Shabbat Sermon: Get Better with Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

Published: Sept. 3, 2022, 5:35 p.m.

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What is true for our Torah portion this morning is also true for every human being who has ever lived, including all of us here today. Also true for our country. What we all have in common is complexity: our Torah, our nation, each of us, contains multitudes.

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Charlie spoke with a wisdom beyond his years about the complexity in our parsha. The same parsha which begins with \\u201cJustice, justice shall you pursue\\u201d also commands genocide in God\\u2019s name. Also commands, in God\\u2019s name, \\u201cYou may take as your booty the women, the children, the livestock, and everything in the town\\u2014all its spoil\\u2014and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord your God gives you.\\u201d We wrestle with Charlie\\u2019s question, how can the same portion that is emphatically concerned about justice in Deuteronomy 16 also command what we now know to be war crimes in Deuteronomy 20? The Torah contains multitudes.

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But isn\\u2019t that true for us all?  We can be generous and ungenerous, forgiving and unforgiving, gentle and cruel. We can be present and not present,  responsive and not responsive, caring and not caring,  depending on the day, depending on the context. All of us contain multitudes.

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Isn\\u2019t that also true of our beloved country?

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