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Tzav Tropical Sermon

 With another year's Tropical Sermon Contest come and gone (mad props to Elliot Dine and Perry Swergeld, by the way, for coming in 3rd and 2nd, respectively), I thought I'd fulfill my promise to publish my sermon, on parshah Tzav, on my blog.  Enjoy, for those of you interested in such things!

            Shabbat Shalom, everyone!  This week we read Parshah Tzav, the second parshah in the book of Vayikra.  In this portion, Moshe initiates Aharon and his sons into the priesthood, and sanctifies an altar for their use.  He clothes Aharon in the garments of the Kohen Gadol and the other kohanim in their own uniforms, anoints them with oil, and places blood on their right thumbs, their right big toes, and the outer cartilage of their right ears.  Most importantly, he carefully instructs them in the process of the korbanot, or offerings, including peace offerings (Zevach Hashlamim), the twice-daily meal-offerings, etc.  This section concludes with the verse

הַשְּׁלָמִים וּלְזֶבַח וְלַמִּלּוּאִים וְלָאָשָׁם וְלַחַטָּאת לַמִּנְחָה לָעֹלָה הַתּוֹרָה זֹאת

This is the law for the burnt offering, for the meal offering, for the sin offering, for the guilt offering, for the investitures, and for the peace offering (7:37).

            There are times at which reading the Torah feels much like reading a textbook.  This week’s portion is such a time.  The word Torah itself means something like “instruction” or “guide,” and I think that it is with this in mind that we should approach Tzav as well as last week’s parshah Vayikra, reading them as a guide to korbanot, written in large part for the practical use of the kohanim.  That being said, even in the absence of the Beit Hamikdash, the portion should remain important to the rest of us, as do all parts of the Torah.  As Rabbi Shimon says in Pirkei Avot (4:13), while the crown of priesthood may belong to the kohanim, the crown of Torah belongs to us all.  The law is all of ours to study and educate ourselves. It is worth mentioning that by spelling ou the process of the korbanot so explicitly in the book of Vayikra, Judaism prevents the monopolization of knowledge by an esoteric priesthood.  As Rabbi Tzvi Freeman has observed, even young children would be able to notice and point out errors in the Kohanim’s procdures.  It is also for this same reason, the education of all in the Jewish law, that the book of Devarim instructs all Jews to write their own Sefer Torahs (Devarim 31:19), a mitzvah now usually observed by giving a copy of the Tanakh or the Chumash to B’nai Mitzvot.  In this way, all Jews may study and learn the law.

            Instruction and education are very important Jewish values.  Knowledge of the law and ethics of the Tanakh and the Talmud is necessary to making the right choices, when leading a moral life as an observant Jew.  This is as true for the process of making sacrifices as it is for the proper recitation of Ashrei as it is for the knowledge of when it is and is not acceptable to lie.  As Hillel states in Pirkei Avot, “a brutish man cannot fear sin [and] an ignorant man cannot be pious” (2:6).  In other words, education and knowledge are necessary for an upright lifestyle.  I think that it is at this point of the year, in the month of Nissan, that teaching, learning, and education should be on all of our minds.  The core of the Seder of Pesach is the mitzvah to teach future generations an important chapter in our national history, specifically, the exodus from Egypt, when God began his relationship with the entirety of the Jewish people, rather than specific individuals, namely the Avot (Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov).  It is written in the book of Shemot, “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, "Because of this, the Lord did for me when I went out of Egypt" (13:8).  The education of future generations is necessary for maintaining the Jewish tradition and way of life.

            Although I have been speaking specifically of Jews, this is a sermon on American values, and the six and half million American Jews (to whom the 613 commandments apply) make up only about two percent of the country’s population of around 312 or 313 million people.  For this reason I emphasize that just as education is necessary for an observant Jew, it is also necessary for a responsible American citizen.  The Founding Fathers firmly believed that education was necessary for the formation of informed citizens who could vote responsibly in a republican form of government.  For instance, the Northwest Ordinances of 1787 set aside the 16^th of the 36 sections of each new township in the Northwest Territories to provide land and funding for a public school.  The bill explicitly stated that “morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”  Of the thirty-nine men who signed the Constitution, sixteen of them sat in the First Congress which unanimously passed this bill; a seventeenth, President George Washington, signed the bill into law.  (Therefore when I say that the founding fathers supported public education, I am neither being vague about which founders I mean, nor about just what I mean by support.)

