The Reform Baal T'shuvah

Gilad is home

2011-10-18T13:31:00.002-05:00

I would have preferred
If he came on eagle's wings
Than for this ransom

How does one of us
Redeem a thousand of them?
Here he is, with us.

The willow branches
The sweet scent of the etrog
Gilad Shalit free

יותר שמחתי
אם בא על כנפות נשר
מפדיון הזה

איך יפדה אחד
ממנו אלף מהם
כאן הוא אתנו

ערבי הנחל
ריח מתוק של אתרוג
שליט בן חורין

D'var Yitro 5771, Delivered at Beth Jacob Congregation 22 Jan 11

2011-01-23T11:21:00.006-06:00

Dvar Yitro 5771

Rich Furman

Last week we read Parshat Beshallach, during which many wonderful things happen. The Israelites find themselves between a sea and an approaching army, and the sea splits, they become frightened because there is not water to drink, and water is provided. They are fearful from lack of food, and lo and behold, food falls out of the sky (the best we merit in Minnesota is snow). The Parsha, in addition to being called Beshallach, for its first word and Shirah for the song at the sea, is also known as Parshat HaMann - for the manna that fell from the skies to sustain the Israelites.

It has become customary in some communities to recite parshat hamon as a “segullah” for “parnassah.” These two terms are both somewhat problematic. In common, contemporary usage “segullah” has come to mean a charm for luck or fortune. “Parnassah” first appeared in Mishnaic Hebrew meaning sustenance(Sokoloff, 935), but these days may mean a bit more than just sustenance.

The Artscroll siddur gives us a small insight into the custom in its introduction to it:

The Commentators cite the Yerushalmi that one who recites this chapter every day is assured that his food will not be lacking. Levush explains that God provides each day's sustenance - just as He provided the manna each day in the Wilderness (Artscroll Interlinear Siddur, 253)

It appears that the custom, when it first emerged did so as a reminder that our sustenance comes from God and is not the work of our own hands, as is written:

וְזָֽכַרְתָּ אֶת־יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהֶיךָ כִּי הוּא הַנֹּתֵן לְךָ כֹּחַ לַֽעֲשׂוֹת חָיִל לְמַעַן הָקִים אֶת־בְּרִיתוֹ אֲשֶׁר־נִשְׁבַּע לַֽאֲבֹתֶיךָ כַּיּוֹם הַזֶּֽה:(דברים ח"יח)

You shall remember Adonai your God, that it is he who gives you strength to make wealth, in order to establish his covenant that he swore to your fathers as of this day. (Deuteronomy 8:18).

And yet, as people talk about this, they look forward to parshat Beshallach as a propitious time to entreat God for sustenance, or even wealth.

The drift from reminder to segullah, from mezuzah to amulet, from reading to incantation, is a drift in the relationship between a symbol and its meaning, it is a product of the fact that any symbol you might care to name is potentially multivalent in meaning. Torah is extremely cautious with this, and in Parshat Yitro we find both the perfect example of the problem, and a perhaps too idealistic outline of the solution.

The moment of the revelation at Sinai is a curious moment; It begins with our text telling us how God tells Moses to prepare the Israelites:

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָֹה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה לֵךְ אֶל־הָעָם וְקִדַּשְׁתָּם הַיּוֹם וּמָחָר וְכִבְּסוּ שִׂמְלֹתָֽם: וְהָיוּ נְכֹנִים לַיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי כִּי | בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִשִׁי יֵרֵד יְהוָֹה לְעֵינֵי כָל־הָעָם עַל־הַר סִינָֽי:(שמות י"ט: י"-י"א)

God said to Moses “Go to the people and sanctify them today and tomorrow; they shall wash their clothes. They shall be ready on the third day, for on the third day Adonai will descend before the eyes of all the whole nation upon Mount Sinai.”(Ex. 19:10-11)

The actual delivery of this message is rather different:

וַיֵּרֶד מֹשֶׁה מִן־הָהָר אֶל־הָעָם וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֶת־הָעָם וַֽיְכַבְּסוּ שִׂמְלֹתָֽם: וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל־הָעָם הֱיוּ נְכֹנִים לִשְׁלשֶׁת יָמִים אַֽל־תִּגְּשׁוּ אֶל־אִשָּֽׁה:(שם, י"ד-ט"ו)

Moses descended from the mountain to the people. He sanctified the people and they washed their clothing. He said to the people “Be ready for three days, don’t go near a woman.”(Ibid, 14-19)

That Moses here is injecting a misogyny into the moment that God did not command is noted by Ellen Frankel in the Five Books of Miriam (117-118). Indeed, even the קול סתם, the narrative voice of Torah, tells us that Moses addresses “העם” whereas God told him to address "כל־העם", thus suggesting that Moses did not do all of what he was told. The injection of that misogyny, however, is not the main problem with this disparity, but rather that the change took place at all. This introduces the fundamental problem of mediated experience: the mediator necessarily changes the message.

So the third day arrives, and the people have prepared themselves according to Moses’ instructions. God sends Moses to fetch Aaron up the mountain, and to warn the Israelites not to come too close. After this, God speaks the ten utterances to the people, who, stunned, say to Moses:

דַּבֶּר־אַתָּה עִמָּנוּ וְנִשְׁמָעָה וְאַל־יְדַבֵּר עִמָּנוּ אֱלֹהִים פֶּן־נָמֽוּת:(שם, ט"ז)

YOU speak with us and we will listen, but don’t let God speak to us lest we die.(ibid: 16)

The Israelites at Sinai may not know it, but we know that Moses is not necessarily a reliable transmitter of divine intent, because we have just seen how he added “don’t go near a woman” to God’s instructions on their preparations. Moses’ editorial license will ultimately be his undoing when the act of striking a rock he was told to speak to becomes the reason God does not let him enter the land. But this particular moment, when all of the people have just had direct communication from God, and decided that they would prefer that Moses continue to mediate can, I think, be said to be where our troubles begin.

The first commandment is:

אָֽנֹכִי יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר הֽוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבֵּית עֲבָדִֽים:

I am Adonai your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt, out of the slave house.

This statement defines a relationship and specifies its basis. God puts forth an I-Thou sentiment in the first clause saying, in essence, I am yours. The people are afraid of that relationship.

Then we have the second commandment, beginning:

לֹא־יִֽהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים עַל־פָּנָֽי:

You will have no other gods before me.

This is an interesting statement. At first glance it is a demand for exclusivity, however, I would like to suggest that another possible meaning of this is that nothing else should be used as an intermediary with God. And yet we find that instead of accepting the face-to-face relationship with God that is offered, the people would rather have Moses between them and God.

Commenting on the phrase על פני which he understands to mean “with me,” Ibn Ezra notes that

Its meaning is: do not make forms that receive powers from above and think that you make them for My glory, in that they will serve as an intermediary between Me and you . . . The meaning of with me thus is: I have no need for intermediaries to be with me.(IE, 437)

With the first two commandments, God tries to implement a system where nothing stands between Himself and Israel, where there is no potential for miscommunication and no symbols whose meaning can drift, but at the end of the revelation, the Israelites want Moses for a intermediary. While God does not need an intermediary, the people, it seems, do.

The problem with an intermediary is that it becomes easy to mistake the intermediary for the power it represents. Thus when Moses, who has just ceased in the eyes of the people to be a human being, and has become instead an avatar for Adonai, appears to have died on Sinai, the people demand an idol.

Ibn Ezra argues that Aaron’s intent in making the golden calf was that it should be an avatar for the divine presence(IE 660-661). This is understandable, first the people put Moses between themselves and God, next they will use a statue. Aaron takes a great deal of care with this statue, that its purpose as an avatar for Adonai should remain at the forefront of everyone’s consciousness, declaring upon it completion that the next day would be a feast for Adonai. But nonetheless there are those among the Israelites who declare:

אֵלֶּה אֱלֹהֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר הֶֽעֱלוּךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם:

These are your gods, Israel. that brought you up from the land of Egypt.

The problem with an idol is that it has no intrinsic meaning. The prohibition on idol and image making that follows upon “you shall have no other gods before me” recognizes this fact and acknowledges that any symbol can have a meaning other than what its maker intends. It is in this way that Ibn Ezra can suppose that Aaron made the golden calf as a vessel for Adonai, while others may describe it as something else entirely.

One can see over the course of Israel’s story - first as a man, then as a people - an increasing abstraction of the relationship.

When Jacob survived his wrestling match, he declared: “I have seen God face to face and my soul endured.”

When the Israelites received direct revelation at Sinai, they were overwhelmed saying: “YOU speak with us and we will listen, but don’t let God speak to us lest we die.”

And at the end of Ki Tissa God appears to cede their point, telling Moses: “You cannot see my face, for mankind cannot see me and live.

With greater abstraction comes greater use of symbols, and so now we find ourselves entrusted with the care of a religion rich with symbol and ritual, from tefillin and mezuzot, to shabbat candles and chanukkah lights, to the symbols that adorn our seder table and our sukkot. It is important for us to remember that the symbols are not there to grant us wealth or protection, but rather to remind us of that moment when we stood face to face with the ineffable and heard “אנכי יהוה אלהיך אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים מבית עבדים:;” may we be ever mindful of it.

Shabbat Shalom

Works Cited

Frankel, Ellen. The Five Books of Miriam. San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1998.

The Schottenstein Edition Siddur. Mesorah Publications Ltd, 2002

Sokoloff, Michael. A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002.

Strickman, H. Norman, et.al. Ibn Ezra's Commentary on the Pentateuch: Exodus. (IE) Menorah, 1997.

Experiments in applied zymurgy.

2010-09-27T14:00:00.002-05:00

We had our Pear Tree removed right before the High Holidays, and the arborist left the fruit for us on tarps, and so, on Sunday of Labor Day weekend, some friends came over, and helped us grind and press the fruit. We pasteurized the raw cider, because the fruit was not in perfect shape, and we cooled it, transferred it to to a fermenter and pitched some English Cider Yeast. We left the fermenter - a three gallon carboy with an airlock - in a cool, dark closet until the day of Erev Sukkot, at which point we bottled directly from the fermenter.

The Cider was good; but that's not what this story is about.

This story is about what happened when the baker in me saw all that yeast at the bottom of the fermenter. The thought that it would be a shame to let it go to waste occurred simultaneously with the thought to which, according to Terry Pratchett, most human made disasters can be attributed: "I wonder what happens if I do this?"

"This," in this case, was to use the yeast that was in the fermenter to make bread.

The wife was skeptical. Cider yeast is not bread yeast, she warned me. The results might not taste good, or might be explosive, or it might not rise at all. Nonetheless, I transferred the yeast into a small jar, fed it a bit of flour, sugar and water, and stuck it in the fridge, and then sanitized and put away the fermenting tools.

When I made my Challah, I used the last of my bread yeast, and I still wanted to bake for a sukkah party we were having. And there was my jar of English cider yeast, waiting patiently in the unemployment line for their next project after having fermented our Sukkot Cider (5771). I told the wife that the worst case scenario is that we end up picking up something at Breadsmith for the party guests, and proceeded to run a batch of something I call "simple bread" in the bread machine using the dough cycle. I looked in on it, and it was far too sticky, so I added flour and re-ran the mixing/kneading cycle, and let it complete.

The dough was still stickier than I wanted to work with, but this was attributable to my failure to consider the liquid that came in with the yeast as part of the total liquid. I sucked it up and shaped the stuff into two boules and a tasting roll, gave it a second rise, and popped it in the oven.

18 minutes later it came out, and apart from a few painful mishaps getting it to the cooling racks, all went well. The tasting roll met with my wife's approval - though I was afraid I was allergic to it. My lips were swelling. Could I be allergic to the cider yeast? Would I be allergic to both the bread and the Cider.

I then rubbed my eye and realized, painfully, that it was not the bread I was reacting to - I had merely forgotten to wash up between seeding a hot pepper for dinner and splitting the roll. Wife had gotten the half that had not been in the pepper hand.

When I served the Boules, they were greeted enthusiastically. It had a crumb similar to most sour dough boules I tasted, but tasted like . . . . cider. It's olive oil mopping powers were widely acclaimed, and of course it paired very well with the cider which had been fermented by the same yeast.

The jar of yeast lives in my fridge, I expect it will slowly develop a sour over the generations, as wild yeast join the colony, but I would call this a success.

The challenge now, as with any chance discovery, is to achieve repeatability.

Dvar Pinchas 5770

2010-07-18T18:24:00.001-05:00

Morgan and I spent a week in Jerusalem last year, and we have since lamented getting on the plane back on multiple occasions. For the most part I felt safer there than I ever do in Minnesota. Like New York, Jerusalem lacks the small town duplicity on which Garrison Keillor and Howard Mohr have built their careers. But I did have one moment of great apprehension when I was there.

It was in the cool of the evening, and I was headed for the Kotel with Chaim Stern’s Paths of Faith tucked underneath my arm. It was a beautiful walk, and I could smell pretzels baking just outside Robinson’s Arch. I passed easily through security and onto the plaza. Yeshivot tower over the Kotel, and everywhere were bochurs davvening ma’ariv out of the Artscroll siddurs that positively littered the place, and as for me I pulled out Stern, and I too davenned ma’ariv. With the matriarchs. In editing “Paths” Rabbi Stern zt”l did not miss a chance to pair the word “avot” with “imahot.” And I knew that if I was overheard uttering them, well, things would not necessarily go well for me. This did not stop me from praying aloud, even in this place of zealots, because I believe that our willingness to utter prayer aloud and put it into the world is one of the things that makes it efficacious. What I felt was a sacred fear, a quiet certainty that this recognition of the personhood of half of humanity was a necessary thing to bring to the men’s side of the Kotel.

And so we come to the verse which gives this week’s Parsha its name.

פִּֽינְחָס בֶּן־אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן־אַֽהֲרֹן הַכֹּהֵן הֵשִׁיב אֶת־חֲמָתִי מֵעַל בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּקַנְאוֹ אֶת־קִנְאָתִי בְּתוֹכָם וְלֹֽא־כִלִּיתִי אֶת־בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּקִנְאָתִֽי:

Pinchas son of El’azar, son of Aaron the priest has diverted my anger from upon the children of Israel; by his zeal [turned] my zeal from among them so I have not made an end of the children of Israel in my jealousy(Num 25:11).

Pinchas had it easy. When the Shimonite Zimri brought the Midianite Cozbi into the tent, Pinchas knew he was looking at a capital crime for which a verdict and a sentence had been handed down. By acting upon it, he saved the people from annihilation. Whether the crime was “cohabiting with a heathen woman,” as is suggested in the Talmud (BT Sanh. 81b-82a), or the violation of the tabernacle, as Richard Elliott Friedman suggests(Friedman, 513), Pinchas knew what action he had to take, and that he took that action for the sake of saving the Israelites is argued by R. Aharon Kotler:

Pinchas actually performed a kindness resembling the merciful deeds of his father Aaron. By slaying Zimri, he rescued the entire people from death at the hands of Heaven, for they were all guilty of tolerating evil in their midst.(Weissman, 358)

It’s a nice drash, the sort that one comes up with when one feels that something reprehensible has taken place, but the event has been condoned by God. It has the feel of rationalization, because this extra-judicial killing is very disconcerting to a tradition that prides itself on the difficulty with which it can arrive at a death penalty. Our sages of blessed memory struggle with this. The Mishnah states:

IF ONE STEALS THE KISWAH[Temple vessels],23 OR CURSES BY ENCHANTMENT, OR COHABITS WITH A HEATHEN [LIT. SYRIAN] WOMAN, HE IS PUNISHED BY ZEALOTS.(BT Sanh. 81b)

But what we find in the Gemara would appear to render this a descriptive rather than a prescriptive statement, for

Rabbah b. Bar Hana said in R. Johanan's name: If [a zealot] comes to take counsel [whether to punish the transgressors enumerated in the Mishnah], we do not instruct him to do so. What is more, had Zimri forsaken his mistress and Phinehas slain him, Phinehas would have been executed on his account; and had Zimri turned upon Phinehas and slain him, he would not have been executed, since Phinehas was a pursuer [seeking to take his life].(BT Sanh. 82a)

In other words, if a zealot acts, it will be without the consent of the sages. The Mishnah, thus, is prevented from rising to the level of practical law. Moreover, unless the act the zealot is responding to remains uninterrupted, the zealot runs the risk of execution by order of the Sanhedrin, but the transgressor does not. In the case where the transgressor is not “punished by zealots,” however the Gemara provides a prooftext from Malachi that God will deal with it:

The Lord will cut off the men that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the Lord of Hosts. (Malachi 2:12).

The overall impression is that the sages would prefer that those who commit the transgressions described in the Mishnah receive their punishment from God rather than man. This solution, however, does not address the anxiety, expressed by Rav Kotler above, that God’s punishment might prove to be communal rather than individual. The problem is that, all too often, communal punishment from heaven is truly in the eye of the beholder, and such differences in perception lead to infighting within the Jewish community. This kind of tension can be seen when Rav Ovadiah Yosef, the spiritual leader of Shas, says in a shiur

[A woman] needs to take care not to lay tefillin. There are stupid women who come to the Western Wall, don tallit and pray. They are idiots, they want equality, their desire is not for the sake of heaven. It is necessary to denounce them and to be wary(אטינגר, my translation).

Rav Yosef’s language seems to compare the Women of the Wall to Korach and his company, alluding to that controversy which is not for the sake of heaven. What’s worse, is there may even be in here an actual call to violence. The word in his speech which I have here rendered as “denounce” is “להוקיע.” To an audience that is literate in both Modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew, it is a dangerous double entendre, being the very same verb that is used to describe the punishment that is to be meted out to the communal leaders who had attached themselves to Baal Peor, as is written:

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה קַח אֶת־כָּל־רָאשֵׁי הָעָם וְהוֹקַע אוֹתָם לַיהוָֹה נֶגֶד הַשָּׁמֶשׁ וְיָשֹׁב חֲרוֹן אַף־יְהוָֹה מִיִּשְׂרָאֵל
Adonai said to Moses, take all the heads of the people and hang (הוֹקַע) them for Adonai opposite the sun so the fury of Adonai’s anger will be averted from Israel. (Num. 25:4)

Brown, Driver and Briggs state that הוקע, the hif’il imperative of יקע is “some solemn form of execution, but mng uncertain.” In Numbers Rabbah on this verse, however, Rabban Judan is quite certain of the meaning, explaining the punishment using the word תלה, meaning hung(Numbers R. 20:23).

Given an audience who would not only recognize the biblical meaning of the word, but would also understand it as an allusion to this very event in which all Israel was endangered, and saved by a zealot, we can see clearly how this utterance can result first in the arrest of Nofrat Frenkel for - I forget, was it leining from a sefer torah, or intent to lein from a sefer Torah? - to the assault of Noa Raz at a Beer Sheva bus stop for sporting strap marks from having laid tefillin.

The reward for zealotry that our parsha opens with strikes me not so much as troubling as ambiguous. Pinchas is essentially assigned the position of warrior-priest, chaplain to the army that will avenge the matter of Baal peor, and the only Levite to serve in this campaign. It is as if the Holy Blessed One looked upon him and said, “this is how you want to be, let’s put you where you can channel that energy.” It is a matching of talent to career more than it is a reward. It is also an expression by God that Pinchas, and the behavior he exhibits, must be taken out of the mainstream and sanctified within the priesthood, in order to contain this sort of recklessness.

And yet, we cannot let ourselves off the hook this easily, for there is another story that is told about Pinchas in the Talmud: that while Moses and the Elders were standing around debating whether Zimri and Cozbi were committing a capital offense, it was then that Pinchas took up his spear and acted(Sanh. 82a). With too much talk, too much deliberation, the leaders of the people stood idly by while a zealot made history committing what should have been a capital crime. There are moments in life where it is absolutely vital that we act in accordance with our consciences, because if we spend too much time on the sidelines of history second guessing ourselves, we will let the Pinchases of the world write our history.

Works Cited

Brown, Francis et.al. The Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999.

Friedman, Richard. Commentary on the Torah. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.

Kantrowitz, David, Judaic Classics. Davka Corporation: 2004 (All references to Babylonian Talmud and Midrash Rabbah)

Weissman, Moshe, The Midrash Says: The Narrative of the Weekly Torah-portion in the Perspective of Our Sages (Bamidbar). Benei Yakov Publications, 1980.

אטינגר, יאיר. 'הרב עובדיה יוסף: נשים המתעטפות בטלית ומניחות תפילין הן "טיפשות."' הערץ Online פורסם ב
- . http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1126528.html 23:25 7, Nov 09

The words of Ovadiah Yosef cited from Ettinger:

"תפילין היא צריכה להיזהר לא לשים. יש טיפשות שבאות לכותל המערבי, שמות טלית ומתפללות. אלו שוטים. רוצות שוויון, לא רוצים שם שמיים, צריך להוקיע אותן ולהיזהר", אמר הרב.

