Aharei Mot - Kedoshim (Ramban)

“You Shall Be Holy”

This week’s parashah is so rich in ideas, and includes so many major comments of Ramban, that it was difficult to decide which to choose. Due to restrictions of time and space (and my readers patience), I shall summarize two important Ramban discussions from Aharei Mot in concise form, and translate and discuss at greater a third one, from Kedoshim.

In his discussion of the atonement ritual performed in the Temple on Yom Kippur, at Leviticus 16:8, Ramban discusses at some length the sa’ir la-azazael, the goat sent out into the wilderness. He asks how such a thing can be done at all: this animal is not a sacrifice in the usual sense of the word, not being offered on the altar, but is rather sent deep into the Judaean Desert east of Jerusalem, where it is pushed over a cliff and smashed to smithereens (!). He reaches the conclusion that this is an offering to “the prince who rules over places of ruin,” or even, so to speak, a “bribe’ to Samael (Satan) himself!—that is, to the demonic powers (“satyrs that dance there”) whose domain is the wilderness. But is this not an act of idolatry? Ramban’s answer is that, indeed, were it not that God commanded us to do so, it would be so; but as God commands us to bring this offering, symbolically “giving” the sins of Israel to the powers of darkness and chaos that somehow reign in the areas beyond human settlement, it is not only permitted, but somehow a part of the Divine economy that takes into account the “needs” of the dark side. (Thus, in extremely concise fashion; we hope, bli neder, to present this passage in greater length before Yom Kippur).

A second interesting Ramban on Aharei Mot is that on 18:25, near the end of the chapter dealing with the laws of incest and other sexual transgressions. This passage is one which I was privileged to learn in a systematic fashion from the late Dov Rappel of Kvutzat Yavneh, in a class he taught during the early years of the Shalom Hartman Institute (I recall David Hartman arguing vociferously with Dov about this passage). The Biblical verse states that the nations which lived in the land of Canaan prior to Israel performed “all of these abominations” (i.e., incest and other forbidden sexual acts enumerated earlier in the chapter) and as a result were expelled (“spit out”) of the Land. The moral implied is that the continued presence of the Israelites in the Land is likewise contingent upon them observing these laws and behaving in a decent fashion regarding such matters. Ramban adds to this his own perennial theme, which we alluded to last week in connection with tzara’at, that the Land of Israel is itself a place over which God watches closely, and is by its very nature subject to different laws than other places; that, in a metaphysical sense, the land itself cannot abide impurity and evildoing (at least beyond a certain point), and will expel those that contaminate it with licentious behavior.

A third teaching, which we translate here, appears at the beginning of Parashat Kedoshim, and sheds interesting light on Ramban’s approach to mitzvot, and the relation between that which is explicitly commanded (i.e., mitzvot) and religious life generally.

Lev 19:2. “You shall be holy.” {Rashi comments here:] “You shall be separate from sexual transgressions and from transgressions [generally], for wherever one finds mention made of sexual lewdness (ervah) there you find mention of holiness.” But in [the tannaitic midrash] Torat Kohanim I saw it stated stam [i.e., without elaboration]: “You shall be separated (perushim tihyu).” And thy also taught there, “’And you shall sanctify yourselves and be sanctified, for I am holy’ (Lev 11:44)—just as I am holy, so shall you be holy. Just as I am separate, so shall you be separate.” And in my opinion this separation does not allude to separation from sexual licentiousness alone, as in the words of the Rabbi [i.e., Rashi], but that perishut [abstinence; asceticism] which is mentioned everywhere in the Talmud, whose authors are called perushim (Pharisees; lit., “separate” or “ascetic ones”).

And the matter is thus: the Torah warned us against sexual sins and forbidden foodstuffs, but permitted intercourse between man and wife and eating meat and drinking wine. Hence the person who is driven by appetite (ba’al ta’avah) will find room to indulge in lustful behavior with his wife or his numerous u wives, and to be among those that swill wine and guzzle meat (per Prov 23:20), and will speak freely using all those vulgarities that are not explicitly prohibited by the Torah. And such a person will be a “knave with the permission of the Torah” (naval bereshut ha-Torah).

Ramban raises here one of the central problems entailed in the system of halakhah, or perhaps in any religious-legal system: religious behaviorism. Does halakhah fully encompass the definition of what it means to be a religious Jew? We have discussed in the past the importance of the sense of being commanded; that Judaism rejects total autonomy, an approach based exclusively upon the individual’s conscience and spiritual sensitivity, seeing the sense of being commanded by a higher authority as central to the religious life. But there likewise exists an opposite danger: a sense of self-satisfaction and self-righteousness based upon formal fulfillment of the letter of the law, and the feeling that I can indulge myself to my heart’s content in whatever the Torah hasn’t specifically proscribed. Ramban here sketches a picture as to how one can live a life of self-indulgence that is technically kosher, adding that the Torah encompasses general commands or standards that cannot be quantified or reduced to clear-cut imperatives: “You shall be holy.”

How does one know that one has become a grober yung? (lit., “a coarse young man”; i.e., a boor or vulgarian)? Ultimately, it is a matter of personal sensitivity; if a person is honest with him/herself, he knows full well when he has become a hedonist, when he lives mostly for his own personal pleasures, performing the mitzvot perfunctorily, his real interest being the table, the bedroom, etc. (Some groups try to control this area: e.g., Gerer Hasidism today has a whole series of rather puritanical regulations about marital sex life far beyond what is specified in Shulhan Arukh; but beyond the excessive puritanism of such an approach, it misses the point: that the Torah seeks to develop a personality who knows how to judge the realm of the permitted in terms of the overall quest for holiness.

Therefore this verse comes, after [the Torah] has enumerated those things that are completely prohibited, commanding in a general way to separate ourselves from excessive material indulgence and to restrict ourselves in sexual intercourse, as the Rabbis say, “Sages ought not to be found with their wives [constantly] like roosters” [b. Berakhot 22a], but only engage in sexual relations according to that which is needed to fulfill the mitzvot connected therewith. And he should sanctify himself regarding wine, in restricting it, as Scripture calls the Nazirite holy (Num 6:5), and he should be heedful of the evils mentioned in connection with it, as in the cases of Noah and Lot. And he should also separate himself from impurity, even though it has not been proscribed in the Torah, as they said, “The garments of an am ha-aretz are a midras [something forbidden to tread upon] for perushim,” (b. Hagiggah 18b; i.e., they maintained a high standard of ritual purity even in everyday life, where it is not required); just as the Nazirite is called holy because he guards himself against becoming contaminated by contact with the dead, so too in this case. And he should guard his mouth and his tongue from becoming disgusting through gross eating and from abhorrent speech, as stated in the verse “for every mouth speaks impiety [or: vulgarity]” (Isa 9:16). And he should sanctify himself in these matters until he achieves perishut, as they said of Rabbi Hiyya, that he never engaged in idle conversation in his life.

Several questions arise in wake of this approach? Most importantly: Is asceticism the central expression of the quest for holiness? The modern temperament, including the present revival of interest in “spirituality,” is by and large anti-ascetic. What about decent behavior in relations between man and his fellow—honesty, generosity, kindness, forgiveness—none of which necessarily require abstemiousness per se? Indeed, the continuation of this chapter seems more concerned with a variety of ethical imperatives, such as “not standing over one’s fellow man’s blood” (i.e., responsibility towards the welfare of others), not to bear grudges nor to behave vindictively towards others and, most centrally, to “love your neighbor as yourself.” And what about God-consciousness, the sense of “radical amazement” at the wonders of God’s creation—which, again, need not necessitate asceticism?

Or, alternatively, one might argue that “You shall be holy” is only one of several general commands found in the Torah, and not intended as the be-all and end-all. Albeit, notwithstanding, it is certainly quite central, both because it is spoken to the entire people in solemn assembly (be-hakhel), and because it closely echoes Exodus 19:6, the imperative that introduced the Sinai revelation, when the people were called upon to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Interestingly, some years ago a friend of mine, quite memorably, celebrated his sixtieth birthday by having a “second bar mitzvah” on Parshat Kedoshim, at which he read the Torah portion and spoke of “being holy” as the central challenge of a Jew’s life.

