R'ey and Gods you haven't known / רעה און געטער וואָס איר האָט נישט געקענט

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

I know I make these appeals every week, but the situation remains dire as I'm sure you know. My friend Kamal needs help in Gaza. His nephew was shot in the head and is in critical condition, with treatment pending a payment of $2,000. This is his pre-existing GoFundMe, which will pay for medical bills and other basic needs. Donating is literally live-saving and life-changing. Please share and donate what you can.

Content note

Genocide in Palestine, Holocaust mention

As the year draws in, I must admit I'm losing steam. The transition from summer to fall is one I relish but I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing with my time. There's a gulf between the knowledge, the firmly held belief that diversity of tactics is how we will win; and the feeling that I'm not doing enough and must do everything. We're not diversified anyway: we're individualized and isolated. If we don't agree fully and without caveat with our comrades, we're encouraged to leave and do it our way, alone. I won't help you if I disagree with an aspect of your tactic even if our goals are shared. It atomizes us and erodes what fragile ties to "the movement" and "community" we have. We are cursed.

The parsha this week is absolutely teeming with content for leftist analysis. Mōshe Rebeynu continues his speech: follow Hashem's laws. Don't do idol worship, do kill the idol worshipers, don't do human sacrifice, do provide offerings to Hashem in the prescribed way (we're reminded that disabilities are defects). Don't listen to false prophets, even if their predictions come true. Keep kashrus. Grieve without self-harm. Celebrate Peysakh, Shavuos, and Sukōs. Don't blot out Hashem's name. It's a week which, like last week, is difficult to read for leftist Jews. Mōshe gives us a utopic vision of tsedoke and debt forgiveness through shmita; and, he instructs us on genocide and how to "ethically" keep slaves.

There is not a coherent modern morality or ideology reflected in Tōrah. Instead, we have blessings and curses.

The parsha's tension between good and bad, blessings and curses, is established in its first verses. We are implored once again to follow Hashem, and to abstain from "other gods whom you haven't known/experienced". This phrase is repeated 4 times this week. It serves as a reminder for the Israelites that they should be loyal to Hashem because they have directly witnessed His power and benevolence. But I'm struck by the fact that we haven't experienced Hashem for many generations. We haven't seen miracles since those outlined in this ancient text. Or perhaps I should only speak for myself: I haven't known or experienced Hashem.

I understand that it is not the intent of whoever authored Tōrah that I read this and wonder why I, a modern Jew, should bother following this god or any other whom I have not known or experienced, but who demands terrible (and inconvenient) things of us. I've met Jews who have faith that their parents, and their parents, and so on have passed down this oral tradition after the miracles in Torah were literally witnessed by their great-great-great- - - - - - - -grandparents. Some Jews have a relationship with the divine which instills them with a faith all their own. I'm not such a Jew. My interest comes from the compelling discourse of the tradition, the strong values of justice and rest, and the beauty of the rituals. This week, I'm not sure if that's enough for me.

Kashrus

A big chunk of the parsha is devoted to kashrus. We're given a list of kosher and treyf animals and reminded not to drink blood or boil a kid in its mother's milk. I drafted a mini essay about it—the "intentionality", the class element, the deliberate isolation which comes from restricting our diets in an extreme way—but I can't bring myself to finish that right now. Studying kashrus laws feels absolutely perverse in the midst of the weaponized starvation in Gaza by a Jewish army.

The parsha presents a favorable view of slavery.

The excesses of owning and exploiting people are mitigated by shmita: release your slaves every 7 years, and don't send them away empty-handed. This, we are to infer, is justice.

The Torah though it doesn’t abolish it, limits slavery. Even if my absolutist sensibilities desire an outright ban, there is a pragmatic part of me that understands the value of regulating, rather than abolishing, the institution. Slavery was a fact of the biblical era and Israelite legislation made it a more humane condition. ... Instead of utopian dreams, the Torah offers laws to temper existing inequality and injustice.

Rabbi Dorothy A. Richmon, My Jewish Learning

Amidst all the impossible miracles, is slavery-reform the best that Tōrah can offer us? There is no liberation here.

"Genocide"

The parsha unambiguously calls for us to murder entire tribes and steal their land, again and several times. (Is dispossession and land theft not abhorrent to Hashem? Is divinely-demanded genocide not human sacrifice?)

There's no self-defense in genocide. Every myth about medinas Israel as "the only democracy in the Middle East" and the IDF as "the world's most moral army" has been revealed to be a farce since October 7, even for the people who were too ignorant and invested in Zionism to see it before. The rhetoric shift wherein all of Palestine is contained in the metonymy "Hamas" condemns the entire people to an "unfortunate but unavoidable" death for the sake of Jewish "security".

We were 5,000 people who were taken from Auschwitz to Warsaw to clean up the ghetto. One day, one of the Jews said to me: “Rabbi, do you still say today, ‘Ata bachartanu’ (You chose us)? I answered him: ‘Today I understand that you chose us more than ever before. If we were not chosen, we would be like them, Nazis. And we were chosen not to be like them. It is better to be burned than to burn. For what is ‘good’? Is ‘good’ to devour? Do we envy animals?

—The Sanz-Klausenberger Rebbe, quoted by S. Shabtai, 25 September 1959

The Holocaust is special and is not special. The scale was unprecedented, but we are not the only people who've been murdered en masse for our ethno-religion—it's happening again. This genocide reveals what we are all capable of. Identity isn't static and we can all move from victim to oppressor, if we do not embody both already. Zionists believe that calling what's happening now in Palestine a "genocide" not only indicts the state of Israel but also somehow cheapens what happened to the Jews of Europe. We must remain exceptional in our perpetual victimhood and consequent inability to do harm. Always burned, never burning.