September 1st: Ki Tavo
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
Our Torah portion begins with a ritual of thanksgiving. After giving a basket filled with the first fruits of our harvest to the priest, “You shall recite as follows before the Lord your God: My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us. We cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. The Lord freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, an outstretched arm, and awesome power, and by signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Therefore, I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O Lord, have given me.” (Deuteronomy 26.5-10)
The appreciation is profound and should be instructive to us: the good things in our lives are the result of many blessings, and it is na’eh l’hodot, fitting to give thanks. However, why would we need to identify ourselves before the Lord? As the statement itself acknowledges, God has been with us all along and certainly knows who we are. Perhaps the hope is that we listen to the words we speak and remember who we are and what we represent.
So often, the way we see ourselves—or the way others see us—affect the dynamic of our presence. When we visit a friend’s place of business, are we present as customers or as friends? When we come to synagogue, are we present as worshippers or as visitors? When we go to a party, are we present as guests or as workers?
Years ago, I remember a friend of mine returning angrily from a student pulpit in the South. “They told me to come to the back door,” he fumed, thinking that this instruction relegated him to the rank of a servant. “No, no,” I practically shouted. Translating for my Northern friend, “In the South, telling someone to come to the back door is a high compliment. It means that they are family. Only strangers come to the front door.” How he was identified made a difference.
In the modern world, much is made of the identity of Zionists—and the implications that flow from it. Zionism itself began as an identity question. While Jews had lived in Europe since the days of the Roman Empire, the creation of nationalism in the 1800s put us in an awkward position. Nationalism claimed that the people within particular governmental units (nation states) were somehow linked biologically to the land on which they sojourned. This organic connection was reflected in language and culture and a racial/ethnic esprit des corps and was distinct from the organic connections other nationalities had with the places they lived. Thus relatively new nations—like Germany—were said to be populated by Germans. These were not just the people who happened to live in what was formerly known as the Holy Roman Empire and whose former duchies and kingdoms had been subsumed by the new country of Germany. Rather, they were seen as people born of the German land and thus racially and culturally connected to that land. The same thinking swept through other nations: Italy, France, Spain, Poland, etc.
Though Jews had been segregated and marginalized for centuries, the 1700s and early 1800s had seen the Enlightenment and the Emancipation and the gradual acceptance of Jews as full citizens of the countries they inhabited and defended. We thought our many years of oppression were coming to an end, but Nationalism threatened our efforts to belong. Many nationalists claimed that our ancient Middle Eastern origins disqualified us from these nationalist identities—these mystical, born-of-the-land racial, ethnic, and cultural constructs. We might live in Germany, but we are not Germans because we did not arise from “German ground.” We might live in France, but we are not truly French because we did not arise from “French ground.” Even after hundreds of years as residents of these “nations,” we could never belong because we were foreigners. For Theodor Herzl, Zionism emerged from the nightmarish awareness that Europeans would never accept Jews as Europeans—that since we were being defined as a non-European and foreign nationality, we needed a Jewish Nationalism—something he named Zionism.
As it turns out, this anti-Jewish nationalistic ruminating led to the modern term for Jew-Hatred, Anti-Semitism. In 1862, German writer Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904) created his League of Anti-Semites to make the point that Jews are not Europeans. They are Semites, people of the Levant and definitely not Europeans. Jewish influence was bad for Germany because it was Levantine/ “Oriental”/Middle Eastern as opposed to the “European-ness” that Aryan Germany needed.
Compare this to the modern anti-Israel claims that Jews are European colonizers stealing land from the Indigenous Arab inhabitants. One can counter that the vast majority of Israel/Palestine’s Arab inhabitants are themselves colonizers/immigrants from other parts of the Arab world—a case in point being Yasser Arafat who was born in Egypt, but the point is that such self-identity or imposed identity is closely linked to legitimacy and rights.
There are obviously serious aspects of this dynamic, but let me conclude with a joke. There was once a man walking down the street in a small Pennsylvania town. Everything was tranquil until he saw a shocking sight. A vicious dog had bitten a child on the shoulder and wouldn’t let go. The child was obviously distraught and in real danger, so the pedestrian ran up and tried to pry the dog’s jaws from the child. It was a real struggle, but finally the man managed to break the dog’s jaws, saving the child but killing the dog. A crowd had gathered and cheered the heroic man. Soon, a newspaper reporter ran up to the scene and started interviewing the hero. The reporter said, “I can just see the headline: Local Man Saves Child.” The hero hesitated and then corrected the reporter. “I’m not local. I’ve visiting from out of town.” “No problem,” said the reporter, “The headline can read, “Brave Pennsylvanian Saves Child.” Again the hero hesitated. “I’m not from Pennsylvania.” Undeterred, the reporter said, “No problem, we can run: Great American Rescues Local Child!” Again the hero interrupted him. “I’m not from the U.S. I’m visiting from Canada.” The reporter and the crowd got very silent, very quickly. The next day, the headline of the newspaper proclaimed, “Foreign Murderer Slays Local Dog.”
Identity grounds us and gives us purpose, but it can also be abused and manipulated for nefarious purposes. Let us think carefully about who we are and what we represent. Let us also be open-minded and open-hearted as we encounter God’s other children.