Yet again, one might view holiness even in the narrower sense of asceticism, or at least as restraining the pleasure principle, as an important starting point in this quest, in the sense of consciously refusing to see the self and its pleasures as the center of life—an important point in the context of contemporary general culture. We continue:

This general mitzvah comes to teach regarding these and similar things. After enumerating all those transgressions which are entirely forbidden, including under this general commandment cleanliness of one’s hands and body, as they said: “’And you shall make yourselves holy’—this refers to the former waters [i.e., at the beginning of a meal]; ‘and you shall be holy’—these are the latter waters [mayim aharonim, at the end of a meal]; ‘for I am holy’—this refers to pleasant oil” (b. Berakhot 53b). For even though these are Rabbinic commandments, the essential point of this and similar verses is to warn us that we should be clean and pure and separate ourselves from the multitude of the people, who contaminate themselves with excessive indulgence and ugly things. For such is the way of the Torah: after detailing a given subject, it includes other things which are similar thereto. Thus, following the prohibitions involving the details of laws involving business dealings between people—“you shall not steal,” “you shall not rob,” “you shall not deceive” and the like—it says in general, “And you shall do that which is upright and good” (Deut 6:18), including under the positive command of the upright and the [willingness to] compromise, all that which is beyond the letter of the law….

And the meaning of the phrase, “for I the Lord your God am holy” (ibid.) is to say that we shall merit to cling to Him when we are holy. And this is analogous to the subject of the first of the Ten Commandments. And it commands here, “each man shall fear his mother and his father” (v. 3), for there it commanded regarding their honor, and here regarding fear [i.e., respect and reverence towards parents]. And it says, “you shall observe my Sabbaths” (ibid.), for there it commanded concerning remembering [the Sabbath], and here regarding its observance; and we have already explicated the subject of both of them [in Exod 20:7]….

In this final section, Ramban touches upon another idea: that Parashat Kedoshim is a kind of recapitulation of the Ten Commandments, but with variations, adding here that which is absent in the earlier text.

Tazria-Metzora (Ramban)

Reserved

Shemini (Ramban)

Reserved

Shemini (Ramban)

Reserved

Pesah (Ramban)

Thoughts on Maggid

“The Haggadah is not only the most popular text in Jewish literature, but an exciting and fascinating text which, read with understanding, yields a series of fascinating questions and provides insights into our own situation, as human beings and as Jews.” Thus, to paraphrase somewhat, our rabbi began his Shabbat Hagadol sermon.

There is just one problem: I find something problematical in the definition of the Haggadah as text. Of course, it is: the majority of Jews I know, Orthodox or otherwise, look on the Haggadah as a text and collection of instructions which we are meant to read and perform on the Seder night—which of course, it is, in on one level. Many members of my generation remember Sedarim as children at which a bunch of old uncles sat at one end of the table mumbling through the text unintelligibly, to do what one is supposed to do, while everyone else sat around bored, waiting for the food to be served. But on another level, the Seder night is the night when we are instructed, nay, commanded, to tell the story of the Exodus to one’s children (and grandchildren), to make the story come alive, so that in the end we, and they, will feel as if we ourselves have just gone out of Egypt. Thus, the mitzvah of the Seder night is meant to be free-form, free-flowing, and the Haggadah is no more than an outline, a suggestion, a framework within which to fit the real discourse.

Question: Why is the Seder constructed as it is, around a Rabbinic midrash? Why not simply read the story of the Exodus as it is given in the Bible—from, say, the beginning of the Book of Exodus to the end of Chapter 12: “On this very day the Lord brought the children of Israel out of Egypt with their hosts.” Indeed, when I was 17 years old and just beginning to observe mitzvot, I was in Israel as a participant on the Young Judaea Year Course. For Pesah I was at Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, a religious kibbutz at which there was a traditional communal Seder led by a learned guest. After the Seder I returned to my room and, having felt that I had not really engaged in telling the story as I understood it, I sat down and began reading the Book of Exodus from the beginning—from the account of the enslavement, through the birth and maturing of Moshe and his call to prophecy, his going to the Israelites and to Pharaoh, and through the ten plagues and the above phrase about the great night of the Exodus. (Somewhere along the line, before completing this self-assigned regimen, I think I fell asleep).

I had originally planned to write a full-length Shabbat Hagadol study, as I have done in years past, on the subject of Maggid—the very heart of the Seder and of the Haggadah—but due to considerations of time, I will confine myself to a few practical comments and suggestions and a concise analysis of one mishnah.

1. There should be free-form questioning encouraged during the Seder. It is a mistake to think that Mah Nishtaneh is The Statutory Question; indeed, as I read it, Mah Nistanah is more a declaration than a question—and certainly not four separate questions!—and quite possibly meant to be recited by the father rather than by the children. The passage of the Four Sons suggests a multiplicity of other questions.

2. Equally important, the narration or exposition of the Exodus story may be rather free-form, and one shouldn’t feel that the main thing is reading the printed text, including the Sifrei’s midrash on “A wandering Aramean was my father,” specifically. But see below.

3. Nibbles during Maggid. I don’t see any clearcut law stating that, after drinking the Kiddush wine and eating the karpas, be it parsley, turnips or potatoes, one is required to refrain from all food. My sense is that in ancient times the eating of the Matzah and bitter herbs may well have preceded the narration of the Exodus story = what we call reading the Haggadah. In any event, I see no reason not to have dried or fresh fruit, nuts, etc., on the table, so that people do not feel that they are a captive audience to those reading or discussing the Haggadah while their stomachs are growling for the sumptuous dinner to follow. Indeed, a beraita quoted in the Bavli states that children should be given toasted grains (!) or nuts at this point to stimulate questions (Pesahim 108b-109a; see O.H. 472.16).

Turning now to Mishnah Pesahim 10.4, which contains the essentials of the mitzvah of Maggid, the procedure for the second cup of wine, recited before the meal. (I have marked with ellipses those sections quoted only in summary form, as they are familiar from the text of the Haggadah itself):

§4. They pour [lit mix] him the second cup. Here the son asks his father; and if the son has not knowledge [intelligence / awareness], his father teaches him. “How different this night is from all other nights!” [Or: How is this night different…?] According to the intelligence of the son, the father teaches him. One begins with degradation/ shame, and concludes with praise, and one expounds from “A lost [or wandering] Aramean was my father” (Deut 26:5), until one concludes the entire passage.

This mishnah mentions three essential elements of Maggid: First, questions and answers. The telling of the story begins in response to the questions asked by the son; moreover, it is not at all clear that the so-called “Four Questions,” which are often the high point of the Seder for the children (alongside the stealing of the Afikoman and its return as ransom for presents), are in fact meant as questions. The Talmud mentions a number of possible questions that might be asked. Moreover, in Albeck’s edition, the phrase, “the father teaches the son” is marked with a colon, followed immediately by Mah Nishtanah: that is, the father’s answer begins with the declaration (not a question!) “How different this night is!” followed by an enumeration of the salient differences between this night and all other nights (the fourfold “On all [other] nights…. On this night….). Incidentally, the text of the “questions” in the Mishnah, presumably formulated when the Temple was still standing, is somewhat different from the wording in our Haggadah text—but a discussion thereof would take us too far afield.

So what does the father teach him and how does he do so? There are two, or even three, distinct answers: on the one hand, he teaches his son the story extemporaneously, in accordance with the son’s (or daughter’s, or children’s, in the plural) intellectual capability. On the other hand, he is to expound (doresh, in Hebrew; the same verbal root as that from which the word midrash is derived) the passage in Deuteronomy 26:5-8 known as vidduy bikkurim, the declaration made by those bringing first fruits to the Temple later on, in the spring or early summer, on or after the festival of Shavuot. This passage consists of a concise summary of Jewish history, from the patriarchs, through the descent to Egypt, the enslavement, the crying out to God, and the deliverance with signs and wonders. Between these two, there is the instruction, “One begins with shame / degradation and concludes with praise”—that is, with the negative situation of the Jewish people, and concluding with its glory, the positive state that follows. Jus what this means is itself ambiguous: the Haggadah really has two beginnings. It begins with our enslavement to the Egyptians (“We were slaves…” עבדים היינו), but a few paragraphs later it jumps much further back, to our arch-ancestor’s worship of idols in pre-Abrahamic days. Similarly, the “praise” may go up to the liberation from slavery per se, or it may go up to the Revelation at Sinai, or even (as Ramban would doubtless say) to the construction of the Sanctuary in the wilderness and the indwelling of God’s presence. Interestingly, it does not go up to the entrance into and settlement of the Land of Israel and our attaining menuhah ve-nahalah, peace and tranquility in our territorial inheritance.

