Passover Parsha Readings: Perennial Hate, Everlasting Love

The normal order of weekly Torah portions pauses for this fifth day of Passover. Instead, we read portions relevant to the festival celebration and its deeper spiritual meaning.

The first reading, Shabbat, Chol Hamoed(in the middle of) Passover: Exodus 33:12 - 34:26, is a reprise of the third reading through the sixth reading of Parshas Ki Tisa that we read on March 2, 2024. These Torah portions include the 13 Attributes of Mercy, description of the Holy Festivals and how to observe them, consecration of the first born, and restoration of the Covenant between God and the Jews after the debacle of the Golden Calf.

The second reading, Shabbat, Chol Hamoed( in the middle of) Passover: Numbers 28:19-25, is the sixth reading of Parshas Pinchas that we will read on July 7, 2024. It goes over the special sacrificial offerings for Passover observance.

The Haftorah(a selected reading from the prophets) is Ezekiel 37:1-14, the dramatic story of the dry bones that miraculously become reconstituted and reanimated.

The Passover readings remind us that human beings are called to God-centered living and that despite delays, setbacks and mistakes a sincere willingness to do so always succeeds because God is good and merciful and loves us.

Observing the dangerous anti-semitic events and rhetoric exploding across the country, I've thought about the Jewish students who attend the Ivy League and other elite universities. These kids come out of liberal abortion supporting homes. They are inculcated with abortion access opinions and represent a large abortion practicing demographic, college age sexually active singles. Jewish campus organizations enable this lifestyle because their donor base supports it or they refuse to address the realities lest it create controversy. 

I wonder if any one of these kids or their parents who feel threatened by the murderous rage directed at them just because they are Jewish can empathize with the babies in the womb whose deaths result from murderous intent directed at them just because they are unwanted or because their advocates lack the power to save them.

I doubt if this idea gets raised at the dinner table around which the kids and parents gather now that Jewish students have been forced to leave campus in order to stay safe. Most likely, conversations around abortion center on political allegiance to the Democrat party and whether or not that will continue despite their party's equivocating support for Israel and tolerance of Jew hatred at home. Perhaps the lukewarm, watered down Republican position on abortion will encourage a 'Jexit.'

God-centered living and its promises of Divine mercy and forgiveness remain unrealized whether Jewish support of abortion homicide continues due to misplaced compassion for women or a declaration of civil and religious liberty or an ignorance of Jewish history and its current manifestations. Only the Almighty knows what can and will reconstitute and reanimate the parched soul of the Jew who longs for spiritual solace and safety but who only encounters hate.

The Chabad website has an excellent commentary on the Exodus portion, especially the 13 Attributes of Mercy. I've pasted it below.

Cecily Routman

May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and good life upon us and upon all Israel. Amen. 

Interpolation of Parshas Ki Tisa

https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/850586/jewish/Interpolated-Translation.htm

"God has mercy on the sinner before he sins, even though He knows he is going to sin; God has mercy on the sinner after he sins and has repented; He is a benevolent God; He is compassionate and gracious; He is slow to demonstrate His anger by inflicting punishment, waiting instead for the sinner to repent; He is abounding in undeserved kindness for those who do not have enough of their own merits; He abounds also in truth, faithfully rewarding those who obey Him. He preserves the merit of acts of kindness a person does for two thousand generations, adding them to the merits of his descendants; He forgives premeditated sins, rebellious sins, and unintentional sins; He acquits sinners from immediate punishment but does not acquit them altogether, punishing them instead little by little—unless they repent, for He acquits those who repent properly and He does not acquit those who do not. He remembers the premeditated sins of the fathers, adding their demerits to those of the children and the children's children, but only if they follow in their fathers' misguided footsteps, and only up to the third and the fourth generation." Thus, God's attribute of rewards is 500 times greater than His attribute of punishment, since He preserves merit for 2000 generations but demerit only for four.