D'var Bo 5770: Kick My People Out

2010-01-24T20:11:00.006-06:00

Kick My People Out: The Challenge of Choosing Freedom
Dvar on Parshat Bo 5770, Rich Furman
Delivered at Beth Jacob Congregation 23 January 2010

Whenever I read the story of the Exodus in the Torah, I think about the phrase “let my people go.” We’ve grown up hearing it, we watched Charlton Heston deliver it to Yul Brynner in that film whose storyboard was received by Moses at Sinai and transmitted by the chain of tradition to Cecil B. DeMille - The Ten Commandments. Many of us sing it in the spiritual “Go Down Moses” around the Seder Table each year. It conjures up images of a people yearning to be free, held back only by the hard heart of Pharaoh. There’s only one problem: It’s not completely clear that this is what the text says, even if the JPS translation in our pew Chumash would have us believe otherwise. “Let my people go” is not the only possible rendering of ".שלח את עמי" The word שלח here is the pi’el imperative of the root ש'ל'ח' which means “send.” However, in the pi’el binyan, it does not merely mean send, but rather, “dismiss,” “send away,” or even “cast out”(BDB 1018-1019). The words that Moses brings from God to Pharaoh thus may be a bit more forceful than “Let my people go;” perhaps more on the order of “kick my people out.”

Back in Parshat Shemot God responds to Moshe’s complaint that his first attempt to get Pharaoh to release the Israelites was rebuffed by telling Moshe “עתה תראה אשר אעשה לפרעה כי ביד חזקה ישלחם וביד חזקה יגרשם מארצו:” “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh so with a strong hand he will dismiss them and with a strong hand he will expel them from his land”(Ex. 6:1). Rashi comments on this verse saying “He will drive them out against their will so that they will not have a chance to prepare provisions [for the journey]. And so it is said: ‘The Egyptians pressed the people - to hurry and send them away.’(Ex. 12:33)”(Rashi on Ex. 6:1). The miracle of the Exodus is not that God persuaded Pharaoh to release a people that was longing for freedom, but rather that God compelled Pharaoh to expel the Israelites from Egypt. One would think that given the oppression the Israelites were experiencing at the hands of the Egyptians, such that their groans rose before the heavenly throne, they would be chomping at the bit to get out, but this was not the case.

On the phrase “סבלת מצרים, the burdens of Egypt” at Ex. 6:6, Simchah Bunem of Przysucha comments:

Even though the slavery was hard and crushing, nevertheless they became accustomed to the bitterness and bore the burden and the distress patiently [punning on the similarity of the words for patience (סבלנות) and burdens (סבלות)]. They regarded their situation as natural. Said the Holy One, “Since already they are not healthy, nor do they sense the bitterness of their lot, the danger would be great to detain the redemption any longer.” (Kushner and Olitzky, 71)

What Rav Bunem is noting here is that the Israelites have come to regard as acceptable, as par for the course, conditions to which no human being should be subject. How one arrives at such an acceptance of such conditions we can learn by examining how learned helplessness is acquired.

Andrew Solomon, in his book on Depression, The Noonday Demon, writes that:

Learned helplessness, studied in the animal world, occurs when an animal is subjected to a painful stimulus in a situation in which neither fight nor flight is possible. The animal will enter a docile state that greatly resembles human depression. The same thing happens to people with little volition. . .(Solomon, 348)

The harsh labors of Egypt, and the fact that the first attempt at getting Pharaoh to release them ended disastrously, shows that the Israelites are in precisely a position where they are subjected to painful stimulus and can neither fight nor flee. In such a position, strength of will to just get from day to day is all that is left, and Solomon goes on to describe how this plays out among the depressed poor in America, using language that is startlingly similar to Rav Bunem’s:

Strength of will is often the best bulwark against depression and in this population the will to go on, the tolerance of trauma, is often quite extraordinary. Many among the indigent depressed have personalities so passive that they are free of aspirations, and such people may be difficult to help.(ibid, 355)

The Israelites’ passivity is, in some ways, the biggest obstacle God must address to effect the Exodus. If there is no intrinsic motivation among the Israelites to leave, if there is no perception among them that a better life is available to them, then an extrinsic motivation must be applied. This is why God said to Moses at the beginning of Parshat Va’era “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh so with a strong hand he will dismiss them and with a strong hand he will expel them from his land,” because with the progression of the ten plagues, God has been goading Pharaoh into action. The plagues have been getting progressively more intense, and here in Parshat Bo, God makes good on the promise that Pharaoh will expel them. I want, in particular to focus on the last two plagues, darkness and the slaying of the firstborn and what happens between them.

The plague of darkness is described thus:

לא־ראו איש את־אחיו ולא־קמו איש מתחתיו שלשת ימים ולכל־בני ישראל היה אור במושבתם

I’m going to render this a bit colloquially as

a man could not see his brother and a man could not get up off his tuchus for three days, but all the children of Israel had light in their settlements. (Ex 10:23).

The first thing to notice here in the Hebrew is that the verbs “ראו” and “קמו” are in the plural while the subject, in each case, is singular. This comes to teach us that in all the households of Egypt (hence the plural verb), each individual member was subject to personal isolation and paralysis of the will (hence the singular subject). Rabbi Michael Gold, understands this to be symptomatic of depression:

The darkness was not simply a lack of light. That could be solved by lighting lamps. Rather it was an inability for anyone to see or interact with any fellow human being for three days. It was as if a thick depression fell on everybody, leaving them entirely alone. People were cut off from people, as if they were in some kind of solitary confinement. There was a blackness of despair, of being entirely alone in the world (Gold).

That the Egyptians would be subject to depression can be easily understood as a middah-k’neged-middah, measure for measure, punishment. As the labors imposed by the Egyptians reduced the Israelites to a state of depression, so too the plagues inflicted by the Blessed Holy One upon the Egyptians, have likewise depressed them. But there is a crucial difference: The Egyptians have the luxury of the depressive breakdown. The Israelite who had succumbed to his depression so as not to get off his tuchus would have been killed for slacking, but the Egyptian who finds himself too despairing to move is free to not move.

The second half of the verse “but all of the children of Israel had light in their settlements” shows us a significant contrast: The Israelites are beginning to have hope, and with the Egyptians incapacitated, are enjoying a freedom of movement and a connection with one another that they had not been able to. We find a similar verse in Esther - appearing also in the Havdallah ceremony - ליהודים היתה אורה ושמחה וששן ויקר - the Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor. It is in this light that we need to understand what happens between the plagues of Darkness and Slaying of the first born.

After the plague of darkness, but before the slaying of the first born, God instructs Moses to gather the elders of the children of Israel together and give them some instructions: to sacrifice a lamb, to paint the lintel and the doorposts, left and right, with its blood, to eat it with matzah and maror while packed and ready to leave, and to mark the occasion eternally with an annual festival commemorating the event: that God would see the blood on the doorposts and protect the Israelites.

This is one of those “what’s bothering Rashi” moments in the Passover story: why would God need to see blood on the doorposts to discern between the Israelite and the Egyptian? Rashi answers this question thus:

הכל גלוי לפניו, אלא אמר הקב"ה נותן אני את עיני לראות שאתם עסוקים במצותי, ופוסח אני עליכם

All is revealed before Him, however the Holy Blessed One said “I am letting my eyes see that you are engaging in my commandments, and so I pass over you.” (Rashi on ex. 12:13, my translation).

In other words, although God can discern between Israelites and Egyptians, the Israelites need to be taking action of some kind in order to effect their redemption. God commands the Israelites to put the blood on the doorposts because doing so demonstrates to the Israelites their willingness to take action on their own behalf. This is an essential exercise in the restoration of their crushed spirits, as David Burns notes in his book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy:

In my practice I find that the great majority of the depressed patients referred to me improve substantially if they try to help themselves. Sometimes it hardly seems to matter what you do as long as you do something with the attitude of self-help. . . . And yet many depressed individuals will go through a phase in which they stubbornly refuse to do anything to help themselves. The moment this crucial motivational problem has been solved, the depression typically begins to diminish. You can therefore understand why much of our research has been directed to locating the cause of this paralysis of the will. (Burns, 82).

Over the course of the nine plagues so far, we have seen a reversal between the Israelites and the Egyptians. The paralysis of the will which was at first present among the Israelites is now present among the Egyptians; one “painful stimulus” after another, which they could neither fight nor flee has taught them the helplessness with which the Israelites contended back at the start of Va’era.

The Israelites, on the other hand, are being invited into a world where volition matters, where actions have results. With the commandments concerning the passover offering including the marking of the door posts and lintels, God is not merely giving the Israelites busy work to do “with an attitude of self help,” but is going further, giving them an invitation to enter into a covenantal relationship, that is, a relationship in which each party does something for the other and gets something back in exchange. Whereas with Pharaoh they would work and work and their reward was drowned sons and pogroms, God is offering a relationship where if the Israelites perform a particular act, God will protect them from the Destroyer.

As the tenth plague comes upon the land, the slaying of the firstborn, the Israelites have the opportunity to see this play out, to hear the cries as the firstborn of Egypt died while their own lived. The Israelites, by following the instructions given to them are able to save themselves. The lesson here is that whereas the life of a slave in Egypt was a life of completely arbitrary punishments by a capricious ruler, there is another mode of relationship - a covenantal relationship in which actions matter, and that by commanding the Israelites, God is inviting them into that kind of relationship, and that by following those commandments, the Israelites are accepting that invitation.

And yet, it is one thing to accept the invitation and another to show up at the event. With the tenth plague, the slaying of the first-born, God pushes Pharaoh to the breaking point. At verse 11:1, God has told Moses:

עוד נגע אחד אביא על־פרעה ועל־מצרים אחרי־כן ישלח אתכם מזה כשלחו כלה גרש יגרש אתכם מזה
One more plague (touch) I will bring upon Egypt after which he will dismiss you from here; when he finally kicks you out, he will utterly expel (גרש יגרש) you from here.

When the Israelites are out, and camping at Sukkot, the first station on their way, it is written:

ויאפו את־הבצק אשר הוציאו ממצרים עגת מצות כי לא חמץ כי־גרשו ממצרים ולא יכלו להתמהמה וגם־צדה לא־עשו להם

They baked the dough they brought from Egypt: cakes of Matzah because it was unleavened, for they were expelled (גרשו) from Egypt and could not tarry or make preparations for themselves (Ex. 12:39)

From God’s declaration to Moses in verse 6:1 at the beginning of Va’era to this moment after Pharaoh has expelled the Israelites we see another word besides ש'ל'ח, and that is ג'ר'ש'. This is the same word used to describe mankind’s expulsion from Eden. That they occur in tandem at both moments when God speaks to Moses regarding what He will drive Pharaoh to do, suggests very strongly that God is not merely giving freedom to “huddled masses yearning to be free.” God, understanding the fragility of the Israelites volition, is seeking to do this in a way that prevents the Israelites from going back to Egypt. This becomes perfectly apparent at the start of next weeks parsha, when God avoids leading the Israelites by the Philistine road “lest they stop when they see war and return to Egypt”(13:17).

It takes God, Pharaoh, Moses, the Egyptians and the Israelites themselves to collectively muster the force it takes to overcome the Israelite’s collective depression, learned helplessness and inertia. When Rabbi Bunem notes that the Israelites “regarded their situation as natural,” he is noting that there is a learned helplessness among the Israelites. In Eden, Adam and Eve were helpless because all their needs were met; only with their expulsion could human history begin; likewise, in Egypt the Israelites helpless because nothing they could do could improve their state, and only with their expulsion could the history of the Jewish people - our history - begin.

Works Cited

Brown, Francis et.al. The Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999.

Burns, David. Feeling Good. New York: Avon books, 1992.

Davis, Avrohom. Metsudah Chumash/Rashi. Ktav Pub Inc, 1999.

Gold, Rabbi Michael. Parshat Bo (5764): Darkness. http://www.rabbigold.com/bo.htm viewed on 10 Jan 2010.

Kushner, Lawrence and Kerry Olitzky. Sparks beneath the Surface. Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1993.

Solomon, Andrew. The Noonday Demon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

Sent to Ambassador Michael Oren

2010-01-12T22:17:00.001-06:00

Dear Ambassador Oren:

I am writing to you regarding the situation at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The arrest of Nofrat Frenkel and the interrogation of Anat Hoffman, while alarming, are merely a symptom of a far deeper problem: namely that Israel is a country which offers freedom of religion to everyone but the Jew, and that the religion that the Jew is free to practice is increasingly a bizarre aberration from the Judaism that most American Jews, from Reform to Right Wing Modern Orthodox, would recognize as the faith of their fathers. It is a Judaism which, by reversing conversions violates the Torah's injunction not to wrong the stranger; it is a Judaism which wrongs the widow, telling her she is an agunah even after when she had been told she was free to marry. It is a Judaism that commits the idolatry of offering prayers to dead "g'dolim" to intercede on their behalf with the heavenly court. It is a Judaism that cleaves to the sorcery of segulot. And with each of these sins, it creates a chillul HaShem that distances American Jews from Israel, and Israeli Jews from any sort of Judaism at all - one yored I know refuses on principle to wear a kippah.

So, I am not going to simply ask that the Women of the Wall be allowed to pray and read Torah at the wall unharrassed, nice as that would be. I am going to ask that the Ministry of Antiquities give serious reconsideration to any sort of religious oversight of the wall. I am going to ask that the site which has been the longing of all Jews since the days of Bar Kochba be redeemed from the captivity of an Israeli Rabbinate that increasingly claims it as the exclusive heritage of a heretical minority and restored to all klal Yisrael as their eternal inheritance.

B'vrachah,

Rich Furman

Challah

2010-01-03T17:01:00.007-06:00

I like to make home baked challah for Erev Shabbat whenever feasible. The use of a bread machine for creating the dough has been a tremendous boon in this, because it means that once I get the ingredients in and the doughball to the right consistency, I can pay attention to other things. This recipe has been working pretty well for me, though I find the crumb can be a bit dry the day after it comes out of the oven. I wonder if more oil can fix that. Advice would be appreciated.

Anyway, here is the Recipe as it stands:

Challah

1: Sponge

1C Warm Water
2tbsp Sugar
2tbsp Flour

2.5tsp Yeast

Combine and let floof for ~20min

2: The Bread Machine.

Put in the sponge, three eggs, 1.25tsp Salt, 2tbsp Honey, 1/3C Olive or Grapeseed Oil

Measure out 3.25C, including 2tbsp. gluten, flour by pouring the flour into the cup to avoid packing. (One day I will weigh this out so that this won't be a worry, but now I don't have a scale.) Add to Bread machine. Run the dough cycle. Add flour/water as necessary for proper dough ball consistency.

3: Shape and proof.

Set a skillet with water on the stove to boil while you shape the dough

Remove completed dough and punch down. Divide into however many strands you want and braid. Put on a floured baking sheet.

Remove skillet of steaming water to bottom of oven. I have an oven with a pilot light which keeps the water steaming. Put the loaf on the middle rack and let proof in the humid ofen for ~40 minutes.

4: Brush and bake

Remove loaf and water-pan from oven. Preheat to 450 Degrees.

Brush with an egg wash comprising a half cup water and an egg. Sprinkle with sesame or poppy seed.

Bake for 20 Minutes.

It comes out looking very much like this:

And it goes quite nicely with my Simple Shakshuka, shown here garnished with asparagus and chiffonade of basil.

Thoughts onToldot 5770, in Haiku

2009-11-23T13:59:00.000-06:00

Isaac, Rebekah
Embittered by foreign wives
Had the same idea:

Send Esau afield
Bless Jacob while he's away
Bupkis for Esau.

Isaac was deceived:
He was expecting Jacob
Thought he got Esau

Isaac was relieved:
The voice, the voice of Jacob
Ears did not deceive.

Isaac was afraid:
Conflict was not his strong suit
Esau had returned.

Could not tell the truth
To Esau, the son who hunts
"We don't like your wives."

Esau overheard:
"Take no foreign wives, my son."
Then he understood.

Had Esau been told?
Was the expectation set?
What if he had known

Not to marry out
If only they had told him
Leah might be his.

Simple Shakshuka

2009-11-15T21:23:00.003-06:00

The shakshuka at Cafe Hillel leaves one feeling nostalgic, so I've been tinkering with the concept and after a couple of tries came up with this. It doesn't have much in the way of exotic spicing, but goes from kitchen to table with about 5 minute's knifework and 30 minutes stovetop.

Simple Shakshuka

One medium onion, medium dice.
1C Bell Peppers, medium dice.
One Can (28 oz/800g) diced or crushed tomatoes.
A splosh of lemon juice (probably two Tbsp)
Four eggs.
One clove garlic, minced
One half tsp Salt
One half tsp Black Pepper
Olive or Grapeseed oil sufficient to saute in a 10" pan

Heat a 10" pan (I prefer cast iron for this) and add oil.
Saute the onions with the salt and black pepper.
As they become translucent, and the garlic, then the peppers.
Deglaze with the lemon juice, then add the tomatoes.
Simmer uncovered to reduce the liquid by about half.
Break the 4 eggs over the sauce and cover until eggs reach desired doneness (tradition dictates a set white with a runny yolk-about 4 minutes).

Serve with Pita or Challah. A garnish of steamed spinach creates a nice contrast on the plate

Serves 2. Parve.

Life as a Jew in Minnesota in Haiku

2009-10-02T11:44:00.005-05:00

מזג האוויר
קר, אפור, ויש גשם
זמן לבנות סוכה

Weather conditions:
It's cold, it's gray, and there's rain
Succah building time.

Post by Morgan: Stuck at Ben Gurion

2009-08-30T22:14:00.003-05:00

Ben Gurion Airport, August 28,2009 1:50 AM

We are STUCK. Tonight’s attempt to arrange ground transportation to the airport was a comedy of small errors, which, compounded by mishegaas at Ben Gurion, resulted in our suffering what I had always thought was my worst traveling nightmare: we missed our flight. It all started innocently enough. Rich checked Egged’s web site, and learned that from the central bus station in Jerusalem, there were busses running direct to Ben Gurion every half hour until at least 9:30. The 9:30 bus would get us to Ben Gurion around ten, just right for the three hour window that El Al’s website had recommended as a pre-flight arrival time. Pretty much any bus from the area of our hotel would go to the central bus station, and we calculated that we had to leave around nine for everything to work. When we checked out of our hotel, the woman at the desk offered to call a sherut for us--much nicer than bus way to travel--but Nesher wasn’t answering their phone any more, so we returned to our well-laid bus plans.

We had a lovely last dinner at the Cafe Hillel near our hotel. I even managed to ask, in Hebrew, that my dish be made without walnuts. I must have even been comprehensible, as I am still alive. After dinner, we walked to the bus stop and waited only a short time for a random bus to take us to the station. Unlike busses in the US--or at least the Twin Cities--Egged busses can make CHANGE, meaning you don’t have to worry about having the exact fare, or even about knowing what it is. Moreover, you can pay for two people and get a single ticket that indicates that it’s for two. And you can do this RIGHT ON THE BUS. I was impressed. The ride wasn’t hugely fun, but a bus ride with a backpack never is: you can take it off and it becomes the most awkward thing on earth to schlepp around, or you can leave it on and sit really uncomfortably and have the thing take up a whole seat by itself. I elected to do the latter.

When we arrived at the central bus station, I was awed. The thing is basically a multi-story shopping mall--worthy of being a destination in itself. Awkwardness ensued as I had to take off my pack and send it through an x-ray. By the time I got through the metal detector and reclaimed my stuff, my husband, who had been right behind me, was nowhere to be seen. Not knowing if he was behind or ahead of me, I put on my pack and stared around stupidly until I sighted him on the other side of the metal detector. Once we were reunited, we decided to check out the nearby book store, since it was just after nine and we had time to kill until our connecting bus. Or so we thought.

When we finally made our way up to the ticket station, the woman there told us that she thought the busses to Ben Gurion were no longer running, but sold us a ticket to Tel-Aviv anyway. We figured that from there we could get a cab or something if she was right, and it turned out that she was. We had just sorted out the process of getting on the Tel Aviv bus, when what should arrive but the bus that we thought we could take to BG. We jumped off, thinking that we would be saved the inconvenience of arranging yet another leg to this trip, only to be told that no, this bus really wasn’t making any more trips. So we got back on the TA bus, and ended up sitting right in front of some young men who proceeded to talk loudly the entire trip. Loudly enough that at one point the driver yelled at them. It was a comfortable bus, and Rich and I both took off our packs and held them on our laps. I might have enjoyed the ride if I hadn’t been so worried about time. I think it was almost eleven when we finally got there.

The TA bus station doesn’t have as sophisticated security as J’lem. There was just this table and a couple of guys with portable wands looking in people’s bags. I think I was pretty fried by then--he had to ask me several times to open my bag, using vocab that I usually understand, and when I finally got it (after he asked in English), I exasperated him further by assuming that I had to open every little compartment on my VERY many-compartmented backpack, when all he was interested in was the main one. He must have thought I was a complete idiot. I started to get really worried when we got inside and saw how dead the place was. Most of the information counters--make that all--were closed. We finally found a ticket counter that was staffed by a helpful guy who told Rich the number of the bus to catch to get to the airport. When we got to the platform we found out that there were two left that night, one at 11:00 and one at 11:40. We caught the 11:00, but I was getting increasingly worried. We were well outside our three-hour window, and edging into the two-hour window that I usually leave for domestic flights. Moreover, this was a local bus route with lots of stops and people getting on and off. I began to contemplate the possibility that the evening might become grueling and expensive.

