Hukat (Midrash)

Is there Animism in the Torah?

I have always found the second half of this weeks’ parsha (Numbers 20:14-22:1), dealing with the events of the final period before the arrival of the Israelites at the steppes of Moab, particularly strange. These chapters are infused with an archaic atmosphere, of ancient tribal wars and of a world in which inanimate objects—springs, rivers, and hillsides—seem alive with vital energy. I often ask myself the question what they are doing in the Torah altogether; they seem sui generis, utterly different from everything else in the Torah, both that which precedes it and that which follows.

Four passages, one narrative, and three short snippets of poetry, particularly exemplify this mood. I refer to: the story of the bronze serpent (Num 21:4-9); the snip of poetry about the brook Arnon, taken from the “Book of the Wars of the Lord” (vv. 14-15); the Song of the Well (17-20); and the quotation from the “bards” or “parable sayers” about the conquest of Heshbon (27-30).

1. The Bronze Serpent

At a certain point in their travels the people become impatient, and begin to complain against Moses and God. Although this is a new generation, largely born in the wilderness, their behavior is strikingly similar to the rebellions and grumblings described earlier in the book—especially to the story of the quail, of Kivrot ha-Ta’avah (11:4-34), in which the people griped about food. (As anyone who has ever been in a summer camp, a boarding school, or an army knows, this is a universal focus of discontent in large groups, often substituting for other, deeper sources of disquietude). In any event, God sent poisonous serpents against the people, many of whom died; they came to Moses, admitted their sin, and asked him to pray on their behalf; God then instructed him to make a brazen serpent, to place it on a high pole, so it would be visible everywhere, and promised that whoever looked at the serpent would be healed and live.

The problem is that all this is very reminiscent of sympathetic magic, whose central idea is that “the fate of an object or person can be governed by the manipulation of its exact image” What, then, is it doing in a fiercely monotheistic, anti-pagan and anti-magical book like the Torah? This is in fact the same idea as underlies sticking pins in a voodoo doll to injure a person, and many other magical and superstitious practices, ancient and modern. There also seems a certain kinship to totemism, or fetishism: the use and adoration of images to represent various forces of nature which, according to Emil Durkheim, was the earliest form of primitive religion. Serpents, in particular, were also used in the ancient world as a symbol of healing: thus, the Greek god of healing, Aesculapius, assumed the form of serpent; the winged snake entwined around a staff, the caduceus, has been a widely-used symbol of the medical professions from antiquity down to modern times, e.g., in the symbol of the US Army Medical Corps.

Alternatively, the use of the bronze serpent may be understood as a kind of homeopathic healing technique, perhaps based on the belief that a small quantity of material from a poisonous serpent could heal. Such remedies were known in ancient Egyptian culture. But that approach too was not without an element of magical thinking, which was contrary to Judaic approaches (see Ibn Ezra on 21:8, and Ramban on 21:9).

Indeed, this problematic aspect of Moses’ serpent came to the fore later on, during the period of the Israelite monarchy, when it became a popular object of folk worship, “Nehushtan,” to whom the people offered incense, until King Hezekiah finally destroyed it (2 Kgs 18:4). The process involved here seems to have been a move from seeing the object as symbolizing a certain power or idea, to seeing the physical object as itself embodying that power itself. This is, in fact, the precise process involved in the origin of idolatry according to Rambam’s explanation in Hilkhot Avodah Zarah, Ch. 1.

Not surprisingly, a central motif of the the midrashim and other Rabbinic comments on this subject relate to the ethical or theocentric interpretations of this incident. Thus, Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 3.8 (parallel to Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, Beshalah, Amalek, §1) says the following:

“And when Moses lifted his hand, Israel were victorious, and when he let down his hand Amalek was victorious” [Exod 17:11] And do Moses’ hands make war or break war? Rather, to teach you that so long Israel looked upwards and subjugated their hearts to their father in heaven, they would win, and if not, they would fall.

Similarly: “And the Lord said to Moses, make yourself a serpent and place it upon a pole. And whoever is bitten shall see it and live“ [Num 21:8]. And does the serpent give life or death? Rather, to teach you that so long as Israel look upwards and subjugate their hearts to their Father in Heaven, they are healed, and if not, they wax ill.

We have here a clear move from magical, quasi-pagan interpretation to the ethical: the serpent (and, in the first case, Moses’ upraised hands at the battle with Amalek) were a religious-educational tool, guiding the people towards reverence for and faith in the one true God.

