This was a week where the world of yesterday and the world of today seemed to collide. At the same time as hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in Jerusalem to protest changes made by the Knesset to the judiciary, the Jewish world observed Tisha Ba’av, the day memorializing the destruction of the First and Second Temples. And, at the same time debuting in the movie theaters was none other than Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer depicting the horrific impact of a weapon so great, the famous scientist is said to have remarked, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Our understanding of the harm human beings are capable of inflicting on one another and the world, is as old as Torah. We see it all over this week’s Torah portion, Vaetchanan, where Moses’ recounts the many times we missed the mark in our journey through the wilderness and were forced to suffer God’s wrath. In this portion, God is both the one who freed us from our house of bondage in Egypt and who, when vexed, will “have a fire blaze force against us, wiping us off the face of the earth” (Duet. 6:15). The threat of continually rising atmospheric temperatures and having lived for more than three quarters under the threat of nuclear warfare, gives new resonance to the Torah’s words. We human beings are indeed “destroyers of worlds.”
And, yet it is important to keep in mind that we are creators of worlds as well. It turns out, the quote Oppenheimer uses is a misquote from Hindu scripture. Taken from a dialogue between a soldier named Arjuna and the God Krishna, the actual line has Krishna sharing with human beings about the inevitability of death, and the necessity of human beings to accept our fate. Judaism, despite its insistence on dwelling on our capacity to destroy, does not let us remain there for long. We read in this week’s Haftorah from the Isaiah chapter forty: “Take comfort, My people, Says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem And declare to her That her term of service is over, That her iniquity is expiated.” For the next seven week’s we move toward High Holy Days with a feeling of relief. Yes, destruction has come to us, but God willing, so will renewal. To the current political environment in Israel, we say, may it Be So.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex