Shabbat Beha’alotecha
North London Progressive Jewish Community
17th June Sivan 21 5766
It’s not difficult to find a connection between this week's
Parashah and the World Cup!
You might laugh, but it seems to me that the strange bit of
text that came at the end of our Torah reading shows how much
the modern day football fan has in common with the ancient Israelites.
I call it a strange bit of text because the two verses I’m
thinking of do not follow on from the rest, but are set apart
inside two upside down letter nuns. Why? Many of the traditional
commentators thought that this was because this piece actually
belongs somewhere else, and somehow was written here instead.
The letter nuns show that it doesn’t quite fit. The commentator
Rashi thought that the piece was put in here because it comes
just before a terrible dispute between Moses and the Israelite
people, and the upside down nuns act to make a break between
this argument and the one that comes before it. The thing is,
there is no argument before this piece. Rashi answers that the
argument before it was the argument that was brewing for three
days and that bursts out just afterwards. The argument, by the
way, was about the longings of the Israelites and the mixed
multitudes with them for the good food they had left behind
in Egypt. So you can see, too, that food and what’s wrong
or right with it, has always been a central concern for the
Jewish people. The words inside the inverted nuns are:
"vayehi binsoa ha-aron, vayomer Moshe
kuma Adonai, ve’yaphutsu oyveycha
ve-yanusu m’sanecha mipanecha"
It means….With the moving of the ark, Moses would say,
‘Arise, Adonai, so that your enemies be scattered, and
those who hate you flee before you’.
Now, if you have spent time in more traditional synagogue
communities you would recognise these words from the beginning
of the Torah service, where they are sung when the ark is opened.
We are taken back straight away to the wanderings of the Israelites,
when, as they set out on their daily wilderness journey, Moses
would call them out. The Holy Ark, carried by the appointed
members of the tribes, would set out, accompanied by all the
tribal members called to carry the wilderness tabernacle. The
whole thing would move forward, followed by the Israelite people,
and ahead, during the daytime, the pillar of cloud. The Ark
here, it seems, has enormous power, the power to scatter enemies.
Or perhaps, it is not the ark, but God, called by Moses.
What, you might be thinking, is the connection with football?
Perhaps the answer lies in why we, as Liberal Jews, do not include
these words in our synagogue service. We don’t sing them
because our ancestors, the creators of the very first Liberal
prayer books, in Hamburg in 1819, took them out. They cut them
out because they were not comfortable with what they saw as
an ethic of vengeance. A powerful God who scatters his enemies,
and a people who called God to stand on their side against the
enemy. And they cut them out as part of a larger project. Creating
a whole new prayer book meant creating a new unique Jewish identity
for themselves. It was provocative, but it worked. Liberal prayer
books have on the whole kept hold of this unique new identity,
although the changes over the past 200 years have been subtle
and very interesting.
Were they right? Was the Hamburg reformers right, and was every
generation of Liberal thinkers correct in rejecting such a powerful
piece of tradition? What happens when our Torah service, 200
years down the line, is so much shorter, and when so many of
us have forgotten those lines about God scattering the enemy?
Part of me thinks that they were. From a purely ethical standpoint
the idea of the Israelite mass holding aloft the Holy Tabernacle
and Moses calling out for God to stand on the people’s
side, can seems like one giant crowd of football supporters,
and the Ark as the trophy of the winning team. And like so much
of the synagogue service, if you don’t understand the
words then you might as well be chanting anything.
But then I think, what’s so wrong with football? The World
Cup has been peaceful so far, and even more than that, it’s
been the time for Germany to have to really talk about its past
to the hundreds of thousands of people who go there, least of
all the goose-stepping England fans. I admire the way that the
country, in many places, and especially the west, has taken
hold of the past. A peaceful World Cup can be seen as a celebration
of difference, or the glory of competition, and the sharing
of a passion that goes beyond national boundaries.
The danger isn’t football, and it isn’t the football
fan mentality. The real danger is the darker side of what has
happens when a people has got hold of military power. As you
might remember, I am recently back from Israel, and have every
plan to go again next year. We might even arrange a visit as
a community. But that should not stop us from standing up to
protest when we see the military abusing power and bringing
destruction out of all proportion on its enemies, as we have
seen on our television screens in recent weeks.
The Torah doesn’t create this situation, human beings
do. And when we find a text that seems to demand action that
conflicts with our ethics, then we challenge the Torah. Perhaps
that is why these two verses are put inside their upside down
nuns. The text itself is written as a warning. These are the
words of Moses, treat them with caution.
© Rabbi Shulamit Ambalu 16th June 2006, Sivan 21 5766
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