Torah Tidbits: Parshat Beshalach

And now, finally, I am caught up!  Phew!  Now it's time to keep the Torah Train on the Tracks and turn to other things...  Stay tuned!

13:19 - "And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him..."  (This must mean Joseph's mummy, right, per Genesis 50:26.)

13:21 - Interesting:  "And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; that they might go by day and by night."  If memory serves, this is the first time we read in the Torah about something (a) supernatural/miraculous, something that couldn't even possibly be explained away, and (b) that was witnessed by the masses. 

14:19 - God gets ready to part the Red Sea, when we read that "And the angel of God, who went before the camp of Israel removed and went behind" the Egyptians.  Huh?!?  Didn't we just read in 13:21 that it was "the LORD" that was doing the guiding?!?  Did I miss something?

15:1-18 - The Song at the Sea in praise of God...  Quite beautiful, actually.  But there are some snags.  How was Moses able to sing about things that hadn't yet happened?  Like what Pharaoh said after the Israelites had left (15:8)!  Like speaking of the destruction of the peoples of the Promised Land in the past tense (15:14-16)!  The building of the Temple (15:17)!  Geesh.

15:20-21 - Nice interlude for Miriam here, who, after the long Song at the Sea, "took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances" and sang. 

15:26 - Ah yes, the fire and brimstone:  After only three days wandering the desert, they can't find water, and the people turn to Moses for answers.  God provides water, saying "'If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His eyes, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon thee, which I have put upon the Egyptians; for I am the LORD that healeth thee.'"  I know I have a lot to learn in terms of understanding the role of punishment vs. rewards, and I'm sure my thinking will evolve on the subject...but frankly this is some of the hardest stuff to swallow in the Torah:  That punishments and rewards are causal effects of whether or not I observe the law.  I just don't -- I can't -- see the world working this way.  I can't believe in a God that operates in this manner, nor in a religious-legal system predicated on God doing so.

16:2-3 - So this is where Jewish whining comes from:  "...and the children of Israel said unto [Moses and Aaron]: 'Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.'"  Nice!  But it makes me wonder:  Why don't we talk about this during Passover?  I think it would make a good subject:  Why is it, just when we've gotten the greatest thing in the world (i.e., freedom), we complain and want more?  I would think the haggadah should talk about this lessons in this...

16:13-15 - Another nomination for the "strangest verses in the Torah" award:  God produces manna, apparently overnight, and in the morning, "when the layer of dew was gone up, behold upon the face of the wilderness a fine, scale-like thing, fine as the hoar-frost on the ground."  Say what?  Kehot translates this as follows:

When the sun rose and the layer of dew rose, behold, over the surface of the desert a thin substance that had been packed within the two layers of dew was exposed, as if the dew had been peeled back. It had a thin crust on top and was as fine as the frost on the ground. Underneath this was another layer of dew.  This substance was thus protected by dew both above and below. Although dew usually descends from the atmosphere onto the earth, here, the dew miraculously rose from the ground.

I still can't figure out what this is supposed to look like...

17:11-12 - Curious:  When Moses physically lifts his hand on the hill top, Joshua and the Israelites prevail over the forces of Amalek.  When Moses lowers his hand, though, Amalek prevails.  As if to drive the point home that there is an actual connection between the position of Moses's hand and the fortune of the Israelites in battle, we read that "Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun."  Why was this necessary?  Why not just wave the staff once or some such thing?  Seems like overkill.

17:14-16 - I don't get it.  A couple mitzvot directly pertain to never forgetting what Amalek did and to destroy their seed...but what did they do that was so bad?  This is it?  Huh...

Torah Tidbits: Parshat Bo

10:7 - I understand that, according to both the narrative and many commentaries, God needed to unleash the plagues on Egypt not only so that Pharaoh would let the Israelites go but because God wanted the Israelites themselves to see his power.  I get that.  But here is another one of those verses that give me pause:  Pharaoh's courtiers basically tell their king to give in, but he won't.  So despite the fact that clearly there were Egyptians ready to free the Israelites, God keeps hardening Pharaoh's heart (in 10:20), which sets the stage for the worst plagues to come.  I'm not a fan of collective punishment no matter what the reason.