Why is the method of midrash chosen? And why this specific passage? But first, yet another aside: the traditional Haggadah includes a series of lengthy paragraphs following the four questions—“Even if we were all wise… it is incumbent upon us to tell the story…”; the comment of R. Eleazar b. Azariah about why we do the Seder at night; the story of the five sages in B’nai Berak; the beraita of the Four Sons—until one actually reaches the exposition of Arami oved avi. In fact, in virtually every Seder I’ve ever attended, the study and discussion and elaboration of this section takes at least an hour, so that one hardly has time or patience left for Arami oved avi!

.

The midrashic method is expansive. The Haggadah expounds each phrase in these four verses, so that every two or three words—occasionally even single words—elicits a comment which is in turn illustrated by quoting a proof text. Hence the numerous “as is said…” (כמה שנאמר). The end result is that the basic components of the story are all somehow covered. Hence, even though, for example, the ten plagues are not described with the wealth of detail, the back and forth dialogue and haggling between Moses and Aaron and Pharaoh as they are in Exodus 7-11, the basic fact of the plagues is mentioned (as well as the suffering they caused the ordinary Egyptians, alluded to by pouring out a few drips of wine).

Why this parashah, specifically? The four verses beginning with Arami oved avi present, in concise form, the essence of the story: the circumstances which led to the descent to Egypt; the enslavement, with its attendant suffering; the crying out to God, and His hearing our plea; and the miraculous delivery, with “signs and wonders.” Moreover, the occasion of bringing bikkurim is based upon the principle of gratitude, an essential one of Judaism, of expressing thanks to God for the bounty of the Land—and in the course of doing so, tells the story of the Exodus.

The next mishnah deals mostly with the transition to the more liturgical section, of psalms, blessings, and the second cup of wine, which we cannot discuss this time, but includes two more important components of the “telling”:

5.. Rabban Gamaliel said: Whoever did not speak of these three things on Pesah has not fulfilled his obligation; namely: Pesah—the paschal lamb; matzah—unleavened bread; and maror—bitter herbs…. In every generation a person must see himself as if he himself has gone out of Egypt.

I will begin with the second sentence: Is this an instruction, or a text to be recited? It has found its way into the Haggadah, but it reads more like a directive as to the attitude with which on must approach the Seder, the inner feeling one must try to achieve: that this is not merely a ritual commemorating events that happened long ago, but something of personal relevance. (But I must add here a demurral from the widespread tendency today, influenced by “New Age” thinking, to read the Exodus in purely personal, psychological terms as redemption from our own private “Egypt” of hang-ups, bad habits and attitudes, addictions, etc. On some level, each person must identify himself with the Jewish people, both present and throughout its historical continuum.) The sense of personally experiencing the paradigmatic events of our sacred history, the complete identification with one’s ancestors, is at least on one level the quintessence of all Jewish religious experience. It is in this light that one must understand the “three things”: the Seder is not only a forum for reading texts, discussion, narration, for intellectual engagement with our history, but it is a meal, and one at which one has a very different diet from one’s fare: flat unleavened bread (following exhaustive cleaning and kashering of the whole house); bitter herbs (some say: so bitter, like raw horseradish, that they bring tears to one’s eyes); and, in ancient times, the roast lamb or goat of the Paschal offering. These foodstuffs in some sense concretize the lessons and ideas that until this point have been no more than that—and their mention at this point in the Seder take us full circle to the “Four Questions,” and at the same time signals the transition from telling the story to the more experiential dimension—singing the Hallel, in praise and gratitude to God, as an expression of one’s inner joy: “And let us say before Him a new song; Hallelujah!”

Our blessings for a very joyous festival to all.

Tzav-Shabbat Hagadol (Ramban)

Vayikra (Ramban)

Vayakhel-Pekudei (Ramban)

Ki Tisa (Ramban)

Why Did Aaron Make the Golden Calf?

Most of this week’s parashah is occupied with the traumatic incident of the Golden Calf and its aftermath. It is a difficult chapter to interpret from many viewpoints; among other things, the most obvious question asked by many of the classical exegetes is: How are we to understand what motivated the people to descend into what was offhand forbidden idol worship, and such a short time—forty days—after the overwhelming experience of the Divine Revelation at Sinai? And, in particular, how could Aaron, Moses’ brother and the appointed priest of the exclusive worship of HWYH, facilitate such a thing? Ramban addresses these questions, and at considerable length, near the beginning of the chapters concerning the Calf, offering a rather surprising answer. His comment to Exodus 32:1:

“’…who will go before us.’ They desired many gods, ‘for this man Moses who has taken us up out of the land of Egypt…’ and showed us the way where we should go ‘we do not know what has become of him.’ We now need many gods who will go before us.” Thus Rashi.

His language is not precise; but this passage is a key to understanding the matter of the Calf and the thought of those who made it. For it is known that Israel did not think that Moses was God and that he, with his own power, made wonders and miracles for them. For what reason would there be for them to say once Moses had gone, “Let us make ourselves a god” (32:1)? Moreover, they explicitly said, “a god who will go before us”—not one who would give them life in this world or the next; rather, they asked for another Moses. They said: Moses, who showed us the way from Egypt to here—for their travels were according to the Lord by the hand of Moses—is lost to us. Let us make another Moses, who will show the path before us according to God by his hand. And this is the reason for their mentioning “this man Moses who took us up”—not the God who took us up, for they needed a man of God.

Ramban notices here a kind of contradiction in this opening verse: Why would the people say, “Come, make us a god” when what bothered them was the absence of “the man” Moses? The answer is that they did not mean “god” in the usual sense, but rather a leader, a guide, perhaps even a kind of oracle, who would show them the way to go and take them through the difficulties of wandering in the wilderness. Hence, neither they nor Aaron were guilty of idolatry in the usual sense of the word. He elaborates on this in the next two paragraphs:

And you may also understand this from Aaron’s answer to [the question of] Moses our Teacher: “What has this people done to you that you have brought upon it such a great sin?” (below, v. 21). To which he answered: “They said to me, ‘Come, make us a god…’ And he added: ‘Let he who has gold take it off and give it to me; and I cast it into the fire” (vv. 23-24). And Aaron apologizes to Moses, saying “be not wrath“ (v. 22). And [offhand] he would seem to be adding sin to his transgression [i.e., augmenting his sin], for [it was as if] he was to say: They wanted an object of idolatry and I made it for them with my own hands. Why should [Moses] not be furious with him? What greater sin could there be than that?!

But the matter is as I have said: that they did not want the calf as a god who gives life and death and to accept its divine service upon themselves, but they wished it to be in place of Moses, their teacher of the way—and this was Aaron’s apology. He argued [in Ramban’s words]: “They only told me to make a god who would walk before them in your place, O master, for they did not know what had become of you and whether or not you would return. Therefore they needed one who would show them the way, so long as you would not be with them, but if you would return they would abandon it and follow you as they did.” And thus it was, for as soon as the people saw Moses they immediately left the calf and despised it, allowing him to burn it and to sprinkle its dust upon the water, and no one dissented from him at all. And you shall see that he did not rebuke them and did not say anything to them, but as soon as he came into the camp and saw the calf and the dances (below, v. 19), they immediately fled from it. And he took the calf and burned it and gave it to them to drink, and they did refuse this at all. But had it been their god, there is no way that a person would allow his king and god to be burned in fire; would he burn their abomination before their eyes and they not stone him?! (an ironic paraphrase of Exod 8:22). But it was Aaron who brought out [i.e., fashioned] this form, because they did not tell him what to make—an ox or a sheep or a goat or the like. And this what is meant by the saying of the Sages: “This teaches that they desired many gods” (Sanhedrin 63a)—that they did not know what they would choose and what would seem good to them.

Ramban now turns to another, deeper question: Why did Aaron choose to make a calf, specifically?

And Aaron’s intention was that, because Israel was in the parched and desolate desert, and destruction and desolation come from the north, as is said, “From the north the evil shall come to all the inhabitants of the land” (Jer 1:14). And this does not refer to the king of Babylon alone, as might seem from the literal meaning of the verse, but that from the left side (in Biblical thought, the north is identified with the left-hand side, which it is if one is facing east) the attribute of Stern Judgment comes to the world, to punish all the inhabitants of the earth according to their wickedness. And in the account of the Chariot, it says “and the face of the ox was on the left of the four” (Ezek 1:10); therefore Aaron thought that the Destroyer would show the way to [through?] the place of destruction, for there his strength is great. But as they were serving God there, He would pour out His spirit from on high (after Isa 32:15) as it had emanated upon Moses; and this is what he meant when he said “there shall be a festival to the Lord tomorrow” (v. 5)—that the worship and sacrifices would be for the sake of the Unique Name, to elicit His grace upon the master of the form, for when it was before them they would have intention towards its matter.

