it serves, or when it becomes a haven for personal grievances and self-centered policies, when it becomes a forum where the lie and the truth are interchangeable then it is no longer for Me—for a higher standard of leadership, and yes, even in a secular setting—a sacred and stable place.

Institutions that have lost their way, institutions which no longer are receptive to the for Me which marked the 70 elders appointed by Moses, can bring about an atmosphere where hatred, racial inequities, antisemitism and indifference grow like poisonous weeds. The institutions themselves begin to weaken, melt and finally wither; the voices of the elders spewing irrational judgments and distortions.

An institution is crippled when the phrase For Me with a capital “M” becomes for me with a lower-case “m.”

05/05/2021

Essays on the Weekly Torah Reading
Rabbi Azriel C. Fellner

B’HAR-B’HUKKOTAI

HUKKIM/STATUTES:
Material and Spiritual Regulations

Our double portion this Shabbat brings to a close the third book of the Torah Vayikra/Leviticus.

At the conclusion of this book, the opening verse of the second reading recalls the covenantal relationship God has struck with the People of Israel. "If you follow my laws and faithfully observe My commandments," God tells the people through Moses, "I will grant rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit." (Leviticus 26:L 3-4) The good fortune of the Children of Israel, however, is contingent upon carrying out the commandments given to them at Sinai.

Should Israel neglect and/or rebel against God’s word, then not only will nature’s beneficence be withdrawn from the land upon which they live, but appalling calamities, both physical and spiritual, will assail them till they are driven out of the land and find themselves dispersed among the nations of the world. This section describing the physical and moral collapse of Israel is called the "Tokheha" and chanted in a subdued tone when read in the synagogue. (Leviticus 26: 14-45)

As is almost always the case, translations from the Hebrew often obscure or distort meaning. "If you follow my laws," the opening verse reads in the JPS translation. Robert Alter renders the verse to read "If you go by my statutes," which is more apt. The Hebrew word "Hok/statute" is more than a law or a commandment, but more like a binding edict. The word "Hukottai" which gives the second Torah reading its name, suggests that a fundamental, foundational platform has been established from which Israel can carry out its mission. If Israel remains faithful to that set of statutes all will be well; if not, then disaster will ensue.

In a fascinating series of Midrashim, the sages clarify and deepen the relationship between a "Hok/statute" and its relationship with Israel and its future.

But there is one Midrash which connects the idea of a statute, a Hok, with the very structure of the universe itself. The Hukkim/statutes exist as its own series of regulations which God used as a code whereby he created the heavens and the earth. As the Midrash points out these are statutes "shebahem hakkakti et hashamyim v’ha-aretz," codes through [these statutes] I, (God), have carved out the heavens and the earth. (Midrash Vayiqra Rabbah 35: 4)

These statutes preceded Creation and continue to govern nature itself. These laws of nature guide the sun and the moon, the stars, the ocean’s surf and even the boundless depths of the world entire.

In associating the inviolable laws of nature together with the statutes given to Israel to fulfill as part of the covenant with God both carry consequences when compromised. If the laws of nature suddenly ceased, pandemonium would result and life would be in jeopardy, the Midrash suggests. Likewise, the laws carved out for Israel to uphold, like the laws of nature, must not be violated. The very survival of Israel depends upon adherence to the hukkim/statutes.

Moreover the Midrash suggests something deeper. Namely, the codes created by God through which the world came into being and without which the universe would collapse are also the same order of code used by God to conceive and protect Israel’s very existence. Hence, when these codes are broken, the very nature of Israel’s survival is in peril. But when the hukkim/statutes are upheld, the rains shall arrive at their proper time, the earth shall yield its produce and the trees their fruit in abundance. The laws of nature and the life of Israel are combined. Israel’s spiritual mission and nature’s metaphysical existence are united.

This Midrash has raised an interesting contemporary challenge.

The laws of this country are also hukkim/statutes as carved out in the Constitution. The laws are based on a covenant whose structure survives only when the truth is spoken and upheld. If a lie is repeated again and again such that a deception, followed by violence threatens the framework of democracy itself, the very foundation of that democracy is in danger of collapse. Laws that uphold the dignity of all human beings, and which allow for their voices and votes to be sustained are like hukkim/statutes, codes which are both engraved like nature’s laws upon the universe and whose compromise would lead to weakening and eventually destroying the very foundation and mission of a nation.

What we all face when we turn our backs on those statutes which helped found both ancient Israel and modern democracies is what the tokekhah warns us. As Thomas Friedman in an essay he wrote for the New York Times, repeating a lie, and suppressing the vote "is the equivalent of lighting a fuse to a bomb planted beneath the foundations of our democracy."

That is also the ominous warning of the tokkekah, the execrations which cautioned Israel. The tokhekah is hard to listen to. We should chant it in a sober key. But it’s worth paying attention to it.