What do we mean by “Our Land”?

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In this session we are going to try to do the impossible: We are going to try to find some deep philosophical issues in the behavior of Bart Simpson. For this purpose you only need watch the first 10 minutes of the episode “Crepes of Wrath”. It is possible to buy this episode, or you can click on one of these free links:

Link one, and link two

barts room

There is a conflict – and there are casualties – because one member of the family has not tidied up after himself. Bart believes that he should be allowed to leave his belongings all over the house – not just all over his room – and that it should be his father’s responsibility to avoid stepping on them. Marge believes that Bart should tidy up his room – she seems to view the stuff in the hall as “overflow”. Homer just lies there.

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Supreme Court: Challenges of Jewish Sovereignty in Israel

Flexing Ethical Muscles

“Taking power and the costs of power…have become central concerns of the Jewish people… Ethical muscles not flexed for centuries are now used; sometimes they are stiff and sore…”                                                                                                                 – Rabbi I. Greenberg

This lesson explores the great responsibility that comes with having power and decision-making ability. The lesson uses two legal judgments made by Israel’s Supreme Court to expose the students to the complex nature of this responsibility. (more…)

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The Messiah – 16

After all the promises and all the tests, and the centralization of our connection to God in the Temple, the destruction of the Temple and of our sovereignty constituted a major spiritual crisis.  It seems likely that many people saw this disaster as evidence that God was a failure, or non-existent.  The prophets’ challenge was now not just to get the people to obey the laws, but to get them not to give up on the whole project.  At first, the assumption was that this disaster was indeed a punishment, but that it would pass: we had paid the price of our sins, so now God could forgive us and get over His anger, and restore an anointed king of David’s line (anointed one = mashiach = messiah), and the Temple service.  As time went on, however, this neat picture never materialized, and we had to find a way to cope with painfully . and indefinitely postponed redemption.  And so, as the messiah receded into the future, he loomed larger and larger in terms of his expected role in the world.  At the same time, we learned to live (mostly) with a “permanent” tension between present reality and our imagined utopian restoration to the good old days (that were not as good as we imagined them).

This lesson traces the development of the messianic concept, and looks ahead at its impact on later Jewish history.  Our relationship to the land of Israel – and the state of Israel – is intimately tied up with this powerful and interesting concept.

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Shivat Tziyon – 17

The destruction of the First Temple and the exile of the elites to Babylonia were of course a huge shock to our system, theologically, socially, and politically.  It seems that the people’s expectation, encouraged by the prophets, was that this punishment would be a harsh but passing blow – that in the near future God would relent and accept our repentance and restore our sovereignty and our connection to Him through the Temple ritual (see, for example, Jeremiah 29).  And indeed, so it happened – with the Persian conquest of Babylonia, a new policy was instituted, and the emperor Cyrus allowed the restoration of autonomy in Judah and the rebuilding of the Temple (but not, significantly, the restoration of the monarchy!) just 50 years after the destruction.  Therefore it is remarkable that the response was . not a mass return, but rather a trickle, with many of the exiles choosing to stay in their new home.  And thus was created the model of Diaspora Jewish life coexisting with a Jewish state.  Moreover, the process of rebuilding and reorganizing the community in Israel was difficult and frustrating, and didn’t look much like the promised redemption.  The period of Shivat Tziyon therefore offers suggestive parallels to our own modern situation of Israel-Diaspora coexistence.  This unit explores the somewhat sketchy historical knowledge we have of the period, focusing on the apparent dilemmas raised by the exiles’ ambivalent response to the possibility of restoration.

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