Monica

JPS translates Num. 12:1 thus: Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married. "He married a Cushite woman!"

All the fluent Hebrew readers objected to this translation, pretty much at the same time, for not making use of the "ki" in the second sentence (among other objections). Further, there is no punctuation in the original torah text, so this is a matter of interpretation, and this particular rendering attributes a motive for the complaint that contradicts midrash. Granted that midrashim often disagree, but we found nothing to really support the idea that their objection is Moshe marrying a foreigner. (The midrash suggests that Miriam was coming to his wife's defense, so "because of" is better rendered as "on account of".)

The translation in the Sapperstein Rashi edition, which is also basically the one used by Nechama Leibowitz, punctuates it differently: And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.

There's still a problem, though. The Hebrew uses the feminine singular verb for "spoke", so if Miriam and Aharon both spoke then the grammar is wrong. They do both speak in the next sentence where they challenge Moshe's sole access to God, and the plural is used there, but not here. I'm not willing to call "editorial error" without first looking for a consistent interpretation.

So all this led me to wonder if we're reading it wrong. I humbly offer the following alternative translation of the Hebrew: [And] Miriam spoke, and Aharon was against Moshe on account of the Cushite woman he had taken [as wife], for he had taken a Cushite woman.

Miriam spoke, and in so doing incited Aharon. Both then went on to criticize Moshe, but Miriam as the instigator bears the punishment. That makes the account make more sense to me, but of course that doesn't mean this is a correct interpretation. Rashi says that Miriam spoke first, but he doesn't explain that further so I can't tell if he interprets it this way. I can, in fact, find no support for my interpretation anywhere in the sources I have to hand -- but nor can I find a problem with it. So I would very much welcome arguments either for or against.

Edit: I posted a question about this on Judaism.StackExchange and got some interesting answers there.

My translation of the sixth aliya of Ki Teitze (Deut 24:5-13):

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While my practice runs at home (from the tikkun) were smooth, doing it in front of people is different. So I was kind of nervous and I suspect it showed, and I accidentally skipped a line in the scroll and had to go back for it, but overall, I think it was a decent first effort. One person commented favorably to me; no one else said anything.

Here, then, is my translation of this passage. I'm writing this now from the Hebrew; I didn't memorize so this is probably a little different from what I said this morning. Because I am a beginner, I try not to take some of the liberties that professional translations can take; I try to stick to literal (but coherent) without smoothing out nuance, because I don't have a good feel for when to do that. That said, in a few cases I don't really know enough to translate, so I just took others' word for it in a couple places (marked with "[?]").

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