He offers an answer rooted in an intricate weave of symbolic, Kabbalistic thinking: the ox (or the calf, the young of the bovine species), being located on the “left side” of the Merkavah, the Divine Chariot seen by Ezekiel, which is taken as an archetypal Divine structure, is associated with the attribute of Din: Harsh Judgment, or destructive powers generally. The desert, as a desolate, lifeless place, is dominated by such forces (“satyrs dance there”). But by worshipping God through the symbol of the ox/calf, one somehow arouses those Divine forces which can neutralize and counter these negative powers. (In several places Ramban mentions these destructive forces, and the need to combat them, or even “bribe“ them, on a metaphysical plane; compare his comments about the sending of the goat “for Azazel” into the wilderness in the Yom Kippur atonement ritual in his comment on Lev 16:8, which I briefly discuss in HY XII: Yom Kippur [=Individual & Community].) He concludes here with two midrashic passages that support his thesis and, at the very end, in a section which I have not translated here, mentions an astrological comment of Ibn Ezra, which he dismisses:

And our Rabbis taught us this matter, and revealed its secret, saying (Exodus Rabbah 43.8, with variants): “’I have surely seen the suffering of my people’ [Exod 3:7]. The Holy One blessed be He said to Moses, ‘Moses: you have seen with one seeing, and I see with two seeings. You see them coming to Sinai and receiving the Torah, and I see how they contemplate Me when I go forth in My Chariot to give them the Torah, as is said ‘God’s chariot, myriads upon myriads, thousands upon thousands [the Lord is with them at Sinai in holiness]’ (Ps 68:18), and they release one of My tetramolin, as is said, ‘And the face of the ox to the left’ and anger Me with it.” Tetromolin means “four mules”: tetra in Greek means four, and molin means mules, as in “the mul’ot of the house of Rabbi”—i.e., a metaphor for the four creatures carrying the Divine Chariot.

And in Leviticus Rabbah (10.3) it says that Aaron said: “As I am building [i.e., fashioning] it, I build it for His name, may He be blessed, as is said, ‘And Aaron called out and said: There will be a festival for the Lord tomorrow’ (v. 5). It does not say, ‘a festival for the calf’ but ‘for the Lord.’” ….

Purim Postcripts

A few afterthoughts relating to Purim: 1. My hevruta, Yehudah Gellman, raised the issue of the historicity of Purim, insisting that Purim be better understood in a non-literal and non-historic, archetypal manner (To this I would add that, in light of the fact that there are certain circles in Israel for whom this holiday becomes an excuse for venting generalized anti-Arab sentiments, this becomes all the more urgent). I would agree; the only question is: what archetypal reading seems most correct?

My hevruta suggests seeing it in terms of the struggle with the “Amalek within”: i.e., the Yetzer ha-Ra, or Evil Urge. But if so, I would relate it to a very specific kind of Yetzer Ha-Ra: not that of eroticism, which is what Hazal most often have in mind when the speak of the Yetzer, because the erotic is also constructive, being the root if all creativity, in addition to being the source of sexual love, and as such of new life. Rather, I think of the “inner Yetzer of Amalek” in terms of the forces of blind hatred, violence, Middat ha-Din gone awry—that which destroys for the sake of destruction, what Freud identified with Thanatos. This is also the salient characteristic of anti-Semitism, and more generally of all hatred of the Other. But why Purim? He writes: “There are two ways to attack the Yetzer: the harsh one is to take it seriously, that is, Yom Kippur. The other way is to make fun of it, how ridiculous it is, how silly it acts.”

An alternative way is to see Purim as a time for opening one’s eyes and seeing God’s presence within the depths of the secular, the mundane, the seemingly random, chance, unredeemed world. This is closer to what many Hasidic books teach, as we have discussed here many time in the past. Even if the Purim story is not true literally, it is true existentially—and it need not be an occasion fir moralizing of any kind, heavy or light.

2. If God is present in the Megillah, as in the Rabbinic doctrine that the word hamelekh alludes to “the King of Kings, the Holy One blessed be He,” can we read certain specific verses as allusions to human-Divine relations? Everyone knows that “On that night the king’s sleep was disturbed” (6:1) is seen as alluding to God as well as to Ahasuerus; indeed, it is a widespread custom to read that verse with a High Holy Days melody. But what about: “Any man or woman who comes into the inner courtyard without being called is put to death, unless the king stretches forward his golden staff” (4:11)—as alluding to the dangers involved in attempting to approach God, in seeking mystical or prophetic visions or “ascents”? Or the seemingly arbitrary nature of those to whom God admits to His intimacy? Or that “A law made by the king, and sealed with the royal seal, cannot be reversed” (8:8) as alluding to Torah, and the king granting his authority to Esther and Mordecai—as a metaphor for Oral Torah and the power of the Sages to reinterpret laws in a broad way? (Needless to say, all this is by way of fanciful speculation, and not intended as serious exegesis.)

3. Some thoughts about the haftarah for Parshat Zakhor (about which I wrote at length in HY II: Terumah and Tetzaveh [=Haftarot], when it was read two consecutive weeks in Jerusalem, when Shushan Purim fell on Shabbat). This haftarah is a central, axial chapter in 1 Samuel, Until that point, the book is dominated by the tension between Samuel and God and Saul , regarding both the institution of the monarchy in general, and Saul’s leadership, in particular. Here, in Chapter 15, he is definitively ousted. The second half of the book is about the choice of David as his successor, the rivalry between the two, Shaul’s growing paranoia, ending with his desperate turning to the witch of Ein-Dor to raise Samuel from the dead (against his own supposed religious principles), and his and Jonathan’s death on the battlefield in Gilboa.

The chapter itself is interesting in several respects. Saul uses will of people, the vox populus, as an excuse for his preserving the best of the flock and the herd. Moreover, he honestly thinks that he is thereby serving God, by offering him the choicest animals as sacrifices. But Shmuel is unforgiving, and gives him no opportunity for teshuvah. Finally, 15:23 is interesting: “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” This verse is among those quoted by the classical Reform and others who invoke “prophetic Judaism” and “ethical monotheism.” But, ironically, he is talking here about killing people, and the chapter ends with Samuel slitting Agag‘s throat, thereby personifying the bitterness of death. What shall w make of this?

Purim (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Tetzaveh - Zakhor (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Terumah (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Mishpatim (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Yitro (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Beshalah (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Bo (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Vaera (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Shemot (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Vayehi (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Vayigash (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Miketz-Hanukkah (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Vayeshev (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Vayishlah (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Vayetze (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Toldot (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Hayyei Sarah (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Vayera (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Lekh Lekha (Ramban)

Contents to be posted

Noah (Ramban)

Reserved

Bereshit (Ramban)

Simhat Torah (Wanderings)

Hol Ha-Moed Sukkot (Wanderings)

Reserved

Sukkot (Wanderings)

Reserved

Haazinu (Wanderings)

Reflections on Faith

In my series of vignettes of various kinds of Jewish faith presented on Erev Rosh Hashanah HY XIII: Nitzavim-Rosh Hashanah), particular interest was elicited by the words of the man I described as a “leading intellectual of the Conservative movement in America,” who has made a maxim of intellectual integrity, calling upon people to avoid self-deceit and easy, conventional statements about God and mitzvot. “There is no such thing as faith,” he says, “only knowledge”—and one must be true to what one knows. (For those who were curious as to his identity: the individual in question is Martin S. Cohen, rabbi of the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, Long Island; editor of the journal Conservative Judaism; among the compilers of The Observant Life, a guide to Conservative halakhah; author of an intriguing little book about lessons to be learned from Seder Toharot, generally considered the most obscure and arcane order of the Mishnah, entitled The Boy on the Door on the Ox; and editor of Siddur Tzur Yisrael, as prayer book he prepared fir his congregation which, interestingly, reinstates passages usually excised from Conservative siddurim, as well as adding study texts and theological reflections in the margins in the margins. Thus, alongside a rigorous honesty, he has a deep and abiding love for tradition, and often speaks of the goal of the religious life as “the journey to Jerusalem.”)