10:24-27 - The back and forth between Moses and Pharaoh over the so-called three day sojourn into the desert continues, with almost comedic effect.  Here, Pharaoh, who by now clearly understands the Israelites are asking for freedom, not a vacation, says they can go into the desert...if they leave their flocks behind.  Moses offers a fabulously opaque excuse:  since they didn't know exactly what animals God would want them to sacrifice, they needed to bring all of their animals along with them!  But God "hardens" Pharaoh's heart, and the answer is no.  (Though it seems to me that the word used here, וַיְחַזֵּק , is better translated as "strengthened" than "hardened," no?)

11:2 - Unless I've missed something, this is the first time God says please!  Mechon Mamre translates the Hebrew "דַּבֶּר-נָא, בְּאָזְנֵי הָעָם" as "Speak now in the ears of the people," but Kehot translates it -- more accurately, I think -- as "Please speak to the people".  It's weird, because Mechon Mamre literally translates "in the ears of the people" but ignores the na suffix on the word "speak," while Kehot does the opposite, leaving out "ears" but including "please."  My question is:  Why does God say "please" here?  Why not just command?

11:7 - What the heck does this mean:  "But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog whet his tongue, against man or beast; that ye may know how that the LORD doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel."  What do dogs have to do with anything?!?

12:2 - "'This month [Nisan] shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you..."  This may be an ignorant question, but huh?!?  I thought Tishrei was the first month of the year, ergo Rosh Hashanah?

12:11 - A poetic verse (in Hebrew), and a great image:  "And this is how you shall eat it: with your waist belted, your shoes on your feet, your staff in your hands, and you shall eat it in haste this Passover offering to God."  Do traditional sederim do something to commemorate this?

12:12 - Fascinating!  I always thought the slaying of the firstborn was carried out by the Angel of Death, not God (a la verse 9 of had gadya), but the text is very clear (both here and at 12:27 and 12:29):  It was God alone who does the killing.  This makes sense, but why did I have it my head that it was the Angel of Death?!?

12:14-20 - These verses made me sigh.  Here we have in unambiguous, explicit details about what we're supposed to do on pesach: (a) eat matzot, (b) not to eat anything leavened or have anything leavened in the home, (c) not to work on the first and last of the seven days of the holiday, and (d) to do these things "for all generations."  So much in the Torah is ambiguous; so many of the mitzvot, it seems to me, are not explicitly commanded in the Torah but rather by the commentators.  But here we have a nice set of dos and don'ts that leave little to the imagination.  This begs the question:  Of the 613 mitzvot, how many are clear like this?  I wonder...

12:21-23 - I'm sure there's a good answer for this, but why would God need the Israelites to mark their houses with blood so that their firstborn would not be killed?  Doesn't God know everything?  A shudder to think the alternative was the case:  That putting blood on the house was the litmus test to find out who didn't believe in God...

12:35-36 - Let me get this straight:  The Israelites "asked" the Egyptians for their "silver and gold," and because "the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians...[the Egyptians] let [the people] have what they asked," and in doing so "despoiled the Egyptians."  Are we to understand that God made the Egyptians give up all their wealth?!?

12:38 - Who, exactly, made up the so-called "mixed multitude" [עֵרֶב רַב] that accompanied the Israelites when they left Egypt?  Obviously non-Jews...  But who were they?  Why did they come?  What happens to them?  Weird...

12:43-50 - Concerning the laws of pesach, God has a lot to say here about who can't eat of the sacrifice:  not "aliens" (or "strangers"), and not "A sojourner [nor] a hired servant."  And you can't take it out of your house, "neither shall ye break a bone thereof."  Etcetera.  If this means non-Jews can't eat of the sacrifice, then what of matzah?  What of the ceremonial foods eaten at a seder to take the place of the sacrifice?  (An aside:  Why don't we eat lamb on pesach?  The Temple and the preisthood were not yet established, so there were no rules about ritual sacrifice to follow.  Ergo, the destruction of the Temple, it seems to me, should not have any bearing on whether we sacrifice lambs today.  I'm probably missing something...

13:1-2 - A-ha moment #1!  So this is where pidyon haben comes from:  God sparing the firstborn of the Israelites!

13:9 - A-ha moment #2!  So this is why we put a bayit of the tefillin on the arm:  because God took us out of Egypt with a mighty hand!

13:14-16 - Where the Torah tells us about the "good son," in eloquent Hebrew:  "If in time to come, your child asks you, saying: 'What is this?' You shall say to him, 'With a mighty hand God brought us out of Egypt, from the House of Bondage.'"

