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Riga 1:
<div class="usermessage" style="background-color:yellow; height: 35px; text-align:center; font-size: medium; line-height: 30px;">'''''Una lettera aperta di Rabbi [[w:Jonathan Sacks|Jonathan Sacks]] in occasione della [[w:Va'etchanan|Parashah Va'etchanan 5779]]''''' <ref>Si riproduce questo libero testo del Professor Sacks in originale inglese, in occasione della sua lettera ai fedeli del 14 agosto 2019. La traduzione in {{it}} non è stata autorizzata, ma la lettera può essere scaricata in PDF ai seguenti link nelle lingue: [http://rabbisacks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/SS_VAETHANAN_2019.pdf '''ebraico''']; [http://rabbisacks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/SPANISH-Vaetchanan-5779-Main-Edition.pdf '''spagnolo'''], [http://rabbisacks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/PERSIAN-Va%E2%80%99etchanan-5779.pdf '''persiano''']; inoltre è disponibile la versione audio {{en}} online: [https://soundcloud.com/office-of-rabbi-sacks/cc-podcast-vaetchanan ''Rabbi Sacks on soundcloud'']</ref></div>
[[File:Sirjonathansacks.jpg|200px|left|thumb|<small>Sir Jonathan Sacks, Rabbino Capo del Regno Unito (2006), ritratto al Convegno "National Poverty Hearing" a Westminster, Londra</small>]]
Riga 7:
[[File:Tora Rolle auf Pergament.jpg|300px|right|Rotolo della Torah su pergamena]] Near the end of Va’etchanan is a statement with such far-reaching implications that it challenges the impression that has prevailed thus far in the Torah. This remark gives an entirely new complexion to the biblical image of the people Israel: “The Lord did not set His affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you are the fewest of all peoples” (Deut. {{passo biblico|Deut|7:7}}).
This is not what we have heard thus far. In Genesis, God promised the patriarchs that their descendants would be like the stars of the heaven, the sand on the seashore, the dust of the earth, uncountable. Abraham will be the father, not just of one nation but of many. At the beginning of Exodus we read of how the covenantal family, numbering a mere seventy when they went down to Egypt, were
In all these texts and others it is the size, the numerical greatness, of the people that is emphasised. What then are we to make of
Rashbam and Chizkuni<ref>Rabbi [[:en:w:Hezekiah ben Manoah|Chezekiah ben Manoah]]; Francia, 1250-1310.</ref> give the more straightforward explanation that Moses is contrasting the Israelites with the seven nations they would be fighting in the land of Canaan/Israel. God would lead the Israelites to victory despite the fact that they were outnumbered by the local inhabitants. Rabbeinu [[w:Bahya ben Asher|Bachya]]<ref>[[w:Bahya ben Asher|Bachya ben Asher ibn Halava]]; Spagna, 1255–1340.</ref> quotes [[Maimonide]]s, who says that we would have expected God, King of the universe, to have chosen the most numerous nation in the world as His people, since
Rabbeinu Bachya finds himself forced to give a more complex reading to resolve the contradiction of Moses, in Deuteronomy, saying both that Israel is the smallest of peoples and
[[w:Obadja Sforno|Sforno]]<ref>[[w:Obadja Sforno|Ovadiah ben Yacov Sforno]]; Italia, 1475-1550.</ref> gives a simple and straightforward reading: God did not choose a nation for the sake of His honour. Had He done so He would undoubtedly have chosen a mighty and numerous people. His choice had nothing to do with honour and everything to do with love. He loved the patriarchs for their willingness to heed His voice; therefore He loves their children.
Yet there is something in this verse that resonates throughout much of Jewish history. Historically Jews were and are a small people – today, less than 0.2 per cent of the population of the world. There were two reasons for this. First is the heavy toll taken through the ages by exile and persecution, directly by Jews killed in massacres and pogroms, indirectly by those who converted – in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Spain and nineteenth-century Europe – in order to avoid persecution (tragically, even conversion did not work; racial antisemitism persisted in both cases). The Jewish population is a mere fraction of what it might have been had there been no Hadrian, no Crusades, and no antisemitism.
The second reason is that Jews did not seek to convert others. Had they done so they would have been closer in numbers to Christianity (2.4 billion) or Islam (1.6 billion). In fact, [[w:Malbim|Malbim]]<ref>[[w:Malbim|Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser]]; Ukraina, 1809-1879.</ref> reads something like this into our verse. The previous verses have said that the Israelites were about to enter a land with seven nations, [[w:Ittiti|Hittites]], Girgashites, [[w:Amorrei|Amorites]], [[w:Cananea|Canaanites]], [[:en:w:Perizzites|Perizzites]], [[:en:w:Hivite|Hivites]], and [[w:Gebusei|Jebusites]]. Moses warns them against intermarriage with the other nations, not for racial but for religious reasons: “They will turn your children away from following Me to serve other gods” (Deut. {{passo biblico|Deut|7:4}}). Malbim interprets our verse as Moses saying to the Israelites: Do not justify out-marriage on the grounds that it will increase the number of Jews. God is not interested in numbers.
Notwithstanding all these interpretations and explanations, [[w:Tanakh|Tanach]] itself offers one extraordinary episode that sheds a different light on the whole issue. It occurs in the seventh chapter of the book of Judges. God has told [[w:Gedeone (Bibbia)|Gideon]] to assemble an army and do battle with the [[w:Madian|Midianites]]. He gathers a force of 32,000 men. God tells him,
God tells Gideon to say to the men: Whoever is afraid and wishes to go home may do so. Twenty-two thousand men leave. Ten thousand remain. God tells Gideon,
''The Jewish people are small but have achieved great things to testify in themselves to a force beyond themselves.'' It has achieved things no other nation its size could have achieved. Its history has been living testimony to the force of Divine Providence and the impact of high ideals. That is what Moses meant when he said: Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? (Deut. {{passo biblico|Deut|4:32–34}})
Riga 31:
You do not need numbers to enlarge the spiritual and moral horizons of humankind. You need other things altogether: a sense of the worth and dignity of the individual, of the power of human possibility to transform the world, of the importance of giving everyone the best education they can have, of making each feel part of a collective responsibility to ameliorate the human condition. Judaism asks of us the willingness to take high ideals and enact them in the real world, unswayed by disappointments and defeats.
This is still evident today, especially among the people of Israel in the State of Israel. Traduced in the media and pilloried by much of the world, Israel continues to produce human miracles in medicine, agriculture, technology, and the arts, as if the word
This small people has outlived all the world’s great empires to deliver to humanity a message of hope: you need not be large to be great. What you need is to be open to a power greater than yourself. It is said that [[w:Luigi XIV di Francia|King Louis XIV]] of France once asked [[w:Blaise Pascal|Blaise Pascal]], the brilliant mathematician and theologian, to give him proof of the existence of God. Pascal is said to have replied,
Shabbat Shalom
Riga 42:
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