Ki Sovō and Curses / כּי־תבוא און קללהות

This is a weekly series

of parsha dvarim (Tōrah commentaries) written by an orthodox atheist transsexual anarchist, with guest posts from comrades. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance, and it's crucial that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns Judaism. We aim to offer comment which is true to the pshat (i.e. engages with the plain meaning of the text, especially when it's difficult) and uses Tōrah like a light to reflect on our modern times.

An appeal

My friend Kamal needs help. He is struggling to find food and pay for medical treatment for his family in Gaza. Please share and donate what you can.

Content note

Genocide in Palestine

This week Mōshe Rebeynu gives us the promise of blessings and curses, should we obey (or not) Hashem's commandments. The curses mirror and rival parsha Bekhukosay in their beautiful, tormented imagery. When I wrote that dvar in the middle of the Ōmer, I had already stopped counting. I wasn't shomer mitsvos and couldn't see a way to engage through my rage and grief. We, the Jews, had become a horror in our blood-soaked tallises. My only comfort in this text was knowing that my comrades and ancestors have been tortured by it too and yet wrestled with it anyway: the holiness is in the wrestling.

This week my practice is more observant: today I laid tefilin, davened, blew shofar, and studied Tōrah with my mother. What changed? Nothing. But something.

Many commentaries on this parsha focus on the nicer sections about blessings and the commandments of first fruits and tithing, but I'm grateful that Rachel's painting is mired in the curses. She sees the wreckage of our misdeeds and wallows in it. She paints the earth orange with ochre pigment (iron) and uses pthalocyanine (copper) for the sky. There is no produce. Disembodied bird feet loom. Everything is hidden and everything is wrong.

Does it matter if you are good when the majority is not? Of course it does. Does it change the cursed outcome? Of course not.

We—the Jews—are judged not as individuals, but as a collective. Can we claim to be good if we do not stop the violence of our people? Our shared identity (nevermind our tax dollars) makes us complicit: the genocide is not only happening in our name, but is defended by our parents, funded by our institutions, and carried out by our cousins and camp friends. Jews are not an all-powerful lobby group but we are, relationally, the closest people to those doing wrong. Abstaining is not good enough. If we can't convince them to stop, then we will fail the test of our generation and history will judge us. We'll be rightly cursed alongside the Zionists.

We are in the middle of a rupture and we cannot see clearly. The end has yet to be revealed. Our primary focus is on Palestine—and, I'm worried too about the future of Yiddishkeyt. Is name "Israel" irrevocably stained? Are we a byword for cursed, or—worse than cursed—evil? For starving civilians, bombing hospitals and blowing the limbs off orphans? For learning the lessons not of the partisans but the Nazis? (How many partisans were themselves Zionists, building a nation not on solidarity but racial hierarchy?) What, if anything, can we do reclaim our name from this death cult?

I try not to trouble myself too much with these questions because it's a waste of precious time and the answer doesn't impact my behavior. People are dying, and my people are responsible. I feel like I say this every week, and it will be true every week until there is peace: whatever the outcome, we must do what we can to interrupt the killing, honor the dead, and support those still living.