The midrash on our parsha does not directly relate to the question as to why Moses made a metal image of the snakes, but rather why He sent them in the first place. It is nevertheless interesting, and indirectly sheds light on our problem. Numbers Rabbah 19:22:

“And the Lord sent among the people the burning serpents” [Num 21:6]. Why did He see fit to punish them with serpents? Because the serpent initiated [the practice of] evil speech first and was cursed, and yet they did not learn from him. The Holy One blessed be He said: Let the serpent come, who initiated evil speech, and punish those that speak evil, as is said, “he who breaks through a wall shall be bit by a serpent” [Eccles 10:8].

The serpent is seen as the very archetype of the misuse of speech, hearkening back to the primeval serpent in the Garden of Eden, who misled Eve, and through her Adam, by the use of speech. He was the first one to use speech for crafty, devious ends: to lead people astray without actually lying; to drive a wedge between those who had been friends and lived in harmony; to deliberately arouse suspicion of others within the human heart. “Evil speech,” lashon hara—in the sense of malicious, destructive speech, as opposed to idle rekhilut, “gossip,” which is also condemned, albeit not to the same degree—is a central theme both of the Midrash (see, e.g., Lev. Rab. 26.2) and of Jewish moral writing generally. The great moralist of late Eastern European Jewry, R. Israel Meir ha-Kohen, “the Hafetz Hayyim,” who is perhaps still remembered by some elderly people alive today, devoted his major work to the laws of evil speech. It would seem that Hazal condemned lashon hara so strongly because it is a uniquely human sin. More so than such “gross” sins as bloodshed and sexual licentiousness, it entails the perversion or misuse of the uniquely human faculty of speech, which may be used to elevate human life by communicating with others, sharing wisdom and knowledge of the world, its Creator, and of the significance and purpose of human life.

Another thing. Why did He punish them with serpents? Even if the serpent eats all the dainties in the world, they turn into dust in his mouth, as is said, “the serpent’s bread is dust” [Isa 65:25]. And these [i.e., Israel] eat the manna, which is transformed into many different delicacies, as is said: “and he gave them their wish” [Ps 106:15]; and it says: “these forty years the Lord your God has been with you, you have lacked for naught” [Deut 2:7]. Let the serpent come, who eats many kinds of things, and in his mouth they are one taste, and punish those who eat one thing and taste in it many things.

In this section, the sin of the people is not the malicious, destructive one of sowing discord by speech, but simple ingratitude: lack of appreciation; grumbling for no good reason; failure to be aware of the positive side of life. As we mentioned earlier, food often serves as a focus of complaints when people feel empty, dissatisfied, vaguely unhappy about their life for no definable reason. The image of the serpent’s food turning “to dust” (which is, by the way, is a midrashic “adaptation” of the verse in Isaiah, from a messianic vision—i.e., that no creature need fear being bitten and eaten alive by a snake—to a description of present actuality) is a powerful one, making the serpent into a living symbol of the moral turpitude involved in ungratefulness.

“The fiery serpents”—that burn the soul [i.e., poison the person]. R. Yudan said: “the fiery serpents”—that the cloud used to burn them up and make of them a boundary for the camp. To inform you that the very miracles that the Holy One blessed be He made for them, He turned against them.

The Serpent and the Heifer

It is instructive to examine the problem of magic, raised in relation to the bronze serpent, by comparing a midrash relating to the earlier part of the parsha, concerning the red heifer (parah adumah). Numbers Rabbah 19.8:

A certain pagan asked Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai: these things that you do [i.e., the ritual described in Numbers 19] seem like magic. You take a cow and burn it and pulverize it, and then you take its ashes, and if one of you has been contaminated by contact with the dead you sprinkle two or three drops on him, and you say: You are clean. He replied to him: Have you ever been possessed by an evil spirit? He replied: No. Have you ever seen a person who has been possessed by an evil spirit? He said to him: Yes. And what did you do to him? He said to him: We bring certain roots and burn them underneath him, and we throw water on it, and it [the spirit] flees. He said to him: Let your ears hear what your mouth says. So too this spirit is also an impure spirit, as is written: “and I shall also cause the [false] prophets and the impure spirits to pass away from the land” [Zech 13:2]. We sprinkle the purifying water, and he flees.

