Monica

Last Thursday after morning services the rabbi was telling me about a d'var torah on parshat Kedoshim, which begins "you shall be holy". The d'var (which I found online after he emailed me a copy of it) talks about the concept of the "naval birshut ha-torah", the one who is (essentially) a rogue within the domain of the torah. That is, you can fulfill the letter of the law and still be doing bad things; "kedoshim tih'yu" (you shall be holy) calls on us to do more than what's strictly required.

(Which, ok, raises the question that if it's the torah telling us this, then isn't that really within the scope of the black-letter law to begin with? But I digress.)

Anyway, the reason we were having this conversation is that the author of the d'var torah, Rabbi Artson at the Ziegler School, talks a lot about a guy named Naval who wasn't a nice person. The phrase "naval birshut ha-torah" originally comes from the Ramban (Nachmanides), who probably didn't use capitalization (Hebrew doesn't), and (according to the rabbi with whom I was speaking) the word "naval" has the more general meaning of a rogue or cheat or the like. So the question arose: was the Ramban talking about Naval or a naval? I don't have the correct references available; if someone reading this does, please speak up.

Why does it matter? If the Ramban meant Naval, then it might -- within the letter of the law :-) -- be correct to draw more specific conclusions about behaviors that are not in keeping with "you shall be holy". Anything Naval did would be included, but for other negative behaviors, you would have to make an argument tying them to Naval indirectly somehow. On the other hand, if we're talking about a naval, then broader interpretation is called for from the start.

In one sense it doesn't matter; I strive to go beyond the letter of the law and be a better person than I "have" to be no matter what the Ramban meant. But I'm still curious about what he actually meant and what his context was.

I chanted torah and gave the d'var torah yesterday. (I'll post the d'var separately.) I read the Akeidah, the binding of Yitzchak, which is a challenging passage.

The text itself is pretty sparse: God decides to test Avraham, telling him to offer up his son Yitzchak as a burnt offering in a land some distance away. Avraham gets up in the morning, gathers what he'll need, and heads off with Yitzchak and two servant-boys. Three days pass and then they arrive. Avraham tells the servants "wait here and we'll return". Avraham and Yitzchak head up together, and Yitzchak asks "err, dad, where's the lamb?" and Avraham dodges. Avraham builds an altar and binds Yitzchak on it, and just as he's about to slaughter his son an angel cries out "stop!". Avraham sees a ram and offers it instead. The angel then tells Avraham that he'll be rewarded through his descendants -- they'll be as numerous as the stars or as grains of sand on the shore, they'll possess the gates of their foes, and everyone will be blessed through them. Avraham then heads back to the servants (Yitzchak is not mentioned) and they leave for Be'er Sheva, where Avraham will live.

It says somewhere in the talmud that a sage who can't find 150 reasons for a beetle to be kosher is no sage at all. I don't have 150 interpretations of the Akeidah, but I can see more than one. Here's the one I brought out in my chanting:

God gives this command. Avraham reluctantly heads off to comply; God gives him three days to stew over it (either to be sure or to bail). Yitzchak questions him and, with tears in his eyes, he says "God's in charge". Once they arrive and things are set in motion, though, Avraham's approach changes: it's like pulling the big sticky bandage off your skin; you can try to do it slowly and make things worse, or you can just grit your teeth and yank. I read it as Avraham gritting his teeth and trying to get it over with, which is why the angel had to rush in (calling from heaven instead of arriving) and had to call Avraham's name twice. After a tense moment, Avraham snaps out of it and says "yes?". For the first time Avraham looks up and sees the ram, which he offers up in place of his son, while Yitzchak sits by, stunned. The angel gives his promise, Yitzchak bolts, and Avraham returns alone, knowing he can't go home to his wife now.

Last time I read it I read it differently, and presumably next time will be different too. Torah is like that.