When we arrived at BG, we wandered around until some helpful airline staff told us where to go. An innocent further ‘where do we go’ question lead to us being ushered through the start of the security process BEFORE I had a chance to use the bathroom and this was NOT A GOOD THING. The security interview was brief and pretty much the same as the one at JFK. They weren’t even interested in x-raying our carry-on luggage at that point. We were shown where to go for check-in, and made the mistake of grabbing the nearest line, which proceeded not to move for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. It was around 12:15 now and I was seriously nervous. Moreover, my feet were hurting, I still needed to use the bathroom, standing around with a heavy pack on my back in a hot muggy atmosphere was making me want to puke, and my left knee was starting to act up. The knee was the bit that I was really worried about. It can be fine and then pop suddenly and be real painful, and tonight was seriously provoking it.

At one point Rich asked if he should try to find a faster line while I stayed there. I lost it and informed him that I was in pain and couldn’t stand much longer. He went to talk to someone or see what was going on or something. The party of women ahead of us was also doing the same thing. Yelling ensued. I had no idea what was going on. I had kind of hoped he was going to find a place where I could sit, but it didn’t sound like that was what was happening. I heard the word “supervisor” a couple of times. When he came back, I learned that 1) the flight was already boarding and therefore we had missed it and 2) the clog seemed to have been caused by a party that didn’t even have tickets trying to get onto the flight. He went back to the counter and there was more yelling. Finally, I had had it. I stepped out of the line intending to just sit down on a clear space of floor, because I really needed to sit. But I lost control of things and belongings and body parts when flying. A very kind family retrieved my water bottle and asked if I was OK, and I felt like a complete dork having to explain that actually, I was better off on the floor.

Right after that, stuff did start happening. A supervisor or something came and we learned that we’d have to go someplace else for re-ticketing. That took a long time, but fortunately didn’t cost any more money. Our new itinerary is: depart BG at 4:30 am (OY!), arrive not at JFK but at Newark (not sure whether this is an OY! or not--never been to Newark but JFK was pretty bad), spend most of the day in Newark (OY!), get on plane for MSP at 6:00, arrive MSP after 8pm Friday night (OY!). And BTW the only seats they had were on two separate aisles, but we can try to fix that at the gate (right). This is a bit of a grrr.... but all things considered, it could have been worse, and at least it wasn’t expected. Also, one of the things I most fear about the logistics of air travel, missing the flight, has happened, and the sky did not fall. It didn’t even cost us extra money, just time and aggravation.

[Rich Adds:]
When we checked in at Newark for our Northwest Flight, Morgan found she could book us on a flight that left at 1:30. We booked it and got to the gate to find that another plane headed to MSP was boarding. I asked if we could get on that flight, and we could, so we got home at 2pm instead of 8pm.

Post by Morgan: Another View of the Kotel

2009-08-30T22:06:00.003-05:00

I had not been sure that I wanted to go to the Kotel. Gender-segregated spaces are things that I avoid like the plague. On the other hand, it’s an important site, and I’m pretty certain that for a pair of Jews to go to J’lem and NOT see the Kotel constitutes “doing it wrong”.

It had been a grueling day in many respects. We had, at my insistence, paid a second visit to Yad Vashem, and then had ended up paying way too much for the cab ride home. I was physically tired and emotionally exhausted, badly in need of catharsis for the roiling feelings left me by the day’s events. Rich had suggested earlier that we go to the Kotel in the evening, when it would be cooler and the shops mostly closed. I wasn’t sure though, after Yad Vashem, that I wanted to visit the remnant of the Temple, the site of another of our great disasters, on the same day.

I don’t know how we started discussing coffee, but the mention of it shook me out of my blah-ness, and we agreed to get coffee at Cafe Hillel and then head to the Kotel. I had read somewhere that women pretty much have to wear a skirt when visiting the Kotel, so I dressed accordingly, and in doing so learned an interesting lesson about how things work in Jerusalem: an ankle-length black skirt will get you tons of space on the sidewalk. It was Rich who first pointed it out to me: “People are giving us a wide berth” he said--and it was true. Usually all you get is enough space to squeeze by each other--no one really steps exaggeratedly out of someone else’s way like they do in MN. But we were getting plenty of passing room that night.

The walk down to the old city was pleasant, and there were places where I wished I could have lingered over beautiful vistas or beautiful architecture. It was a cool but muggy evening--one of those where you can be chilled and sweaty at pretty much the same time. Part of the time we were walking on a road where you shared the space with cars--sometimes with the benefit of metal or concrete posts protecting the pedestrian area and sometimes not. We only had to fend off one guy who really wanted to sell us stuff.

There are separate entrances to the plaza for men and women. This is something that Rich had warned me about. When we arrived, there were a lot more women than men waiting. I was somewhat uncomfortable as I broke away from him to join the women’s line. He and I are seldom apart. The men’s line moved quickly. The women’s line crawled. Bags were being opened, and of course everyone in the women’s line had a purse or something that needed inspected. Suddenly the men’s line was completely empty, everybody had gone through. After a few seconds, the bunch of women immediately behind me charged the men’s entrance. More women who had just arrived joined them. My line still wasn’t moving, so I said “lamah lo?” and joined the other line. The last woman in line and I exchanged giggles. This was pretty much the last thing I had expected to happen.

From the security checkpoint it’s just a little walk to the plaza, but nevertheless, the space seemed to open up really suddenly, and there was the Kotel right in front of me. It was, honestly, a smaller space than I had expected it to be, and the ancient wall itself seemed to be hemmed in by the stuff around it. But the thing that struck me most on seeing it in person was the same thing that always strikes me in photographs: those plants. Those big, humongous plants that grow in the spaces of the wall. They really are huge. I think some of them are longer than a person is tall.

I took some photographs, and then stood there for a while just looking through the metal screen that tops the wall that separates the plaza from the area in front of the Kotel. I could see where the mechitzah was, and for a long time I stood right there, right on the border between the men’s and women’s sections, just watching. I couldn’t help noticing that the women’s side is much smaller than the men’s, and it made me angry. The whole thing made me both angry and sad--very, very sad. Here, in that wall that divides the prayer area in two, is a tangible articulation of how far we have not come in bringing justice to the world, how far we have yet to go, how impossible it is that my own eyes will live to see justice here or anywhere else. The heartbreak that I found at the Kotel was not the heartbreak that I had been expecting: it’s hard to feel the national loss that the Temple’s destruction must have been when the plaza is crawling with live Jews, when this site is so obviously ours again. I contemplated a couple of times just swallowing my objections and going down to the women’s side, to daven or to just touch the stone, but I couldn’t do it. Every time I thought about it, my stomach turned over, and I realized at last that I would be happier, and have more respect for myself, if I did not make this particular compromise. Instead, I took out my sketchbook and did several sketches of the site, focusing on the things that delighted me most: those beautiful huge plants.

At some point, Rich had sat down in a chair behind me--there are plastic chairs available all over the place, in case one needs to sit down. When I been standing long enough that my feet started to hurt, he gave me his seat and went to get another chair for himself. I realized that I had ended up sitting right behind the men’s section. Rich pulled up a chair and sat beside me but a little way away. I had an inkling of what he was doing before he said anything. He had positioned himself just behind the women’s section. No one cared of course; we were still on the plaza, separated from the segregated area by a wall that I had to stand on tiptoes to really see over, and plenty of other people were observing what was going on on the opposite gender’s side. We took out Paths of Faith and davened Ma’ariv from it. It was a symbolic protest of course, meaningful, perhaps, only to us. But nevertheless there was a certain power in having found a way to pray together as a couple, here in this place where we were so vehemently NOT supposed to do so. It was a cool, peaceful night, relatively quiet despite the number of people there. It was satisfying to be able to pray. As we reached the end of the service, there was no question but that we would say Kaddish for those of our people who were killed in the Shoah. Here, in the peace of the cool night, in the ancient words of the Kaddish Yatom and its familiar rhythms, I found the catharsis that I had needed since our visit to Yad Vashem earlier that day. I experienced once again the power of Jewish ritual to heal the soul, and experienced also the powerful truth that ours is a religion where what you do matters. I had been unsettled by a welter of emotion all day because of a need to do something--a need to do what there was for me, as a Jew, to do in order to honor the memory of those whom we all have lost.

I left the Kotel feeling both at peace and uplifted. I had found a way to pray there, and to do it in my own way, without making any compromises.

The Food in Jerusalem

2009-08-30T21:34:00.007-05:00

Point the first: if anyone tells you that Starbucks pulled out of Israel because of politics; they are wrong. ארומה - Aroma is the local corporate coffee behemoth, and, well, Starbucks falls so completely short of what they deliver in both food and drink that Starbucks must have seen itself a grasshopper in comparison. The smaller chain, Hillel, is a full service restaurant which serves Shakshukah, and a wide variety of pastas, salads and sandwiches made fresh in its own kitchen. During our stay, the manager came to know our habits. She called us "Chocolate Junkies."

The Falafel, from a stall on Ben Yehudah, of course was grand; 50nis got us both a full sized falafel with everyhing and two beers. The falafel was beautifully balanced in its seasoning, not overpowered by cumin as our American falafels tend to be, and it was crisp outside without being hard, and tender inside without being gloppy. And "everything" really was, even fries were used as toppings.

The next evening, after our feet had time to recover from our Shrine of the Book adventure, we found a place near Independence Park called The River Noodle Bar, where we had a lovely beef noodle soup with a hard cooked, deep fried egg. No, not pho - the stock held the spicing characteristic of Korean food, with strong hints of sesame.

The following evening we dined at a place called New Deli, a bit like Subway, but even here, the chicken for Morgan's sub was grilled to order and the pastrami tasted like top-flight Chicago pastrami.

Also, the fleishig cafeteria at Yad VaShem does an awesome beef stew.

Final Verdict: the food is better here.

The Shrine of the book.

2009-08-25T15:09:00.006-05:00

Morgan and I are staying at the Jerusalem Inn, on 7 Horcanos, about a a block from Yaffo and Heleni Hamalka. Those of you familiar with Jerusalem's geography and topography will probably raise an eyebrow when I tell you that we decided, on Tuesday to walk to the Shrine of the book to see Dead Sea Scrolls and (drum roll please . . .) the Aleppo Codex! We started out early walked Yaffa to HaMelech George to Ramban. After about 3/4mi on Ramban we crossed a really big street and followed a street whose name I can't recall to the Israel Museum Complex. Once in, we looked for a while at the model of Late Second Temple Period Jerusalem. I turned on the Audio Guide and a British voice gushed lovingly in my ear about the sheep pools. I turned off the Audio Guide. Morgan took this picture of the model Temple:

There is an amazing amount of care and detail that went into the model, but it is unpeopled, empty; even architectural models place people in their landscapes to suggest a place in use. This model, however, suggests a place in disuse.

After ascending the stairs to a plaza we came across this lovely fountain:

The "fountain," of course, is the Shrine of the Book. It is designed to look like the lid of one of the pots that contain the Dead Sea Scrolls; appropriate since it itself contains them. The fountain is a very effective cooling system, keeping the interior in the 60's or so, even when the exterior is in the 100's. Jerusalem's dry climate is part of its effectiveness - evaporating water cools the dome.

Inside one steps down through a series of small displays concerning the material culture of the Qumran community, and then one enters the rotunda which has displayed the scrolls, or copies thereof depending on their condition. We saw part of the rule of the community, and the battle of the sons of the darkness and the sons of the light. A copy of the Isaiah Scroll was displayed at the center. One is struck first by the legibility of the texts - the letter forms, penned more than 2000 years ago, are not strikingly different than those we use today. The English alphabet has undergone more changes in about a quarter of that time. Most of the scrolls are in Hebrew, so to the reader of Hebrew they are comprehensible as well as legible. To read a scroll written that long ago is to stand in direct communication with its scribe across millenia.

Downstairs a special treat awaited us. The Aleppo Codex, edited, according to Maimonides, by no less than David Ben Asher himself is the crowning achievement of the Masoretic Tradition. It's not much to look at - penned in a plain hand with nikkud, cantillation marks, and Masoretic notes it is a text whose writer clearly valued function over form. This was the text that Maimonides used as his exemplar when he wrote his own Sefer Torah, and provided the basis for his Hilchot Sefer Torah which remains to this day an essential body of Halachah for the scribe writing a Sefer Torah for Synagogue use. The text remained in tact until 1948 when parts of it were lost in a pogrom.

Another item on display was called the "Small Codex." It is a small codex penned by an Ashkenazic scribe using the Aleppo Codex as its exemplar. It was opened to a spread containing the last page of Eichah and the first page of Esther. It was stunningly beautiful, rich with creative formatting of the text. In some ways I found this text more remarkable than the Aleppo Codex itself - it testified to what a scribe can do to wed form and function when presented with a reliable exemplar and a kavannah for hiddur mitzvah.

Other things we learned that day - the Art Garden is torture at midday. Israeli Feta and Watermelon are a fantastic pairing. And one side of Agron St. is closed to Pedestrian Traffic between the Conservative Center and HUC Jerusalem. The following morning we found a very nice apothecary who provided just the thing for our blisters. It was a transaction conducted entirely in Hebrew, though that entailed me showing her the blister because I have no idea what the generic name is for Moleskine, let alone how to say it in Hebrew.

The Kotel and the Liminal

2009-08-25T03:13:00.005-05:00

So there I was at the Kotel. I had just inserted a woman's prayer on the men's side. Then I davenned Ma'ariv from Paths of Faith, complete with the matriarchs. I choked up during Hashkiveinu, something about reciting a prayer of protection at the site of so much conflict. When I got to the risha'im in the Amidah, I realized that I was thinking of the ultra-frum all around me, even as they would be thinking of me when they encountered it in their siddurim. As I finished praying the golden dome of the Al-Aqsa mosque, just visible over the Kotel, emanated its call to prayer. I turned and looked up at the Plaza and there was Aish HaTorah's new yeshiva side by side with Chabad's Soup Kitchen. These two competing ideologies in ultra-orthodoxy looked to me to be looming over the Kotel, over Judaism, like Godzilla and Mothra locked in struggle, careless of how many Tokyo residents became collateral damage, careless that the quid-pro-quo theology that ultra-orthodoxy teaches can produce only zealots or atheists. And beyond these august institutions was visible the dome and cross of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Kotel stands at every border: borders of faith, theology, gender, past and present. I choked up at Hashkiveinu because I was praying for protection while standing in front of what I can only describe as a wound in history. And I think that in one way or another, every prayer offered at the wall is a prayer for the healing of that wound, however that healing may look to the petitioner.

The Old City and the Kotel

2009-08-25T02:21:00.009-05:00

On Sunday, Morgan spent most of the day recovering from her accidental seafood exposure. I went to the Old City to see if I could figure out how to get to the Kotel. The Old City is crowded and tightly packed. Streets are often shared between vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The narrow sidewalks are often choked by tour groups and the vendors hawking their wares are often agressive. I decided to buy Morgan a pomegranate since electrolytes are always a good thing. The vendor showed me a lovely view from a roof top and introduced me to his brother who succeded in selling me a 80NIS mezuzah case for 150NIS. When he tried to sell me a 150NIS Magen David for 900NIS we had an argument in Hebrew about whether God did or did not want me to spend 900NIS on a Magen David from a Bedouin in the old city. When I left his shop the price came down to 200NIS, but he had already swindled me on the Mezuzah Case, had just shown me the depth of the swindle he tried to pull on the Magen David, and I was not kindly disposed. I left the Old city then, rebuffing an offer to be shown David's tomb (in a place within the Old City, though it is in fact outside the walls) and a come-on from a self-proclaimed purveyor of "schmattes and chazerai" near the Jaffa gate.

Why all the attention? Perhaps because of my mannter of dress. At the time I looked rather like the image on the left. I clould be seen coming from a mile away and everything from the shirt to the shorts to the uncovered hair says: "American Idiot on Vacation." So later that evening, as a small experiment I donned a pair of black Chinos, a white cargo shirt, a black corduroy jacket, and a canoeing hat to create a mode of dress that I call faux-frum. No one spoke to me. I looked frum to the hawkers, and I looked, I will assume, strange to the chabadniks and charedim. And in this garb, with a copy of Chaim Stern's Paths of Faith tucked underneath my arm, I headed out for the Kotel.

To get to the Kotel from the Jaffa gate, one takes the Armenian Patriarchate road through the Armenian Quarter, and then makes a hard right into a parking lot. Follow that until you see a sign that says "No Traffic on Shabbat or Holidays." and follow that road down hill until you reach a switcback with a pretzel stand. Robinson's Arch is directly across from the switchback. If you actually reach the pretzel stand, then the Kotel is behind you. This is a view of the Kotel from the Plaza:
Women are to the left, men are to the right. The privacy fence serves as the mechitza. The wooden items stacked near the mechitza on the men's side are shtenders, basically portable reading stands. I entered the Men's side and located a good spot to deliver the note I had been asked to deposit there and davened. That deserves its own post.

In Jerusalem

2009-08-22T15:03:00.003-05:00

I had thought to order posts chronologically to form a cohesive narrative of events, but my attempts to do so are futile. So I'm going totally non linear.

The City
It reminds me of Manhattan in the '80's, before gentrification. A little bit TriBeCa, a little bit of the east Village, a little bit of midtown - times square especially. It pulses with restaurants, nightclubs, cafes, people selling their wares. And on Shabbat it is, to borrow a phrase from Leonard Cohen "dead as heaven on a Saturday Night." An ironic description since on Saturday night the city wakes from its sabbath slumber as if in answer to Isaiah's charge in this week's Haftarah "התעוררי התעוררי קומי ירושלם" - "Awaken, awaken, rise up, Jerusalem." We read this Haftarah in Shul this morning when we davened at the IMPJ affiliated Har-El synagogue next to the Bezalel Artists' house on Shmuel haNagid Street.

This is what happens on Shabbat Morning at Har El - More P'sukei d'Zimrah than in typical American Reform congrregations, but fewer than in Conservative. Morning Blessings are read as follows - the Shaliach Tzibbur reads a blessing, the Congregation says Amen to that blessing and then reads the next blessing to which the Shaliach Tzibbur says Amen. Thus the roles of reader and respondent are passed between the Shatz and the Congregation. The Torah Service includes seven aliyot, maftir, and haftarah, with additional honors of lifting the Torah and dressing the Torah. The service is kept to about an hour by the use of the triennal reading cycle, and is followed by a kiddush, wherein the person making motzi washes the hands prior to doing so and the bread is salted. I had the honor of lifting the Torah, and Morgan had the honor of dressing it. I was also asked to make motzi, and did so, grateful that I had the handwashing prayer in my head.

There are some restaurants and clubs that don't necessarily wait until Havdallah to open. They cater to secular Israelis and may serve things that put them outside of eligibility for a heksher. Seafood is not uncommon, but pork seems very unusual. Smoked goose breast seems to be used in its place. People with seafood allergies would be well advised to seek out a Heksher when dining out, because it is a guarantee that there can be no contamination from shellfish. How we became aware of this is left as an exercise for the readers imagination.

I have been asked about cigarette smoke. What we have found is that most places prohibit smoking indoors, and provide generously for it out of doors. Smoke tends not to linger near the ground here, but is pretty quickly lifted away, making proximity to smokers less problematic than we thought.

We went for an evening walk in Independence Park and as we were walking back up to the hotel, were invited into a Judaica shop by a vendor. We ended up getting a fair price on the earrings, paying about 20 NIS less than the originally quoted price, and they really do pick up the blue in Morgan's eyes quite nicely.

The flight up.

2009-08-21T09:57:00.001-05:00

We departed Minneapolis for a flight to New York where we will be connecting to an El Al flight to Israel. I have in my pockets four dollars of money from each of 3 people and Temple Israel to be given to those who may need it. This is a סגולה, a charm, for safety. No harm will come to the traveler on a mission of charity. I am also carrying a prayer for the Western Wall, and though I don't hold that prayers tucked in to the wall are more effective. but the petitioner does. So that is another mission. I myself may have different feelings after doing this.

I also carry fears and expectations. My biggest fear is that I will find that the Israelis smoke everywhere and I won't be able to tolerate it. Or that MM will get a nut - She's allergic. Or that there will be zealot trouble on a bus.

I am looking forward to discovering the liberal davennen scene. Har-El on Shabbat, someplace masorti for the week. Looking forward to coffee in the land that spit out Starbucks. ארומה, Aroma is the big chain. And I am looking forward to bookstores. Steimatzky's is the chain. And looking forward to food. I want to walk the city, to conduct life without a car - impossible in Minnesota. I want to feel the history washing over me. Not interested in details right now; just want to contemplate what it means to be in a city where so much has happened, a city 10 times older than New York.

Shabbat Shalom

Dvar Pinchas 5769

2009-07-12T00:01:00.005-05:00

Dvar Pinchas, - Beth Jacob Congregation, 11 July 2009, Rich Furman

We are starting to see them now, the signs for the Great Minnesota Get Together, the State Fair. It’s a lovely week of celebration, when Snelling Avenue north of University becomes undriveable, when Minnesotans converge upon Our Fair City, the State Capitol, to stroll up and down the midway, buying food from vendors selling out of booths all along Dan Patch avenue, and if you should approach from the north side of the fairgrounds, you will see the RV’s and tents, the temporary dwellings set up by those who have come from all over the state of Minnesota to this place that has been established for them to show off the finest of their fruits, grain, and livestock.