Astonishingly, R. Yohanan seems to accept the pagan’s argument, and to agree that the ritual of parah adumah is comparable to various procedures known in the pagan world for the exorcism of evil spirits. The argument seems to be that all these practices are legitimate and have some quasi-natural basis; just as they exist in pagan culture, so too do they have their counterpart in Judaism. He even invokes a proof text from Zechariah to confirm the reality of “evil spirits.” Of course, the line between what we would call “magic” and what was considered in those days as “science” was rather hazy; in any event, there was widespread acceptance of the scientific or material culture of the day by Jewish sages. (It has been suggested that the varying attitudes to astrology among the rishonim, the medieval European sages, was based upon the general acceptance of its scientific, empirical validity by most of the surrounding culture; Rambam’s opposition to it, as almost a minority of one, was perhaps based on a differing scientific purview.)

After he went on his way, the disciples turned to him [R. Yohanan]: Our Master, you have dismissed him away with a straw. What can you tell us? He said to them: By your lives, the dead body does not contaminate nor does the water render pure. Rather, thus said the Holy One blessed be He: I have hammered out a statute, I have ordered an edict, and you are not allowed to question it, as is written: “this is the statute of the Torah” [Num 19:2].

But all the above is only “on the face of it.” Rabban Yohanan had given the pagan an answer he didn’t really believe in, as a purely polemical move, but his disciples remained deeply troubled by the implications of the question: are there really mitzvot of the Torah that contain magical elements? He is quick to dispel any such thoughts, just as the mishnah rejected a magical explanation of the effect of the bronze serpent: the mitzvot are the expression of the Divine will. But there is an important difference in the two answers: in the former case, the gesture of looking up to the serpent was seen as based upon the moral, educational lesson to be derived therefrom; here, the ritual of the heifer is seen as totally inscrutable, as an expression of the Divine Will, to be obeyed without necessarily having any understanding or providing any rational explanation for them. (This is of course a central theme in contemporary Orthodox polemics. I have discussed various aspects of this issue in some detail in previous years; see HY I: Shelah Lekha, Korah, Hukkat).

But there is yet another twist to this discussion:

And why are all the sacrifices male, and this one female? R. Aibo said: This may be compared to the son of a maidservant who soiled the palace of the king. The king said: let its mother come and clean its filth. Thus said the Holy One blessed be He: Let the heifer [i.e., an adult cow] come and atone for the act of the Calf.

Here, the law of the heifer is no longer treated as a divine fiat, but as a religious symbol: as an act of atonement for the sin of the Golden Calf. This is in itself interesting: the incident of the Calf is seen by the Midrash and much of Jewish thought as the paramount sin in Israel’s history, requiring constant, ongoing atonement, even generations later (see my discussion of this motif in HY I: Hukkat). Interestingly, Rashi has a separate, second, symbolic commentary on the meaning of this ritual, “based upon R. Moshe ha-Darshan.” In any event, it is interesting that a symbolic approach to religious ritual, rather than invocation of arbitrary authority, seems to have the last word, at least here.

2. The Song of the Spring

The second puzzling passage in this Torah portion is the “Song of the Well” (Num 21:17-20): a brief song addressed to a well, perhaps the well that accompanied them in the desert in supernatural manner.

The animistic belief in a numinous power vested in springs and rivers is well known and documented for the ancient Near East. The 19th century Semiticist, W. Robertson Smith, notes that “springs are viewed as seats of spirits and the peasant women ask their permission before drawing water.” But animism clearly does not figure in the Bible; monotheism, by its very nature, has no room for such a multitude of demi-gods, spirits, and jinns. Thus, the call to the well must be seen as no more than rhetorical flourish, a poetic metaphor.

But this passage, even if not motivated by pagan or animistic ways of thinking, is puzzling because, like the other two brief bits of poetry in the same chapter, to be treated presently, it does not seem to convey any special “religious” message. Rather, all three passages represent secular, possibly heroic, celebratory poetry, of noble deeds. Thus, this song celebrates those responsible for the well (“the well; it was dug by the princes, carved out by the nobles of the people…”)—either those who physically performed the digging, those who financed it, or the leaders of the people, the elders who sponsored and initiated this project. Rashi, following Targum Onkelos, says that this refers to Moses and Aaron. Our midrash, on the other hand (Num. Rab. 19.26), is puzzled by the absence of any explicit mention of either God or Moses. This poem was nevertheless considered significant religiously: it was sung in the Temple every third Shabbat afternoon, alternating with the two parts of the Song of the Sea (see Rosh Hashana 31a).

