HeritageandHistory Zurich

Themes from our think tank.

Who are we in this moment? 

This week’s reading of the parasha, Pinchas, drew my attention to the moral and circumstantial duality of our judgment: Pinchas is rewarded with the honor of eternal priesthood for his family for a murder. In today’s world, we cannot relate to this fact. The daughters of Tzelofchad are benefited with their father’s inheritance. They seek Moses who goes to God for consultation. And God finds it fair that they, in the absence of a male heir, receive the inheritance. God thus establishes this law with which we can relate very well today.  A sign that our approach to the text of the Torah is tied to our time and our space. A Jew who read this parasha in the year 230, in a closed and macho culture, might have thought the opposite of what we think here today: the rights of the daughters of Tselofchad is an affront and Pinchas got...

We were ourselves foreigners in the land of Egypt

The text of this parasha puts me in a slightly delicate situation, as it brings laws, rules – mishpatim. Not that I don’t appreciate them and don’t like order and discipline. It’s no surprise that I studied to be a graphic designer, putting texts, colors and images in order. But I am generally bothered by certain applications of laws as commanded in the Torah, either by their rigor dating back centuries or millennia, or by their lack of contemporaneity or context. Therefore, I am a faithful defender of the approach appropriate to our time and moment. But especially this excerpt from the Torah brings something not only very current, but also fundamental for the formation of the ethical conduct of the Jewish people at any time: dealing with others who are in a less privileged situation than you, either because they are so, or because this situation was caused by...

A righteous man, blameless was Noah in his generation

Genesis is pure poetry. It is to be read countless times and, with each reading, a new layer, a new meaning, is revealed. The density of the book of Genesis is a challenge to matter and physics. As liberal Jews, we extract from the text that takes us beyond what is written there. We take off from literality and take the flight of comprehension and understanding with contemporary times as a backdrop. Parasha Noah is full of important matrices that have both inspired Hollywood epics and are indispensable symbols in our contemporary world. Everything happens in Noah: the regenerating flood on an Earth given over to injustice and corruption; the ruin of the Tower of Babel that generates confusion and misunderstanding; the mention of Abram and Sarai even before they became the patriarch Abraham and the matriarch Sarah; the dove with the olive branch – symbol of Peace on Earth...

The Torah carries the crown

“Nachamu, nachamu ami…” I still haven’t forgotten that melody. It is from this coming Shabbat’s Haftarah, Shabbat Nachamu. The Shabbat on which, 39 years ago, I celebrated my Bar Mitzvah. You don’t need to do much math: I turned 52 – 4 times Bar Mitzvah this week. This melody and these first three words of Isaiah, which begs that his people be comforted by the tragedy of the destruction of the Temple, I may never forget. In the book of Devarim – words, the words that Moses addressed to the people – the saga of the Israelites is repeated, the laws of God are remembered, ratified and extended, and in this parsha Vaet’chanan the peculiar foundation of this nation among other peoples is emphasized: the Israelites have a single God and are, with this single God, partners in Creation, responsible for each other and for everything that inhabits the Earth....

Our Duty towards Remembrance and Our Commitment to Memory

You can gather people around a table on Erev (Eve of) Pessach, you can place a plate with all the symbolic foods in the center of the table, read from the Haggadah (narrative), perform all the ritual, recite the prayers and even have the festive foods for dinner. If there aren’t any Jews sitting at this table, this not a Seder (ritual meal), but a staged act. This is true to most rituals or commemorations within the Israelite nation: it is through the person or the community that these events acquire their fundamental meaning.  The Shoah was, by definition, the systematic annihilation of Jews. There is no other denomination. There are other victims, there are! But there is only one Holocaust. The establishment of the date on which the Holocaust should be remembered in Israel generated heated discussion in the Knesset (Parliament) in 1951. Until then, in 1949 and 1950,...