...ANA LEVY-LYONS Copyright © Tikkun magazine 2016 Arif Qazi / cargocollective.com\arifqazi O f all the old-and-dusty-sounding commandments in the Hebrew Bible, the commandment to not “take God’s name in vain” seems oldest and dustiest. We can’t help but picture nuns rapping school...

.... This is a powerful theological assertion in the wisdom of the ancient Israelites, which is further fleshed out by two of the central commandments in the Sinai covenant: the prohibitions against graven images and against taking the Lord’s name in vain. Both of these are reactions to what the Israelites saw...

... it through fragments of memories of those still living . . . toward which they are directed. “Thou shalt not take the name in vain.” How many outbursts of rage did Menachem Begin earn when he dared to profane the name. How many warnings have been uttered since then by researchers of the Holocaust...

... devotion to nonviolence in the name of God and Torah. Perhaps even more surprising, the reader looks in vain for any examination of warlike and peaceful Jewish ideologies in the twentieth-century Diaspora. Nowhere is there a discussion of the almost entirely nonviolent tactics used by the movement...

... disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts...

... to introducing or co-sponsoring bills that would limit its practice by the government. Still, we wait in vain for the meshing of the spoken word against this crime with action to bring it to an end. If there is one recent litmus test, it is the Military Commissions Act, the vote...

... the name of YHVH in vain— lashav —happens not only in our own minds, but in the ways that we represent reality in public. The Third Commandment is ultimately about speech-acts. It acknowledges the power of speech, spoken and written, to transform the world. In this way, it links again to the creation story...

... to claim their freedom with rocks Palestinian conflict. O ur grassroots advocates have met w ith and guns—and other youth, wearing the Magen David, break the Israeli and Palestinian Prime M inisters, U.S. Senators and their arms, in a vain attem pt to break...

... in the passenger seat said it was probably due to my Be In Vain,” the poem he recited that huge Jewfro and license plate from the Chocolate City, because when the officer came up and day, at tikkun.org/healeygrantpoem. saw my face, he looked surprised and quickly let us go. White skin is the best get-out...

... youth, wearing the Magen David, break the Israeli and Palestinian Prime M inisters, U.S. Senators and their arms, in a vain attem pt to break their will. Representatives, friends and loved ones, and in part because of To answer the pain in my heart, I threw myself into peace­...

... in vain, special manifestations had to be arranged on the earth for all to see. Bobby Kennedy had predicted that in forty years there might be an African American president. And right on time you are the one. Dr. King was killed while planning the Poor People’s Campaign...

..., and a stick-figure Bubbe who’s wearing rollers in her hair and a superhero cape, and stomping on a Nazi. Bubbe exudes with pride: “Ohh! My Stories! Tree times I read your book. I say, my granddaughter, she listen, all dis time she listen! My stories are not in vain!” and, in the next breath, to the server...

... be the days o f M y people, A nd M y elect shall long enjoy the work o f their hands. They shall not labor in vain, Nor bring forth childrenfor trou­...

... and Martin Luther King Jr. To show them that their blood was not shed in vain, special manifestations had to be arranged on the earth for all to see. Bobby Kennedy had predicted that in forty years there might be an African American president. And right on time you...

... of existing capitalism with anti-Americanism, deaf to the genius of the founders. Reversing himself, Livingston further entangles his argument. In one breath, today’s Left is a handful of vain intellectuals in ivory towers. In the next, leftists are most everywhere, scoring incessant victories. We should...

.../enemy, Esau, “I have seen you; it is like seeing the face of E lokim ” (Genesis 33:10). Rav Kook continued: The words ofYaakov shall not go down as a vain utterance. The brotherly love of Esau and Yaakov, of Itzchak and Ishmael, will rise above all the “m eh u m o f— disturbances...

... Bible could sanc­ ther the atheists some of half of the story. tion either bloodshed or hypocrisy in ex­ their contemporaries ac­ The ideal of religious change for a vain confession of faith. cused them of being, nor...

...). And, in each, learning and teaching are the means to deploy one’s knowledge to individual advantage (or the advantage of the nation vis-a-vis other economies). One looks in vain here for some alternative vision of knowledge and learn­ ing as a shared resource for mutual human uplift...

... founded, and who was its founder?” he asks. “Long have all the chroniclers labored to find this out in vain. But some few facts have been revealed to us,” continues Agnon, possibly tongue-in-cheek, since he was famous for his fine sense of irony, “and I am herewith setting down a faithful record of all I...

... for the tional conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. absence of a lived Jewish sovereign reality. The complexity that this entailed could not truly be imagined even by its most fervent vi- It would not be prudent to allow...