{"id":267,"date":"2013-11-18T03:20:12","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T03:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcmangel.net\/?page_id=267"},"modified":"2013-11-18T03:20:12","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T03:20:12","slug":"vaera-5769-2009","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/?page_id=267","title":{"rendered":"Vaera 5769 (2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Drash for Vaera 5769<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Marc Mangel<\/p>\n

Parshat Vaera falls between Shmot \u2013 oppression \u2013 and Bo \u2013 redemption. This is where we live most of our lives, that intermediate region. There is no better model for how to do this\u00a0 than Heschel, who lived his life with prophetic zeal but did not reject observance. He did reject religious behaviorism that disregarded God and Israel in favor of rules.\u00a0 The issue of prayer, he said, is not prayer. The issue of prayer is God because the fundamental statement about God in Judaism is that God is in search of man, in need of man, and concerned about man. We do not need to communicate with God, we only need to make ourselves communicable with him<\/p>\n

Last Weds (14 Jan) was the Yahrzeit of Heschel and Thurs (15 Jan) was the 80th<\/sup> birthday of Martin Luther King. And of course, this past Tuesday was a remarkable moment in history [reminder: it was the inauguration of Barack Obama for his first term].<\/p>\n

In Vaera,\u00a0 Ch 6, v 3 God say \u201cAnd I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai but through my name HaShem I did not become known to them\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 From this we learn three things.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Maimonides writes \u201cThe gates of interpretation are never sealed\u201d and Tamar Ross \u201ca dynamic unfolding f the original Torah transmitted at Sinai that reveals in time it ultimate signifiance\u201d and Rav Kook \u201cThere is a supernal Torah with successive unfolrding of that Torah as progressive revelations\u201d<\/p>\n

To Kohelet, Heschel said \u201cHow dare you say that life his vanity\u201d and about the Shoah he wrote \u201cThe question is \u2018where was man\u2019, not \u2018where was God\u2019\u201d because a person cannot be religious and indifferent to the plight and suffering of other people.\u00a0 He wrote that the beginning of piety is compassion and that Judaism exists only in community \u2013 because there is no anxiety in Judaism about personal salvation, but what matters is universal salvation.\u00a0 The prophets had no idea of God; they had understanding that God is a partner of man.\u00a0 There is one message from God, and we must continue to understand and reveal it.\u00a0 Every time we read the Torah we are able to see a new truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Drash for Vaera 5769 by Marc Mangel Parshat Vaera falls between Shmot \u2013 oppression \u2013 and Bo \u2013 redemption. This is where we live most of our lives, that intermediate region. There is no better model for how to do this\u00a0 than Heschel, who lived his life with prophetic zeal but did not reject … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":53,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-267","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":268,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/267\/revisions\/268"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}