The word mehokek used here refers to those who hold the staff—i.e., the leaders: either those who hold royal power (as in the enigmatic blessing given to Judah in Gen 49:10), or the lawgivers and teachers of Torah, as in the Targumim and the tannaitic midrash. The Dead Sea Scrolls, in Damascus Covenant (CD vi 2-11), sees it as both.

The well itself also serves as a powerful symbol of Torah. Jacob Milgrom mentions a panel at the Dura Europos synagogue (3rd century CE)—a kind of visual midrash, if you will—in which the well, located in the middle of the camp, divides into twelve streams, bringing water directly to each of the twelve tribes.

In any event, water was a major preoccupation in ancient times due to its scarcity in desert and semi-desert climes, and its vital importance for all life. The disputes between Isaac and the Philistines over the ownership of wells, their being filled in and reopening (Gen 26:15-22), come readily to mind, as does one of the stories of the naming of Beer-sheva, the oasis of water in the midst of the desert (ibid., 32-33). Perhaps there is also an internal connection in our parsha itself between the Song of the Well and the account of Moses seeking water and hitting the rock (20:1-12). This story, which follows on the heels of the death of Miriam, relates in turn to the tradition that a miraculous well traveled through the desert with Israel thanks to her merit, disappearing upon her death (Rashi ad loc.; Ta’anit 9a).

Water is a serious concern in the Middle East in modern times as well, albeit not couched in spiritual terms. A major water concession was an important component of the peace treaty with Jordan; the issue of subterranean aquifers will doubtless be one of the serious issues with the Palestinians, if we ever get to the point of even entertaining the possibility of harmonious relations; Israel is plagued by serious water problems right now, for which no one in the government seems willing to take responsibility; in this last case, there seems to be an excess of “faith” that everything will work out (“yihyeh tov”—the all purpose Israeli answer).

The association of the well with Miriam is intriguing. There seems to be a deep symbolic connection between wells and femininity. Sefat Emet (Hukkat 5649, s.v. ba’inyan) draws a comparison between the Song of the Sea, uttered in response to the overt miracle of the splitting of the Reed Sea, which the Israelites triumphantly crossed as free men; and this song, which alludes to a hidden, subtle, unobserved sort of miracle. “Satim vegalya.” There are hidden processes involved in the underground flow of water that sustains life; may these be connected, associatively, with the eternal feminine? This contrast between revealed and hidden likewise relates to the contrast between Shabbat and weekday, between revealed, written Torah and Oral Torah—the latter reflecting labor in Torah, the Torah “written on a person’s limbs,” the Torah as a field of mutual human/divine creativity.

3. Is it not written in the Book of the Wars of the Lord?

The passage in 21:14-16 quotes an otherwise unknown book called “The Book of the Wars of the Lord.” Ibn Ezra suggests that this, like Sefer ha-Yashar mentioned in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Sam 1:18, was an ancient book containing songs celebrating Israel’s early victories. Both titles were later used by classical rishonim—Ramban and Rabbenu Tam—as titles for their own halakhic works, but that is of course a horse of an entirely different color.

One interesting reading gives this passage a more religious sense, but requires reworking of the traditional Masoretic vocalization: “the Book of the Wars: The Lord came in a whirlwind [sufah] to the wadi of Arnon…” etc. Here vahev is interpreted as a rare verb, meaning “to come.”

4. The Saying of the “Bards” or “Parable Sayers”

The last of these brief poems, 21:27-30, concerns the conquest of Moab, and is quoted as something said by the anonymous moshlim—the “bards” or “parable sayers.” The term mashal is used for a wide variety of short sayings: from pithy folk maxims (Milgrom gives the examples of 1 Sam 24:14 and 1 Kgs 20:11) and mocking, taunt songs against an enemy, as in Isa 14:4; Micah 2:4, through to parables, proverbs, riddles, and allegories. Thus Samson is asked a mashal, Jotham’s parable in Judges 9 is called such, but so also are Balaam’s poems (“and he lifted his parable and said”), Job’s discourses, and of course the contents of the Book of Proverbs.