            The provision of land for public schools, however, is only an auxiliary measure of the Northwest Ordinances, one of the most important bills passed by the first Congress.  The main purpose of the bill was to regulate land distribution in the Ohio Valley and beyond for the ever-moving westward frontier of the young nation (yes, I know that there were American Indians already inhabiting this land, whom the lawmakers did not take into account, but that is the topic for another time).  Those of you familiar with the Northwest Ordinances, the Homestead Act of 1862, and other historic land bills know that land was parceled out in portions large enough for a family, these bills requiring that the owners remain on the land for several years before they could officially take possession of the property from the government.  American values held that every family had the right to its own plot of land, to hold as self-sufficient, independent producers.  This same importance placed upon the rights of all people to a plot of their own land, we also find later in the book of Vayikra, in which it is stated that every plot of land be redistributed every fifty years to its original patrilineage:

אֲחֻזָּתוֹ אֶל אִישׁ תָּשֻׁבוּ הַזֹּאת הַיּוֹבֵל בִּשְׁנַת

During this Yovel year, you shall return, each man to his property (Vayikra 25:13).

            This practice prevented too much land, the most important form of property throughout most of the history of human civilization, from being concentrated in too few hands, a concern from earliest times.  For instance, in the early 6^th century B.C.E., the late years of the First Temple period in the kingdoms of Yehudah (while these agricultural laws were still in effect), in the Greek city-state of Athens, maldistribution of wealth created civil strife, as the poor had no choice but to use their own persons as collateral to secure usurious loans from the wealthy landed aristocracy.  The situation remained unstable even after the cancellation of debts by the famous legislator Solon (in the famous σεισάχθεια, or “shaking off of bonds”) and social unrest continued for decades in Attica.  The law of the Yovel promoted social justice in the land of Israel, seeking to ensure that all families would have the economic means of supporting themselves.

            I argue that this insistence on independent means, enshrined in both 18^th- and 19^th-century America and in the Torah, is the importance which we place on one’s ability to provide for oneself as a social goal.  We find this same ethic in the Talmud: Rabbi Yehuda said, "Anyone who does not teach his son a trade teaches him thievery" (Kiddushin 30b).  In other words, an inability to provide for oneself leads directly to crime and to social disorder.  It is in the interest of both the individual and the rest of society that he or she not find him- or herself with no income, no job, and no assets.

            In our postindustrial society, where virtually all farming is done by large corporations, and the traditional family farm is a rarity, the ability to provide for oneself no longer depends upon land tenure.  Rather, it depends upon labor: today, about 65% of all personal income in the United States is accounted for by employees’ wages.  And labor, that is, the ability to take and keep a job, depends upon education.  According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, the 2011 unemployment rate for Americans without a high school diploma was 14.1%, the rate for those with only a high school diploma was 9.4%, the rate for those with a bachelors’ degree was 4.9% (all statistics cover only those over the age of 25).  Wages also depend on level of education: the median annual wage of a high school dropout is $23,452, whereas that of a holder of a bachelor’s decree is $54,756, more than twice as much.

            Yet the public education system in the United States is in decline today, millions of Americans lack even high school diplomas, and “young Americans today are less likely than their parents were to finish high school.”  Public education in the United States is also in decline relative to the rest of the world: According to a study at Michigan State University, “A slightly higher proportion of American adults qualify as scientifically literate than European or Japanese adults.”  Our national level of education is also in decline relative to its own past: in the late 18^th century, the United States had the highest literacy rate in the world, but a report from the United Nations Development Programme in 2011 ranked it as 10^th in the world in literacy.  The absolute figures are sometimes staggering: although there are several different figures as to how many American adults are illiterate, dependent partially upon the precise definition of literacy, the National Right to Read Foundation estimated the figure at 42 million in 2002, while the U.S. Department of Education placed it at 32 million, or about one in seven, in 2009.

