Every article on impeachment insists that “impeach” does not mean to “remove” — but rather, in a quasi-Talmudic tone, the word means to “officially state the charges against a public official.” As law bloggers scrambled to parse the parameters of an “impeachable” offense, sounding a lot like the rabbis of two thousand years ago, the translator in me couldn’t resist turning to other languages for understanding.

I did not have to look far. The Hebrew term tahalichei hadacha is plastered across the front page of Haaretz, Israel’s leading newspaper. While tahalichei means proceedings, hadacha offers far more to think about; it is the noun form of the verb that means “to make you stray.” That verb appears in a famous verse from Deuteronomy 13:6 featuring the word l’hadichacha, or “to make you stray,” that, conveniently enough is about a false prophet, the fake news of long ago.

For those who are exhausted by the news cycle, or perhaps, by the endless discussion of “impeachable,” I recommend focusing on the Hebrew word hadacha, with a dagesh and without. Consider how much this period in time — this little dot in the grand span of human history — has made us stray from our path. Consider the false prophet, or perhaps, false prophets, that have come into our midst. And then take out the dagesh, and take solace in an ancient word of cleansing. Think rinse. Think suds. Then let your mind wander to din v’cheshbon, justice and accounting, abbreviated or not, labeled “impeachable” or not. Think a national — and perhaps, global—cleanse of all of this, just in time for the personal and communal cycle of teshuva, repentance.

Let this be the year we return to a just path, cleansed.


https://forward.com/culture/432343/w...ore-in-hebrew/