Summary: <p>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 <em>complexity</em>: our Torah, our nation, each of us, contains multitudes.</p> <p>Charlie spoke with a wisdom beyond his years about the complexity in our <em>parsha</em>. The same <em>parsha</em> which begins with “Justice, justice shall you pursue” also commands genocide in God’s name. Also commands, in God’s name, “You may take as your booty the women, the children, the livestock, and everything in the town—all its spoil—and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord your God gives you.” We wrestle with Charlie’s 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.</p> <p>But isn’t 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.</p> <p>Isn’t that also true of our beloved country?</p>