I would like to elaborate somewhat on this subject. I had hoped to do so during the Days of Awe, but time pressures didn’t allow me to do so; fortuitously, this week’s parashah, Moses’ farewell poem of admonition to the Jewish people, contains a description of God as אל אמונה, “a God of faith” or more likely “a faithful God” (Deut 32:4), making a discussion of the term emunah germane. At first blush, Cohen’s words might be seen as proximate to those of my atheist–empiricist friend, who refuses to engage in metaphysical discussions because one can never arrive at a definitive proven answer thereto. But what he is trying to say, as I understand it, is quite different: that what people most often mean by “faith” is the acceptance of certain axioms or dogmas regarding God and religion without any sort of evidence or argument or even reasonable plausibility. His point is that there are not two kinds of knowledge: one either knows a given thing or does not know a given thing;. When people say “I believe” what they really mean may be “I don’t know whether this statement is true or not, but I would like it to be so, so I will pretend that it’s true”—i.e., an elevated kind of wishful thinking. On the contrary, he argues, religious truth must be like any other kind of truth: it must make sense, and must not be based on ideas that fly in the face of what we know from other sources of truth or knowledge.

This approach belongs to a venerable tradition of purifying the intellectual contents of faith. Thus, Maimonides insists on a well-thought-out, philosophically coherent belief in God: a faith that can be proven and not one adopted in a capricious way. Thus, he speaks of the mitzvah of Anokhi Hashem Elohekha as implying knowledge of the existence of God which, according to him, can be acquired by acquired through an (admittedly arduous and demanding) process of philosophical reasoning. Hence, in Yesodei ha-Torah 1.1 he uses the word לידע שיש שם נמצא ראשון—“to know that there exists a First Cause.” Indeed, as Simon Rawidowicz demonstrates, even in Sefer ha-Mitzvot, where one finds the word להאמין—“to believe”—used in the equivalent passage, the Arabic original is a word which refers to knowledge, not faith. (Unfortunately, in the modern world we are less sanguine about the validity of such proofs, so we must find another path to knowledge of the Divine.)

The Torah itself never speaks of “faith“ or “belief” in God as a mark of the religious person. The word אמונה means “faithfulness” or “trust,” and is used, for example, of Abraham and the other patriarchs who had no need for “faith” in the modern sense because they stood in a living relation with a God whom they knew—whom they talked to directly. והאמין בה' ויחשביה לו לצדקה (“And he trusted in God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”: Gen 15:6). This is likewise its meaning in Habakkuk 2:4, צדיק באמונתו יחיה (“the righteous shall live faithfully”). Martin Buber, in his book Two Kinds of Faith, elaborates in this idea, noting how the two terms, pistis and emunah, reflect the very different conceptual worlds of the Greek and Hebrew mentalities.

I don’t know when the word emunah first acquired its modern meaning as belief in a proposition: certainly nowhere in the Bible, and I suspect neither in the Talmudic or Midrashic literature. It most probably emerged in the world of medieval Jewish thought, which need to confront Greek philosophy in its Arabic guise: e.g., in Rabbenu Saadya Gaon’s Emunot ve-De’ot.

But the real problem with so-called “faith” is its abuses. On the lowest level, there is the popular idea that to be religious means to have the ability to believe any and very form of nonsense, provided that it is dressed in a halo of religiosity; that is, to be credulous: e.g., to believe that wearing a red string on one’s wrist that at one point was (allegedly) tied around Rachel’s tomb is somehow a segulah, that will help one against whatever troubles one--illness, money problems, matches for oneself or one’s children, etc.; that God will heal even the gravely ill, raising them from their suck bed if one prays hard enough, if one recites the entire Book of Psalms ever day for forty days, if one visits the grave of a holy man or, especially, if one enlists the help of a Rebbe or Kabbalist (who, needless to say, expects to be handsomely rewarded for his intervention).

“Rabbis,” rebbes, “Babas” and Kabbalists who take advantage of people’s desire and need to believe, not only in God, but in holy men, are a ubiquitous feature of contemporary Israeli life. It is a strange phenomenon: multi-billionaire, secular tycoons visit Kabbalist rabbis like Rav Afargan (“the Roentgen”) and Rav Pinto for advice and blessing. I am doubtful as to whether these “spiritual” counselors told them what is most important, ethically and halakhically: that they must assure that the nearly 2000 workers who were recently displaced by the sale of Ma’ariv are provided with the final salary, compensation, and pension that are rightfully there’s.

I am not worried about the Denkners and Nimrodis of this world wasting their money on such charlatans, but some of these rabbis are notorious for abusing the faith placed in them to squeeze money out of poor and misfortunate people who can ill afford it. Indeed, this phenomenon led to the murder last summer of one of the more grasping of these “rabbis” by a frustrated, disappointed believer.
A second misuse of faith is found in the political realm. The prophets spoke harshly against those who invoked God’s name to propagate false interpretations of actual events, who taught messages of unwarranted complacency or self-confidence (see, e.g., the story of Michaihu ben Yimlah in 1 Kings 22:16 ff.) of the type of “God is on our side.” Unfortunately, similar attitudes are all too prevalent today.

What then might be meant by serious, mature Jewish faith? Faith might be described as accepting a certain axiom which one accepts without proof, as a guideline or operating assumption in one’s life—e.g., that the Torah is in some sense is from Heaven, or that God exists and is our Master—while knowing that it is not knowledge in the usual sense. These beliefs are by their very nature unknowable, mysterious, unfathomable, but we accept them as articles of faith, that is, as something to live by. It seems to me that this is why the language of religion is that of parable, metaphor, midrash, even myth—forms of expression that are suggestive, allusive, not scientific—pointing as they do towards that which is beyond the realm of empirical truth.

An interesting aside: I’ve recently been reading some books by G. K. Chesterton, an early 20th century British intellectual convert to Roman Catholicism. He shows his “Father Brown” character surprising others by being consistently more down-to-earth and sceptical than the more secular characters in the story, making the point that scepticism about nonsense of various sorts (e.g., believing that a certain murder was performed by a ghost) is as important to true religion as is faith in that which is true.

I also recently read an insightful caveat about the relation between these types of truth, written by the Dalai Lama: “A clear distinction should be made between what is not found by science and what is found to be nonexistent by science. What science finds to be nonexistent we should all accept as nonexistent, but what science merely does not find is a completely different matter… [for example,] consciousness itself. Although sentient beings, including humans, have experienced consciousness for centuries, we still do not know what [it] actually is…”

Another line of thought about the nature of Jewish faith/religious knowledge: Judaism sees the masoret, that which has been received in the tradition, as a form of knowledge—if not about God Himself, than certainly about the halakhah and the other components of our teaching. The basis of our faith (and here some people may demur as well) and say that this too is unreliable) is as a tradition we have received from our parents: this is what it means to be a Jew. (Part of the crisis of modern Judaism is the break or rupture in tradition. Fewer and fewer people who can say: I practice mitzvot because I received it from my father, who received from his father, and so on. Neophytes to Jewish religion need instead to be convinced of the value and legitimacy of the enterprise, and often of each and every mitzvah—whether by rational argumentation or by emotional experience.) In any event, this is the high road, “the long but short path” to His service.

A Sad Correction

In the issue for Ki Tavo, towards the end of my essay on Jewish marriage, I mentioned Monique Susskind Goldberg’s Za’akat Dalot, and added “for whose health we pray.” Shortly after sending out this number of HY, I received a note from a reader in Arad informing me that Monique had died, already several months ago.

I first met Monique nearly forty years ago, when her home served as the venue for Shlomo Carlebach’s teaching whenever he came to Jerusalem. All his followers and whoever wished to hear him crowded into Monique and Gaby’s living room and Shlomo would learn, talk, sing, and in between shmoose with the people till the wee hours of the morning, Later I heard that Monique was studying fir a doctorate in Jewish thought, and had been ordained as a rabbi by the Mesorati movement in Israel – one of the first woman to receive that title here, and quite possibly the only French speaking Conservative rabbi in Israel.

Throughout her life, Monique suffered from a serious handicap—she had suffered polio as a child, and was confined to a wheel-chair—but she had an indomitable will, and did not allow her limitations to stand in the way of making something of her life. She was highly learned in Talmudic and halakhic literature and. among other things, write the above-mentioned book, which is a compilation of halakhic solutions to the problems of Jewish marriage. She was accompanied everywhere by her devoted husband, Gavriel Goldberg, whom I came to know somewhat during one of the few periods when they were apart: our six-week basic training in the IDF.

