Tsav / צו

This is a weekly series of parsha dvarim written by a frum, atheist, transsexual anarchist. It's crucial in these times that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns Judaism. Our texts are rich—sometimes opaque, but absolutely teeming with wisdom and fierce debate. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance. I aim to offer comment which is true to the source material (i.e. doesn't invert or invent meaning to make us more comfortable) and uses Torah like a light to reflect on our modern times. The full dvar is paywalled for four weeks to help me sustain my work as a writer; if you can't afford to subscribe, email me and I'll send you the link for free.

An appeal: My friend Madleen needs help to support her children in Gaza. This fundraiser is run by a friend of a comrade, and I talk to Madleen regularly. Any amount helps, no matter how small.

Content note: Genocide in Palestine and the Vietnam War

The parsha Tsav details the process of slaughter for the five types of burnt offering made to Hashem on the alter of the Mishkon or Temple. We're also given the punishments for improperly eating from the sacrifice, and the consecrating of the Kohanim. There's some strong gender: only the male descendants of Ahron may eat the holy offerings. Then, we shift from instruction to narrative as Moishe Rebeynu and Ahron make a sin offering of a bull and a ram.

While there's some interesting paths we can explore about gender or the Jewish obsessive compulsions with food touching other food, I'm too dazzled by the descriptions of the sin offering that Moishe and Ahron make in killing the bull. It reminds me of the scene in Apocalypse Now where they film the actual ritualistic slaughter of a water buffalo. The blood. The beast's knees buckling as it falls down dead. We are not the only culture to kill animals in the name of G-d. I've been thinking a lot about the Vietnam War lately, so it's no big leap from the parsha to Colonel Kurtz for me right now. I've been looking backwards as I always do, searching for patterns in history that I might find applicable answers for this moment. Vietnam calls me from the archives. The Iraq War might be more similar in geography and technology, but it's Vietnam that looms in my mind as the endless, unwinnable American conflict ("campaign") against an anti-war population at home and a civilian (guerrilla) force abroad.

The urgency of the war—this war, the war in Palestine—hasn't left me, 552 days later. My mind still races and searches for more effective ways we can stop the genocide from here in the heart of empire. It's our tax dollars funding it and our weapons shipments that kill. What good is a march, a photo-op, a hundred protestors getting arrested on purpose? The gears of war grind on.

"During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in—and which we lost—every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high."

—Kurt Vonnegut, 2003