The fair is about celebrating the bounty that has come forth through the summer, it is about coming together as a community, and sharing the bounty that has been granted to us, about wandering through the fine arts building and the arts and crafts building to see the work of one another’s hands, but it is something else too - it is summer’s denouement, and as such, in the midst of the joy, there is that tinge of melancholy, a sense not unlike the fatigue that comes at the end of the day - the Jams and Jellies and pickles that have been tasted and judged are harbingers of winter days to come, the bounty of summer condensed and contracted to carry us through the winter. The fair is as much about preparing for the winter as it is about celebrating the summer. It is about the contraction that follows the expansion of summer. And part of that contraction is minimizing the amount of livestock that needs to be wintered over. Ann Reed touches on this in her song “My Minnesota State Fair:”

Took some time, but now I find the heartbreak of this place,
The shocked and frozen look upon some FFA kid’s face;
If her pig should lose, I s’pose that’s only pure dumb luck
But if her pig’s a winner then she’s next year’s pronto pup

We learn two things from this: first, that the Fair’s pronto pups aren’t exactly built around Hebrew National hot dogs; second, and more poignantly, it also captures the essence of sacrifice, namely that the offerer is parting with something significant, that there is a certain melancholy associated with that parting, and with the loss of life that turns livestock into food.

And with this we begin to touch upon our parsha, Pinchas, which ends by listing the sacrifices associated with Sukkot. Because of the way it is described, outlining the sacrifices day by day, we cannot fail but be impressed by the sheer amount of meat that is being butchered and eaten during this festival. I have always wondered what could possibly be behind this. I am not alone in wondering this; Nigel Savage, writing for Hazon’s Jewish food blog The Jew And The Carrot learned a possible reason when chatting with Aitan Mizrahi, the goat herd for the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center, where they would be holding their annual conference in December of 2007.

I should perhaps begin by explaining why Savage was talking with a goatherd in the first place. This was when Rubashkin’s was beginning to receive its well deserved scrutiny from within the Jewish community, and many questions about Sh’chita were coming to light. Many Hazon participants are vegetarian, others eat meat, so the question became how people’s food choices would be affected if they were to witness Sh’chita for themselves. So a decision was made that two goats would be shechted for an erev shabbat meal at the December conference, and so Savage found himself asking Mizrahi about the details.

He learned in his conversation with Mizrahi that Hazon would need to pay to feed the goats between October and December. When he asked why, Aitan explained that male goats are slaughtered in October so that they will not have to be fed during the winter, when the dairy producing females would be in greater need of the food. Savage was surprised at the irony that shechting goats at the conference would extend their life. Mizrahi boiled it down to one basic rule in dairy farming: "No dairy without death"(Paraphrased from Savage) This revelation caused Savage to reflect on

the fact that Pesach and Succot are exactly six months apart – they’re both on the full moon – they’re both seven days long – but on Pesach, biblically, they killed a single paschal lamb; and on Succot there’s this enormous series of sacrifices of bulls – ie male cows?

We may say that the commandments concerning sacrifice are חוקים, to be obeyed for no other reason than that they were given. We may look hard at the numbers and come up with notions like 70 bulls being offered to make expiation for the 70 nations, and 98 sheep to avert the 98 curses in Deuteronomy(Numbers R. XXI:24, Rashi on 29:18). But to me, this explanation rings true: that in the annual cycle of expansion and contraction, the huge number of sacrifices offered uniquely on Sukkot helps to get through the winter by ensuring that the dairy producing females will have sufficient food.

“No dairy without death” is an important point to bear in mind - it points to the dialectic of the autumn, the tension between life and death and the necessary deaths that make survival of the winter possible. One interpretation of the commandment not to seethe a kid in its mother’s milk is that milk represents life and meat is the result of death. Thus, the idea that it is impossible to have dairy without death underscores the tension between life and death that is the essence of the autumn. Deciduous trees drop their leaves in an imitation of death that helps them conserve their life force for the following spring. Bears hibernate, and people take to the indoors, the bounty of summer dried, pickled, canned, or otherwise preserved to carry us through. It will be six months before the next festival - Pesach - because we are hardly expected to travel in winter.

And while this all seems so melancholy, we are, nonetheless, commanded to be happy on Sukkot:

ולקחתם לכם ביום הראשון פרי עץ הדר כפת תמרים וענף עץ־עבת וערבי־נחל ושמחתם לפני יהוה אלהיכם שבעת ימים
You shall take for yourselves on the first day fruit of the Hadar tree, branches of palm trees and boughs of myrtle and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before Adonai your God seven days (Lev. 33:40, my translation).

Rejoicing is a key element of the commandment here because, although things are winding down, we have our harvest in, and with the growing season behind us, we can relax. This rejoicing before Adonai is also a reason for the number of sacrifices. Bearing in mind the number of people who pass through the fair and want to eat, imagine what Jerusalem must have been like at Sukkot. We find some sense of this intimated in the revised edition of Plaut’s The Torah, a Modern Commentary:

The procedure [for animal offerings] was basically this: instead of slaughtering the animal privately and eating it privately (as was the overwhelming practice everywhere), it was killed at a special spot, its meat was shared with the sanctuary workers, and it was consumed in an attitude of gratitude, exaltation, repentance, or other sentiment appropriate to the occasion of the sacrifice. Frequently such cultic meals were the only occasions on which the worshipers would or could afford to eat meat. . . . Public offerings like those prescribed for holy days were to reflect the awareness of the whole community that God dwelt in its midst (Plaut, 1090).

The idea that the sacrifice is consumed in an attitude appropriate to the occasion is something that we may miss in the modern context, indeed, the Plaut commentary goes on to express concern about the dysjunct between the modern consumption of meat and the willful ignorance of what goes on in the abbatoir. Hazon’s experiment two years ago was a way of addressing that problem. With our blessings prior to eating we acknowledge God as the Ultimate Source of the foods we eat, and we also take pains acknowledge the immediate source, with specific blessings to remind us that the grape was once on a vine, the potato in the earth, and that by his word all manner of sustenance came into being.

That parshat Pinchas should end with a series of sacrifices serves as a bittersweet reminder that in order to nourish and preserve life demands a certain amount of death. This is the denoument of the story of redemption and revelation that began in Exodus. The Israelites are on the verge of entering the Promised Land, and Moses, who knows he will not be entering, has seen his successor invested before his eyes.

Ultimately, this entire Parsha is about succession; Pinchas becomes heir to the priesthood, which he had not been, having been born too soon (Rashi on 25:13). The daughters of Zelophechad argue successfully for their father’s line of succession, and Moses’ role is passed to Joshua who will be seeking God’s help through Aaron’s heir El’azar.

_________________________
Works Cited:

Davis, Avrohom. Metsudah Chumash/Rashi. Ktav Pub Inc, 1999.

Plaut, W. and David Stein. The Torah: a Modern Commentary, Revised Edition. Union for Reform Judaism, 2005.

Reed, Ann. “My Minnesota State Fair.” Keepers: Morning Show Favorites. Minnesota: MPR, 1994.

Savage, Nigel. “Schrodinger’s Goat, scapegoats, and the goats of Yom Kippur.” http://jcarrot.org/schrodingers-goat-scapegoats-and-the-goats-of-yom-kippur. Viewed on: 14 June 2009.

Simon, Maurice. Midrash Rabbah. London: Soncino Press, 1983.

What do we mean by "melacha?"

2009-05-29T10:22:00.004-05:00

Dovbear has an interesting post on a controversy over a Baltimore JCC's decsion to open its doors on Shabbat. It's worth reading, and perhaps even necessary to fully understand what I'm going to write here.

Dovbear argues that most Jews keep Shabbat in one way shape or form, but also notes that "Officially shabbos is only 'kept' when you refrain from melacha in testimony of the fact that God created the world/took us out of Egypt." To me the hinge question is what do we mean by "melacha." Chazal tended to view "melacha" as the 39 tasks they deemed necessary for the building of the tabernacle. This is an important principle to which I will return in a bit when I discuss shabbat in the life of a rabbi. For me "melacha" means my occupation.

I do computer support for a living. My definition of "melacha," therefore, is fixing broken computers, or answering questions about computers. My community has learned not to approach me with computer problems on Shabbat, though some will say "I wonder if you could look at something after Havdallah." This then is my boundary for what I absolutely positively will not do on Shabbat. On the other hand, blogging is expressly forbidden to me in my workplace, and thus falls outside of my definition of Melacha. Hence I am posting on a Festival day. If the computer needs fixing before I could post, the post would wait.

What about a rabbi? What comprises melacha for him or her? If the rabbi is standing on the Bima leading a service on Shabbat, is he or she not working at at an occupation? Is this not what they are paid to do? There is of course the legal fiction that a rabbi is not paid to be a rabbi, but rather that a rabbi is paid to not be something else. This is a legal fiction, and therefore a fiction and does not apply. This is where the 39 tasks come in. The 39 tasks are derived from the Toraitic principle that one should not build the sanctuary on Shabbat. To my mind, that is the principle that anyone engaged in Synagogue business, whether Rabbi, Board Member, or Committee member should heed. The rabbi should not be dealing with budgets, planning, personnel searches and the like on Shabbat, and nor should anyone else. This is "building the sanctuary" but if a Rabbi wishes to worship with the community and the community wishes to grant the Rabbi the honor of being Shaliach Tzibbur, this is acceptable. And of course, for a rabbi to study with the community is both acceptable and good.

This also brings me around to something else I don't do on Shabbat or festivals: committee work. This is building the sanctuary, and I don't like to talk about synagogue business on shabbat. Executing a program is another matter - after all I am a Levite, and Levites have ALWAYS been charged with enhancing the worship experience of their fellow Jews. And in today's world those who volunteer to execute a Shabbat or festival program, to run a Shabbaton, and such are enhancing the worship experience for their fellows; as long as it does not break down into the sort of thing that should have happened in a committee meeting, execution is well and good.

So there you have my thoughts on what "melacha" means in Modernity. What tasks would YOU deem forbidden in this framework? What do you refrain from on Shabbat?

Sedarim

2009-04-13T23:12:00.003-05:00

First night: Fleishig.

I made Lamb Tagine; it came out good. The recipe is long and complicated and I did not follow it. I used fresh ginger, whole cloves, whole toasted Cumin and forgot the saffron. It still came out good.

MM made a Persian Onion Soup from Olive Trees and Honey. This was a parve soup, and would be served both nights. It got rave reviews, sort of a French Onion Soup meets AvgoLemono kind of deal.

BM made a Potato Casserole, also from Olive Trees and Honey.

JK made Matzoh Ball Soup and a flourless chocolate torte.

SS Brought much more chocolate.

With RK and צב"ע there I had a nice full age range. I like this, it's a way to fulfill the commandment ושננתם לבניך on Other People's Children (seeing as if I had kids, they would probably end up feral).

Night 2 was dairy.

I did a yam and spinach casserole with Korean flavorings. MM did the Persian Onion soup and a braised leek and tomato dish, LR brought a Feta-Kale pie with a Quinoa crust and for those who wanted it JK's Matzoh Ball soup gave a reprise performance. LP brought a veggie plate.

This was led from the concise family Seder, and everyone present was an adult.

In some ways, both sedarim almost caught me unawares, even though I was hosting them.

Birkat HaChammah

2009-04-13T22:30:00.002-05:00

Went to Morning Minyan at Beth Jacob. Usual service followed by a study of the laws of Birkat HaChammah to give the first-borns something they could make a siyyum for. Finally went outside, had a little custom service with Osheh Ma'aseh B'reshit at its center and the Beatles' Here Comes the Sun as its closing song. All issues of calendrical accuracy aside, it seemed just right for Minnesota this year.

A few bubbemeisses floating around. One says that Birkat HaChammah last coincided with Erev Pesach 500 years ago. Another that this happened at the Exodus, at Purim, and this year and these were the only three occasions. The truth: it last happened in 1925.

The MO world seems troubled by the idea that because the calendaring is off, this might be b'racha l'vateil, a wasted blessing. Because of my own belief about the nature of being and time, I don't think Oseh Ma'aseh BiReshit is ever a b'racha l'vateil. The process by which we move moment by moment into a world that reflects the results of whatever state-changes were effected in the prior moment is a constant miracle.

All the angst aside, I think it's cool that we have a religion that can think in terms of 28 year cycles for this, and 50 year cycles for the Jubilee. As Rav Allen said, may we all merit to see the NEXT birkat HaChammah.

Interchange from first night seder, 5769

2009-04-10T14:17:00.003-05:00

Recording this here, because it was an insight that I might want to mine in the future.

JK: Why seven days of eating matzah? Why once they were out couldn't they just bake bread?

MM: The short answer is that seven days is what's commanded. If you stop and think about it though, in those days leavening did not come out of a packet from Fleischman's. They were almost certainly using a sourdough starter made by letting flour and water catch wild yeast, and that can take seven days.

Me: If that's the case, then the starter made with yeast caught in Egypt was left behind, and when the Israelites could make leavened bread, it would be with starter that contained only yeast caught in the wilderness. This may symbolize that at a point of transition, we need to leave behind old attitudes and acquire new ones.

D'var Tzav, 5769

2009-04-05T21:58:00.002-05:00

Dvar Tzav
Rich Furman
Delivered on Shabbat HaGadol, 5769 at Temple Israel, MPLS.

This is the second year running that I have had the privilege of drashing on parshat tzav, and it has afforded me a wonderful opportunity to uphold R. ben Bag Bag's saying "turn it and turn it for everything is in it." Our parsha deals with the Standard Operating Procedures for each of the sacrifices, and while we may not, to borrow the words of the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, expect "the return to a sacrificial system of worship under the sons of Aaron," we owe it to ourselves to seek the lessons that even these passages have to teach.

One of the ways we can learn from these passages is to look at the types of offerings brought brought and why they are brought. I want to focus today on the last of these offerings, the שלמים offerings. שלמים is most often rendered as "peace offering," but the word carries more of a connotation of wholeness or well being. Three types of these well-being offerings are defined for us. The תודה, or thanks offering, the נדר or vow-fulfilling offering, and the נדבה, or voluntary offering. Of these three, the תודה is unique in that it must be eaten the same day it is offered, whereas the נדר and נדבה offerings may be eaten over two days.

Why is it the case that the thanksgiving offering should be consumed in less time than the vow or free will offerings? Rabbi Zelig Pliskin explains this by citing Sforno, who “comments that the purpose of this extremely short time period was to ensure that he would share the bread with others. This would publicize the fortunate event." (Growth Through Torah, p. 244-245) In other words, the speed with which the offering was to be eaten was designed so that the person who brought it would have to share his gratitude with as many people in the community as possible.

We may think we're good at that right? After all, every Friday night, from the bimah, we hear about who's been born, who's becoming bar or bat mitzvah, who's getting married, and who's having an anniversary. But these are all things that happen in the public eye in any case. They are all things which, if we live out our days, will happen to everyone.

The things for which the Talmud teaches that one is supposed to bring the thanksgiving offering are a bit closer to the bone:

Rab Judah said in the name of Rab: There are four [classes of people] who have to offer thanksgiving: those who have crossed the sea, those who have traversed the wilderness, one who has recovered from an illness, and a prisoner who has been set free. (BT 54b)

These things are a little more intimate than our life cycle events - returning safely from a dangerous journey, recovering from illness, release from captivity, all of these entail being able to admit to our community, and therefore to ourselves, that we were in mortal danger, and that were it not for the grace of God, we would not be able to offer thanksgiving.

The sacrifices ceased with the destruction of the Temple, and prayer has replaced them. What prayer is said in the place of the thanksgiving offering? "Rab Judah said: 'Blessed is He who bestows lovingkindnesses'. (ibid)" And in keeping with the idea that this gratitude is to be shared with the community, "Abaye said: And he must utter his thanksgiving in the presence of ten, as it is written: 'Let them exalt Him in the assembly of the people.'(Psalm 107:32)"(ibid).

The prayer that has replaced the thanksgiving offering is called Birkat HaGomel, and it may be found on page 253 of Mishkan Tefillah for Shabbat. What we will see if we look at it is that it is set up as a dialogue between those who are thanking God for delivering them from danger and the Congregation which in turn thanks God for the the good that was done in delivering those members of the Congregation who were in danger. This can be seen in the Hebrew which is perhaps best rendered:

Individual Recites
Blessed are you Adonai our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who has bestowed every goodness upon us.

Congregation Responds
Amen. May the one who has bestowed every goodness upon you continue to bestow every goodness upon you forever.

I do not know why, in MT’s translation, the congregation’s part is rendered “us” when the Hebrew says “you.”

In explaining why one who returns from the sea should recite Gomel Rab Judah cites Psalm 107:

Whence do we know this of those who cross the sea? Because it is written, “They that go down to the sea in ships these saw the works of the Lord He raised the stormy wind they mounted up to the heaven, they went down to the deeps they reeled to and fro and staggered like a drunken man they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distresses.”(ibid.)

This is an easy passage for anyone who has, as my wife and I did Tuesday night, flown into MSP during a snowstorm in a commuter jet. The turbulence at time raised us up and cast us down, and so I will rise, and ask her to rise, and if anyone here has, as the note at the bottom of page 253 says, survived a life challenging situation over the past six months, please feel welcome to rise and join us as we recite Gomel.

__________________

Perhaps half the people present rose for Gomel on this prompt. Those standing recited the individual’s portion which, in MT, is couched in the plural. Those who were still sitting responded with a bit of prompting. I enjoined people to not ask those who were bentsching Gomel for details of their situations. It went well. The rabbi indicated to me that he had not known that MT had Gomel; to the best of his knowledge it is the first Reform Siddur to contain it. Another congregant came up to me afterward, volunteered what she had been through to me, and thanked me for giving her the opportunity to bentsch Gomel.

To form one Mishkan

2009-03-22T17:00:00.003-05:00

The book of Genesis tells tale after tale of fraternal relationships gone awry. We begin with the worst case scenario: Cain kills Abel. Then Sarah becomes incensed when Ishmael is playing with Isaac, and he is banished; they reunite only for their father's funeral. Then Jacob buys Esau's birthright and acquires Esau's blessing, they enjoy one reunion, and don't see each other again until they must bury Isaac. Finally we have Joseph and his brothers - who sell Joseph into slavery. In this case, the entire family is reunited, everyone hugs and cries, Jacob and Joseph are gathered to their kin and חזק חזק ונתחזק.

There is a progress, of sorts, through Genesis; each fraternal conflict has a successively better outcome, but it is in Exodus that we finally see siblings dwelling together, by and large, in peace. I'm speaking of Amram's kids - Miriam, Moses, and Aaron.

I think the importance of kinship is of paramount importance in Exodus: Miriam monitors Moses' progress on the Nile and arranges that he will remain connected to the family by having Yocheved for a nurse. Aaron and Moses act together, in concert with each other in the Passover narrative. While numbers will show us some family tension, God resolves it quickly and easily; no lengthy estrangements required.

And yet, it is not only in this family dynamic that we see the importance of familial devotion, but so too in the instructions for the Mishkan and its furnishings. On the ark of the pact, there are to be two cherubim, each facing the other. But the text does not read "each facing the other" but rather "each facing his brother." And the place where God will appear to Moses is between these two brothers facing each other. Likewise, the curtains of the Mishkan are not joined "one to another," but rather "each to her sister." The purpose of this is to form one Mishkan.

The unity of the brothers facing each other is like the unity of Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh - between them they could speak for God to pharaoh. The unity of the curtains is like the unity of Miriam and her sister Israelites, dancing in praise of God.

The message is clear - it is that God delights when K'lal Yisrael - The family of Israel - come together for common good. Their may be schisms between communities, there may be rifts within communities, but the ability to come together, to find strength in those differences, and to apply that strength in God's service is the ultimate goal of Torah.

Parshat Bo: The Thing which Matza is Not.

2009-01-29T21:56:00.003-06:00

ויאפו את הבצק אשר הוציאו ממצרים עגת מצות כי לא חמץ כי גרשו ממצרים ולא יכלו להתמהמה וגם צדה לא עשו להם

They baked the dough that they brought from Egypt [into] unleavened cakes, for it had not risen, because they were kicked out of Egypt and could not tarry and also did not make provisions for themselves.

We know about Matzah. Hard, dry, square things that come in a box from Manischewitz or Streit's. It was on my family's seder table all the time I grew up.

I recently switched to Shmurah matza for the seder. Big round things, not real uniform, without the perforation or machine-cuts of the Streits' stuff. It feels closer to what this verse describes. Flour and water, hastily baked by a nation in flight. It really gets to the bone of what matza is. But we are missing something, I think.

What is this matzah not? By which I mean, if it had had the time to leaven (sour, really. The root חמץ means "went sour" more than it means "leaven") and rise and be baked properly, what would the product have become? One thing I'm certain of - it would not have become Wonder Bread, nor Baguettes, nor Challah.

What it would become I learned the week before last passover, where I stopped into a place called "Queen of Sheba" thinking to get some falafel or something, only to discover that it was and Ethiopian cafe. Well, having gone in, and perused the menu, I settled on a boneless lamb stew. I knew that I would betray a horrible American-ness if I used the flatware that was condescendingly placed at my table. When the food arrived, there was the stew, and there was this huge, round, soft, flat bread pockmarked with bubbles. I ripped a piece of it and used it to pick up some of the stew. It was a sourdough. Made of teff. Really absorbent. Injira.