May her memory be a source of blessing.

Yom Kippur (Wanderings)

Two Faces of Yom Kippur

Two (or three) phrases are constantly used to describe this season: Yemei teshuvah—Days of Repentance (or Yamim Nora’im, “Days of Awe”) and Yom ha-Kippurim—the Day of Atonement. We tend to think of this period as a continuum, united by a single theme, but in fact, the underlying concepts of teshuvah and kaparah, repentance and atonement, are radically different, perhaps even diametrically opposed.

Teshuvah means repentance: contrition, regret, turning, even a kind of rebirth experience. It is rooted in a sense of sin, of wrongdoing, of being on the wrong path, of shame, even guilt for how one has lived one’s life, at wasted opportunities to be a better person; and it is charged with a desire for moral and spiritual renewal. Theologically, it is based on the sense of standing before the bar of God’s judgment and being found wanting; these are Days of Awe because God is seen as manifesting Himself in all His awesome majesty: the liturgy for Yamim Noraim abound in expressions of this idea (ובכן תן פחדך..). But even though this particular season is set aside for teshuvah, the notion of repentance is really conceived in Judaism as a constant process. Every day, we are told by a Rabbinic dictum, one must seek to do teshuvah; a person is judged every day; nay, every hour, even every minute, and must act accordingly.

On one level, Yom Kippur is the culmination of the days of teshuvah which began with the month of Ellul. Rambam describes Yom Kippur as “the time of teshuvah for all” (Hil. Teshuvah 2.7). Hence, we repeated over and over again, even before the final meal and in every prayer throughout the day, Viddui: the Great Confession, an alphabetical litany of every conceivable kind of sin one might have done.

But there is a second theme of Yom Kippur, that from which it derives its name, which is very different: kaparah. We cry out to God: סלח לנו, מחל לנו, כפר לנו—“Forgive us, pardon us, atone us.” And the message of Yom Kippur is one of kaparah: “And God said: I have forgiven, as you have spoken” (Num 14:20). In the Temple of old, on Yom Kippur the High Priest would confess the sins of the entire people of Israel, placing his hands on the head of the sa’ir la-azazel, the goat that sent out into the wilderness: “And the goat carried their sins upon him into a wild land” (Lev 16:22). At the end of this ritual, the crimson thread tied to the altar turned white and the people rejoiced, knowing that their sins had been forgiven. And when the High Priest emerged from the Holy of Holies, his face was radiant and he made a great feast for his family and intimates, and all the people rejoiced.

In later ages, Yom Kippur was marked by a special sublime joy. Rav Soloveitchik used to say that whoever had not seen the faces of the Jews leaving the synagogues in Vilna after Neilah of Yom Kippur cannot understand what was lost in the Holocaust.

Teshuvah is a manifestation of what might be called the prophetic moment: the ceaseless demand for moral integrity, for both personal perfection and for justice and decency in the life of society. And in its light, the job of the rabbi, the preacher, the prophet, is to ceaselessly chastise the people, to raise the bar, to demand moral and religious perfection. To the man of teshuvah there are no holidays. And, in theological terms, it envisions God as a stern, demanding King seated on the Throne of Judgment or, in Midrashic-Kabbalistic terms, Middat ha-Din.

Kaparah means forgiveness; it is the deepest expression of God’s love, of His acceptance of us as human beings in all our weakness and frailty, with all our conflicting needs, urges, fears and desires, ever torn between trying to do the good and our natural impulse to seek pleasure and comfort, to live for the self and in the moment. The paradigm for Yom Kippur is God’s forgiveness of the sin of the Golden Calf—a forgiveness granted only after Moses prayed, beseeched, and cajoled Him for forty days and forty nights. It is based on an image of a loving, almost maternal God (Av ha-Rahamim = “the wombed father’), who cannot help loving and forgiving His children no matter what: Middat ha-Hesed (see on this HY I: Ki Tisa [= Torah]). And this process, like that of teshuvah, also begins from the start of Ellul, Hodesh ha-Rahamim veha-Selihot, the month of compassion and forgiveness.

We cannot understand the economy of Divine rule, the secrets of how God runs His world nor, indeed, exactly what is meant by kaparah. But as human beings we can speak of the psychological counterparts of these traits in our own lives. Teshuvah is the voice that calls upon us to constantly better ourselves—if you will, the super-ego. Kaparah is the voice of self-acceptance, the realistic awareness of our own limitations, that one is only a human being and as such is bound to fail much of the time, and that one cannot “drive oneself crazy” with impossible demands on oneself. Somehow, both of those voices are the authentic voices of Yom Kippur.

Nitzavim-Rosh Hashanah (Wanderings)

“You are All Standing This Day”

This title verse of this past Shabbat’s parashah, though in original context refers to the Israelites standing before God on the eve of Moses’ death and shortly before entering the Land, is taken as a metaphor for the occasion on which it is read: the last Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, when there is a feeling of expectancy, of standing before God, of preparing to accept His kingship upon us, and of waiting with anxiety and uncertainty, as it were, for the judgment on each one of us and all of us together before the bar of Divine judgment, wondering what the new year will bring.

I think about all of the people in my life, wise and learned and thinking Jews, and our ongoing learning and dialogue over the years on the most basic questions: What does it mean, in this puzzling “post-modern” world, to be a good Jew? What, in that context, do we mean by the “good life”? And what do we understand by such words as “faith” and ”Torah”? And what are we doing when we pray?

There is one man I met for the first time this summer—one of the leading intellectuals of the Conservative movement in America—for whom a central maxim is insistence on intellectual integrity, and not fooling oneself and others by making easy conventional statements about God and mitzvot which one does not really believe (this applies especially to rabbis and what they say from the pulpit!). “There is no such thing as faith,” he says, “only knowledge”—and one must be true to what one knows.

There is another who stresses the inadequacy of human language to speak about God: both the theistic language of a transcendent God, who judges and commands and listens to prayer and makes miracles; and the mystical language of the God who is everywhere, who “fills all things” (memale kol almin), who is the All—both alike are metaphors, are no more than human attempts to express the inexpressible. “He is all, and He creates all.”

Then there is my rosh yeshivah, with whom I studied nearly forty years ago: a pious, strictly Orthodox Jew (albeit clean-shaven, an important statement of sorts), with encyclopedic knowledge of Talmud, rishonim, poskim—really, of all Jewish religious texts (but does he know Kabbalah and Hasidut, I wonder)—coupled with a rich knowledge of the Western humanistic and literary tradition. But with all that erudition, he is marked by extraordinary humility, rooted in a kind of pure and innocent, almost simple faith, in absolute certainty that the Torah is devar hashem, the word of God. In a recent book-length interview, he said: “I am an ordinary Jew. There are thousands of people like myself. I simply try to do what the Torah requires.”

And then there is another: one who sees all religions as divergent paths toward the one God. He tells how, at a crucial stage in his life, he met three “candidates” to be his spiritual teacher—a Bratslaver Hasidic rabbi, a Sufi sheikh, and a Zen master. At the time, he chose the Sufi teacher—but then, some years down the road, his teacher told him that the time had come for him to convert to Islam, and he was unwilling to make that final break with Judaism (and with his family). He sees Sufism as a spiritual path, not as part of a “religion.” And so he lives his life as a Jewish Sufi, or perhaps as a Sufi Jew, straddling both worlds: from time to time he comes to my Shabbat table, he davens in all the many kinds of minyanim that exist in Jerusalem, and now and again he goes to Turkey to meet with his Sufi friends (of the more tolerant, liberal ilk of Sufism), for serious religious conversation which, even more than prayer or ecstatic dancing, lies at the very heart of Sufi.

And then there is Hayyim, a hasid of Shlomo Carlebach who, at 60-plus and with numerous children and grandchildren, is still a 20-year-old hippie at heart. He always has a smile on his face, he davens up a storm, and has a kind of simple faith. I think of him as a living, latter-day embodiment of the hero of R. Nahman’s tale of the simpleton and the wise man.

There is also the avowed atheist, the believer in science—in rationalism, in empiricism, who believes that, in principle, it is only meaningful to ask those questions for which one may, at least in principle, attain an empirical, objective answer. Religion, theology, and metaphysics are by their very nature “disciplines” without any final answers, but only endless speculation. But withal, he keeps a kosher home, makes Kiddush on Shabbat, he goes to synagogue on occasion—but for the sense of community, of history, of culture, not because he expects to find God there.