            Although adult education is a cure such problems, an improved system of primary and secondary school education is more effective as a preventative measure to illiteracy and ignorance.  Federal and state money cannot solve everything: Brazil lavishes money on its very poor system of public schooling, and yet its literacy rate remains at only 90%.  That being said, I strongly disagree with Governor Rick Perry, who in November made the campaign promise to abolish the Education Department if elected President.  In this year’s State of the Union Address, President Obama recommended that all states pass laws that students not be allowed to leave high school until they either graduate or reach the age of 18; this would be a bold move, but I see its passage, especially in all fifty states, as highly unlikely.  Many point out to the low standards of teaching in the United States, which I have personally experienced.  In my senior year of high school, my Government teacher, despite having been born in New York, having attended Buffalo State University, and teaching at Ithaca High School, was able to name neither the governor at the time (David Paterson), nor his recently-resigned predecessor (Eliot Spitzer).  The woman to whom my training in civics was entrusted was working a second job as a waitress, and could think of no lesson plan more creative than showing video clips from YouTube.  Many suggest that we need is a new generation of passionate, informed teachers.  Some members of the Cornell Jewish community are contributing to this effort: seniors Nate Schorr and Sarah Myers will be Teaching for America this coming year, and I wish them both all the luck in the world in the paths that lie ahead of them.

            In John Steinbeck’s classic novel Of Mice and Men, the story’s protagonists, George and Lenny, dream of a day when they will no longer labor as migrant workers, living hand-to-mouth, from one week’s wages to another.  I believe that this American dream, of a time when we might all secure safety under our own vines and fig trees, is possible only through education.  My own grandfather, Bernard Davis of blessed memory, worked at a printshop by day, and took night classes in order to earn his degree.  He went on to become a high school math teacher, and was able to send all three of his own children to college, two of whom now teach.  This, in a sense, was his American dream, and without his hard work to educate himself, I would not be where I am right now: I do not owe my place here in Cornell to my own merit.  We should be cautious about being overly prideful in our own talents and accomplishments.  As we approach Pesach, the most educational of all holidays, in which we are instructed to recount our people’s history to our children, let us bear in our hearts the two-and-a-half-millennium old words of the prophet Yirmiyahu, which conclude this week’s Haftorah: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, nor the strong man boast of his strength, nor the rich man boast of his riches.” (9:22).  Rather, we should be conscious of the roles our teachers and communities have played in our own formation as mature Americans.  May you have a Shabbat Shalom.

~JD

"La position des Italiens vis-à-vis de la Solution finale en Europe a rendu extrêmement difficile l’application des mesures recherchés" [The position of the Italians regarding the Final Solution in Europe rendered the application of the sought-after effects extremely difficult] (Heinrich Müller, as quoted in Serge Klarsfed, La Shoah en France, 234).

Jews of Touraine Proposal

Due to the overwhelming popularity of my recent post about studying in France, I've decided to give people the specifics of my plans.  The following is the final version of the project proposal for the Susan Tarrow Award.  Thanks to my Mother for helping me beat out a final draft!

Background History:

                On July 10^th, 1940, the legislature of the French 3^rd Republic officially invested Marshall Pétain with full governmental powers, in what jurist René Cassin has called a “coup d’etat constitutionnel.”  Under the influence of their German occupiers, Pétain’s Vichy “French State” began to pass a series of anti-Semitic laws applicable to French Jews.  These included the Statut des Juifs in 1940 and 1941, the creation of a General Commissariat for Jewish Questions and the seizure of Jewish property in 1941, and the requirement that all Jews wear yellow stars sewn onto their outer garments in 1942.  In mid-July of 1942, thousands of Parisian Jews were arrested and detained.  Mass deportations followed, sending most of the detainees to death German death camps, most notably, in Auschwitz.  Concentration camps cropped up across France as well, with three in Paris alone, and a death camp in Alscace.  The Final Solution succeeded in killing tens of thousands of the Jews living in France, mostly by their deportation and subsequent execution in German death camps, especially Auschwitz.  The non-Jewish reaction to these policies was mixed.  At times, French complicity with Nazi policy was blatant, as when German officials requested the names of all Jewish men living in Paris for the purpose of detainment, and French officials responded with lists of women and children to be included for this action.  At other times, in spite of the danger of doing so, many non-Jewish French families sheltered their Jewish neighbors, risking their own incarceration if detected.