Even though I made some mistakes and had to be corrected, I think this went pretty well and I got lots of compliments. People appreciated the effort I put into reading it interpretively. (They didn't have the text in front of them, so I gave a summary and some keywords to listen for in advance.) I'd like to be able to share that reading with interested friends, though I'm not sure how to do that usefully for folks not fluent in Hebrew. If I produced an audio file, is there an easy way to turn it into a video with "subtitles" timed to the chanting?

We had a visiting rabbi this morning. (Not known in advance and not official; this was a relative of a member of the minyan.) I noticed that she was very quietly chanting along with me. Alas, she and her family left right after the service, so I didn't get a chance to talk with her. It did strike me that, usually accidentally, the more-knowledgeable-than-most-laypeople visitors tend to show up disproportionately on my weeks. Hmm. (It's not always accidental; there was one time we were having a visiting cantor who declined the offer to chant the portion, and consensus was that I was the congregant least likely to freak.)

(This is somewhat stream-of-consciousness.)

This morning in torah study we talked about this part of Nitzavim: "And not with you alone will I make this covenant and this oath, but with him who stands here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him who is not here with us this day" (Deut 29:13-14). The context is Moshe's final address to Israel; we can prety much take as given that this is not referring to people who slept in that morning. The rabbis understand this as a source for the covenant being binding on all Jews, the ones who stood at Sinai as well as those who came later. In other words, Judaism claims you by virtue of your birth. (I knew that, of course, but I learned a new term for it: "birthright dogma".)

This is hardly unusual; some other religions do this either as a birth condition or based on an action that your parents take very soon thereafter. We say "once a Jew always a Jew"; the Roman Catholic church says the same thing once you've been baptised. Surely there are others. (I'm not sure if Muslim status is automatic at birth; I have the impression it is.)

Some modern Jews have a problem with this, but I don't. We're born into other obligations that we got no say over; why should this be different? The issue to me isn't what you're born to but what you're going to do about it and what anyone else can or should do about it. As a convert from one "we claim you forever" religion to another, I find myself in an interesting position.

There are folks out there who try to preach obligation to the people they see straying -- and that just doesn't work. The church thinks I'm a lapsed, sinning Catholic -- fine for them, but I don't care, because I don't subscribe to their belief system. That they think they have a claim on me means nothing to me; I think they're wrong. (No offense meant to my Catholic readers, of course.) Any attempt to reach me via the "but you have to" path would utterly fail. (Ok, any attempt to reach me at all would fail now, but there might have been times in my life when that was not true.) And we have this in Judaism too; there are people who are very concerned with bringing back those who've strayed by going down the "obligation" path. Going down the "benefit" path is much more likely to be productive. You'll almost never succeed (long-term) in intimidating people, but if you can show them the beauty, fulfillment, or richness of a religion or tradition, you might hook them. Chabad, for all its other problems, gets this; the people who stone cars on Shabbat do not.

If status is forever, then we should be picky about entrance criteria when we can be. If a gentile eats bacon cheeseburgers on Yom Kippur, so what? But once he becomes a Jew, he's sinning. if the members of the beit din (the rabbinic court) think he's not committed, they can and should tell him "not now". This is part of why Judaism requires a significant period of study and evaluation, which can take years. The rabbis on the beit din need to assure themselves that they aren't making things worse for K'lal Yisrael (the community of Israel), while of course also weighing the issues of the individual candidate. As a candidate I expected that kind of rigor and would have been unhappy if I hadn't gotten it. (In fact, during my studies I met one local rabbi who said "I always say yes", and I made sure that rabbi was not on my beit din.)

Somehow from here we ended up talking about interfaith families, but that's another set of topics for another time.

The rabbi pointed out an oddity in this week's portion this morning (for which he did not have an answer off the top of his head): at the beginning of Sh'lach L'cha, when the spies are enumerated, we have "from the tribe of Ephrayim, Yehoshua bin Nun" and then, later, "from the tribe of Yosef from Manashe, Gadi ben Susi". Yosef, one of the twelve sons of Yisrael, doesn't get his own tribe; instead, his sons Ephrayim and Manashe are elevated to full tribal status. So why does the torah give the extra lineage in one of these cases but not the other -- and especially skipping the first instance (where you would expect it were there only one)? The rabbi checked Mikrot Gedolot but didn't find anything there.

