Parashat Acharei Mot-Kedoshim (Leviticus 16:1-20:27) for May 6, 2006

This week's parasha study has been generously sponsored by Nancy Shanoff in loving memory of Peter Weis.

Planting is connecting something at its root.

Study with Baruch Sienna

This year's cycle of weekly Parasha study explores what connections and insight we can find by examining the Torah portion together with the Haftarah.

Again this week we have a double portion, combining the parashiyot of Acharei Mot and Kedoshim. (When the portions are read separately, there are different traditions for which haftarah is read. Some communities recite this week's haftarah from Amos, others read portions from Ezekiel 22, and Ezekiel 20).

Amos' pronouncement provides an interesting counterpoint to the Torah portion. Kedoshim concludes with how Israel has been set apart from all the nations (Lev. 20:26) yet the haftarah begins with Amos reminding Israel that God is God of all humanity, and God cares equally about the Ethiopians. God also redeemed other nations. At the same time, Amos reinforces the message of Kedoshim "You shall faithfully observe all My laws...lest the land to which I bring you to settle in spew you out" (Lev. 20:22) that God will judge all people. Right living seems to be a condition for dwelling in God's promised land. The haftarah concludes on a positive note with a vision of a brighter future.

Amos is the first of the 'literary' prophets. He lived and prophesied around 784-748 B.C.E. during the reign of King Jeroboam. Like Moses, Amos was a 'reluctant' prophet. That is, he described himself as a sheep breeder and tended sycomore figs and was called by God to proclaim a message warning of Israel's destruction. He prophesied in the Northern Kingdom of Israel against the immoral practices that he saw. His message was the classic prophetic message: that rituals and religious piety do not have God's approval when there is inequity between people and social injustice.

This week we mark Yom HaZikaron, the day of remembrance for Israel's fallen soldiers, and celebrate Yom Ha'Atzma'ut, Israel's Independence Day. How wonderful that we celebrate Israel's Independence this week in the first week of May, the month for planting. Both the Torah and haftarah portions include this motif of planting. Our combined Torah portion includes many famous verses, including "You shall love your neighbour as yourself" (Lev. 19:18) and my favourite, "You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind" (Lev. 19:14) (see last year's column). But among the miscellaneous collection of laws (everything from sexual morality to sacrifices) is a verse that describes the Israelites' connection to the land: When you come into the land and you plant every food-bearing tree...(Lev. 19:23). This imagery connects to the haftarah's description of our return to Israel, planting vineyards and gardens.

Planting is connecting something at its root. Herzl understood that the precarious condition of Jews throughout history was because the Jewish people had been uprooted from their land. Many early Zionists believed that the health of the Jewish people depended on its reconnection with nature. The early Zionist thinker and writer, A.D. Gordon wrote:

We come to our Homeland in order to be planted in our natural soil from which we have been uprooted, to strike our roots deep into its life-giving substances, and to stretch out our branches in the sustaining and creating air and sunlight of the Homeland. Other peoples can manage to live in any fashion, in the homelands from which they have never been uprooted, but we must first learn to know the soil and ready it for our transplantation. We must study the climate in which we are to grow and produce. We, who have been torn away from nature, who have lost the savor of natural living - if we desire life, we must establish a new relationship with nature; we must open a new account with it.

The early Zionists took A.D. Gordon's words to heart. Their slogan was: to build and be built. By literally building and planting, these chalutzim (pioneers) were involved in re-building the Jewish nation and Jewish life. Many of them were disconnected from traditional Jewish practice, and many were even secular and hostile to religion, yet many of them sensed a quasi-religious quality to their efforts. They were helping a new Jewish people to take root; transplanting an alienated folk in the soil of their own national life. Certainly the early religious Zionists believed that there was a mystical connection between the land and the people of Israel. This is why HaRav Kook, Israel's first Chief Rabbi, considered even the secular Zionists as partners in helping to bring redemption.

While in Israel, we might celebrate the land and Yom Ha'Atzma'ut by going on a hike or visiting the seashore, those of us in the diaspora cannot easily connect to the land of Israel. Since these days do not yet have a fixed liturgy or traditional ritual, it is especially fitting to hear this week's haftarah from Amos. The early Zionists were initially opposed by some religious groups who believed that we should wait for God to restore the Jews to their land (and a small minority of extremists still hold this position). But Amos tells us that we must [first] rebuild the cities and the gardens of Israel, and then God will 'plant Israel upon their soil. We plant our 'roots' in Israel, and we hope for the day when Amos' vision will come true, when Israel will "never again to be uprooted from the soil that I have given them."

Shabbat Shalom,

BDS