I was delighted. I knew, in a deep down knowing that this was the thing the shmurah matza was not. It was חמוץ - sour. It was tender. And it was perfectly suited to picking up stewed meat with one's fingers. I sat eating it thoughtfully - this was the meal that Abraham served the visitors, these the "cakes" that Sarah prepared. And the shemurah matzah? The unleavened cakes that Lot had on hand.

When I sat down at the Seder, I knew precisely what I was missing - a tangy crepe like bread replaced by bread that shatters. And I may have acquired a new custom - to eat Ethiopian in the week before pesach.

Because it seems remiss not to . . .

2009-01-11T21:38:00.003-06:00

This is a religious blog, not a political one. I did not create this space for the habitation of my righteous indignation, but rather for my theological, and philosophical reflection. That said, it seems that having a JBlog and not saying something about Gaza are mutually exclusive.

As complete a statement as you can hope for of my theology can be found at the top of this blog. The bit of it that is relevant to the current situation is "Human nature being what it is, things sometimes get ugly, and sometimes booty needs kicking in order to create space in which kindness can prevail."

I will now subject you, patient reader, to the exegesis of my own words. Your patience is to be commended.

There are two parts to the statement. "Booty needs kicking," and "kindness can prevail." While Israel is currently doing what is necessary with respect to the first bit, it is my fervent wish that it will follow through with the second bit by reoccupying Gaza for the purposes of rebuilding its infrastructure, creating an education system that does not teach hatred, and extending a thousand kindnesses to the population there so that no organization like Hamas can get a foothold there again. This is a decades long project, and not likely to meet the world's approval, but the success of the Marshall Plan in Germany and Japan shows how well such an approach can work towards the creation of lasting peace and prosperity. On the other hand, if Israel leaves Gaza an impoverished smoking heap of rubble, as Germany was left in the wake of WWI, it should not be altogether surprised if there are similar results.

I hope that Israel will pursue such a rebuilding effort, and I hope that it will enjoy the full support of the incipient Obama administration in such an effort.

While it is tempting, in my cynicism, to note that if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, I will instead conclude with these words from the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah - עוד לא אבדה תקותנו - still our hope has not passed away. May we see the space created where kindness can prevail on both sides of the Gaza border, and may it do so.

Chanukah: Beyond Sufficiency

2008-12-23T19:57:00.005-06:00

Our Rabbis taught: It is incumbent to place the Hannukah lamp by the door of one's house on the outside; if one dwells in an upper chamber, he places it at the window nearest the street. But in times of danger it is sufficient to place it on the table. (BT Shabbat 21a)

I first encountered this image two years ago, and it moved me to tears. Mine is an analytical mind, and the urge to comment is strong, but I think this picture speaks for itself.

Thoughts On Parshat VaYetze 5769

2008-12-06T22:05:00.002-06:00

29:32-34 - The first three sons of Leah all have names that are derived from her feelings of anguish over Jacob's dislike of her. None fare well in Jacob's blessing either.

30:3-36 - Rachel gives Bilhah to Jacob with pretty much the same language that Sarah uses with Hagar: "ותלד, על ברכי, ואבנה גם-אנכי"Gen 30:3b vs. "ותאמר שרי אל-אברם, הנה-נא עצרני יהוה מלדת--בא-נא אל-שפחתי, אולי אבנה ממנה" Gen 16:2 But whereas Hagar named Yishmael, Rachel properly lays claim to her handmaid's offspring, naming them herself. It is also noteworthy that Rachel says "ותלד על ברכי" whereas Sarah does not. This too is a way of making it clear who the kid belongs to.

David H. Aaron notes that

"In antiquity, it was not uncommon for a woman from a family of means to be married with a concubine who would potentially serve as a surrogate in the event she proved infertile." (TMT Vayetze 5769)

This was the case with both Bilhah and Zilpah, and presumably they would have known it. It may not have been the case with Hagar who, it seems to me, may have been acquired during Abraham's stay in Egypt.

Thoughts On Parshat Toldot 5769

2008-11-28T22:35:00.002-06:00

25:30-26:1 Chapter divisions mislead us. It is parsha and aliyah division that show us the Jewish understanding of how the text ought to be divided. This struck me upon hearing the second Aliyah read, and the phrase "ויהי רעב בארץ" coming on the heel of Esau's selling his birthright for food. If the episode takes place in the context of a famine, then Esau's exhaustion is understandable - no rain, no browse; no browse, no deer. The hunter cannot hunt when there is no prey. Thus Esau turns to Jacob, but produce too is at a premium, and Jacob will not relinquish it for less than the birthright. If we follow the principle that what happens to the Patriarchs foreshadows what happens to their descendants, then we see a foreshadowing of the Egyptians surrendering their freeholds to become sharecroppers to Pharaoh in exchange for grain from Joseph's granaries in this interchange between Jacob and Esau.

Noach and Moses: Human beings in places where there are no human beings.

2008-11-09T11:21:00.002-06:00

D'var Torah delivered at Temple Israel Congregational Service, 1 Nov 2008.

"These are the generations of Noach: Noach was a righteous man, blameless in his generation."(Gen. 6:9a)

So begins our Parsha, and there Midrash we are fond of which hangs on the phrase "in his generation." "O Ho!" we say, "it doesn't take much to surpass the virtue of the Generation of the flood." We are content to suppose that Noah did not smell like a rose, but was merely the least offensive item in a barrel of fish-guts. But there is more to the verse than this:

et ha'elohim hithalech noach.

"Noach was in the habit of walking with God."(Gen. 6:9b)

This tells us much, and all to Noach's credit. hithalech, is the verb halach, walk, in the hitpa'el form. This form is used for reflexive, repetitive or habitual actions, so from it we learn that Noach was in the habit of walking in the ways of the divine spark within himself. The generations up to the flood were by and large without commandments, so the person who can walk with God is one who has shown a remarkble initiative for doing the right thing without being told.

This is perhaps why R. Nehemiah defends Noach against the idea that he was merely the best of a bad crop, saying: "If he was righteous even in his generation, how much more so [had he lived] in the age of Moses."(BR 30:9) His point is that it is more difficult to be righteous when surrounded by lawlessness than when surrounded by people who have some basic laws.

He is not the first person of whom this is said, however, of Enoch it is written "vayithalech Chanoch et ha'elohim v'eyneino ki lakach oto elohim" - "And Enoch was in the habit of walking with God, and he was no more because God took him." That Enoch gets this special treatment in what is otherwise a typical genealogy passage is of special noteworthiness because he is Noah's great grandfather. When Enoch exhibited this "walking with God" thing it might have been that God thought it was a one-off, but with Noah, it begins to seem like a family trait. Thus, after Adonai decides to destroy all creation, "Noah finds grace in in the eyes of Adonai"(Gen. 6:8).

So, although we are not quite clear on the nature of Noah's virtue, it was sufficient to persuade God that there was something worth preserving, such that he commanded Noah to build the ark and to save his family, and breeding pairs of all the animals. Thus God can now unleash harsh judgement on the world, but does not have to start from scratch, but rather can repopulate the earth from the ark (tevah). Thus R. Shim'on notes in the Zohar:

"The blessed Holy One wanted to engender from him generations for the world, from out of the ark. Further, judgment could not overpower him because he was hidden away in the ark, concealed from sight. . . ."(Matt I:395-6)

Thus, the ark, which is associated with Shechinah in this passage of the Zohar, is used to protect Noah from the harsh judgement that is destroying the world. It is preserving a remnant of creation for redemption. The word used for the ark here, tevah, is used in only one other story in the Bible - it is a tevah into which young Moses is placed when he is set upon the Nile. As was the case with Noah, destruction was walking the earth, albeit at Pharaoh's behest, and Moses merited preservation. We find discussion of this protection attributed to R. Judah in the Zohar:

[Rabbi Judah said] "What does this mean: She took a papyrus basket for him? She covered him with Her signs, so that he would be protected from those fish who swim the waters of the great sea.(Matt, IV:55)

Bearing in mind that "She" in this passage refers also to Shechinah, we can observe that Noah and Moses both merit divine protection, and both receive it through the same aspect of the divine, through Shechinah. We have already discussed how Noah merited this - being th only righteous person in his generation played a key role there, but we should also note Moses' merits, the auspicious beginnings of what would be the most significant career in Torah. Ibn Ezra notes two early deeds that show Moses to be particularly righteous in his generation:

. . . Moses killed an Egyptian because the latter committed an act of violence and . . . saved the daughters of Midian from the shepherds because the [shepherds] were trying to water their flocks with the water the women had drawn (Ibn Ezra, 39).

What Noah and Moses have in common is that finding themselves in situations where the people around them are acting in ways unbecoming even to animals, they both pay attention to that divine spark within and behave in ways that live up to human potential. The importance of this is central to our philosophy as Jews, for it is written in Pirke Avot: "In a place where there are no no men, try to be a man" (Avot 2:5).

This then is our charge and our challenge: to treat each other and our neighbors with the compassion and humaneness due them as fellow creatures created in the image of God, to strive to be human and humane, even if no one else is, because only by preserving that divine spark of humanity within the tevot of our souls can we fulfill that aspiration.

Works Cited

Blackman, Philip. Ethics of the Fathers. New York: Judaica Press, 1980.

Ibn Ezra, Abraham et.al. Ibn Ezra's Commentary on the Pentateuch: Genesis. New York: Menorah Pub, 1988.

Matt, Daniel. The Zohar 1: Pritzker Edition, Volume One. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Matt, Daniel. The Zohar 4: Pritzker Edition, Volume Four. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Simon, Maurice. Midrash Rabbah. London: Soncino Press, 1983.

A thought that occurred to me as I was building the Succah

2008-10-18T22:34:00.002-05:00

There is a joke that goes:

Q: Why did God command Sukkot?

A: So that Jewish men would learn to use tools.

There may be something in that - that we should never forget how to build portable dwellings or a tabernacle. We note, after all, that Sukkot is a remembrance of being brought forth from Egypt. The holiday is commanded so that God had us dwell in booths when we left Egypt. Its not a bad skill for a Jew to have - the ability to create a dwelling with ready to hand materials, to make homes for ourselves even as we depart from whatever Egypt we happen to find ourselves in. The Sukkah is an instrument of our deliverance, and I never understood properly God's instructions to Moses concerning the building of the tabernacle until I had built a Sukkah.

To repair a bit of the world

2008-10-15T19:09:00.003-05:00

I've been meaning to post this for months, but have only now found the time.

On Sunday, June 29th, my wife and I traveled with Nechama to Waverly Iowa to do some flood relief work. Deploying with Nechama is something we've been meaning to do for a few years, but scheduling conflicts or fears about our bodies' ability to deal with the allergens or the rigors kept us from it. But earlier this week, fresh from parshat שלח לך, an opportunity that fit our schedule crossed the wife's desk. She asked what I thought, and, not wishing to seem like a grasshopper in my own eyes, I said "let's do it."

We needed to gather shoes, gloves, an sundry other stuff, and we did so. We were nervous about our stamina and allergies, but I decided that dying while trying to make some people's lives a bit better would be better than keeling over at my desk. So we got up at 5:30 on a Sunday morning and rendezvoused at the Sabes JCC with the Neshama van which took us down to Waverly. The van stopped at a Dunn Brothers in Owattana, MN so we could all get coffee and breakfast.

As we continued down we passed through some wind farms. The windmills were tall with beautiful, slender, blades that spun slowly in the breeze. They fascinated us, like some graceful three-armed creature dancing in the the wind. One could imagine meditating whilst staring at them in deep contemplation - as one might meditate with a flame.

The work that awaited was the result of the cedar river flooding its banks. Much of the downtown had been under water, but stores were back in operation when we arrived. Waverly seemed like a creature awakening, life spreading to the various parts of its body. We were to be part of that awakening, removing flood damaged parts of the houses so that the homeowners could restore them. We visited three homes during the course of the day. From one, we removed the kitchen, from another we took up flooring, and in the third, we stripped what had been a finished basement down to the studs.

It was this last house that told the story of what had happened there. As we hung string lights to work by, water came rushing out of the ceiling. As we separated the sheetrock from the studs, we found the water trapped in the insulation. The mud from the river remained in the walls. We then carted the debris to he curb.

It is difficult, when doing flood cleanup work not to think of Noah. God's selection of noah, the building of the ark, the animals-these things always take center stage. Noah planted a vineyard, we read, and we know where that led, but what a monumental task Noah and his family were faced with! Rebuilding their homes, starting over from scratch. How easy to be taken over by despair.

And yet despair is not what we found when we arrived. We found hospitality, homeowners sharing coolers stocked with bottled water. People who wanted to work by our sides to repair their worlds.

Thoughts on Parashat Ki Tetze and Megillat Ruth

2008-09-15T19:11:00.002-05:00

In many ways it seems like megillat Ruth is a response to Ki Tetse. The parsha deals with gleanings, levirate marriage, treatment of the widow and the ger, any whether or not a Moabite can join kehillat yisrael. In Ruth a Moabite woman marries an Israelite woman, takes on the Israelite religion, and, through levirate marriage, becomes the progenitor of Israel's favorite king. A strict enforcement of the rules in this parsha would render that chain of events impossible. Beth Kissileff, in her address to the Saint Paul Melton graduation of 5768 noted that Ruth is an example of dynamic legal tension within Tanakh itself. I myself would like sometime to count the generations from Joshua to Ruth. If they are ten or more, that poses an interesting possibility - namely that the "even unto the tenth generation" that we so often take to mean "never" may in fact mean what it says. If so, then a limit is set on this exclusion. That leaves us with the question of what to do with verse 23:4, where it says "ad olam." So why then, does Ruth merit to join the kehilla? - for the care she has taken of Naomi - she thus separates herself from the Moabite sin of refusing to sell food and water to the Israelites. This teaches us to assess people on their individual merit rather than their tribal affiliation.

D'var Shoftim 5768

2008-09-07T00:31:00.003-05:00

D'var Shoftim 5768

Its a familiar scene: a sea of young faces, eager to greet the future, ending one phase of life to start the next. We've all lived it, and witnessed it - that moment when the Rabbi, or the high school principal, or the college president imparts those final words of wisdom, knowing that this is the last opportunity he or she will have to inluence this particular group of young people for the good. Or maybe it's you - as your children that you've guided into adulthood leave their neighborhood, birthplace, and parental home for lands they have not seen - imparting those final words that you hope will urge them to live by the values you instilled in them so painstakingly over the years. This is the setting of D'varim, as Moshe addresses the nation that he has led out of Egypt for the last time in the hopes that they will continue to walk in the ways of Adonai.

But its more than that even, for with this final instruction to the children of Israel, Moshe is also handing the reigns of governance over to the nascent Israelite nation. And in order to do so, those aspects of governance that had been dependent on him and his special relationship with the holy blessed One need to be transformed into something that can be sustained by human beings who do not have Moshe's special form of prophecy. Moshe's role as the one who, in consultation with Adonai, resolves the most difficult cases is the aspect of governance that our present parsha, Shoftim, deals with.

In parashat Yitro, we saw the early development of the judicial system: Moshe judges every case. Yitro, Moshe's father in law, takes one look at this and says:

The thing that you are doing is not good. You will exhaust both yourself and this people that is with you, for the thing is too heavy for you; you cannot do it by yourself (Exodus 18:17-18).

And so, at Yitro's urging and with God's assent, Moshe establishes a tiered judicial system wherein he decides only the most difficult of cases. This is an instance of tzimtzum on the part of Moshe - he reduces his engagement in order to give the children of Israel room to gain the skills necessary to function as an independent nation.

Tzimtzum is a very important aspect of parenting allowing the child to develop skills necessary to survive indepedently. Wendy Mogel notes inh her book Blessing of a Skinned Knee that

In the Jewish mystical principle of tsimtsum we can find a lovely spiritual model for slowly relinquishing control over our children. Tsimtsum means "contraction of divine energy." Originally everything was God. God filled up the entire universe. But in order for one thing to exist, something else has to withdraw. So in order to make a place for the world, God had to withdraw a bit.

At first God stayed close by us, his new and vulnerable creations, to provide help as needed. When we were trapped by the Egyptians, God provided plagues; when we needed to escape quickly, God parted the Red Sea; when we were hungry in the desert, there was the miracle of manna from heaven; when we were thirsty, God provided water from a rock. God was a day by day, sometimes minute by minute, miracle maker. Later as we matured and were able to manage on our own, God withdrew further and made fewer miracles. Left to our own devices, we humans took a lot of false steps. But we learned from our mistakes and became a resilient people, strong enough to endure for more than three thousand years. (Mogel, 92)

While Mogel emphasizes God's role as parent, it is clear that God and Moshe together comprise a parenting team. We see this most clearly in the matter of the golden calf, where God complains to Moshe saying "your people, that you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted ruinously"(Exodus 32:7) to which Moshe counters "Adonai, why does your anger wax hot against your people, that you have brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?"(32:11) In this bickering between God and Moshe we see the paradigmatic parental response in which each parent says to the other "look what your child has done." Thus we see that not just God, but Moshe too is acting as a parent to the children of Israel.

But tzimtzum without instruction is nothing more than abandonment, and so, before Moshe can depart from the world, he must instruct the children of Israel how to carry on without him, he must relinquish that last bit of power he had reserved to himself - the role of deciding the most difficult cases - and impart the principle that guides its application: Tzedek, tzedek tirdof, "Righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue." We customarily see this rendered as "justice" but I render it "righteousness" because rigteousness is what we achieve when we temper justice with mercy - one of the fundamental principles of this parsha.

The curious thing is that it is the pursuit of righteousness that is commanded. The message is that whether it is attainable or not, it must remain the goal. The question of how righteousness is best pursued is the subject of this parsha. Moshe had the advantage of prophecy unlike no other as is written: "and there did not arise again a prophet in Israel like Moshe, that knew Adonai face to face," but as we move beyond the availability of this kind of prophecy, the pursuit of righteousness relies, ultimately on human integrity.

How does our parsha ensure the kind of human integrity necessary to ensure the pursuit of righteousness? It begins by warning the judge not to recognize faces or accept bribes(16:19), it then goes on to say, concerning information about acts of idolatry or blasphemy that "When it is told to you, you shall listen, and you shall inquire well . . ." and finally a capital sentence cannot be meted out without the testimony of two or three witnesses whose own hands must be the first to execute the sentence. This puts the witnesses in the position of standing by their words. And if concerning crimes against God, which should receive the swiftest retribution, we have this level of due process, how much the more so do crimes between people demand it.

The difficult case, which perplexes the local judge and would have been referred to Moshe under Yitro's system is now to be referred to "the levitical priests, and unto the judge that shall be in those days"(Dvarim 17:9). This is the most radical change to the system: contemporary priests and Judges, applying the precepts outlined earlier replace Moshe acting with Adonai's counsel. This turns the judicial system into something that can last through the generations, rather than being bound to one person. It transitions the Israelites from what may well have been a cult of personality to a rule of law. And it designs into those laws safeguards against vigilanteism or vendetta. It assures that the Israelites have the tools they need to build a just society when they enter the Land.

And as it is with the Israelites, so it is when children leave home, when students leave school, when employees take on new roles – the challenge is to withdraw and let them test the precepts they have learned. At times they will follow them perfectly and all will be well, at other times they will follow them perfectly and all won't be well, at times they will revise them, and improve them, at times they will devise them and even come to harm. The trick is to remember, even in this last case, that people learn from their mistakes, and become resilient only through doing so.

Reflections on the Third Temple

2008-07-27T08:00:00.002-05:00

I was raised in a conservative household and spent some time in an orthodox youth group. My earliest years, we lived in a suburb that had very few Jews, all of my classmates were Christian. Our teacher in Kindergarten had us write letters to Santa Claus. Mine, if I could ever get the "S" right would tell Santa to stay away from our house because we were Jewish. I learned quickly though, that Santa was a ruse, a game Christian parents played with their children.

At Passover, I had a sneaking suspicion the we Jews were playing a similar game - it was called "opening the door for Elijah the Prophet." This suspicion was confirmed for me when I saw my father quaffing Elijah's cup after the Seder. It wasn't a moment of great disillusionment or anything - I just acknowledged that Elijah is our Santa Claus and that is that.

Once on a retreat with my Orthodox youth group, we were studying the commandment of the Red-Heifer. Now, by this point in my life I was already a little rationalist, I already believed that whether we knew it or not there were reasons behind commandments, and as we discussed the notion of the חוק, the just because commandment, I sat there thinking "nah, we just haven't figured it out yet."

So now I think I have it figured out: There is a war being waged today between heaven and earth. On Earth, there are zealots attempting to breed a red heifer that meets the halachic standard for being without blemish. And in heaven, there is God who needs only to strike two or three hair follicles on said heifer to keep those zealots from trying to take the temple mount. And God has consistently done so.

And therein, lies the reason for the commandment of the Red Heifer. God meant, when he commanded that it be "without blemish" that you couldn't use a three-legged, or one-eyed red heifer. But He also knew that humans would set a standard so high under rabbinic Judaism, that the inability to produce one would prevent our rebuilding the temple.

I think this is the reason because I do not believe that the destruction of either temple was a punishment for sin, necessarily, but rather an attempt to wean the set of humans that He had chosen for particular interest, from animal sacrifice altogether, that animal sacrifice was not something God particularly wanted from us, but that He had to allow early in our history, because if He did not provide a tactile mode of interaction for us, we would come up with things like the Golden Calf.

