מִקְדָּשׁ רִאשׁוֹן מִפְּנֵי מָה חָרַב — מִפְּנֵי דְּבָרִים שֶׁהָיוּ בּוֹ: עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה וּשְׁפִיכוּת דָּמִים.
Due to what reason was the First Temple destroyed? It was destroyed due to matters that existed in the First Temple [including]: Idol worship and bloodshed.
מִקְדָּשׁ שֵׁנִי מִפְּנֵי מָה חָרַב? מִפְּנֵי שֶׁהָיְתָה בּוֹ שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם. לְלַמֶּדְךָ שֶׁשְּׁקוּלָה שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם כְּנֶגֶד שָׁלֹשׁ עֲבֵירוֹת: עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה, גִּלּוּי עֲרָיוֹת, וּשְׁפִיכוּת דָּמִים.
Why was the Second Temple destroyed? It was destroyed due to the fact that there was wanton hatred during that period. This comes to teach you that the sin of wanton hatred is equivalent to idol worship and bloodshed. (BT Yoma 9b)
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Our parashat hashavua is Ki Tisa, in which we read that the Israelite people make the worst choice imaginable: too anxious to wait any longer for Moshe to return from the top of Mt Sinai, too uncertain to trust in a holiness they cannot see, they decide that it’s time to create an image of HaShem. The impact of this failure is a different topic; what I want to consider with you now is the fact that HaShem gives up hope for any future with the people of Israel.
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר ה’ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה רָאִ֙יתִי֙ אֶת־הָעָ֣ם הַזֶּ֔ה וְהִנֵּ֥ה עַם־קְשֵׁה־עֹ֖רֶף הֽוּא׃ וְעַתָּה֙ הַנִּ֣יחָה לִּ֔י וְיִֽחַר־אַפִּ֥י בָהֶ֖ם וַאֲכַלֵּ֑ם וְאֶֽעֱשֶׂ֥ה אוֹתְךָ֖ לְג֥וֹי גָּדֽוֹל׃
HaShem said to Moses, “I see that this is a stiff-necked people. Now, let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them, and make of you a great nation.” (Exodus 32.9-10)
Even HaShem is capable, clearly, of giving up hope for Israel. So who are we not to sometimes feel worried? In war after war it has become clear that Israel is not going to be wiped off the map of the Levant, despite the desire of some. Yet there is a deeper unease that many of us can feel, possibly because it’s carried in thousands of years of cultural DNA. Something has gone very wrong with the dream of a Jewish state in the ancestral homeland.
Twice in our history, our Temple was destroyed and we became homeless; not because of the greater strength of an invader, but, as we read in the Babylonian Talmud that our sages intuited, because of our own internal social rot. The greatest prophets of our entire religious history derived their greatness from the insight that we do not act without consequences in this world, that “what goes around, comes around.” It was not the Babylonian Empire that razed the first Temple and caused the first Exile. It was our own tragically bad choices, the Golden Calf redux: idol worship and bloodshed. The second Temple fell not by the hands of the Romans, but because we chose hate over love in our society, and that viciousness took its course. Once again, we had created an image to believe in rather than the harder work of seeking the way of HaShem anew every day.
It’s difficult not to feel the echoes of those tragedies – which carry away guilty and innocent alike – when we witness a State of Israel that allows and encourages bloodshed in the West Bank. The fact of the wholesale slaughter of Gazans and state-sanctioned Jewish pogroms against Palestinian farmers is enough bloodshed to drown us all in despairing pain. The fact that the current government of the State of Israel holds up its existence as the greater good, with expanded boundaries that not only wipe out Palestine but threaten Lebanon as well, equates powerfully with idol worship. The theology is clear: if what one worships causes one to transgress mitzvot such as “love your neighbor as yourself” or “do not oppress the stranger”, then to argue away these mitzvot in order to rationalize “Greater Israel” is not following the ways of HaShem. It is not what Judaism teaches.
Yet the despair we may feel, or the desire to agree with HaShem’s (momentary) loss of hope in this week’s parashah, must be confronted as something less than the best possible conclusion. We are, after all, created in the Divine Image, which means that we share its essence. The mystics deduced that to be created in that Image is a mandate to copy the acts of HaShem as our ultimate role model.
As HaShem left the door open to be talked out of wiping the Israelites out, and was willing to be convinced that not all is lost, then we, similarly in our day, are called upon not to abandon our Israeli siblings. Like HaShem in this passage, we need to settle down, past the emotional reaction we are justified in having, and then to think:
- Human beings, Jews too, are created by HaShem with flaws. When creations of our own fail us, we are not immune from the fault.
- Many Jewish Israelis are fighting hard against the dehumanization the State perpetrates upon Palestinians; in the words of our Patriarch Abraham, will we judge the guilty and the innocent alike?
- Most importantly of all, one never quite gives up on a loved one. Our sources reassure us that HaShem will never give up on us:
חביבים ישראל, שאף על פי שהם טמאים שכינה ביניהם; שנאמר כי אני שוכן בתוכה, ואומר ולא יטמאו עוד את מחניהם, ולא תטמא הארץ. רבי נתן אומר: חביבים ישראל שבכל מקום שגלו שכינה עמהם:
Beloved are Israel, for even when they are tamei the Shekhinah reposes among them — (Vayikra 16:16) “who dwells with them in the midst of their uncleanliness,” and (Ibid. 15:31) “… when they defile My sanctuary which is in their midst,” and (Bamidbar 5:3) “and they shall not make unclean their camps in whose midst I dwell.” (Ibid. 35:34) “for I HaShem dwell in the midst of the children of Israel.” R. Nathan says: Beloved are Israel, for wherever they are exiled the Shekhinah is with them.
We are feeling the exile right now: not of geography, but of distance from the World To Come, that world we know we are capable of building, but somehow never can bring into existence. Everything seems tainted beyond recovery. As much as some of us would like to insist that we are not attached in any way to Israel, it is not true. In Israel and everywhere where Jews feel connected beyond reason and beyond any possible sundering – we are Israel, together, and we mourn, as well as celebrate when we can, in many different ways and with much disagreement. But all Jews feel the effect upon any Jew, and that includes the Jewish state.
Our parashah declares that in our fear and anxiety for the Jewish state, HaShem is with us. Our mistakes and our cruelties will echo as they must in a world in which effect surely follows cause, yet compassion is real and love is stronger than death. The Shekhinah, the Presence of HaShem, is still among us even when we fail miserably at following the ethical path; we can never, never give up on the small light of hope that we are always capable of imagining, even when we cannot see it.
Now, when the waters are pressing mightily
on the walls of the dams,
now, when the white storks, returning,
are transformed in the middle of the firmament
into fleets of jet planes,
we will feel again how strong are the ribs
and how vigorous is the warm air in the lungs
and how much daring is needed to love on the exposed plain,
when the great dangers are arched above,
and how much love is required
to fill all the empty vessels
and the watches that stopped telling time,
and how much breath,
a whirlwind of breath,
to sing the small song of spring.
– Yehuda Amichai, trans by Leon Weiseltier
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 