FOR THE LORD YOUR GOD,

HE IS THE GOD OF GODS

AND THE LORD OF LORDS,

THE GOD GREAT, POWERFUL,

AND AWE-INSPIRING,

HE WHO LIFTS UP NO FACE

IN FAVOR AND TAKES NO BRIBE, PROVIDING JUSTICE FOR ORPHAN AND WIDOW,

LOVING THE SOJOURNER, BY

GIVING HIM FOOD AND CLOTHING.

SO ARE YOU TO LOVE THE SOJOURNER,

FOR STRANGERS WERE YOU

IN THE LAND OF EGYPT.

(Devarim

10:18)

"So

the lessons to be learned from the exile.

"So are you to love the sojourner"

Resemble God in love

of the stranger who accompanies you from alien lands; by your acceptance of the

stranger you will realize that pure humanity is the supreme quality in your

view. Equality before the law and the love with which Israel relates to the

stranger characterize the nation and the Land as the Nation of God and the Land

of God. In other circles, man's status depends upon his ancestry and his

property; in the Nation of God and the Land of God only pure humanity,

subservient to God, determines the status of man.

  (Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch, Devarim 10:19)

"For

you were strangers" – All of your misfortune in Egypt was that you were "strangers"

there; as such, local custom denied you land, birthplace, livlihood; the

natives were free to do with you as they saw fit. As strangers, you were denied

rights in Egypt, and this was the root of the servitude and the persecution you underwent.

Therefore, watch yourselves – this is the terminology of the admonition – lest

you establish human rights in your state on any foundation other than pure

humanitarianism, which rests in the heart of every man as a man. Any

depravation of human rights will open the door to arbitrariness and to abuse of

man – this is the root of the abomination of Egypt.

                                                                                  (Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch, Shemot

22:20)

OTHER

GODS

Ariel

Rothaus

The

parasha of "And if you will heed" which appears at the

end of the sidra of "Ekev" presents in clear

terms – just like the opening of the following sidra, "Re'eh",

– the demand to chose between two paths: To heed the commandments of God

and merit His blessings – rain, the early and the late rain – or to stray from

the straight path and to be banished from the good land.

The

sin which leads to banishment is the failure to withstand the temptation of

idolatry: "Be careful lest your heart be seduced, so that you turn

aside and serve other gods and prostrate yourselves to them" (Devarim 11:16). This verse, familiar to us all, would seem to

need no elaboration; it warns, in simple language, against the dangers of idol

worship. But even though the phrase "and serve other gods" is

crystal clear in view of the monotheistic view of the Torah and its struggle

against idolatry, it nonetheless attracted the attention of the Sages and was

subject to homiletic interpretation (droosh) inside and out, in sundry

and peculiar ways. Here are some of the derashot found in the

"Sifri":

"And

serve other gods" – are they, then, really gods? Is it not written: "And burn their

gods in fire, for they are not gods" (Isaiah 37:19); why, then, are they called "other gods"? Because they

delay the good from coming into the world. (The

word "acher" can mean "other", delay",

and "be late") An

alternate explanation: "Other gods" – they turn their

worshippers into strangers. Another explanation: "Other gods"

– meaning others consider them to be gods. Another explanation: They are

strangers to their worshippers, as is written: "If they cry out to it,

it does not answer; it cannot save them from their distress" (Isaiah 46:7) [Sifri, Ekev 11, Piska 43, Finklestein

edition, New York, 5729]

It

appears that the point of departure of this excerpt from the Sifri (which

continues to bring more explications to the verse) is the fear of possible

comparison between The Holy One, Blessed Be He, and idols. Idolaters could have

understood "other gods" as recognition that idols are

in some way similar to The Holy One, Blessed Be He, that these

"others", belong to that same category of supernatural, supreme

beings, in short – partners with the divinity. Therefore the multiplicity of d'rashot

which explain the word "others" in different ways, far from the

simple p'shat, all sharing a common purpose – the prevention of

that ugly equation. So does Rashi, in his explication of "You are not to

have any other gods before my presence", justify the wrenching

of the text from its plain meaning: "There can be no other way to explain

"other gods" , for to attribute to them divinity is to

insult the Almighty".