Even more puzzling: there is the brain researcher, who insists that we human beings are programmed to be what they are, There is no free will to speak of, because our lives, our emotional and other reactions, are determined by the “hard-wiring” of the electrical connections of our brains and our nervous systems. But, withal, he is a pious, “Orthodox” Jew, who to all appearances lives a halakhic life, davens three times a day, and recites Kabbalat Shabbat with Hasidic fervor.

And finally, there is this person called Yehonatan, who davens and learns, and writes incessantly. Who is he? What does he think and believe, deep down? And, like all of us, he too receives the call on Rosh Hashanah to answer the question, איכה: where are you? And, what have you done with the nearly 66 years of life you have been given, as a gift from God, to date?

“You are all standing here this day.”

May we all merit to be written in the Book of Life, for a year filled with goodness, learning, creativity, and love for one another—and the health and livelihood to make it possible,

NOTEThe letters of איכה (taken from Gen 3:9, God’s call to Adam in the Garden after eating of the forbidden fruit) may be read as the numbers 1, 10, and 25: the 1st and 10th of Tishrei—i.e., Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—and 25th Kislev, the first day of Hanukkah: all days when we render accountings of ourselves. But if w fail, the same word may be read as Eikhah, Lamentations.

Ki Tavo (Wanderings)

To be posted

Ki Teitzei (Wanderings)

To be posted

Shoftim (Wanderings)

“Justice, Justice You Shall Pursue”

This parashah, devoted to a variety of social institutions, begins with those of law and justice—courts and magistrates. It occurred to me that the words צדק צדק תרדף —“You shall surely pursue justice”—with which the first section concludes, is a bit odd. It is as if to say: Justice is elusive, it needs to be actively pursued to assure its existence. There are always forces opposing it, people who stand to benefit by injustice and oppression, robbing the weak and helpless, as in the old folk song, “Some rob you with a pistol, some with a fountain pen.” This idea is further suggested by the verses that immediately precede it, which so to speak list all the obstacles or barriers to justice: “Do not pervert justice; do not favor ‘faces’ (i.e., important people); do not take bribes, for bribery blinds the eyes of the wise and distorts the words of the righteous” (Deut 16:19).

No person is safe from self-interest, the temptation of easy gain at the expense of the other. Even the wise man, who knows full well when he is doing wrong or “bending” the rules to his own or his friend’s unfair advantage; even the righteous man may fall prey to temptation—as if to say, no man is “righteous” as a fixed quality of his being as a person. Justice, truth, righteousness, integrity, are all the results of a daily struggle to do good and not to be influenced or tempted to depart from the straight and narrow. There may be people who are called tzadikkim, but they have the same inner struggles as everyone else, and at times they fail (albeit hopefully less frequently), just like the next person.

That is why the person who truly practices justice—particularly the judge, who is supposed to be the guardian of justice for society, using his authority to protect the weak and helpless from those who would oppress them and deprive them of what is rightfully theirs—is called a partner of the Almighty. Thus, when Rabbi Akiva sat as judge he would say to the litigants, ”You are not standing before Akiva ben Yosef, but before He who spoke and the world came into being.”

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Parshat Shoftim was chosen to open the Torah readings of Elul, “the month of forgiveness and compassion,” the month devoted to teshuvah. One of the areas in which most people, both individuals and communities, in most places and times, need to examine themselves, is that of justice. Indeed, we are told that one of the three questions asked of a person after he dies and his soul is called before the Heavenly tribunal is נשאת ונתת באמונה—“Did you behave honestly in your business dealings?” Our tradition poses high demands in this area. It is unfortunate that the term teshuvah (repentance, turning towards God) has been hijacked by the pietists and identified in the public imagination with becoming religiously observant. As Rambam says in Chapter 7 of Hilkhot Teshuvah, it is much more than that: first and foremost, it involves rectifying one’s character faults and one’s ethical behavior.

Some weeks ago (HY XIII: Mattot-Masei) I discussed the first six blessings of the middle section of the weekday Amidah; at the time, I promised readers that I would return to discuss the second group of six, something I still hope to do. In the meanwhile, I would like to mention one important point, germane to this discussion. The main theme of these six latter blessings is the redemption of Israel; the first stage mentioned, after the ingathering of exiles, is the restoration of true justice. This includes the restoration of the Sanhedrin as an institution, but more than that, the Sanhedrin and the other courts are seen as embodying a pure, holy, upright, God-inspired system of justice. Until that happens, we cannot go on to the restoration of the Davidic monarchy, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the indwelling of Shekhinah. There are those in Israel who sometimes talk as if Messianic fulfillment were just around the corner—but they are “jumping the gun.” Israeli society, beginning with its leadership, has a long way to go to become a society that manifests justice, righteousness and caring loving-kindness to all—and it is that which must be our highest priority.

POSTSCRIPTS

EKEV: “Make a Wooden Ark”

Two weeks ago, in our discussion of the retelling of various historical events in Sefer Devarim, we mentioned the manner in which the story of the Golden Calf is related there. Perhaps the most striking point, which I somehow failed to mention : in its retelling in Parshat Ekev, Moses’ entire dialogue with God, in which he asks to “make known to me Your ways” and “show me Your glory” is omitted, as is the Duvine response, in which God places him in the cleft of the rock, covers him with His hand, shows him His “back” but not His “face”; and reveals to him the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy—all these details, pregnant with profound if mysterious and ambiguous theological significance, are absent.

Instead (?), God instructs Moses to make an ark of wood, and to place therein the two stone tablets on which He will write, a second time, the Ten Commandments. All this seems very different from the commandment in Exodus 25 to make an ark of wood inlaid and overlaid with gold in the larger context of building a tabernacle. The only coherent explanation I can think of is that the ark is a reminder to the people of the sin of the calf and of their culpability and, most of all, of God’s forgiveness, symbolized by the giving of the second tablets. This may also explain why the revelation of the thirteen attributes of mercy are omitted; the ark of the covenant is a kind of sign of the same act of Divie forgiveness, albeit in a far more muted sense. (On this entire subject see my essay at HY I: Ki Tisa= [Torah]).

RE’EH: On Leviticus and Deuteronomy

Last week I conducted a comparison of the laws in Re’eh with their counterparts in the earlier humashim. I noted that the laws in Deuteronomy, generally, whether those dealing specifically with religious institutions, such as the Temple, tithes, festivals, etc., or those dealing with other aspects of societal life, seem far more socially oriented, This tendency continues in this week’s parashah, Shoftim, and in the one thereafter.

A thought that occurred to me during the course of the Torah reading last Shabbat: since time immemorial, it would seem, there have been two basic approaches to religion, within Judaism and in the human community generally. The one sees religion as a distinct realm of life, “holy” and “sanctified” in the sense of being separate and isolated insofar as possible from the mundane realm; a place to which, as it were, man may escape from the chaos and tensions of “real” life to find solace for his tormented soul. (Is that why so many religions insist on segregation of the sexes in the realm of the holy?) The holy is perceived as a realm complete unto itself, almost hermetically sealed-off from the rest of life by a series of rules and rituals, inter alia symbolized by the physical walls of the Temple or synagogue (kedushat mehitzot; or those of the church, mosque, monastery, place of “retreat,” etc.) This approach is epitomized by the attempt to apprehend what Rudolph Otto has called Der Ganz Anders—God as the “Wholly Other,” the mysterium tremendum.

The other approach is one which sees religion as integrated within and guiding life, as attempting to sanctify life by teaching human beings how to live with themselves and with one another as beings created betzelem elohim, in the Divine image; through the study and practice of Torah as embodying ethical values and ideals; through the halakhah, which is seen first and foremost, as an instrument for teaching decent and upright behavior, thereby sanctifying everyday life. Or, if you prefer, one might speak of these as the “priestly” and “prophetic” approaches.

The point is that neither of these is “right” or “wrong”; each one reflects a part of the desired path to be followed by the religious human being. (In much the same way, God is described as both “transcendent” and “immanent,” neither one exhausting the mystery of His Being—a point particularly strongly articulated in Hasidic thought). Thus, one might argue that, by presenting us with both these codes of law, the Torah ends up, in its totality, giving us a rounded, more complete picture of how things should be than if we were to have had only one or the other.

