Tetzaveh 5775

The Spirit of Amalek is Alive and the American College Campus

In a recently published study of more than 1100 Jewish college students it was found that 54% had experienced an anti-Semitic incident his past year.  Ariella Kasar, who headed the study and teaches at Trinity College, was quoted as saying: “We were surprised how prevalent it is. There are no pockets where it is in specific places, regions or universities. It’s kind of widespread,” Most surprising, perhaps, is that there is virtually no difference in the rates of experiencing anti-Semitism between those who are “never open” about being Jewish on their campus and those who are “always open” about being Jewish. 

The reality of anti-Semitism on college campuses is a clear and present reality around the country.

The Shabbat before Purim is called Shabbat Zachor: the Sabbath of memory.  We will read the passage regarding Amalek at the conclusion of our Torah reading:

Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt -- how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the LORD your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!  (Deuteronomy 26:17-19)

Amalek was a tribal chieftain who attacked the Children of Israel as they marched through the desert directly after the splitting of the sea.   In this passage Moses reminds the people that Amalek attacked the most in the back of the caravan.  Had he wanted to simply fight the Israelites, Amalek would have chosen to focus on the front of the caravan where the fighting men were.  Rather, he chose to slaughter the weakest and most vulnerable element of the Jewish people.  For this cowardly and hateful act Amalek wins the eternal ire of God.  Moreover, Moses teaches us that the war against Amalek will be an eternal one.  Haman, who tries to destroy the Jews of Persia in the time of Mordecai and Esther was a direct descendant of Amalek.  In the eyes of Jewish tradition, Amalek was more than a historical figure, he was the very symbol of anti-Semitism throughout time.

The sad reality of the modern day is that the spirit of Amalek is alive and well throughout the world and as this recent study shows, on college campuses as well.  In the past weeks the students bodies of Stanford University and Northwestern University voted to divest from 6 major companies that do business with Israel.  The claim is that the products from these companies are used by Israel in human rights violations in the Palestinian territories.  The vote on the Northwestern Campus was 24 to 22.  The Jewish students who were involved in the struggle against the divestment experienced both abuse and the worst form of anti-Semitism thinly disguised as anti-Israel rhetoric.  I am proud to say that some of the Jewish leaders at Northwestern and Stanford were from Anshe Emet.

On this Shabbat Zachor Mitchell Caminer will share his experience of this struggle with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction Movement on his university campus as well as his encounter with anti-Semitism.   Sadly, the spirit of Amalek is not only present in terrorist acts in places like Paris and Copenhagen but in our halls of higher education as well.  Please plan to be with us this Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Michael Siegel

Tetzaveh 5774

Do the Clothes Make the Man?

Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist, would often recall the lessons he learned from his father, Mel, as a young boy:

One of the things that my father taught me besides physics – whether it’s correct or not – was a disrespect for certain kinds of things… One time we were looking at a picture of the pope and everybody bowing in front of him. My father said, “Now, look at those humans. Here’s one human standing here, and all these others are bowing in front of him. Now what’s the difference? … this difference is the hat he’s wearing.” (If it was a general, it was the epaulets. It was always the costume, the uniform, the position.) “But,” he said, “this man has the same problems as everybody else…” [Richard P. Feynman, What Do What Do You Care What Other People Think?, 18]

This week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, which describes in minute detail the various garments worn by the Kohanim (Priests) during their service, would seem to raise this very question. Indeed, contemporary readers can easily find themselves asking Mel Feybman’s question: why all the fancy clothes? Who would be fooled into thinking there was something special about these Kohanim just because they wear a special outfit?

That question resonates in large part because of our celebrity culture – think about the upcoming Academy Awards and all of the attention that will be paid to the “red carpet” and the stars’ outfits. But for the ancient Israelites, things were quite different. Even as God designates the Levites and Kohanim to serve in the Mishkan, we are just weeks out of Egypt; the same people who now take on an important leadership role were, not too long ago, toiling in the sun along with everyone else. By what right do they now separate themselves from the rest of the Israelites, living by a higher standard of purity and religious devotion?

Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin of Volozhin (Russia, 1817-1893) answers this question with a powerful insight into human behavior: the way we dress and the way we act are closely related to one another. If the Kohanim – until recently, ordinary Israelites just like everyone else – were to start holding themselves to a different measure of religious practice, they could easily appear arrogant to the other tribes. Only by donning the uniform, an external signifier of the role they were to play, could they take on their special practices while maintaining the respect of their peers.

Of course, the inverse is true as well – and herein lies the importance of what Mel Feynman taught young Richard: in order to merit that respect, people who wear a uniform, be it military, civil, or religious, must live in a way that earns the honor the clothes are meant to confer. While the conventional wisdom suggests that “the clothes make the man,” both Mel Feynman and Rabbi Berlin remind us that, perhaps even more so, the man or woman – through his or her actions – make the clothes.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Abe Friedman