Among the derashot quoted above, two

stand out – their wording is similar, but their perspectives are contradictory,

to the point where it might be said that a dialectic contradiction ties them

together: "They are strangers to their worshippers" (droosh number

four), as against "They turn their worshippers into strangers" (the

second droosh).

The expression "gods which are strangers

to their worshippers," as a homiletic elaboration of "other

gods", is familiar to us from Rashi's commentary on Devarim 11:16 (and

earlier in his commentary on Shemot 20:3, but there it appears as an alternate

explanation). Naturally we tend to relate this expression – which presents the

false gods as being strangers to their worshippers because they lack power to

fulfill their requests – to the fierce and dramatic struggles against idolatry

described it the Bible. We vividly recall the powerful scene of Eliyahu

taunting the prophets of the Baal on Mt. Carmel. The prophets wound themselves

with swords and daggers "until blood is spilled on them" (I Kings, 18:28) hoping

in vain to merit an answer from their gods. It is possible, however, that the

polemical target is not the rituals of idolatry in its primitive, instinctual

form, but a different – a much higher and more rational – kind of relation of

alienation between god and man, one derived from acceptance of philosophical

views of the alien world. Greek philosophical thought developed a abstract

concept of the divinity, one which did not encourage an emotional and personal

tie between the human and the divine. The apex of the tendency to alienation is

to be found in the teachings of Epicurus, who did not deny the existence of the

gods, but thought that they are disinterested in humans, and totally

indifferent to their fate. It is therefore not unfeasible that the ‘gods who

are strangers to their worshippers' are not Baal and Ashtoret or Zeus and Hera,

but the gods which are perceived in an intellectual-rational manner alone

and/or those who are totally alien to man – the gods of the philosophers.

A different form of alienation is alluded to

by the second homiletic statement "gods who turn their worshippers into

strangers." This droosh is problematic and forced from a linguistic

point of view, but incomparably penetrating from an ideological aspect.

The commentator on the Sifri, R' Moshe

Avraham Troyes Ashkenazi, writes that the meaning of the phrase is that

idolatry totally excludes the sinner from the ranks of Israel: "This is

the meaning of the phrase ‘they turn their worshippers into strangers" –

they will be set apart even from their children and will not be a partner even

in the Israelite nation" (Toldot Adam, on Sifri, ibid.)

The Netziv explained the expression as

follows: "They turn their followers into strangers' – Strangers to The

Holy One, Blessed Be He, as though they were not those who were designed and

created by God" (Emek

HaNetziv on Sifri, ibid.). The alienation created by idolatry is not

between the Jew and all of Israel, but between the Jew and his Creator. In this

aspect, the phrase is the complete opposite of the one discussed above. There

the gods alienate themselves from their subjects; here the idol worThere is in

this phrase, however, another aspect not mentioned in either of the two

explanations, one which opens a possibility for an explanation slightly

different from the phrase itself. This aspect is the relationship between the

idolaters – whom the darshan terms "strangers" – to Elisha ben

Abuya, who was called "Acher" [the other] by the Sages. That errant

scholar who is engraved in Israel's collective memory as the archetype of the

true heretic, the person who crosses all the lines and all the boundaries. The

reason for this designation is related in the Talmud:

He went out and he found a harlot, and

propositioned her. She said to him: "Are you not Elisha ben Abuya?"

He pulled a radish out of the garden on Shabbat and gave it to her. Said she:

"He is someone else [acher]. (Bavli, Haggigah 15a).

 This story describes a different type of alienation, one

caused by deviation from the ways of the Torah: Man's alienation from himself.

By extracting the radish on Shabbat, not only did Elisha ben Abuya desecrate

the Shabbat, he also executed a symbolic act of complete severance from the

roots. In this way he turns back to all his past and to all the good which The

Holy One, Blessed Be He, had implanted in him; he makes himself – using the

phraseology of the Netziv – as though "it was not him who was designed and

created by God." And just as in the story Elisha becomes, in the words of

the harlot, "Acher" – someone else – mainly in relation to himself, a

traitor to his spiritual mission, so can we say that the phrase under

discussion alludes to a similar betrayal. Not only does idolatry have an aspect

of infidelity to God, it also is expressed by Israel's denial of its own

character, its renunciation of the good which The Holy One, Blessed Be He,

implanted in Israel from birth, its abandonment of the spiritual mission which

he was to have realized. A Israelite nation which worships other gods loses,

first and foremost, its self, just as Elisha lost his self.

