5 March 2020 Jewish News
www.jewishnews.co.uk
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Orthodox Judaism
SEDRA Tetzaveh BY RABBI NAFTALI SCHIFF There is one person noticeably absent from this week’s parsha. Moses, whose name appears more than anyone else in the Torah, is no longer in the script. Where has he gone? The great commentator and halachic authority, Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher (d.1343), also known as the Baal Haturim, says his absence is due to his request to God: “Erase me from your book that you have written.” When the Jewish people served the golden calf, it was deemed to be such a catastrophic error that it could have been the end of them and their role as being God’s representatives on earth. God suggested to Moses that he would now become the forefather of a new nation, which would carry on that mission. Moses stood his ground and, like a loving father and the loyal shepherd he was, refused to accept God’s offer and pleaded instead on behalf of his people. He even beseeched God to remove his own name out of the Torah, because the prospect of being there without his beloved nation was too
much to bear. The Jewish people were spared, however parshat Tetzaveh (which always falls at the time of Moses’ yahrzeit) remains without his name as a reminder of the extent to which he was willing to go on behalf of the Jews. Later on in the Torah, Moses is referred to as the “humblest of all men”. He is the shining example of true leadership. Moses consistently places the people and the fulfilment of their historic role in world history above his own. He was not in it for personal glory. Moses was willing to sacrifice everything for the Jewish people and realised that their mission, as a nation who can lead by example, was far more important than his own success or aspirations. Moses’ absent name teaches us that humility, coupled with care and compassion, are the hallmarks of authentic leadership.
Rabbi Naftali Schiff is the founder and chief executive of Jewish Futures
Torah For Today What does the Torah say about: Harvey Weinstein’s crimes BY RABBI ZVI SOLOMONS Often is it said that being a Jew is hard. This is not only because we have 606 more mitzvot to perform than the rest of the world, but also because we are a small people who suffer persecution. We have only to look to the Labour antisemitism debacle to understand the fetid soup of conspiracy that unfortunately can surround us. It is therefore a very great outrage when a prominent and identifiable Jew is convicted. We remember the opprobrium poured onto Ernest Saunders and Sir Gerald Ronson at the time of the Guinness scandal. Much of this had to do with their Jewish ethnicity. The Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal and his conviction, so soon after the Epstein scandal, has certainly done us no favours. It doesn’t matter to our detrac-
ANYTHING WE DO AS AN IDENTIFIABLE JEW CAN, AND USUALLY WILL, BE USED AGAINST US
feel at these heinous acts is borne into the wider world through our Jewish values, which even our haters and abusers unwittingly share. This is thus a lesson in the Third Commandment: “You shall not bear the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Anything we do as an identifiable Jew can, and usually will, be used against us. We should therefore strive to adhere to the highest moral standards. We cannot be responsible for Weinstein’s criminal acts, but we might be able to redress the antisemitic claims that his behaviour is particularly Jewish, by proving to the world that in fact the extreme opposite is the case.
tors that all of this abuse of others and sexual crime is several layers deep in prohibition. The very disgust that we all
Rabbi Zvi Solomons serves JCoB, the independent Orthodox community in Reading, Berkshire
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