                At the time of the advent of the Vichy government, there were some 350,000 Jews living in France, though not all were legal French citizens. More often than not, the casualties of Vichy policies were not French Jews with full citizenship, but rather foreign Jews who had assumed French culture, and, sometimes, French surnames.  This population had been immigrating to France on a large scale since the 1870s, from Poland, from Russia, Rumania, Turkey, and other Eastern European countries.  Their unofficial status exposed them to persecution more readily than Jews with full French citizenship, as they lacked a similar degree of legal protection.

Research Goals:

                Numerous studies exist on Vichy complicity in the Nazis’ Final Solution, on concentration camps, on non-Jews who protected Jews, on daily Jewish life under Vichy, on French Jewish orphans, etc.  However, there is a little known concerning this history of this issue in areas of Occupied France outside of the Ile-de-France.  Because of this, I am pursuing a study of regional persecution of the Jews living in the region of Touraine , which is located in the northwest quadrant of France, in the Loire Valley. The city of Tours is the administrative center of its sous-préfecture, being the tenth largest city in France.   In particular, I am examining the social dynamics within and between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities of this region during the war.  I will be looking at how and why Jews of Touraine were persecuted, detained and deported during this period.  Did the history of persecution in regional areas of France parallel the succession of events occurring in the capital of Paris, or, for that matter, in Germany?

                There currently exist two approaches to the treatment of European Jewry in what became the Holocaust:  Intentionalism and Functionalism.  According to the Intentionalist approach, Jews were victims because the Nazi and Vichy regimes set the goal of the ultimate destruction of the “Jewish race.”  All anti-Semitic acts contributed to the larger “Final Solution” to exterminate the Jews.  According to the Functionalist approach, Jews became victims because of social and bureaucratic problems (German historian Hans Mommsen is most famously associated with this position).  Shannon Fogg suggests that the Jews of the Limousin (central France, just south of the occupied zone) were often evicted in spite of the goodwill of their gentile landlords, in order to make room for French families suffering from deprivation and rationing.  Jews proved to be vulnerable targets because of their ambiguous status and lack of legal protection.  The mass deportations, made convenient by Eichmann’s infamous and efficient train network, were no more than a solution to thousands of local, yet thematically related, social and bureaucratic problems.  Shortages in France during the war included housing, labor (soldiers needed to be sent to the front, and the Nazis captured a French slave labor force of 1.2 million), food (fewer farmers, in addition to massive requisitions by the Germans), and cash (from war indemnities).  For my study, I will be looking for evidence as to what extent the Jews of Touraine were detained due to anti-Semitism, social pressures, or both.

Methodology:

                My primary path of research will be in the regional archives of Indre-et-Loire, in the sous-préfecture of Tours, located in the city of Tours.  In particular, there is a portion of the archives dedicated to regional history in the time of World War II.  For example, archive accession 10-W-66 contains the “German administration of the Jewish questions, organization,” accession 46-W-102 contains the official texts on the appropriation of Jewish goods, and 52 W 13 deals specifically with the prefect’s correspondence regarding the regulation, arrest, and internment of “Jews and foreigners.”  These sources are pertinent to my study, but are only part of a larger list of archives which may prove important.  For example, the files of the office of the prefect, of the police department, and of the local administration should reveal some of the nature of regional Jewish persecution.  Is there evidence that it was largely conducted by police and soldiers, or did civilians participate?  If the latter, did Jews ever seek legal protection from the state, and if so, what was the state’s response?  Did French Jews (citizens of the “confession Israëlite”) receive official and unofficial treatment different from that of foreign, non-French Jews?  How many Jews were arrested for internment and deportation?  In addition to the archives mentioned above, there is a collection of documents describing the nearby Jewish concentration camp at la Lande which may provide important statistics for the numbers of people detained from the region.                Another source which may prove important is local newspapers.  Is there any record of the reaction of the local population to the treatment of Jews?  Were there stories published after the war of acts describing resistance to the Vichy policies, especially as regards the sheltering of Jews from persecution?  Is there information regarding the return of Jews to Touraine?  Were they able to function if they did return?  What is the current population in this region? 