The lesson which may be derived from the droosh

in the "Sifri" is relevant, then, to every generation; it seems

germane especially to our generation. It is difficult to say exactly which type

of idolatry we practice today in Eretz Yisrael, but there is no doubt that we

have become "others", that we have betrayed our mission, that we have

uprooted many radishes on Shabbat.

Of course, each one of us has a different

image of "Yisrael Sabba" -"Grandfather

Israel" (A term indicating the true,

authentic Jew of old.) – by which he defines betrayal of mission. Some

think that "Yisrael Sabba" is the ghetto-dweller,

others identify him as one who fought to the death at Matsada; according to our

chosen image, we bemoans the loss of the path in our times.

Whoever thinks, however, that the statement

of the Talmud "This nation has three identifying signs – the merciful, the

shy, and those who do good deeds" (Bavli, Yevamot 79a) presents the ideal

character of the historical Jewish nation and its preferred mission in our

time, will certainly conclude that that the loss of direction lies in the

extreme deviation of our society from this paradigm. We live in a society in

which those identifying signs of "Yisrael Sabba" are

becoming increasingly blurred, in our relations with our neighbors, in internal

relations between different groups within the nation, and in our relations with

the stranger who lives in our midst. The power principle has replaced mercy and

chessed, with brazen insolence and without shame.

We can only hope that we will know how

"others", but, once again, our true selves.

Dr. Ariel

Rathaus is a literary researcher and a translator.

"You shall devour all the

Its Implementation

Initially the king is to wage only a war of mitzvah, and what is

a war of mitzvah? This is the war against the seven nations, etc…

(Rambam,

Laws of Kings, 5:1)

It is a mitzvah to devote the seven nations to destruction, as is written: "You are to

devote them to destruction, yes, destruction." Whoever has the

opportunity to kill one of them but does not do so transgresses a negative

precept, as is written: "You are not leave alive any breath"

– and their memory is no more.

(Rambam,

ibid. 5:4)

… Values have worth and weight only in proportion to the difficulty by

which they are attained and the ease by which they are lost. This is the true

religious and moral meaning of our national revival and of the return of the

possibility of use of power to our hands. Now we are being tested, to see

whether we are able not only to suffer

for those values we proudly profess, but also to live according to them. It is easy to endure physical and

material suffering for values, even to sacrifice life; this demands only

physical courage, and this is found in surprisingly large degree in every human

society. It is difficult to suffer for the sake of values, when this suffering

means conceding things which are considered to be positive values – just needs

and interests of the collective. The moral problem exists only when there is a

clash between the Good Inclination and the Good Inclination; the eradication of

the Evil Inclination by the Good Inclination is difficult, but it is not

problematic.

Very undemanding – and therefore also cheap and pathetic – is morality

which has reservations about acts of violence and bloodshed when this morality

is not accompanied by the responsibility for

issues and values for which – or in whose name – these acts are

perpetrated and this blood is spilled. Before the establishment of our State,

we witnessed in our camp highly moralistic persons, who came to Eretz Yisrael

against the will of the Arabs, and lived and worked there under the protection

of the bayonets of the British and the pistols of the Haganah, but the right of

aliya for other Jews was made conditional upon the consent of the Arabs;

aliya by force – without consent of the Arabs – they condemned as

immoral…

In our religious-ethical soul-reckoning, we do not justify nor do we

apologize over the spilling of blood during war (when more of our blood is

spilled than of our enemies). The big problem arises with regard to the manner in which the war – which continues till this day – is conducted, and with

regard to what happens after this war. The problem is immense and difficult:

Since permission was granted to employ "the profession of Esav" – the

distinctions between permitted and forbidden, between the justified and the

improper, are very fine – just like that "Handbreadth between Gan Eden and

Hell", and we are obliged to scrutinize and examine whether or not we have

breached these partitions.

(Y.

Leibowitz: "After Kibiya", 1953, from "Torah and Mitzvoth in Our

Time", pp.168-170)