So the development of Rabbinic Judaism was a step toward God's original desires for the Jewish People, and that, were we to reinstitute animal sacrifice God would greet the prospect with the same distress as a mother, having just celebrated her son becoming Bar-Mitzvah, would experience watching that son return to the use of the pacifier.

The destruction of the temple is something that we should commemorate because so many Jews lost their lives, but, painful as it was, it forced us to grow into a more spiritually focussed people, which I suspect is one of the goals of Torah anyway.

And as prayers for Elijah the Prophet, and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem insinuate themselves back into Reform liturgy I think we owe it to ourselves to ask how we can hope to remain a progressive movement if we undertake to pray for regression.

Naso: Problems of Gender and Number

2008-06-06T14:48:00.007-05:00

I'm going to be leining at my shul this weekend, - third Aliyah of Naso. And of course, when I'm preparing a reading, I am face to face with it for weeks, and end up paying really close attention to grammar. Sometimes I get divrei Torah that way, other times I get stuff like this - stuff that bugs me but probably would not interest a general audience.

Numbers 5:5-7

ה וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר. ו דַּבֵּר, אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, אִישׁ אוֹ-אִשָּׁה כִּי יַעֲשׂוּ מִכָּל-חַטֹּאת הָאָדָם, לִמְעֹל מַעַל בַּיהוָה; וְאָשְׁמָה, הַנֶּפֶשׁ הַהִוא. ז וְהִתְוַדּוּ, אֶת-חַטָּאתָם אֲשֶׁר עָשׂוּ, וְהֵשִׁיב אֶת-אֲשָׁמוֹ בְּרֹאשׁוֹ, וַחֲמִישִׁתוֹ יֹסֵף עָלָיו; וְנָתַן, לַאֲשֶׁר אָשַׁם לוֹ

Adonai spoke to Moses saying: "Speak to the Children of Israel - a man or a woman, if they commit any human sins breaking faith with Adonai, and that person does damage; they shall confess their sin that they did and the damage he shall return in full with a fifth added on top of it, he shall give [it] to the one whom he damaged.

There is interesting stuff going on with gender and number here. The commandment here, regarding restitution, is regarded at "a man or a woman." This results in a subject that is singular but of ambiguous gender, being either male or female. Since the Torah so rarely specifies gender at this level, the linguistic difficulties this creates are rarely dealt with in the biblical text. It is interesting to see the kind of struggle this ambiguous antecedent imposes on the text that follows.

The approach taken here is similar to approaches taken recently in English to cope with gender which have made grammarians like E.B. White and William Safire cringe. Sentences like "if somebody wants to walk their dog in the city, they have to take a pooper-scooper" became the norm as English speakers became more inclined to use gender inclusive language. The same sentence penned in the 1950's would have read "if somebody wants to walk his dog in the city, he has to take a pooper scooper." Our scribe here does indeed resort to using plural cojugations and declensions (יעשו, והתבדו, חטאתם, עשו) before return to the more common biblical usage after the segol clause of Num 5:7a.

So what does this all mean? I think it would be retrojection to imagine that our scribe was troubled by matters of gender equity in the way that we might be, but there does seem to be a genuine struggle here to sort out what best to do with an ambiguous singular referent. I don't really know what to make of it, but it may be interesting to return to.

A Haiku for the Sabbath

2008-06-05T19:58:00.001-05:00

יום שישי נגמר
נדלקו נרות שבת
מה יפה היום

The Rubashkin's Raid and the Reform Jew

2008-05-18T22:09:00.000-05:00

First, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can get up to speed by reading the details of the raid at the the Heksher Tzedek blog.

I've kept an eye on Rubashkin's ever since reading Postville. The latest is just another event in a long string of issues that have included kashrut violations (caught on tape by PETA) and food safety violations.

But I'm Reform, and I don't seek a Heksher on my meat. As long as it comes from a healthy animal, killed under controlled circumstances for human consumption in a manner that ensures rapid brain death, I'm fine. So why should I care about what happens in Postville? They're not part of my food stream, so what's my dog in this fight?

It's simple - what is happening there is a chillul haShem, a desecration of the divine name. When Jews are seen to be exploiting workers for profit, or breaking rules of the land, it often has implications for all of us, it can feed stereotypes that lead to problems. Moreover, despite the fact that I do not require a heksher on my meat there are other Reform Jews who do - after all, Reform theology, taken at its word, admits of a very wide scope of praxis. Finally, for the sake of klal Yisrael, the Jewish community as a whole, it is incumbent on me to do what I can to ensure that the Jew who does keep heksher-kosher has the freedom to do so. The chillul haShem in Postville has the capacity to endanger this freedom by creating the impression that kosher slaughter is linked with cruelty or corrupt business practices.

These are the stakes that a Reform Jew, regardless of whether or not he seeks a heksher, has in this issue.

To those ends I support Rabbi Allen's efforts with respect to making heksher tzedek into a reality.

Yom HaShoah

2008-05-01T22:48:00.000-05:00

Many years ago the father of a friend gave me a gift. I don't know that he ever trusted his son with it, but he trusted me.

He was a survivor. His wife too. Don't know the details, but the PTSD was something his wife never let go of. One day, I delivered him food, because he was in need and he gave me the gift of this story. I only remember its climax, its crux, and I figure there is no day better than today to record it.

He was on a train headed for a camp. It was summer's peak and they were packed in. Stopped. Without water they would die. They drew lots. It fell upon my friend's father to escape the train and bring back water. People gave them what valuables they had so that he could pay.

He left the train, acquired the water, and returned with it. It seemed odd to me that he would return to the train, but people were depending on him, and the Hungarian countryside would not necessarily be a hospitable place for a lone Jew.

People were grateful and the train moved on. Death was postponed, but it only ever is anyway. They were alive then, and that was what mattered.

He survived. Sired a son. Told me this story, and I'm sharing it because that's what was wanted.

Sedarim

2008-04-22T14:45:00.001-05:00

First Night:

Friend S. Hosted. Wife M. Led. 16 People.

It's official: we've outgrown The Concise Family Seder. The term "Concision" was coined for the property of which this haggadah contained excessive amounts. The youngest, W., complained that the brief birkat hamazon was too brief, which was very heartening. Our institutions are doing well by our youth, creating a generation that is more engaged than the parents. The maggid was considered too brief, and a factual error was observed in this haggadah's assertion that Abraham met Sarah in Canaan. It served us well for 5 years, but it's time to move on. The layered Kugel I made was a hit. It comprised a layer of yam kugel, a layer of spinach kugel, and another layer of yam kugel.

Second Night:

I hosted. I led. 8 People.

Friend J. lent us a bunch of the Baskin Haggaddah. Slightly different crowd from first night, so lots of different energy in the room. I was leading this one, and we had enough in the way of students of Hebrew and native Israelis at the table to be able to look at some of the differences between the Hebrew and the English, which was fun. Then R., the 14 year old who had not been around on Monday, raised all kinds of thorny issues around chosenness, and how can we reconcile the plagues and drowning of the Egyptians with the merciful God we Liberal Jews like to believe in. So midrash was shared, various personal theories explored, a discussion of the balance between mercy and justice and she was, of course, assured that this is one of the questions that never stops being asked. The Baskin Haggadah served us well, except for missing the handwashing. Food was my low-effort lamb-packets. There was lamb from the meaty, broiled shankbone in our Hillel sandwiches, because Reform Judaism does not long for a return to temple service. B. and A. brought a marvelous Potato thingy, L. some steamed veg, J. supplied Matza ball soup and I supplied some vegetarian borscht.

Lamb Packets, per serving:

2 Lamb Loin chops (a nice lean cut)
6 Stalks of asparagus
1/2 tsp of Astringent (Lemon juice most years, but this year it was Balsamic Vinegar)
a few aromatic sprigs (I usually use lavender, but I could see rosemary working well.

Stack it all on foil, seal it, and put it in a 250 degree oven about an hour before the Seder starts, and then don't spare it another thought until you're ready to eat. The beauty of this food prep method is that it will wait for you.

Korban Pesach

2008-04-13T17:39:00.000-05:00

Dovbear recently re-posted to his blog his ideal Passover menu. It's not a menu I would use myself, because it seems to me to be uninspired. But sifting through the comments (his readers range from left wing Reform to right wing Chareidi) I noticed a few things. Some commentors feel that red meat should not be eaten at the Seder. Others say red meat is fine so long as you don't grill or roast it. And then there are people I know who won't eat lamb on pesach at all.

The reason behind all this has to do with the notion that since the destruction of the temple, it is impossible to bring the Korban Pesach and therefore one should not eat it. Rabbi Yehoshua Weber of Clanton Park Synagogue, based on Shulchan Aruch OC 476 writes:

Today, given that we have no bais ha’mikdash, and consequentially no Pesach offering, we refrain from eating roast meat or fowl at the seder lest someone think that we are eating some sort of mock Pesach offering. (Weber, 12)

So when all is said and done, it is this nostalgia for the temple that has inspired this reticence. That it is in the Shulchan Arukh may even give it the force of halakhah. But the Reform Jew must determine for himself whether this halakhah is worthy of following. Paragraph 5 of the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 states that we do not expect a return to "a sacrificial system under the sons of Aaron." While much of that paragraph has been reversed by subsequent platforms, this statement remains unabrogated. Such a return is incompatible with the notion of a progressive Judaism. That being said, the remembrance of the sacrifices, and most especially of the Korban Pesach has moved from the Beit Hamikdash to the mikdash m'at of the home, therefore I will be serving lamb at my seder. I won't be roasting it though, but this is only because I find that lamb slow cooked in packets means that dinner will not burn if the Maggid should go long (as it should be allowed to.)

When you lie down and when you rise up

2008-04-08T20:53:00.000-05:00

This is just a nodule of a thought really, not quite a post. But it is interesting to me that the command to recite the Shema "when you lie down and when you rise up" is presumed to refer to evening and morning recitations.

How odd it must be, for a night watchman or a third-shifter to help out with a morning minion and recite "who removes sleep from the eyes, slumber from the eyelids" before going to bed, or to recite Hashkiveinu at the start of his day.

The Shema itself, does not contain language linking it to the time of day it is recited, but the attendant blessings are.

Dvar Tzav

2008-03-18T12:38:00.000-05:00

Dvar, Parshat Tzav, 5768. Rich Furman

Permanence in Diaspora

No one knows a synagogue building better than a child on the verge of becoming bar or bat mitzvah. They explore the corridors, every nook and cranny. They know where to hide, where all the best bathrooms are, and sooner or later they inevitably discover that the Ner Tamid, which they have been told all their short lives means "Eternal Light," isn’t. This moment came for me as I was poking around a small alcove in the Rego Park Jewish Center, when I found a circuit breaker labeled very clearly "Ner Tamid." For some of this congregation's children I suppose that moment came when, a few years ago, there was a power outage, and the Ner Tamid went out but the Menorot over the exits remained on. It struck me at the time as poor stagecraft that the Ner Tamid was not on the emergency power system, but even in this, there are lessons to be learned.

One of the questions that always stayed with me since my own discovery is why the Ner Tamid, alone, had such a clearly labeled circuit breaker. Was it left like that so that we would discover it, wrestle with that discovery, and come to our own conclusions before we stood upon the Bimah as adults for the first time? Was this discovery a rite of passage, a stern reminder that human institutions, such as synagogues, were human institutions, and not divine? That whatever myths we had developed as children to rationalize a light that glowed eternally, despite the fact that we knew that bulbs burn out could not be carried into adulthood?

There are two commandments in the first reading of Parshat Tzav whose juxtaposition strikes me as being equivalent, somehow, to that moment of cognitive dissonance. The first is that a fire be kept burning constantly upon the altar - this is the source for the Ner Tamid. The second is that the meal-offering be consumed as matzot. The reason that these two commandments, side by side, trouble me is that the first speaks to permanence and rootedness but the second speaks to transience.

The first time we encounter Matzah is in Genesis. The angels arrive at Sodom, where they are greeted by Lot, who invites them for dinner. He serves them Matzah. The rabbis disparage Lot's hospitality, after all Abraham had spared no expense. What kind of awful host is Lot that he just fed them Matzah? But the angels are there to lead Lot and his family out of a city that God is about to destroy. Matzah is what we eat when we don't have leisure to knead, and proof and shape and proof again and bake. It is a bread baked by someone who knows he may have to flee at any moment. It makes sense that this is what Lot would have on hand given that he could be run out of town at any moment. He is in fact redeemed from from the towns immanent destruction. Lot's family's exodus for Sodom foreshadows the Israelite exodus from Egypt, where matzah once again figures as a symbol of hasty departure.

And so we find ourselves, in the first Aliyah of Parshat Tzav, in the Mishkan, itself a temporary structure, being told never to let the fire burning on the altar go out, but not being told how to preserve it when the encampment moves, and move it must, because despite the Midrash telling us that leaven cannot mix with the meal offering because of the meal offering's holiness, the symbolism of the priests eating matzah remains an indicator of our transience.

The problem of how they preserved that flame puzzled me, and I reflected on it, sought opinions on it and researched it. In my own reflections, I imagined an ember being carried, perhaps - in the manner of Prometheus - in a fennel stalk. One of my teachers at Melton, Rob Portnoe, imagined a torch being kindled and carried, and the flame carried that way. And my research turned up a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud which suggests that they covered the flame with a large pot when they traveled. (JT Yoma 4:6)

All of these ideas share one thing in common: that it is upon us to carry the flame wherever we travel, be it in the land of Israel or outside it, whether we are settled in a place or moving between places. It would be poetic, perhaps, to say that that light is our tradition and we must keep it burning in our hearts. But Judaism knows that abstractions like that are not sufficient to maintain continuity. It takes the reification of that idea, whether as a flame on the altar or a lamp over the the the ark or the lights we kindle on Shabbat and Festivals to make it real.

And as we move from place to place we carry two things with us, the matzah, that teaches us that we need to be alert for the moment that God says its time to move on, and the flame, which teaches us that wherever we set up camp God is with us. But just as the flame needed care and tending to remain burning, just as the bulb in the Ner Tamid above us now needs to be changed from time to time, so a relationship with God is something that requires tending and attention.

Taboos and Text Preservation

2007-10-21T02:54:00.000-05:00

Had an interesting thought driving home from Shul today - to what degree has the taboo on destroying documents containing the tetragrammaton helped to preserve our tradition, and help our historical sense. Imagine - if that taboo did not exist, if the stuff could be burned, no Cairo Geniza, perhaps no Dead Sea Scrolls. With rulings that digital representations of the Name don't count, what will become of documents we produce today.

D'var Torah - Parashat Bireshit, '68

2007-10-14T22:52:00.001-05:00

I delivered this d'var at our monthly participatory service in October.

Bireshit is a huge parsha, it begins with the creation of the world and ends on the edge of the flood. The amount of human time it spans is unknowable. In the passage that we just heard read, we see the world created, and it's important, I think, to watch the way it happens - we begin with heaven and earth - the creation of space - and then light and darkness, which are called day and night - the creation of time. And so it proceeds, things created in pairs, each thing both opposing its counterpart and, through that opposition helping its counterpart to do something neither could do alone - if Heaven and Earth were not separate from each other, there would be no space for anything. If night and day were not separate from each other, time would not pass and we could not say "וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר י֥וֹם אֶחָֽד" - "and there was evening, and there was morning: day one."

Moving to the creation of people, we find that this same tension between opposites is an essential aspect of the divine plan, as the Holy Blessed One resolves "it is not good for the man to be alone, I will make for him an עזר כנגדו."(Gen. 2:18)

This is a difficult phrase to render into English. An attempt to be literal might give us "a help as his opposite." The words themselves seem to contradict each other. Is this companion to help Adam, or to oppose Adam? Rashi, who frequently asserts he comes to explain the plain meaning of the text, cannot get out of this one without providing a midrash - "if he is worthy then [she is] a helpmate, if he is not worthy, then she is opposite him, to fight him"(Rashi, 27)1. This solution is elegant because because, rather than resolving the tension, it teaches us that that tension is there to instruct us. We are to learn that just because one possible meaning is true does not mean that the other is false.

Another approach to this problem comes from the lexicographers Brown, Driver and Briggs. If it is Rashi's purpose to teach us the plain meaning of the text, how much more so must it be for those preparing a dictionary, and yet a literal rendering is beyond them as well, as they offer us the following definition for עזר כנגדו: "a help corresponding to him i.e. equal and adequate to himself"(BDB 617). This rendering deviates from the other meanings they give for נגד, which tend to cluster around meanings like "opposite" or "in front of." However it is instructive, and appealing to our egalitarian sensibility, that Eve is created as Adam's equal. Carol Meyers, in her book Discovering Eve reinforces this idea, by noting the preposition "כּ־" meaning "like" or "as" and observing that "the prepositional phrase establishes a non-hierarchical relationship between the two"(85).

If this is indeed a non-hierarchical relationship, and if this relationship is, as Rashi suggests, about supporting the other when worthy, and opposing the other when not worthy, then we find that it is as incumbent on Adam to support Eve when she is worthy and oppose her when she is not, as it is for her to do the same for him. Indeed, I am going to suggest today that it is his failure in just this duty that facilitates the situation with the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad.

As a quick refresher, the story goes very much like this: The serpent approaches Eve, asks if it is really the case that she and Adam cannot eat from any tree in the garden, she counters that they may in fact it from every tree except the tree of kowledge of good and bad, which they may not touch, lest they die. The serpent parries that they will not die if the eat from it, but will become like God, knowing good from bad2. She takes the fruit, eats it and gives some to her husband with her. They realize they're naked, and hide when God next shows up in the garden.. God knows instantly what happened, and when he inquires about it, Adam blames Eve and God in a single breath, and Eve blames the snake. God then informs everyone of the consequences of their actions.

There are two important things to note in the story. The first is that although we are told "[the serpent] said to the woman . . ." he does not say "you," but rather "you-all" or "youns," that is, he is speaking in second person plural as if addressing both. Now it may be that he is using this because he is inquiring about both of them, or it may be that he is doing so because he knows Adam is present. The second is that "she took the fruit and she ate, and she gave also to her man with her, and he ate." The words "with her" seem to me to mean very plainly that Adam was there on the scene throughout. So, if we look only at the p'shat, the simple meaning, we must ask ourselves, "why didn't he act?"

God, informing everyone of the consequences of their actions, wonders the same thing; saying to the man "because you listened to the voice of your woman. . ."(Gen 3:17) although there is no accounting of Eve saying anything to Adam, only that she gave him the fruit. So then to what is God referring? The only utterances we have from Eve in the text thus far are her words with the serpent. If we stick to the simple meaning of the text before us, then it must be those words that God means. Adam's responsibility then is that rather than supporting her when she was arguing against the serpent and opposing her when she decided to take the fruit, he sat idly by and did nothing.

God meant for there to be tension between them. Not the contentious "I'm good and you're bad" kind of tension that rips the world asunder, but rather the tension between two trees leaning on each other such that neither falls. And it is because Adam avoided even that positive tension, refusing to be a true partner, that the labels of "good" and "bad" entered the world, and the strife associated with them.

Just as heaven and earth, light and darkness, and sea and land achieve great things by their balanced opposition, so it is the divine will that we and our partners should achieve great things balanced opposition - supporting each other's aspirations and correcting each other's foibles. It sometimes takes a suspension of one's own immediate needs and wants to support another, and it sometimes takes great courage to tell someone you love that they may be missing the mark, but this is what it means to have and be an עזר כנגד. May we all have the strength for it.

The following material was not part of the d'var, but was made available as appendices to those curious.

Review of Traditional and Feminist responses to the situation of the tree.

A Summary of the Tradition

Midrash Hagadol asserts that the serpent wanted to get Eve alone thinking "any attempt to seduce Adam is certainly doomed to failure. Let me first approach the woman because women listen and are more easily persuaded"(3:1 cited by Weissman, 45). The implication here, that the woman would be the easy mark, is untenable not only because of its misogyny, but because the snake has no basis for such an inference. The best we can say here is that the woman may have seemed the better target because she received the law second hand, and not directly from God. But the question of how she would be alone is not answered by our text. Midrash Rabbah attempts to supply an answer:

Now where was Adam during this conversation? Abba Halfon b. Koriah said: He had engaged in his natural functions [sc. intercourse] and then fallen asleep. The Rabbis said: He [God] took him and led him all around the world, telling him 'Here is a place fit for planting [trees], here is a place fit for sowing cereals.'(Gen. R. XIX 1-3)

Whether the rabbis argue that Adam had fallen asleep after sex, or give him the ultimate alibi by claiming he was with God at the time, we cannot help but note that the purpose of these midrashic narratives is to remove Adam from the possibility of any direct participation, either by comission or omission, in the matter of eating the fruit. At most, they read God's statement to Adam that "Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree that I told you 'don't eat from it' the earth will be cursed on your account"(Gen. 3:17) to mean that his sin was not asking Eve about the fruit's provenance before eating it himself (Ohr Hachayim on Gen. 3:17, cited by Rosenberg, 58).

Two feminist readings, in brief.