                I plan to spend six to seven weeks in the region in and around Tours, consulting as many archival sources for this research as I possibly can.  I will also visit the Jewish section of the municipal cemetery, located just a few minutes’ walk from the archives.  Such a visit might give the names of families whose histories I can trace.   In addition, if I have time, I would like to place this regional study in a larger context.  In order to do this, I would extend my stay an additional week and travel to Paris.  This would allow me to visit the Holocaust archives of France, at the Centre de documentation juive contemporain, which is associated with the Mémorial de la Shoah.  These archives describe the legal and social persecution in World War II France in general, and can provide useful background, primary-source material for the overall history of this study.

Relevant Classwork:

                This project will require reading and understanding primary source documents written in French.  I am fluent in French, having taken French language courses since middle school.  As a French and History major at Cornell, my skills were greatly improved from a semester abroad in Fall, 2011, during which I was enrolled in courses, taught in French, at the University of Paris IV Sorbonne.  Prior to my enrollment at the Sorbonne, I participated in a month-long immersion language course at the Institute de Touraine.  

                Although this is often a difficult area to research, I am drawn to this topic, not only because of my Jewish background, but also because of its relevance in the struggles with immigration and religious discrimination which are still very relevant today.  This semester, I am taking Professor I.V. Hull’s Seminar on European Fascism (History 4570).  The assigned readings of this course, as they pertain to the Third Reich and Vichy regimes, will provide a background to the history of Europe in this period.  More importantly, part of this course is a 15-page research project, and I will be writing one on the topic of Vichy complicity in the Final Solution, and familiarizing myself with secondary-source literature, such as is found in the bibliography below.  This reading will supply some of the background history of the Final Solution in Vichy France.  I also plan to use the research conducted in France for my Senior Honors History Thesis, which I will be writing in Spring , 2013, on the topic of wartime rationing in Vichy France, a matter closely related to the Jewish Question.

Bibliography of Secondary Sources:

Adler, Jacques. 1987. The Jews of Paris and the final solution: communal response and internal conflicts, 1940-1944. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dreyfus, François G. 1990. Histoire de Vichy. Paris: Perrin.

Fogg, Shannon Lee. 2009. The politics of everyday life in Vichy, France: foreigners, undesirables, and strangers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Joly, Laurent. 2006. Vichy dans la "Solution finale": histoire du commissariat général aux questions juives (1941-1944). Paris: Grasset.

Klarsfeld, Serge. 2001. La Shoah en France. la solution finale de la question juive en France 1, Vichy-Auschwitz. Paris: Fayard.

Kritzman, Lawrence D. 1995. Auschwitz and after: race, culture, and "the Jewish question" in France. New York: Routledge.

Lochak, Danièle. 2009. Le droit et les juifs: en France depuis la révolution. Paris: Dalloz.

Marrus, Michael Robert. 1981. Vichy et les juifs. France: Calmann-Lévy.

Budget:

Roundtrip USAir Flight from Ithaca, New York to Paris, Charles-de-Gaulle Airport: $1,650

Roundtrip train from Paris to Tours: €80 = $105

6 weeks’ stay in the Tours youth hostel (breakfast included), at €21.60 per night: €907.20 = $1200

Meals: €7.50 per day = €315 = $420

Tours Subtotal: $3,375

1 week’s lodging in the Latin Quarter youth hostel: €49 per night = €342 = $465

1 week’s additional food: $70

10 Metro tickets: €12.50 = $16.50

Paris Subtotal: $551.50

Grand Total (estimate): $3,926.50

~JD

"Up until our own times, men had only received two sorts of teaching in what concerns the relations between politics and morality. One was Plato's and it said: `Morality decides politics'; and the other was Machiavelli's, and it said `Politics have nothing to do with morality.' Today we receive a third. M. Maurras teaches: `Politics decide morality'" (Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals, p. 110).