And is it significant that Yosef's name is attached not to one of the heroes of the story (Yehoshua), but to one of the defeatist spies who caused the forty-year delay on entering the land?

And on a much more minor note, why is Yehoshua bin Nun instead of ben Nun? (That's consistent, not just in this passage.)

In the passage I'll be reading for this coming Shabbat there is a small oddity. There is a pronoun, which must be feminine per the grammar, which is spelled "hei (chirik) vav alef" and understood to be "hi" (fem). "Hi" is correctly spelled with a yud, not a vav; "hu" (masc) is spelled "hei vav alef", so if reading without the vowels you'd normally read this "hu". Except, as I said, it's part of a phrase involving a feminine verb, so it can't be.

I've seen spelling errors before and the tikkun (reference text for torah readers) has always noted it, thus far. This time, no note. None of my chumashim have any commentary on this passage (or that part of it, anyway). I don't own the correct volume of Rashi. I asked another torah reader (experienced and fluent in Hebrew) and she shrugged and said this happens a lot and it probably doesn't mean anything.

I'm curious, though. If it is an anomoly, it happens in a particularly interesting place (i.e. I can see an interesting interpretation). But if this sort of thing is common, I don't want to read into it.

Do any of the torah readers among my readership have any thoughts on this?

Yes, Shavu'ot was a couple weeks ago, but between LJ outages and general busy-ness I haven't written about it before now.

My rabbi's tikkun leil Shavu'ot (late-night torah study for the holiday) always begins with a study of Exodus 19-20. This year I noticed, or had pointed out, things I had not previously noticed.

The first is in 19:1, which begins to set the scene. The text refers to a specific day, but instead of saying "bayom hahu" (on that day) it says "bayom hazeh", on this day. (My rabbi pointed this out.) There is a midrashic tradition that all the Jewish people, including (mystically) those not yet born, stood at Sinai; I wonder if this is related. Or, I wonder if it's part of the proof-text for the idea that revelation is ongoing. Or, maybe it's just a typo. :-)

A few verses later there's a bit of poetic repetition that I understand to be stylistic for biblical Hebrew -- God says "thus shall you say to the house of Ya'akov and tell the people of Israel". The house of Ya'akov and the people of Israel are, of course, one and the same. Saying and telling are similar; I wonder if there is nuance there or it's just part of the poetry. But something else struck me: the noun phrases there are "beit Ya'akov" and "b'nei Yisrael" (so "people" of Israel is a mistranslation; it says "sons of"). Is repetition just repetition, or does it try to hint at something? When you talk about your "house" you're looking backwards, to your ancestry; when you talk about your "sons" (or children) you're looking to the future. Maybe the torah is tellins us that both are important; this new enterprise isn't a clean slate (don't ignore your past) but it is a new opportunity (you can change going forward).

(Aside: I am growing to intensely dislike the translation "children of Israel". Too many people read it as "young children" and write divrei torah about how they needed to be taught as if newborns, couldn't be expected to think for themselves, etc. While they did need to be taught, that line of reasoning lets them off the hook for the things they did wrong, like the various rebellions. When someone becomes "bar mitzvah" ("bar" = "ben"; it's Araamic versus Hebrew) we say he's an adult. B'nei Yisrael were, likewise, adults. If we need a gender-neutral word, how about "descendants of Israel"?)

Another small thing: God says (to the people, via Moshe) "you have seen...how I carried you on eagles' wings". In talking about the exodus we talk a lot about divine might (including in the part of that verse I elided), but might alone, while impressive, probably wouldn't evoke buy-in from the people. Thus far they've seen a divine slug-fest; they might reasonably think that they're just trading one uncaring master for another. I think this might be the first indication to the people that it's (at least partly) about them and not just our God fighting it out with Egypt's false gods. The people probably needed that in order to be able to accept torah willingly instead of under duress. (Did they accept it willingly? That's another issue.)