Carol Meyers notes that "it is the woman, and not the man, who perceives the desirability of procuring wisdom. The woman, again not the man, is the articulate member of the first pair who engages in dialog even before the benefits of the wisdom tree have been procured"(91). Naomi Rosenblatt, who reads this tale as a "charming allegory of sexual awakening"3 understands "she gave also to her husband with her" to mean that "Eve reaches out to Adam, holding the fruit (the shape of which suggest fertility, the female breast). In contrast to the female [who deliberated out of concern for pregnancy], the male is immedately susceptible to any sexual invitation, is instantly responsive"(9).

Reflections

Just as the patriarchy faults Eve for being an easily seduced airhead, so the feminists fault Adam for being an easily seduced meathead. Both repeat the error of blaming the Other to absolve the Self that Adam commits in blaming God and Eve in a single breath. It didn't fly with God in the garden, and does not hold much creedence today.

Works Cited

Brown, Francis et.al. Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996.

Davis, Avrohom. Metsudah Chumash/Rashi. New York: Ktav Pub Inc, 1999.

Maimonides, Moses. The Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Dover Publ, 1956.

Meyers, Carol. Discovering Eve. Cambridge: Oxford University Press, USA, 1991.

Rosenberg, A. Genesis: a New English Translation Volume I. New York: Judaica Press, 1993.

Rosenblatt, Naomi. After the Apple. New York: Miramax Books, 2005.

Simon, Maurice. Midrash Rabbah. London: Soncino Press, 1983.

Weissman, Moshe. The Midrash Says. Union City: Bnay Yakov, 1999.

A Response to the latest "Eilu V'Eilu"

2007-10-14T22:39:00.000-05:00

Which can be found at The URJ's Eilu v'Eilu Volume 20 page.

RavMoffic is happy to wring his hands over the decline in synagogue affiliation, but he fails to address the most crucial of issues: Why be Jewish? During the span in which he notes the decline, the Reform movement did all the things he seems to prescribe - welcoming intermarrieds, davenning in English, being accessible - so that's clearly not working.

What IS bringing people in are lively services, and a return to practice that allows us to reify what it is that makes being Jewish so special - the sense that God chose us for a special purpose. Lose that element of our theology and the rituals that reify it and one is hard pressed to see why one would choose it over, say, Presbyterianism.

Judaism has always been a very sensory religion - the clean light of Shabbos candles, the smoke of the havdallah candle, the fragrance of the etrog and the myrtle, the rustle of the willow and the pine, the flavors and textures of the Passover Seder, that cozy, sheltered feeling that comes with wrapping the tallit over your head as you say the Shema.

Early Reform, with its nearly Spock-like valorization of Reason uber-alles, erred in rejecting these rituals and the very human needs they meet. The zeitgeist was one of pragmatism, of privileging the intellect over emotion or physicality, and the move my have seemed appropriate for the time, but I think it has proved demonstrably unsustainable.

Ritual fills the need to have a physical relationship to God, to acknowledge that as physical, emotional beings we need modes of physically reifying our relationship to God. It prevents us from either worshipping idols or rejecting God altogether by creating a way to encounter God from the place we are.

Thoughts on Parashat Shemot

2007-01-12T22:56:00.000-06:00

הַרְפּוּ וּדְעוּ כִּי־אָנֹכִי אֱלֹהִים

Slack off, and know that I am God (Psalms 46:11)

וַיֹּאמֶר נִרְפִּים1 אַתֶּם נִרְפִּים עַל־כֵּן אַתֶּם אֹמְרִים נֵלְכָה נִזְבְּחָה לַיהוָֹה

And he said "Slacking! You've been slacking, therefore you say 'Let us go offer to Adonai.'" (Exodus 5:17)

וּמֹשֶׁה הָיָה רֹעֶה אֶת־צֹאן יִתְרוֹ חֹתְנוֹ כֹּהֵן מִדְיָן וַיִּנְהַג אֶת־הַצֹּאן אַחַר הַמִּדְבָּר וַיָּבֹא אֶל־הַר הָאֱלֹהִים חֹרֵבָה: ב וַיֵּרָא מַלְאַךְ יְהוָֹה אֵלָיו בְּלַבַּת־אֵשׁ מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה הַסְּנֶה בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ וְהַסְּנֶה אֵינֶנּוּ אֻכָּל: ג וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אָסֻרָה־נָּא וְאֶרְאֶה אֶת־הַמַּרְאֶה הַגָּדֹל הַזֶּה מַדּוּעַ לֹא־יִבְעַר הַסְּנֶה

And Moses was shepherding the flock of Yitro, his father in law - the priest of Midian and he had driven the flock beyond the wilderness and he came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. And the angel of Adonai appeared to him in the heart of the fire from within the bush, and he looked and behold, the bush burned in the flame and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said "let me turn away and I will look at this great sight - why won't the bush burn up?" (Exodus 3:1-3)

Moses doesn't just notice the burning bush - anyone could notice the burning bush - he stops and turns away from his task to look at the bush. He is curious, and outside of Egypt, away from the pressures of the court and the hurry of urban life he stops just to check out something cool. And from the freedom to stop and look comes a relationship with God. Freedom is the key to this - had a Hebrew slave in an Egyptian chain-gang hauling bricks to the builders seen this, he may have indeed been every bit as curious as Moses was. But he would not have been able to relent, to turn away, to "slack off" as it were from his task. He is giving himself permission to do this, hence the combination of a jussive form with the supplicative particle נא. He can - a slave cannot.

This distinction is not lost on Pharaoh who, when the Hebrew representatives ask him why he is overworking them notes that when they had slack-time, time for reflection, time for a kind of spiritual healing (the root רפה giving us the word for healing as well as the word I here render as slacking), it occured to them to go offer to Adonai. Leave them no time for a thought other than that of work, and thoughts of the holy would be banished from their minds. This root shows up in Psalm 46:11 as well, in a phrase generally translated as "Be still and know that I am God," but which I rendered with "slack off" so as to underscore the commonality.

It is the quiet moments available for reflection, contemplation, contact with something bigger than ourselves that make any kind of mystical experience possible. Our days amuse us to death with trivia, and separate us from the reality that the world is a far larger system than we can control. The sabbath, "first among our sacred days," is a reminder of that, and the creation of a sacred space in time to allow us the opportunity to slack off, turn from our often all too narrow paths, and take the time to indulge our curiosity and in so doing open ourselves to a relationship with God.

Thoughts on Parashat Vayechi

2007-01-10T22:42:00.000-06:00

Blessing Menasseh and Ephraim

Morgan suggests that this is done in order to legitimize them in the eyes of the rest of the family despite his mother's heritage. This seems likely.

Jacob says they will be like Reuben and Simeon to him. Does he mean in place of? He has few kind words for his eldest sons.

His blessing of the lads finds its way into the Bedtime Shema, as does the "Adonai, I long for your salvation."

The image of Judah being a lion, with his hand on his enemies' scruff, delights me.

Two deaths - Jacob and Joseph.

Midrash maintains that up until his reunion with Joseph in Egypt, his life sucked. Hence "Jacob LIVED 17 years in Egypt." This was also the age Joseph was when his brothers, er, sold him down the river.

Jacobs Funeral - Women, Children, and Flocks are left behind. Compare with later departure from Egypt.

Joseph - asks that his bones return to Canaan. He was in Egypt on account of his brothers. His brothers descendants, in particular the Levite Moses, takes him out. Why a levite?

Thoughts on Parashat Miketz/Vayigash

2006-12-31T11:27:00.000-06:00

These two parhiyot are so tightly integrated that I wish to treat them together. This year, going through, the whole family saga thing has not much caught my interest. I think its noteworthy that Joseph comes from a place where he recounts a dream he had and is immediately taken to task for its meaning - His family all speak the language of dreams, but in Egypt this ability is not a given. Joseph must interpret dreams for the Eqyptians.

Returning to a theme I wrote on last year, Joseph's assertion that Pharaoh's dreams are one dream is presaged in the following verse

וַיְסַפֵּר פַּרְעֹה לָהֶם אֶת־חֲלֹמוֹ וְאֵין־פּוֹתֵר אוֹתָם לְפַרְעֹה
And Pharaoh recounted to them his dream and none and there was no interpretating them for Pharaoh.

This is easier to understand in Hebrew than it is to render, because the participial form of פתר can mean "interpreter," "interpretation," or "interpretating." I have chosen the last, which is good English only in Appalachia, because it is the only one that does not demand the interpolation of a preposition where there is none in the Hebrew. However, the participle does not concern me. More interesting in this verse is the use of the plural direct object pronoun אותם with the singular referent חלומו. This hints at the single meaning of the multiple dreams.

וַיֹּאמֶר יוֹסֵף אֶל־הָעָם הֵן קָנִיתִי אֶתְכֶם הַיּוֹם וְאֶת־אַדְמַתְכֶם לְפַרְעֹה הֵא־לָכֶם זֶרַע וּזְרַעְתֶּם אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה: וְהָיָה בַּתְּבוּאֹת וּנְתַתֶּם חֲמִישִׁית לְפַרְעֹה וְאַרְבַּע הַיָּדֹת יִהְיֶה לָכֶם לְזֶרַע הַשָּׂדֶה וּלְאָכְלְכֶם וְלַאֲשֶׁר בְּבָתֵּיכֶם וְלֶאֱכֹל לְטַפְּכֶם: וַיֹּאמְרוּ הֶחֱיִתָנוּ נִמְצָא־חֵן בְּעֵינֵי אֲדֹנִי וְהָיִינוּ עֲבָדִים לְפַרְעֹה: וַיָּשֶׂם אֹתָהּ יוֹסֵף לְחֹק עַד־הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה עַל־אַדְמַת מִצְרַיִם לְפַרְעֹה לַחֹמֶשׁ רַק אַדְמַת הַכֹּהֲנִים לְבַדָּם לֹא הָיְתָה לְפַרְעֹה

And Joseph said to the people, "look, today I have purchased you and your land for Pharaoh. Here is seed for you, you shall sow the earth. It shall be in the harvest that you will give 1/5th to Pharaoh and four parts will be for you to sow the field and to eat and satisfy your households and feed your children." And they said "you have caused us to live, we will find grace in your eyes my lord, and we will be slaves to Pharaoh." And Joseph established it as a law until today over the land of Egypt for Pharaoh only the land of the Priests alone was not Pharaoh's.

I find myself troubled by this passage, so this year I decided to wrestle it to the ground to see what blessings it might have to give. The problem I have is this: In Miketz the Egyptians are freeholders. Joseph imposes a 20% tax on them for the purpose of laying up stores against the famine. The famine arrives and Joseph does not disburse the grain to them that they grew, but rather sells it back to them. When they no longer have silver, he buys their means of production for grain, and when they later need food, he buys them, making them sharecroppers on the land. To a contemporary economic and social liberal this seems appalling. Indeed, even Torah itself seems appalled; the institution of sabbatical years and Jubilee seem designed very much as a safeguard against this sort of thing happening in Israel.

So why does this happen? Some sources (Sifrei, Midrash HaGadol - cited in Feinstein) suggest that this transfer of wealth from individuals to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh's absolute ownership of all wealth means that when the Israelites left Egypt with articles belonging to their neighbors, it is in fact Pharaoh, not their neighbors that are being deprived. To my mind this explanation does not satisfy. It seems more indicative of the Rabbi's ethnocentric focus that explicatory of why the enslavement happens at all. Personally, I have wondered if the Israelite slavery could be viewed as a נגד כנגד response to this action of Joseph's. But this too does not satisfy.

Morgan has argued that this is a "just so story;" a legend to explain how a status quo has come to pass. Her proof is "וַיָּשֶׂם אֹתָהּ יוֹסֵף לְחֹק עַד־הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה" with "היום הזה" indicating the biblical narrator's present at which time Pharaoh still holds all the land. The idea that a legend would be required to explain this suggests that, from the point of view of the speakers society, the notion of a king holding all the land seemed aberrant. The state from which they descended to slavery - that of the freeholder, seems viewed by the narrator as normative.

But why would Joseph behave thus? Another suggestion of Morgan's - given the situation at court, with Joseph being a stranger regardless of how well he has blended, and a former slave regardless of how high he has ascended, he really cannot act in ways that do not accrue to the direct benefit of Pharaoh. Joseph must be ever mindful of the caprice of court life; given the fates met by the Baker and the Cupbearer. One can be arbitrarily jailed, and arbitrarily redeemed or hung. Thus Joseph's treatment of the Egyptians at large can be viewed as a mechanism of self defense.

But there is something else too. The whole region is having a famine. And while one might cynically say that Joseph has helped Pharaoh make a killing in grain futures, the value of these futures depends on the fact that the need is there to be met. And it is a vital need. Joseph is selling not only to the Egyptians and to the Israelites, but to all the surrounding nations. His foresight has saved the region from starvation. Returning it measure for measure to the people who grew it, "giving the surplus back to the people," as it were, would not have allowed him to do this.

Thoughts on Parashat Vayeshev

2006-12-17T15:01:00.000-06:00

וַיְהִי אַחַר הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה וַתִּשָּׂא אֵשֶׁת־אֲדֹנָיו אֶת־עֵינֶיהָ אֶל־יוֹסֵף וַתֹּאמֶר שִׁכְבָה עִמִּי: וַיְמָאֵן וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל־אֵשֶׁת אֲדֹנָיו הֵן אֲדֹנִי לֹא־יָדַע אִתִּי מַה־בַּבָּיִת וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר־יֶשׁ־לוֹ נָתַן בְּיָדִי: אֵינֶנּוּ גָדוֹל בַּבַּיִת הַזֶּה מִמֶּנִּי וְלֹא־חָשַׂךְ מִמֶּנִּי מְאוּמָה כִּי אִם־אוֹתָךְ בַּאֲשֶׁר אַתְּ־אִשְׁתּוֹ וְאֵיךְ אֶעֱשֶׂה הָרָעָה הַגְּדֹלָה הַזֹּאת וְחָטָאתִי לֵאלֹהִים

And it was after these thing that the wife of his lord lifted her eyes toward Jacob and said "lie with me." He refused and said to the wife of his lord "look, with me, my lord is not concerned with what is in the house, for everything that is his he has placed in my hand. No one is greater in this house than me and he has witheld nothing from me except you, insofar as you are his wife, so how could I do this great evil and sin against God?" (Genesis 39:7-9)

This episode is striking, I think for a number of things. to my mind the most noteworthy thing is that Joseph perceives Potiphar's wife's proposal as a sin not against Potiphar, but against God. He has been entrusted with absolute control over Potiphar's household, he could do anything he wants, but this one thing, lying with Potiphar's wife, he knows he cannot do. I think that the reason for this is that it was with God's help and the successes that God granted him that he gained this degree of trust from Potiphar. To betray the trust that was built with the Lord's help would be to betray God by spurning the gift that God has given him in Potiphar's faith.

Thoughts on Parashat Vayishlach

2006-12-11T13:18:00.000-06:00

Wrestling

וַיִּוָּתֵר יַעֲקֹב לְבַדּוֹ וַיֵּאָבֵק אִישׁ עִמּוֹ עַד עֲלוֹת הַשָּׁחַר

And Jacob remained by himself and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. (32:25)

We always hear of Jacob wrestling with an "angel," but this is not what the text says. It uses the word איש, not מלאך of Jacob's opponent. Who it is is never explained in the text. Some have argued that it was Esau's guardian angel, and that the מלאכים that Jacob sends are his own. As charming a reading as it is, it turns this into more a magician's battle than anything else, befitting the mindset of the midrashic period. But it seems to me to be fairly likely that it is Esau himself. And, though he does not let on, I think Jacob knows it. The thing that Jacob demands of this personage that comes to wrestle with him is his blessing. What would the blessing of a stranger be worth? And God has already given him His blessing, but the blessing of Esau - that would be a prize indeed.

Back in Toldot, Jacob voiced discomfort with his mothers plan for obtaining his father's blessing. He did it, it can be argued, under duress from her. She was acting according to what God had told her, but she did not let him in on that. So Jacob has discomfort - he does not feel he holds his father's blessing with legitimacy, and the only person who can grant that legitimacy is the person he wronged to obtain it -- Esau. So Jacob triumphs and receives his blessing, and then names the place "PeniEl" "Because I have looked upon the face of God and lived."

The face of God? This is what causes us to speculate that this is an angel. But I think something else is going on here, in this moment, in wrestling with Esau, Jacob sees for the first time that his brother is created בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהים, in the divine image. Hence he later says to Esau: רָאִ֣יתִי פָנֶ֗יךָ כִּרְאֹ֛ת פְּנֵ֥י אֱלֹהִ֖ים "I have seen your face like the face of God." Why "רָאִיתִי" in the perfect; why not "seeing" your face? Why not an infinitive; why not "to see" your face. It is perfect, because earlier, he noticed that his brother too, like himself, contained a spark of the divine.

Dinah
I heard it said that Dinah was six years old at the time of the event. The math was very good, being the same sort of math that puts Isaac at 37 for the Akedah. This math relies on the assumption that there is no gap in the narrative. Torah narrative is episodic. We do not know, because we are not told, how much time passed between Jacob settling in sh'chem, and Dinah going out to see the local girls.

The rape, and the rather curious phrase "וַתִּדְבַּק נַפְשׁוֹ בְּדִינָה בַּת־יַעֲקֹב וַיֶּאֱהַב אֶת־הַנַּעֲרָ וַיְדַבֵּר עַל־לֵב הַנַּעֲרָ" "and his soul cleave in Dinah, daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl and spoke over the heart of the girl" raises questions. וַיְדַבֵּר עַל־לֵב הַנַּעֲרָ is often rendered "he spoke tenderly to the girl," but I would press another reading: he overrode her objections. על means "over" "on" or "above," so it seems to me that rather than being an indication of kindness, it is a willful ignoring of her wishes.

Thoughts on Parashat Vayetze

2006-12-06T20:38:00.000-06:00

Just some quick notes to myself

סוּלָם is a hapax legomenon.

Rachel and Leah have quite the race. Their motivations are quite different. With each son Leah hopes that Jacob will finally love her. Rachel's concern, however, is to build herself up through offspring. Morgan has noted that since a woman who had not yet borne a child could be spurned by a husband, Rachel's concern may have been that if she did not give Jacob a child of her own, that Laban would pull something like, "She has borne any children to you, so I will keep her with me lest you spurn her."

Thoughts on parashat Toldot

2006-11-28T19:22:00.000-06:00

Thoughts on parashat Toldot
וירא אליו יהוה ויאמר אל-תרד מצרימה

And Adonai appeared to him and said "don't go down to Egypt."

In Chayyei Sarah, Abraham takes great pains to ensure that Isaac does not go to Padan Aram, likewise Adonai takes pains to ensure Isaac does not go to Egypt. I can only speculate that both share the concern that if Isaac goes to either of these places he will become mired. Indeed, this language and the following promises remind us of the language with which He removed Avram from the land in which Terach had become mired.

Isaac doesn't separate between business and personal. For largely pragmatic reasons, Abimelech sends him away, but when Isaac is prospering a safe distance away, Abimelech wants a treaty. Isaac is shocked that he even showed up:

מדוע באתם אלי ואתם שנאתם אתי
"Why have you come to me when you hate me?"

To Isaac's mind, it was hatred that motivated Abimelech's sending him off, and the notion that that hatred was conditional and not a permanent condition is strange. The conclusion of the covenant must have seemed truly wondrous - a relationship thought to have been permanently soured restored.

From Lech Lecha clear to here, צחק receives lots of word play. Here that wordplay reaches a tragic climax with יצעק.

The Deception of Esau

It's a story we're all familiar with - Isaac prepares to bless his children, and Esau, who is the eldest and, we are told, Isaac's favorite, is sent to hunt some venison to make a stew before he blesses him. Rebekah hears of it and seizes the opportunity to sneak her favorite, Jacob, in with a stew of his own, masquerading as Esau in order to receive the blessing from poor, blind Isaac, who grants it not knowing any better. The tragedy of this is described by Plaut thus:

[Jacob] practices outrageous deceit on a helpless father and a guileless brother, and he is rewarded for his deed. . . . Ironically Jacob and Rebekah involve themselves in moral turpitude in order to achieve what God would have brought to pass in any case. (185)

There are other spins too, like the "Isaac knew" camp that shows an Isaac passive-aggressively participating in his own deception because he knows that Jacob, not Esau, merits the blessing, or as Plaut describes it:

As we read the story with close attention to the personality of Isaac we are led to conclude that throughout the episode he is subconciously aware of Jacob's identity. However, since he is unable to admit this knowledge, he pretends to be deceived. (186)

I would argue, however, that he is not merely subconciously aware, but rather that he knows precisely what is happening, because he and Rebecca planned it just this way. In order to understand why they might do such a thing one needs to look at what surrounds this episode. Right before it begins, we find these verses:

34] When Esau was 40 years old, he took to wife Judith, daughter of Beeri the Hittite and Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35] They were a bitterness of spirit to Isaac and Rebekah.

Verse 35 here is especially telling. Whereas earlier in the parsha, we see a house divided, with Isaac favoring Esau and Rebekah favoring Jacob, here we find Isaac and Rebekah united in their dissatisfaction with Esau. Indeed, the fact that this verse leads with Isaac rather than Rebekah is not overlooked by the rabbis:

Both Yitzchak and Rivkah suffered from Aisav's idolatrous wives, but Yitzchak was affected more than Rivkah. He was the son of holy parents, and had been raised in a household which served Hashem, and he was therefore disturbed by the slightest trace of idolworship. (Feinstein, 255)

So here we have a strong motivation on Isaac's part to deny Esau the blessing. In marrying these Canaanite women, Esau has brought idolatry into the house, but he has also done something worse; he has married into a group of people who have actually been cursed, for Noah cursed Canaan in retribution for Ham's gazing upn his nakedness. We shall see how that curse works together with the blessings Isaac bestows upon Jacob and Esau.

