This week’s Torah reading closes the Book of Numbers, leaving the People — who have journeyed for 40 years, losing many people in the process and raising new generations — poised to cross the Jordan. The narrative includes a 42-stage recitation of journeys: “These are the stages of the children of Israel…” (Numbers 33:1-49). Each of the stages is reported as follows: “…and they journeyed FROM [old place]….and they camped [new place].”
One lesson of the reading seems to be the importance of noting every stage on the way. And the repetition of “journeyed from” — forty-two times! — hammers home the idea that you have to leave one place to get to a new one. But events of recent weeks in the nation, as well as some travel of my own, suggest that recognizing where we are is no simple matter.
Flags
In South Carolina a few days ago, the Confederate flag was removed from the State House. (See, e.g., Al Jazeera.) Observers reportedly chanted “USA! USA!” as well as “nah nah nah nah…goodbye,” and the removal was heralded by many as a victory over hate and divisiveness. In addition, other instances of the same flag, in stained-glass windows at the Washington National Cathedral, for example, also face possible removal.
from Al Jazeera
However, there are some who mourn the loss of what they consider a “heritage symbol.”
Still others argue that the US flag, Mount Rushmore, the faces on our currency, and a variety of other national symbols and observances need to go as well. (See, e.g., Black Agenda Report.)
So, if we had to name this stage in our country’s history, what would it be?
Where are we leaving?
Where are we headed?
Are we making a collective journey at all, if we don’t share a starting point?
Horns
Stained-glass window at Kenyon College’s Church of the Holy Spirit
Meanwhile, I am visiting Kenyon College in Gambier, OH, this week, where this image of Moses (right) holds a prominent place in the campus Church of the Holy Spirit.
The horns are based, most scholars think, on a mistranslation of the word קָרַן — as “keren” [“grew horns”] rather than “karan” [“sent forth beams (of light)”] in Exodus 34. They appear most famously on sculptures of Moses by Michelangelo and Donatello (both centuries before the window design).
The horns were a “widespread medieval negative image of the Jew,” according to My Jewish Learning, and “led to the widespread notion that all Jews had devilish horns.” Moreover:
Der Sturmer cover 1932
The Nazis seized upon the negative Jewish body image and used caricatures and other forms of propaganda to present the Jews as sub-human or as disfigured humans. The Nazi weekly Der Sturmer was famous for disseminating these images. (See right, e.g.; more here).
In a 1997 history of the church, Perry Lentz says, “in the left-most first window a Moses with a distractingly muscular forearm is bringing the ten commandments.”
A video, used in promoting the “Beyond Walls” program that brought me to Kenyon this week, pans the church windows at a distance too great to discern content, while a young spokesperson declares: “When Kenyon was founded, we were Episcopalian, but now we’re completely non-denominational.”
Eleazar the priest said to the troops who had taken part in the fighting, “This is the ritual law that YHVH has enjoined upon Moses: Gold and silver, copper, iron, tin and lead — any article that can withstand fire — these you shall pass through fire and they shall be pure, except that they must be purified with water of lustration [mei niddah]; and anything that cannot withstand fire you must pass through water. Continue reading Matot: Something to Notice
The horns were a “widespread medieval negative image of the Jew,” according to My Jewish Learning, and “led to the widespread notion that all Jews had devilish horns.” Moreover:
"A Song Every Day" 