The interesting thing about this poem is that it does not describe Israel’s conquest of Sihon at the time, but hearkens back to the Amorites’ earlier defeat of Moab, the original inhabitants of this territory. The legitimacy of the Israelite conquest of Heshbon is a motif repeated several times in the Bible: in Jephthah’s justification of the Israelite presence there (Jdg 11), in Jeremiah 48, and elsewhere (cf. Num Rab 19.35; Hullin 60b). The difficulty is that it would have been unjust for them to conquer this territory directly from Moab, as Israel was commanded not to harass Moab (Deut 2:9); instead, the Amorites took it from them at a certain stage, and in the desert period Israel conquered it from them in turn.

An Afterword on Statutes

As mentioned earlier, the chapter of the red heifer (better, simply: “cow”) is frequently invoked as the example par excellence of the ultimately inexplicable nature of the laws of the Torah, and the need to observe them with an attitude of acquiescent obedience, as Divine edicts (hukim).

My way of looking at this today is that the perception of mitzvot as “above human understanding” is an important moment in religious experience, but not the whole of it. The tendency today in much of Orthodox education to stress the element of submissiveness, of accepting authority, of the arbitrary nature of the Torah, seems to me problematic. There is also room for human creativity, for understanding, for the cultivation of a Torah-informed human ethical conscience that interacts with the received halakhah. Rav Kook wrote that that which contradicts natural morality cannot be the true Torah teaching; a contradiction between the two is a sign of the need for further examination and deeper understanding of one or the other—or perhaps both. There is nevertheless a bottom line, that on a certain level our commitment to Torah is not axiologically dependent upon our own understanding.

It recently occurred to me that there is yet another way of looking at this issue. The emphasis on Torah as hukkim can be seen as implying a certain valuation of innocence, of simplicity, of walking with God with an uncomplicated wholeness (if need be, a kind of “second naivete” à la Foucault): holekh tamim as a kind of counterpoint to an excessive sophistication, to over-intellectualization of life. Medieval Christianity celebrated the figure of the “holy fool”; there seem to have been similar elements, at least in early Hasidism.

All this is especially important in the context of the Jewish people, whose culture has long tended to overemphasize “head stuff” at the expense of other qualities. My ex-wife introduced me to the wonderfully ironic expression used by German Jews, “ein Normalisch Jüdisch wünderkind” (“a normal Jewish wonderchild”)—as if to say, it is only normal and expected for a Jewish child to be bright (and think of the burden this puts on the merely average!). At times this obsession with brains is almost pathological—especially among modern Jews, who abandoned religion and translated the value of Torah study into secular terms: the celebration of intelligence, knowledge and culture per se. As a youth, I knew assimilated European Jews who seriously thought that we are the chosen people because “we’re smarter than everybody else.”

Early Zionism, with its celebration of a healthy body, of hard physical labor, of a closer relation to nature and the outdoors, was one kind of reaction against this. The emphasis on temimut, on a kind of simplicity and straightforwardness in ones way of standing before God, may be seen as a certain religious reaction to this. Besides everything else, the dispute between Hasidism and Mitnaggedism was waged over the issue of book learning, of head-oriented piety vs. a more emotional, integral, simpler, wholistic service of God.

It is important for bright people in particular to seek simplicity, due to the danger of worshipping their own intellectual powers in an almost idolatrous way. This is my reading of Shlomo Carlebach—the central choice that fixed his life trajectory was the choice of the emotional qualities above intellective ones. A brilliant yeshiva student, an iluy, he left all that behind to become a Jewish minstrel, a teacher of the heart, speaking a very simple, direct language (of both words ad music), without serpentine, dialectic complexities.

To conclude with Midrash: several of the midrashim relate to the figure of King Solomon, “the wisest of all men,” whose braininess was his downfall. Thus, Sanhedrin 21b:

R. Yitzhak said: Why were the reasons for the Torah not revealed? For in two passages the reason was revealed, and the greatest person in the world stumbled therein. It is written: “He should not have too many wives [that they not lead his heart astray”; Deut 17:17]. Solomon said: I can have many wives, and they shall not lead me astray. And it says, “And in Solomon’s old age his wives led his heart astray [after other gods, and his heart was not whole with the Lord”; 1 Kgs 11:4; see ff., 5-10, about his building them pagan temples and altars close to Jerusalem]. And it is written “He should not multiply horses [and not return the people to Egypt”; Deut 17:16]. Solomon said: I shall multiply, and I shall not return the people. And it says, “And his chariot went out from Egypt… ” [1 Kgs 10:29]