Parshat Bo: The Thing which Matza is Not.

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 . . .

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.