סְיָג לַתּוֹרָה, לֹא מָגֵן שֶׁקֶר

Seyag LaTorah, Lo Magen Sheker

A Fence for the Torah, Not a False Shield

Torah is not a private shield against the burden of the people. A true fence around Torah protects the sacred not from responsibility, but from political corruption.

The Torah was not given so that one group could say to the rest of Israel: others will fight, serve, bury their sons, carry trauma in their bodies and silence in their homes, pay the price of history and live under the permanent pressure of fear, while we convert our absence into a superior form of presence. That is not holiness. It is the abuse of holiness. And it must be named without politeness, because polite language has too often served as the upholstery of moral cowardice.

Pirkei Avot begins its moral architecture with the severe instruction: asu seyag laTorah — make a fence around the Torah. Yet a fence is not a hiding place. It is not a private wall around privilege, nor a political bunker from which one group may receive the protection of the state while refusing the weight of the state. A fence around Torah exists to protect the sacred from distortion, desecration and careless use. It exists because what is sacred cannot be handled as campaign material, coalition property, budgetary leverage or rhetorical ammunition.

This distinction now matters with almost unbearable force. When Torah is invoked to deepen responsibility, it remains Torah. When Torah is invoked to avoid responsibility, it becomes a false shield, a magen sheker. The most dangerous political lies rarely arrive in the language of crude cynicism. They arrive wrapped in reverence, quotation, inherited authority and moral certainty. They do not say openly: we want privilege, immunity and exemption. They say: we defend Torah. Precisely there the corruption begins, because a holy vocabulary can become the most efficient disguise for an unholy asymmetry.

A Jewish state cannot survive as both a shared protection system and a private estate of exemptions. It cannot demand blood from some and declarations from others. It cannot send one part of society to the front while another part transforms non-participation into a publicly funded virtue. It cannot speak of........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)