{"id":8815,"date":"2013-08-16T15:46:27","date_gmt":"2013-08-16T21:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=8815"},"modified":"2013-08-16T15:46:27","modified_gmt":"2013-08-16T21:46:27","slug":"two-queens-torah-and-the-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/two-queens-torah-and-the-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Queens: Torah and the Constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"

By TED ROBERTS, the SCRIBBLER ON THE ROOF<\/em><\/p>\n

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The other day in my continual quest for knowledge \u2013 after digesting the analyses of the NFL playoffs \u2013 I spied, laying on our coffee table, the Constitution.\u00a0 I mean the Constitution of the United States of America.\u00a0 What was it doing on our coffee table?\u00a0 A disorderly mind always leads to a disorderly coffee table.\u00a0 I once found a half
\nconsumed pastrami sandwich complete with pickle, tomato, and mustard laying on the coffee table.\u00a0 The leftovers of some long ago meal. Half-read books, two month old mail, ten-pound dictionaries, keys that fit nothing I own are other relics that live on that table.\u00a0 But the constitution caught my eye.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t read it for years.\u00a0 And so I did.<\/p>\n

My first reaction was a commonplace one \u2013 not that the Constitution wasn\u2019t a political thunderbolt \u2013 but that, quite predictably, it dealt with the problems of the day.\u00a0 Problems that impinged on the lives of Americans of the late 18th Century.\u00a0 For example, when you first look at the first ten amendments \u2013 that we call the Bill of Rights \u2013 besides freedom of the Press and the right to bear arms \u2013threatened by the hand of King George III \u2013 there\u2019s Amendment III \u2013 a burning issue of the day:\u00a0 A ban on involuntarily quartering troops in your bedroom.\u00a0 Then, a problem \u2013 today, almost a cartoon.<\/p>\n

British officer:\u00a0 \u201cGood Morning, Mr. Citizen. I want you to meet Redcoat George Jones, who strangled his wife, and his Sergeant, Robert Hawkins – he broke a couple heads in a barroom brawl last night.\u00a0 They\u2019ll stay with you for the next six months.\u00a0 George likes pancakes for breakfast and a dollup of rum in his tea.\u00a0 Robert prefers a light breakfast and a hearty, beefy supper.\u00a0 Good luck.\u201d<\/p>\n

The obvious conclusion:\u00a0 Our founders naturally addressed freedoms that were issues of their day.\u00a0 Not exactly surprising.\u00a0 It did NOT deal with issues over their current horizon of time.\u00a0 Slavery, Internet freedom, abortion.\u00a0 So-called \u201cBig Government\u201d.\u00a0 Though it
\ndoes say, \u201cThe powers not delegated to the U.S. by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people\u201d.<\/p>\n

Somehow that sentence jumped out at me.\u00a0 This was a document written long ago, which was intended to civilize our behavior.\u00a0 It was a primer both in independence and morality.\u00a0 And quite naturally, its authors were concerned with current behavior \u2013 not conflicts and
\nconundrums that in some cases were no longer the talk of the town.\u00a0 Quartering troops?\u00a0 An arms-bearing militia?\u00a0 Yes, current issues.\u00a0 In short, it dealt with the freedoms under fire in the late 18th Century.\u00a0 Naturally, we have modernized it (some would say \u201cweakened\u201d it) with amendments, legislative, and judicial action. As I wrote that last phrase, a light switches on in my dim brain.\u00a0\u00a0 Hey, it\u2019s just like the Torah.\u00a0 The Constitution, except for its origin, is perfectly analogous to our Torah, a divine document even more sanctified, of course, than the one written by the Founding Fathers.\u00a0 But they both brought moral enlightenment to a wayward world.\u00a0 Both revolutionary.\u00a0 And they both face the same problems of\u00a0 currency.\u00a0 We no longer have to worry about an autocrat quartering troops in our guest bedroom and likewise we never have to worry about\u00a0 our muzzled ox getting his share of the grain he is grinding.\u00a0 But still, today\u2019s moral questions over the centuries of 3 millennia are the descendants of Torah Law, proving that mankind \u2013 despite aircraft, computers, Ipods, and other bric-a-brac \u2013 has changed little.\u00a0 And the
\nsame is true of his cultural, moral choices.<\/p>\n

Granted that both the Constitution and Torah still have a vivid relevance to the restraint that we call civilization \u2013 how have we adapted them to the brave, new world we live in?\u00a0 The Constitution, via judicial techniques \u2013 the Torah, through our Talmud or what manwould choose to call the Oral Law.\u00a0 We, with a delicate combination of
\nzeal and caution, try to tame the times of these two epochal codes.\u00a0 But still they are two covenants; one between man and government and the other between man and G-d.\u00a0 And the same problem of modernity applies.\u00a0 Two queens aging, but still beautiful, still reigning.<\/p>\n

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