Beaten Toward Redemption
The mark of a ubiquitous and resonant idea is the ability to inspire both high and low culture simultaneously. Nietzsche quipped, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,” a notion taken up by no less a meme-generator than pop princess Kelly Clarkson. But our Midrash predates both, comparing the description of the “clear oil of beaten olives” from our parasha to the people of Israel, who required the conquest by others to compel them toward repentance and to evoke an emergence of their highest natures. It is, on the one hand, a troubling excuse for historic suffering in the presence of a seemingly absent God. Yet this analogy also drives our people’s almost supernatural survival instinct in the face of enduring persecution. Both approaches elevate what would otherwise be a mind-numbing litany of artifacts and practices of a Temple defunct for two millennia into an aspirational guide for Jews as individuals and as a transcendent community. Nietzsche and Clarkson possessed a firm foundation of lemonade-making-from-lemons upon which to ply their pop-philosophies.
Rabbi Daniel Weiner
Two Minutes of Torah at TDHS 