The first and last of the ten commandments given directly to the people ("I am your God" and "don't covet") aren't about actions so much as intentions or belief. You can refrain from stealing or adultery, but refraining from the coveting that would lead you to steal or adulter seems a little less under your control. Judaism focuses more on action than belief, but you need both and maybe this bracketing of the active commandments is meant to indicate this.

Originally posted here: http://www.greatestjournal.com/users/cellio/1158.html

Ok, here's why I asked my question a couple days ago: the account I think I know isn't what's written in torah, and this was true of everyone in class Monday night when we discussed it, and I was curious about how widespread that is. Pretty widespread, as it turned out. Thanks for taking the time to answer.

Mind, every year I read the relevant passages and have some reaction along the lines of "huh, that's odd", but that thought never seems to stick around long enough for me to actually do something about it. So I'm glad our teacher pointed it out.

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When God sent the plague of blood, it affected not just the Nile but all Egyptian water. Rabbi Avun ha-Levi said that if a Jew and an Egyptian sat together, drinking from the same jug, the Jew drank water while for the Egyptian it was blood. Even if the Egyptian had the Jew pour the water for him, it turned to blood in his hands. Only if the Egyptian paid money for the water did it remain water. (Exodus Rabbah 9:10)

I think this is a sad midrash in one way. If, in the midst of oppression and plagues, a Jew and an Egyptian were able to sit down together as peers (which would be pretty remarkable), wouldn't a better teaching be that for that Egyptian, the water stayed water? But perhaps my modern thinking informs this; such a thing would certainly have undermined some of the power of the plagues. The p'shat (plain reading) of the torah account does not seem to allow for innocent Egyptians, which troubles me. I think we're supposed to read it at the grand, national level, not at the level of individual participants. I have trouble doing that sometimes.

(I really need to get a Rashi instead of relying on secondary sources'
citations...)

Last week I had the chance to study torah with Rabbi Arthur Green and a bunch of other lay people. The week's parsha was Lech L'cha, the beginning of the Avraham story, so we studied that. More specifically, we looked at a passage from B'reishit Rabbah, a midrash collection from somewhere between the third and fifth centuries (common era).

This source tells a strange parable (a mashal). What follows is my translation, augmented by a few notes, from the Hebrew (he didn't give us English): One day [a man] crossed from place to place (that is, was travelling) and he saw a tower (birah) "on fire" (doleket). He said, this tower has no owner? [A man] peeked out and said "I am the owner". The parable ends here, without telling us why the man seems unconcerned that his tower is burning. Fortunately for us, the midrash doesn't end there. :-) It continues with a nimshal, an explication.

The traveller, the midrash says, is Avraham Avinu, who said: this world has no owner? And ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu, God, peeked out at him, saying: I am the ruler of this world. According to this midrash, God didn't reveal himself to Avraham until Avraham deduced that the world must have a creator/ruler and went looking. Avraham was a seeker; God didn't just speak to him out of the blue and say "lech l'cha" (go forth from your homeland to the land I will show you, etc).

We talked in the group about the alarming vision in the parable. The translation of doleket isn't entirely clear; Rabbi Green initially did not translate it (wanting to see what we would come up with) and then we more or less settled on "on fire" -- but he suggested that it could also mean "full of light" (think "blazing with light" in English; when you say that you usually don't mean a literal fire). "On fire" suggests brokenness in the tower; did Avraham see brokenness in the world? I suggested that seeing a tower "full of light" might inspire one to seek hospitality, a very different interpretation. (This seemed to meet with some approval.) Someone else in the group drew a connection between the birah doleket and the burning bush. Another suggested that Avraham's birah doleket could be an internal event, not a vision but a question he was "on fire" with. (Nice.)

