Connecting Torah with the Fourth of July
by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Dear friends,
I view the Fourth of July as not mainly the day of national independence for the USA, but the day when the best principles of self-government proposed by Locke, Jefferson, and Co. — and certain passages of Torah!! — were broadcast into the world.
The whole world.
— We hold these truths to be self-evident: That we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights — that among these are life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness — that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it . . .
And then a list of specific abuses by the King.
For those of us who celebrate living in (at least) two civilizations, it's a great day to connect with Torah.
For there is a passage of Deuteronomy (17: 14-20) called Perek HaMelekh, the Passage of the King, that makes this connection beautifully.
Indeed, it is probably the most ancient root of the Declaration of Independence.
It proclaims a constitutional monarchy of Israel, with the king responsible to God, Torah, the Levites, and the people as a whole, and with explicit limits on his powers.
The Passage on a King:
Deuteronomy 17: 14-20
If, when you have entered the land
that YHWH [Yahh, the Breath of Life] your God is giving you,
and you possess it and settle in it,
should you say:
I will set over me a ruler
like all the nations that are around me —
you may set, yes, set over you a ruler
that YHWH your God chooses;
from among your kinfolk you may set over you a ruler,
you may not place over you someone so alienated
that he does not feel that you are kin to him.
Only: he is not to multiply horses [cavalry] for himself,
and he is not to return the people
to Mitzrayyim/ Tight and Narrow Place/ Egyptian slavery
in order to multiply horses,
since YHWH has said to you:
You will never return that way again!
And he is not to multiply wives for himself,
that his heart not be turned-aside,
and silver or gold he is not to multiply for himself to excess.
But it shall be:
when he sits on the throne of his kingdom,
he is to write himself a copy of this Teaching in a document,
before the face of Levitical priests.
It is to remain beside him;
he is to read out of it all the days of his life,
in order that he may learn to have-awe-for YHWH his God,
to be-careful concerning all the words of this Teaching
and the deep-carved laws, to observe them,
that his heart not be raised above his kinfolk,
that he not turn-aside from what-is-connective,
to the right or to the left;
in order that he may prolong (his) days over his kingdom,
he and his children,
in the midst of Israel.
Since the July 4, 1974, inter-havurah retreat at Weiss's Farm in New Jersey, in some havurah and Jewish-renewal circles (almost all the Kallot, and Elat Chayyim) we have treated July 4 as a yontif that calls for Torah reading.
We have read this passage from the Torah.
And then we have read the Declaration of Independence (or parts of it) as the haftarah — a Prophetic response to the Torah portion.
It's far far far from perfect, any more than most of the Prophets. It ignores women, is quite savage toward the "savages" (Native Americans), skirts slavery (because the Congress insisted on leaving out a paragraph Jefferson had written criticizing slavery). But, like Torah, it carries the seeds of its own transformation.
And after we read these great and sacred texts, we set aside time for Torah-study that addresses what yet needs to be transformed. We simply say to people: What would you add? Or subtract? Or change?
Do our interdependence with Earth and our need for community, not only liberty, belong in a new Declaration? Should we explicitly recognize the subjugation of Blacks, Indigenes, some Latino and Asian-origin peoples, some religious communities, women and GLBTQIA folk, as utterly contrary to the principles proclaimed on the Fourth?
When we ask these questions, there is usually a burst of energy, and of responses.
By the way — if you don't happen to have a copy of the Declaration around the house, on Tuesday morning if you can get a NY Times, the whole last page of the paper will be a facsimile copy of the Declaration.
Or you can download the text from the National Archives — https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration
If your congregation is not in a place to do this Torah-reading & study & song, any cluster of people — or any one person — can do it.
For me, this practice reminds me that as M L King said, the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice — that our work to hear God's demand that we enact justice and freedom in the world is three thousand years old and more — that it has in fact succeeded on many occasions and failed on many others — that hope makes sense, and struggle is necessary — that the Torah is not just for Jews (not all of it, anyway) — that the Declaration of Independence is not just for USAmericans — and that celebration and memory of each victory is a Joy. Hallelu - YAH!
As for songs of Hallel (slightly edited):
O beautiful for patriot's dream
That sees beyond the years,
Thine alabaster cities gleam —
Undimmed by human tears!
America, America, God shed Her grace on thee,
And crown thy good with sisterhood,
Beyond each shining sea!
And —
A few years ago, for July 4 I wanted to highlight the passage in the siddur when we celebrate the collapse of King Pharaoh in the Red Sea before the power of YHWH, the ruach ha'olam, Breath of life become a mighty wind to change the universe. As the chant goes, "Yahh yimlokh l'olam va'ed! — The Breath of Life will reign forever and beyond [blowing away all other kings]."
So I went fumbling in the dark in Elat Chayyim’s library to find a siddur that might have the “Yahh yimlokh” in transliteration as well as Hebrew. My hand fell on the Reconstructionist prayer-book of 1953. It fell open in my hand — I swear!! — to a page where there was an order-of-service for Independence Day.
On it was a quote from the Declaration plus two verses of “America.” The second — non-national — goes like so (slightly edited):
Our parents’ God, to Thee,
Author of Liberty,
To Thee I sing.
Long may our lands be bright
With freedom’s holy light!
And bring us forth from warring night —
Great God, Our King!
A perfect Alenu!!!
One last song, with a lighter touch:
Yankee Doodle went to town,
Riding on a pony;
Stuck a feather in his hat
And called it macaroni!
This may sound like a nonsense song, but it isn't. It began as a British song, poking fun at the ridiculous American "army." For "macaroni" was what the British called what we now call "gold braid" or "scrambled eggs" on the shoulders of officers. And the Americans were taking farmers right from harvesting the hay, sticking a chicken feather in their caps, and treating them as officers.
Ridiculous!
Except that for a guerrilla army, it made sense.
The Americans understood this, and stole the song away to make it ours. Itself a guerrilla victory.
You'd think we'd have learned the lesson — beware of becoming an arrogant Empire — but ……
As I've said, the richest outpouring comes from simply sharing the community's thoughts on what we would write in our own Declaration today.
Shalom,
— Arthur
