You know that feeling when you stop at an intersection and a car pulls up next to you, heavy bass booming from his radio, into your car, through your chest and stomach and out the other side? That is a sampling of what the Jews felt like at Mt. Sinai.
Rabbi Goldenberg is mediating a quarrelling couple in his study at home. When the wife finishes her tirade against her husband, the rabbi strokes his beard and says, “You’re right”. Ten minutes later, after the husband completes his harangue, the rabbi sways back and forth and remarks, “You’re right”.
Sapir Cohen is one of the strongest humans I have ever met. This week, I was privileged to hear her harrowing but profoundly inspiring story of faith and resourcefulness while held captive by Hamas. Shivers ran down our spines throughout her talk. One of her most poignant anecdotes was when she glimpsed a TV clip from Israel. Sapir had been nabbed out of a fractured country, squabbling over its government, legal system and religion. The TV scenes stunned her. Black-hatted and pink-haired Israelis stood as one. One of the terrorists muttered how Jews are impossibly powerful when united. Sapir concluded her talk with an urgent plea for continued Jewish unity.
Walter Mischel’s Marshmallow Experiment is one of the most well-known studies in delayed gratification. Mischel and his team famously challenged preschool children to delay eating a treat for 15 minutes. If they held out, they would earn an additional treat. Kids sat on their hands, played with toys or sang to distract themselves. Some could not hold out and gobbled up the marshmallow within minutes.
Who sat next to you at the Pesach Seder? Was it your fidgety nephew, cantankerous uncle or the new guy with too many questions? When you read the Haggadah, you discover that where you sit at the Seder might say a lot about you. Remember the Four Sons of the Seder? Well, the troubled son is right next to the intelligent son. Even the questions they pose sound remarkably similar. The wise son wants to know why G-d gave us a range of commandments, while the wicked son challenges why we serve G-d. We embrace the genius of the former and condemn the latter as a heretic. We accuse him of removing himself from his heritage and warn him that he would never have made it out of Egypt. In fairness, the sophisticated query of the wise son sounds similar to the impious son’s challenge. He also asks why G-d commanded you”. He also seems to exclude himself from the narrative. Maybe he is not altogether different from his edgy counterpart.
The cancer of antisemitism has metastasised globally since October 7th. When we adopted the motto, “Never Again”, we believed we had cured history’s most chronic social ill. We thought we had friends in the West, in liberal progressives who fought for equality and in the intelligentsia who embraced our Nobel laureates. Each time a head of state visited Yad Vashem, we took it as confirmation they would stand up for their Jewish citizens. In the last six months, Jew hatred has vomited out onto TV, social media and city streets. We are scratching our heads at their betrayal and wonder how 1933 Berlin came to a city near us.
The cancer of antisemitism has metastasised globally since October 7th. When we adopted the motto, “Never Again”, we believed we had cured history’s most chronic social ill. We thought we had friends in the West, in liberal progressives who fought for equality and in the intelligentsia who embraced our Nobel laureates. Each time a head of state visited Yad Vashem, we took it as confirmation they would stand up for their Jewish citizens. In the last six months, Jew hatred has vomited out onto TV, social media and city streets. We are scratching our heads at their betrayal and wonder how 1933 Berlin came to a city near us.
You may have to be South African to really appreciate this. I recently returned from a short break in the world-famous