At the other end of the story we see Esau having an epiphany. At verse 28:8 "Esau understood that his father Isaac looked with disfavor at the daughters of Canaan." This verse is heavily loaded. The first thing we note is that it is neither "his parents," nor "his mother," but rather "his father Isaac" looking with displeasure. In this way, the Torah drives home the point that Isaac had been set against Esau from the very beginning of this episode, and he blessed precisely who he meant to bless. The second thing we note is that although these women are both Hittites, they are not described as "daughters of Chet," but rather as "daughters of Canaan" once again alluding to Noah's curse.

So, it is clear that on account of Esau's marriage to these Canaanites, Isaac and Rebekah are of one mind regarding Esau. The question, of course, is how the timid and vulnerable Isaac is going to deny anything, especially something this serious, to the rash and powerful Esau. The answer, of course, is to set up a set of circumstances that grants him plausible deniability, for, as Plaut notes, "Isaac does not have the courage to face Esau with the truth." (186)

A close reading of the story allows us to see how such a plot can be found in the text.

The first thing that happens is that Isaac sets Esau a task:

27:3] So pick up your weapons -- your quiver and your bow -- and go out to the countryside and hunt me some game. 4] Then you can make me tasty dishes such as I like and bring [them] to me and I will eat, so that I can give you my heartfelt blessing before I die.

This is quite a task Isaac is setting Esau. He is sending him off by some distance, to engage in the time consuming task of hunting which is itself a critical task to dressing, butchering and preparing the food. This should occupy Esau for quite a while. In assigning this task, Isaac very effectively gets Esau out of the way, for a long enough while for other things to happen.

5] As Isaac was speaking to his son Esau, Rebekah was listening, and when Esau went to the countryside to hunt for some game to bring [him], 6] Rebekah said this to her son Jacob, "Look -- I heard your father speaking to your brother Esau, saying, 7] 'Bring me game and make me tasty dishes, that I may eat -- and [then] bless you before the Eternal before my death.'

We normally imagine Rebekah sneakily eavesdropping here, but the text does not necessarily imply this. It seems just as plausible that she is listening for her cue, making sure that her husband has had time to get Esau out of the picture before she begins with Jacob. It is interesting to note at this point the differences between verses four and seven. In verse four Esau is promised Isaac's "heartfelt blessing." This hints to us that the blessing that Isaac is going to give Esau is the blessing he will feel comfortable giving him. Isaac does not make any claims for this blessing other than that it will be heartfelt. Indeed, all of three and four may be read to mean "go away for a while, so that I can give you the blessing it is in my heart to give you, rather than the blessing of the first born, which it is not in my heart to give you." At verse seven, however, Rebekah misrepresents what Isaac has said to Esau - the "heartfelt blessing" of verse four becomes a blessing "before the Eternal" in verse seven. Rebekah is trying to convey a sense of urgency to Jacob; she knows that while the diversion that Isaac has provided for Esau is ample, it is nonetheless limited.

11] But Jacob said to his mother Rebekah, "Look -- My brother Esau is a hairy man and I am a smooth skinned man; "

15] Rebekah now took the finest of her elder son Esau's garments that she had in the house and dressed up her younger son Jacob. 16] The skins of the kids she wrapped on his hands and over the smooth part of the neck.

Jacob calls attention here to a problem that had not been considered - the discrepancy between Esau's and Jacob's skin. This would perhaps have been irrelevant had everything gone according to plan, but Jacob's fears must be assuaged, so Rebekah improvises a disguise to appease him. It's a safe bet that this costume reeks; the goats were only just killed; the scent of fresh blood would still be upon the pelts.

20] Isaac then said to his son: "How is it that you were able to find [game] so quickly, my son?" And he replied, "The Eternal your God made it happen for me."

We generally read this as suspicion, and from this we may derive that Isaac gets his first clue that he is being deceived and is willing to go along. But I would suggest another reading - Isaac is genuinely alarmed that Esau has returned quickly from the hunt, before Jacob could arrive for his blessing. After all, Jacob would not reek of fresh kill, he was to arrive with a plate of stew prepared by Rebekah. So Isaac is confused about who is in the room with him, not because he was expecting Esau (who should still be in the field), but because he was expecting Jacob, and this person reeking of blood shows up. Now, as to the reply he receives, Rashi asserts that this would have disclosed Jacob's identity to Isaac: "Yitzchok thought to himself 'it is unusual for Eisov to readily mention God's name and this one has said, "Because Adonoy, your God, [brought it about]."'(Metsuda Rashi, 297). However, it seems to me that Jacob is playing the role of Esau to the hilt, saying "your God" rather than "our God." Rashi may yet have the correct reading, because Jacob has not yet contracted his own relationship with God.

Thoughts on Parashat Chayei Sarah

2006-11-14T22:12:00.000-06:00

The years of the life of Sarah

וַיִּהְיוּ חַיֵּי שָׂרָה מֵאָה שָׁנָה וְעֶשְׂרִים שָׁנָה וְשֶׁבַע שָׁנִים שְׁנֵי חַיֵּי שָׂרָה

And the life of Sarah was a hundred years and twenty years and seven years: the years of the life of Sarah. (23:1)

Zohar makes much of the way this is broken up, and noting that is a reminder to myself to look there if I want to work with that.

Another interesting thing going on here is pointed out by Ben Baruch in his comic Shabot 6000:

A mersenne prime is a prime number that is a power of 2 with 1 subtracted from it. Powers of two are digit places binary, which is the joke.

Normally I would stop there, figuring powers of two to be irrelevant to exegesis, and just accept the joke for what it is. But a power of two comes up someplace else as well - in the 32 paths of creation that is the opening line of the Sefer Yetzira. Not sure there's anything worth doing with that, but there it is.

Buying the gravesite.

Most interesting here is the way the transaction took place: in the presence of witnesses. But not before their eyes, but in their ears.

וַיְדַבֵּר אֶל־עֶפְרוֹן בְּאָזְנֵי עַם־הָאָרֶץ לֵאמֹר אַךְ אִם־אַתָּה לוּ שְׁמָעֵנִי נָתַתִּי כֶּסֶף הַשָּׂדֶה קַח מִמֶּנִּי וְאֶקְבְּרָה אֶת־מֵתִי שָׁמָּה
And he spoke to Ephron in the ears of the people of the land saying "but if you will only listen to me, I have given the silver of the field - take from me and I will bury my dead there."

My transation here is rather literal, because I think its an important metaphor. The transaction does not take place לִפְנֵי, before the people, but בְּאָזְנֵי, in the ears of the people. This is taking place in speech. Money is changing hands. A contract is made that is not written but carried out in the full hearing of everyone. And it seems, from the way Abraham is saying let me buy the land (on my terms, so I own it) and then AND ONLY THEN will I bury my dead. It almost seems as if Abraham finally burying Sarah is a bargaining chip he uses to get them to let him buy the land.

But why would they object to selling him the land? Because he is an immigrant, a foreigner, and to own land in a place is to control it. If they give him a land for a grave, well, they have helped him meet a need, but if he buys land, he is more than a sojourner. If he buys land, he might well SETTLE there. Hence the reluctance.

A Wife for Isaac

וְהַנַּעֲרָ טֹבַת מַרְאֶה מְאֹד בְּתוּלָה וְאִישׁ לֹא יְדָעָהּ וַתֵּרֶד הָעַיְנָה וַתְּמַלֵּא כַדָּהּ וַתָּעַל
And the lass was very nice to look at, and a virgin and no man had known her and she went down to the well and filled her pitcher and went up.

The curiosity here to me is why וְהַנַּעֲרָ and not וְהַנַּעֲרָה? Morgan suggests that the final ה is in any case a mater lecciones and that this is merely a defective spelling. Fine as far as it goes but a defective spelling cannot pass without comment. So what is the significance of the missing ה?

It's interesting to note that the divine name comprises materes lecciones entirely. For this reason, when a word is spelled defectively, or when one shows up in an unexpected place (as later in this parsha אֹהֵלָה אִמוֹ where what looks to be a heh of direction shows up in a place where it makes little grammatical sense) the Zohar makes much of it. The Zohar's drash supposes that Rebekah is a direct replacement for, perhaps even a doppelganger of Sarah. I do not like this reading, it is eerily oedipal and a bit off the mark. But an idea that has occurred to me is that that extra heh is there to show that the defect - that Rivka was still living at home is a family of origin that is kind of sick - is repaired as she settles into a new home with Isaac who loves her. Unqualifiedly.

Thoughts on Parashat Vayera

2006-11-12T11:02:00.000-06:00

The opening scene - it begins with 3 men standing over Abraham, and ends with Abraham standing over them as they eat. I wondered at first what the siginificance was of the apparent role reversal. Lily, our dinner guest for the evening, was troubled by why he would have to run out to greet them if they were "standing over him." She provided the most satisfying resolution - being divine beings, when they arrived they were larger than human standing over everything, but as they adjusted to human scale, Abraham had a distance to bridge. This also helps to explain why Abraham is so flighty, running, rushing, and hurrying about in this scene. The midrashic tradition would have us believe that this was Abraham's starndard for hospitality, but that this is special behavior for special guests makes more sense all around. Finally, he stands over them ready to serve, rather than, as I had at first imagined, in a fussy sort of way.

Sodom and Gomorrah
The account opens with God wondering whether to conceal what he is about to do from Abraham, and deciding not to. It seems that God wants to see how Abraham will react. Is this a test of Abraham's willingness to intervene? Or is it God, deeply troubled by what he is about to do seeking a confidante? Or does Abraham's bargaining with God help God to decide where to draw the line. At ten, there is a kind of consensus.

When Lot leaves why is he reluctant to go up to the mountain? What is the wickedness that clings to him? Why are feminine forms used of it - is it his daughters?

The Akedah
Isaacs question of where is the sheep moves Abraham from a simple state of denial that he will have to sacrifice his son to an overt articulation of faith that he will not have to sacrifice his son.

Random thought - Zohar v. Romance of the Rose

2006-11-12T10:54:00.000-06:00

A fundamental difference between Zohar and the Romance of the Rose:

Zohar uses sex as a metaphor for talking about God; the Roman uses the task of explaining God as an excuse to talk about sex. This is a reflection of a fundamental difference in mindset wherein one tradition regards sex as a commandment, and something any man beyond a certain age would be familiar with, while the other tradition regards sex as something forbidden that can only be talked about behind a veil of piety.

Thoughts on Parashat Lech L'Cha

2006-10-28T22:04:00.000-05:00

Parashat Noach ends telling us:

וַיִּקַּח תֶּרַח אֶת־אַבְרָם בְּנוֹ וְאֶת־לוֹט בֶּן־הָרָן בֶּן־בְּנוֹ וְאֵת שָׂרַי כַּלָּתוֹ אֵשֶׁת אַבְרָם בְּנוֹ וַיֵּצְאוּ אִתָּם מֵאוּר כַּשְׂדִּים לָלֶכֶת אַרְצָה כְּנ֔עַן וַיָּבֹאוּ עַד־חָרָן וַיֵּשְׁבוּ שָׁם. . . וַיָּמָת תֶּרַח בְּחָרָן

And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. . . and Terah died in Haran. (11:31-2)

We do not know why Terach packed up his family and set out to Canaan, but we do know that this was Terach's goal. We also know that Terach settled in Haran, again we don't know why. Then Parashat Lech L'Cha begins with:

וַיִּקַּח אַבְרָם אֶת־שָׂרַי אִשְׁתּוֹ וְאֶת־לוֹט בֶּן־אָחִיו וְאֶת־כָּל־רְכוּשָׁם אֲשֶׁר רָכָשׁוּ וְאֶת־הַנֶּפֶשׁ אֲשֶׁר־עָשׂוּ בְחָרָן וַיֵּצְאוּ לָלֶכֶת אַרְצָה כְּנַעַן וַיָּבֹאוּ אַרְצָה כְּנָעַן

And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came. (12:3)

One cannot help but note that Avram is undertaking the journey that his father failed to complete. The journey from Ur to Canaan takes two generations. This puts one in mind of the words of Rabbi Tarfon from Pirke Avot: "It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, yet you are not free to desist from it." (Avot 2:16)

It is of Torah study that Tarfon is speaking, and as we look at the history of Jewish tradition from Torah to Prophets to Writings to Mishnah to Talmud to the Law codes and commentaries and responsa literature, we see a multigeneration conversation taking place.

As individuals faced with a daunting task we may become overwhelmed, but the work is carried out not in a single lifetime, but across the generations. And one of the tasks we face in every generation is the preparation of the next generation to take up the work that we cannot complete.

****

When I consider:

וַיִּרְאוּ אֹתָהּ שָׂרֵי פַרְעֹה וַיְהַלֲלוּ אֹתָהּ אֶל־פַּרְעֹה וַתֻּקַּח הָאִשָּׁה בֵּית פַּרְעֹה: וּלְאַבְרָם הֵיטִיב בַּעֲבוּרָהּ וַיְהִי־לוֹ צֹאן־וּבָקָר וַחֲמֹרִים וַעֲבָדִים וּשְׁפָחֹת וַאֲתֹנֹת וּגְמַלִּים

And Pharaoh's officers saw her and they praised her to Pharaoh and the woman was taken to the house of Pharaoh. And for Avram it went well because of her, and there was to him flock and herd, asses and bondsmen, maidservants and she-asses and camels.

What I find interesting is that it went well for Avram "because of her" his wife/kinswoman "on the inside" so to speak. I cannot help but be reminded a little of Mordechai and Esther - because of her beauty she was taken into the king's house, and because she was taken into the king's house it went well for the Jews of Shushan.

A curiosity in the changing of names:

וְלֹא-יִקָּרֵא עוֹד אֶת-שִׁמְךָ, אַבְרָם; וְהָיָה
שִׁמְךָ אַבְרָהָם
No longer will you name be called Avram; but your
name will be Abraham . . .(17:5)

Here it looks like God is renaming Avram. Your name was Avram, now it is Abraham. Contrast this with the Sarai/Sarah shift:

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, אֶל-אַבְרָהָם, שָׂרַי אִשְׁתְּךָ לֹא-תִקְרָא אֶת-שְׁמָהּ שָׂרָי: כִּי שָׂרָה, שְׁמָהּ
And God said to Abraham, "Sarai your wife - don't call her name Sarai, because 'Sarah' is her name." (17:15)

Here it looks almost as if God is chiding Abraham for having called her by the wrong name all this time. Whereas when Avram becomes Abraham, a converted perfect is used for time-setting, here, we have a simple copulative. It seems almost as if the name Abraham is given - Avram has been transformed into Abraham, but that Sarai has been Sarah all along, and Avram could not know that, but Abraham can.

Thoughts on Parashat Noach

2006-10-22T22:47:00.000-05:00

אֵלֶּה, תּוֹלְדֹת נֹחַ--נֹחַ אִישׁ צַדִּיק תָּמִים הָיָה, בְּדֹרֹתָיו: אֶת-הָאֱלֹהִים, הִתְהַלֶּךְ-נֹחַ.

The puzzler here is in the final phrase. הִתְהַלֶּךְ is the hitpa’el form of the root הלך, “walk, go.” The hitpa’el form is Hebrew’s way of expressing the reflexive:

יֹסֶף שָׁמַר אֵת שָׂרָה.
Joseph guarded Sarah

שָׂרָה יַפָה מְעֹד.
Sarah is very pretty.

עַל כֵן, יֹסֶף הוּא הִתְשַׁמֶר
Therefore Joseph guarded himself.

So, back to the question at hand, Gen. 6:10b is generally rendered “Noah walked with God,” but this rendering does not account for the reflexive sense of הִתְהַלֶּךְ. The question therefore arises, just what is that hitpa’el doing there and what is its implication?

Rashi looks at the verb and notices two things: it is in the past, and the preposition is את rather than לפני neither of which addresses the binyan. Maybe I'm trying to read too much into an idiomatic expression. But it seems unusual. The only other place I've seen it is in the imperfect describing Enoch's relationship with God, right before God takes him.

One thought is that this reflexivity tells us that, to a degree that was unique to his generation, he was capable of journeying within himself to find that still, small voice within that said, "hey, it might rain for a bit, build a boat."

The other puzzler of this parsha for me at the moment is in the Bavel tale. Before launching into the Bavel narrative, we are told how each of the nations descended from Noach goes to its own and according to their nations and their tongues (לשון). When we get to Bavel, everyone is using the same language. This is unsurprising, and does not contradict the earlier division, because they are all in the same city. But the word used for language here is not לשון, but שׂפה, lip. What is the meaning of this distinction?

I will say that I think something profound happens at Bavel. I don't think that this is the birth of separate languages - I believe we saw that earlier. I think, instead, that God's "confusion" of language is something deeper. I think that prior to Bavel, when somebody said something to his neighbor, his neighbor, without fail, understood exactly what was meant. That the chasm that must be bridged between the consciousness of the speaker and of the listener did not exist until that moment, that to hear was to know exactly the speaker's thoughts. When Adonai confounds their language it is so that לֹא יִשְמְעוּ אִיש שְׂפַת רֵאֵהוּ, a man will not hear his neighbor's lip. The breakdown is not in the speech, but in the hearing.

Parashat Bireshit - A few random thoughts.

2006-10-19T21:31:00.001-05:00

This year I am attempting to read the Torah in Hebrew. It's quite a challenge, because my Hebrew's not quite there yet, so I'm definitely pushing the envelope. I have found William Holladay's Concise Hebrew & Aramic Lexicon of the Old Testament to be of inestimable help in this, as BDB is too cumbersome for just reading.

But anyway, I have rambled a bit. One thing that struck me, reading through, is that light is created, then plants, then the sun, moon and stars. There is a midrash that states that the light created by the utterance יהי אור, "let there be light" is supernal light, stored away for the righteous. But plants cannot flourish without light. So I wonder, were the plants first reared on supernal light, before the sun was made? No profound observation here, just a simple question. It seems to suggest that that supernal light could not have been stored away until the מארת were created.

Regarding the fall: Maimonides posits the idea that prior to consuming the fruit mankind knew right from wrong, in an ideal sense. But with the consumption of the fruit comes notions not of right and wrong, but of good and bad. (Guide I:i) This is an important distinction - good and bad aren't necessarily ethical values. This is rather about discernment. It is interesting to note that God does not say "I will curse the earth on your account," but rather "the earth is cursed on your account." This difference raises the possibility that God is not cursing the earth, but rather that it is Adam's actions that have this as their consequence. Consider the context: Adam now knows good from bad. He may have been just as thrilled by plantain and dandelion as by wheat before this, but now he will call plantain and dandelion "weeds" and wheat "food." Bad and good. And in order to extol the one above the other, he will have to break his back tilling, sowing, weeding, and harvesting. And indeed, when those dandelions show up in the midst of the soybeans he will curse, every gardener does. Hence "cursed is the earth on your account."

It also seems impossible to pass over the first word of Torah - בראשית without noting that there is a sheva, not a patach, under the bet, making it indefinite. Every translator wrestles with that one way or another. The notion that this world is not the first is a common interpretation, and set forth by Rashi. But the thought that occurs to me is that מעשה בראשית, the work of creation never ceases. Mankind is constantly being made from dust, as we eat fruit of the earth, bread brought forth from the earth, and even plant eating mammals, dust becomes us. But not only that but we become dust, not merely by dying, but even in the course of living as we slough hair and skin cells. Creation is not a one time act, the flipping of a cosmic light switch, but the ongoing process of transformation.

Hebrew

2006-10-18T20:11:00.000-05:00

Hebrew has been making a comeback in the Reform Movement, which, for a few centuries, prided itself on the use of the vernacular languages in worship. In many ways this is unsurprising. Perhaps part of the shift is that with the establishment of the state of Israel, Hebrew is no longer a “dead language,” although I would contend that it never was a dead language. I study Biblical Hebrew because as languages ranging from Ancient Egyptian to Aramaic to Latin and Middle High German and English have passed into and out of the mouths of Am Yisrael, Hebrew has remained the language of Torah and liturgy, of commentary and philosophy. Had Rashi written in Old French rather than Hebrew his work would be far less accessible to the contemporary Jew than it is. I cannot help but note with some irony that in the Metsuda Chumash with Rashi, it is Rashi’s rendering of Hebrew terms into Old French, the vernacular of his audience, that now needs glossing. Hebrew has also made collaboration possible across both space and time. Would the Yiddish-speaking Moses Isserles have been able to gloss the Shulchan Aruch as he did had Karo written it in the Ladino of his own vernacular rather than in Hebrew? And do we not, today, have more difficulty understanding the Aramaic Gemara than the Hebrew Mishnah upon which it comments? More than anything, it is the fact that Hebrew has served Judaism as a reliable lingua franca for millenia, while vernaculars have proven but transient lodgers in our mouths that gives it the distinction of being lashon kodesh, the holy tongue. I celebrate the Reform Movement’s renewed interest in the language, because like Shabbat, Hebrew too has kept the Jews.