I'm used to thinking of Lech L'cha as God choosing Avraham, but maybe Avraham chose God first. I'm told that Heschel wrote a book that explores this question, God in Search of Man. That sounds like something I should take a look at.

My own quasi "lech l'cha" experience was not nearly so clear-cut as Avraham's (which is good!); now I wonder a little whether this interpretation applies a little to myself. Not consciously, for sure, but the subconscious is a funny thing sometimes.

Food for thought.

This weekend we'll read the end of the torah and then go right into the beginning again. As I noted in this morning's parsha bit, there is a rabbinic interpretation that Moshe wrote the whole torah (dictated by God), including the part that talks about his death, and that he cried while doing this. Moshe had complete knowledge of what was to come and was powerless to change it. That sort of knowledge is not generally considered to be a blessing. If we understand that this writing occurred while Moshe was on Har Sinai, then he lived with this knowledge for 40 years. (I'm not advocating that interpretation, just speculating about what it implies.)

After reading this ending that Moshe knew and couldn't avoid, we then go straight into B'reishit where we read about the first humans, Adam and Chava. They had no knowledge whatsoever at first; they were completely free of the burdens that come from knowing. But that, too, was not ideal; they ate from the tree and they had to eat from it in order to become thinking, functioning human beings.

The torah ends with perfect knowledge and begins with total lack of knowledge (when it comes to people). Neither is a desirable state and neither is sustained. (No one other than Moshe ever got that level of privilege.) The contrast struck me as interesting in a hard-to-articulate way. Perhaps a lesson is that while we should strive for more knowledge (especially certain types), we shouldn't wish for a complete understanding even if such were achievable. There are lines we ought not cross at both ends of the knowledge spectrum.

One of the two classes I'm taking through the Melton program is a basic theology/text class with an excellent rabbi. Last week's topic was creation, and I wanted to jot down a few things that he taught about before I forget about them.

Two words are used in Hebrew to convey separation. One is "kadosh", which means to sanctify or set apart. Yisrael is set apart for a particular purpose; we set Shabbat apart from the rest of the week; when we marry we set our spouses apart from all other people (kidoshin); etc. The other word is "havdil", which I gather is a more "mundane" separation. This is the word used in the torah when God separates light from darkness on the first day. That makes sense; it's not like one of them is in any way elevated over the other. But, if that's the reasoning, then what of havdalah, the ceremony we do to mark the end of Shabbat where we say that God separates (havdil) Shabbat from the rest of the week? We elevate it but God doesn't so much? Must think more on this. (The rabbi only pointed out the use of "havdil" versus "kadosh"; the rest of this ramble is me. So don't hold him accountable if I'm off-base.)

The days of creation pair up as follows: day one light/dark and day four sun/moon; day two waters and day five water creatures; day three earth and vegetation and day six land animals and man. I never noticed that before.

(I, by the way, have no problem whatsoever with light on day one and the sun not showing up until day four. God can make light come from anything he wants, or nothing at all. He doesn't require a star to create it. I've met people who see a difficulty here.)

The word "hashamayim" (heaven(s)) contains "mayim", water. Day two talks about separating the "waters above" (heaven) and the "waters below" (sea). I don't really think of heaven as a place requiring a snorkel and fins to traverse; I wonder where the "water" association disappeared? (There is midrash about Moshe going up to heaven, so we can't just write it off as "God can live in any environment". The midrash doesn't talk about Moshe breathing in water while there.)

The rabbi asserts (I haven't confirmed) that the only time in B'reishit that God seems to talk about himself in the plural is when creating man (the first time), when he says "let us make man in our image". One could write off the "us" as referring to the heavenly court, but tradition teaches that man is made in God's image, not the image of God and his underlings, so the "our" is problematic. I read it as the royal "we" and don't worry about it, but I'm sure there are people out there who use this as a basis for polytheism. (I should mention that I've been taught that early Judaism was monolatrous; monotheism came later.)