Another point: there is an enigma in the section concerning kosher and unkosher birds in the kashrut code of Chapter 14, verses 11-20. This section begins with the verse כל צפור טהורה תאכלו (“You may eat every pure [species of] bird”), and ends with the almost identical phrase, כל עוף טהור תאכלו (“you may eat every pure winged creature”). In ordinary Hebrew usage, the words tzippor and ‘of are virtually synonymous, being used almost interchangeably to refer to birds. Indeed, the Even-Shoshan Dictionary defines ‘of as referring to vertebrates which have a beak, feathers, and wings—in other words, a bird; the word tzippor refers to the smaller members of this group. But it occurred to me, half in whimsy, that with some stretching this could be read as alluding to locusts and other winged insects which the Torah permits in Lev 9. Ibn Ezra supports this interpretation.

Re'eh (Wanderings)

“This Repetition of the Torah”

With this week’s Torah portion, we begin that part of Sefer Devarim (Deuteronomy) devoted to a systematic legal code. As I stated last week with regard to the narrative-historical-sermonic part of this book, here too a close reading with an eye to comparison with the earlier books of the Torah can be very instructive and enlightening, shedding light on the significance of this seeming repetition of what appears earlier.

And indeed, nearly all of the subjects treated in this parashah (Deut 12-16) are repetitions of subjects found earlier in the Torah: the Sanctuary or Temple; kashrut; tithes; the sabbatical year; festivals. But upon closer examination we find that, in every case, these laws are told in a different way than in the earlier books, with different emphases, and are brought here primarily—so it would seem—davka for the innovations therein.

To begin: the legal section of our parashah (the actual reading begins with a half-dozen verses that round off the more general, sermonic themes of the first three Torah portions) begins with the subject of religious worship, the service of the Almighty at a special site set apart for that purpose—a subject which dominates the latter half of Exodus (Chs. 25-31; 35–40), the first half of Leviticus (Chs. 1–16, 21-22), and scattered sections of Numbers, describing the building of the Sanctuary (forerunner of the Temple in Jerusalem), the types of sacrifices to be offered there, the laws of purity and avoidance of the numerous sources of bodily impurity, which are a sine qua non of the performance of its service, and various laws concerning the priesthood. In the corresponding chapter here, there are virtually no details of the korbanot, the specifics of the how, what, when and where of the offerings. Instead, there is a rather sweeping statement, “There you shall bring your burnt-offerings and your whole-offerings, your tithes and gift-offerings, your vows and free-will offerings and the first born of kine and flock… And you shall eat them there before the Lord your God” (12:4–5). The main idea is the centralization of worship in one place: “that place which the Lord your God shall choose from among your tribes to make His Name dwell there” (a phrase repeated a dozen or more times in the course of the parashah); all this, in stark contrast to the indigenous pagans who worship their gods “on every high mountain and hill and under every leafy tree” (ibid., v. 2).

Thus, a related subject, the flip-side of worshipping the one God, is the rejection of idolatrous worship. Whereas in the earlier books of the Torah this prohibition is stated firmly but briefly, without much elaboration, here it is a subject of central concern. Particularly important here are the social dangers of mingling with the indigenous pagan population and the need to avoid various forms of pagan proselytizing.

A third subject which looms large in our parashah is that of kashrut: those forms of flesh—mammals, fish and fowl—permitted and forbidden for consumption. At first glance, Chapter 14 is not dissimilar from Leviticus 11, even down to the specific listing, by name, of the various species of prohibited birds. But there are differences: here, it is not rooted in quite the same way in the laws of tum’ah (even though the word is mentioned here, in passing), in that it does not discuss how contact with certain carcasses may contaminate foodstuffs, vessels, etc; where possible, it is slightly more concise; there is no mention of those few species of insect—grasshoppers and locusts—which it is permitted to eat (a practice which has long since fallen into desuetude among most Jews); and, perhaps most important, it concludes with several laws of a more general nature: the prohibition against eating carcasses of animals which died by themselves and, by implications, the law of shehitah; the ban against blood; and what we know as the prohibition against cooking or eating meat and milk together, which appears in two places in Exodus in a rather strange context. The overall impressions is that we have here something like an orderly code of kashrut, of what the Israelite person may and may not eat, as a part of everyday life without being related to the sphere of the pure and the holy.

Tithes: in Numbers 18:21–32 we find the laws of tithes for Levites. Here, too, a tithe is separated from all produce, but it is consumed by Israelites when they go to the Temple on pilgrimage—what is referred to by Hazal as the “second tithe”; moreover, there is a three-year cycle, in which every third year the tithe goes to the poor instead. In other words, in addition to (or some might say, instead of) tithes and gifts to the religious functionaries (priests and Levites), the tithe serves a more general purpose for the population as a whole: to enhance the sacred celebration on pilgrimage feasts, and to help the poor and indigent (including, in passing, the Levite, who is without a homestead).

Sabbatical year: In Leviticus 25 the sabbatical year is described as “a Sabbath for the land”: no agricultural labor is done; the land lies fallow except for what grows by itself; and, instead of private ownership of its produce, all are free to help themselves to its natural yield—among other things, a social regulation that, for one year, levels off the economic differences in society. In Deut 15:1-11, this idea is complemented by the remission of all debts—a lofty ideal, giving those who have fallen into debt an opportunity to start afresh. Precisely because this idea is such a radical one, and those with money are understandably reluctant to loan it to others out of fear that it will be cancelled in the remission year, the Torah emphasizes the moral imperative of doing so, saying, roughly: Don’t bear an “evil thought” in your head that you won’t loan money to those in need because of your own selfish considerations, but do it nevertheless (vv. 9-10). This noble and generous-spirited legislation clearly reveals the primitive socialist spirit of the Torah. But halakhah and moral admonitions were of no help, and in the end, when the Sages saw that this law it was unworkable, it was legislated out of existence through the legal fiction of the prusbul. In this way the halakhah was forced to take account of the meaner realities of human nature, as otherwise no one would lend out money to anyone else (also, society and the economy became more complicated, and loans began to be made for investment and speculation, diminishing the moral character of the remission, intended to ease the burden of those that suffered real need).

Festivals: Unlike Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28-29, which detail the sacrificial offerings brought on each of the festivals (including Sabbath and Rosh Hodesh, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), here the festivals are primarily occasions for pilgrimage of “every male” to “the place which the Lord shall choose.” The only offering specifically mentioned is the Paschal offering, which is central to the observance of Pesah; otherwise, each family unit brings of whatever God has blessed them, from both livestock and field produce, to and “rejoice before the Lord your God.” The festivals, as we may infer also from the Psalms, were occasions for the whole people to be together, to be part of the “joyous multitude,” impressing upon each person not only the almost-tangible presence of God in the holy center, but also the sense of belonging to this people.

It is clear from this brief survey that the Mishneh Torah is not a simple repetition of what comes in the earlier books, but that in almost every case familiar institutions are mentioned with the addition of some new and significant element.

How are we to understand all this? One solution offered by modern scholarship is that of biblical criticism—that the Book of Deuteronomy was written by a different hand, in a different time, reflecting a different religious approach than the other books. An interesting question is whether one can be a pious, observant Jew without believing in the unity and Mosaic authorship of the Torah, but acknowledging some sort of historical development. I have addressed this issue elsewhere. (see HY X: Bamidbar –Shavuot [=Zohar]).

But there is another way of reading these texts, somewhat in the spirit of the late Rabbi Mordecai Breuer: namely, that the use of different textual layers is a kind of organic means of dealing with the multi-faceted and complex issues of human life addressed by the Torah. In this view, Devarim serves as an organic, natural complement to the earlier laws, adding new laws suitable to the new situation of a people living in its own land, as against the more sacramentally-oriented cult of the tribes living in the desert, close to the holy place. There is thus a shift of emphasis: In Leviticus, the realm of the holy is a kind of sphere unto itself, with a daily routine of sacred service somehow detached from the everyday life of society. Here, the holy place is much more a kind of focal point of society—the center to which people ascend periodically on pilgrimages, and more generally, for a gamut of offerings related to personal events.

This point is felt even more strongly in the following two parshiyot, which deal, respectively, with the institutions of society as whole (the king, the high court, the military, the prophet, etc.), and the multitude of situations encountered in family and inter-personal life. Thus, many of the laws in Shoftim and Ki Teitsei are totally new, not mentioned at all in the first four books. But that is for another time.