Is the Kotel a Jewish tourist trap?

Yesterday's article by URJ President Rabbi Eric Yoffie at jweekly.com, about recent events at the Kotel, got me thinking.

(For those who missed it, "Women of the Wall," a group of women who meet regularly to conduct services at the Kotel, ran into trouble last November when one of their group brought a Torah scroll and put on a tallit.  That ran afoul of a previously-issued High Court ruling that required the group to adhere to the regulations for behavior at the Kotel, regulations, of course, written by Orthodox Jews who are, shall we say, unsympathetic to such behavior.  You can read a contemporary account of what happened here.)

I get why some Orthodox Jews view it as a holy place.  It's the sole remnant of the Temple.  Insofar as some pray for the restoration/rebuilding of the Temple, it stands to reason that the Kotel is hugely significant.  (Why it's considered to be a synagogue for legal purposes is another matter...)  But for the rest of us Jews who do not hope and pray for the restoration of the Temple and the resumption of sacrifices...why do we make such a big deal out of it?  Yoffie writes, "Throughout the generations, the Kotel has been a source of inspiration to Jews everywhere. It is a concrete symbol of our love for Jerusalem and our common Jewish destiny. The Wall belongs to the entire Jewish people; it must be a place that unifies our people, where all Jews are welcomed and all are respected." 

Frankly, I don't buy it. 

As far as I can tell, the Kotel is a tangible symbol of what divides Jews, not unites them:  Those who long for the restoration of the Temple vs. those who don't; those who view it as a powerful religious site vs. those who view it as a powerful nationalist site.  It may be "a source of inspiration to Jews everywhere," but if the things we're being inspired to do are widely divergent, it's hard to see how it unifies us.

The first time I went to the Kotel was in High School, on Tisha B'av.  It was one of the most profoundly moving experiences of my life.  I had planned for my semester in Israel for years, hoped and dreamed it would come...and when I saw it lit up at night, thousands of Ultra-Orthodox chanting Eicha, I wept on the stones for what seemed like hours.  By the end of my six months in Israel, it still felt special.  Several years later when I returned, it felt familiar, but there was something strange about being there -- I felt as if I was supposed to feel something, and the more I thought about it, the more I didn't know what was even appropriate to feel.  And, of course, I got hit up a dozen times for money every time I went to pray. 

And then it started to feel a bit idolatrous. 

In my opinion, one of the genius things about Judaism is its distinction between real holiness and its trappings.  Jews aren't supposed to have holy places -- anywhere 10 Jews come together to pray is perfectly holy enough, thank you.  We don't need art, or things, or monuments...just Torah and people.  The Kotel, though, seems to undo all of this, as if the remnants of the retaining wall of the Second Temple could ever be imbued with any holiness beyond that brought by the people who go there...and the Orthodox certainly have no monopoly on that.

Don't get me wrong, I think people have the absolute right to feel whatever they want to feel about the Kotel.  That's none of my business.  But from where I stand, it's the ultimate Jewish tourist trap:  That place to which we're all supposed to go, supposed to feel something...supposed to put our prayers on paper and stick them between the stones where they're supposed to get to God faster.  Where we get hit up for money from every other Black Hat in Jerusalem. 

Others can have a blast there if they must, but sorry to say I think it's baloney.

Mitzvot of the Week: #2, #3 - Not to believe in other gods/To believe that God is one

Introduction:

The Rambam doesn't make things easy here.  By my reading, there is a "double-double" approach to the uniqueness of God.  First, as in Week 1, he seems to approach this mitzvah from two different angles, "belief" in vs. "knowledge" of God's oneness.  Second, the mitzvah is really two mitzvot, one positive, one negative.  So what we have here, at first blush, are four possible approaches -- (1) to believe in God's oneness and (2) not to believe in other gods (from Sefer HaMitzvot); and (3) to know that God is one and (4) not to consider that there are other gods (from Mishneh Torah).  I look at his arguments for all four of these positions, but I adhere to the Rambam's classification system by considering that these positions really constitute two mitzvot, opposite sides of the same coin.

In Sefer HaMitzvot (Negative Commandments - Mitzvah 1), "The exhortation against believing [מלהאמין] in the Divinity of aught beside Him" is stated as the first negative commandment.  The Rambam here cites Exodus 20:3:  "There shall not be unto you any other gods before my presence" (לֹא-יִהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים, עַל-פָּנָי).  As with the first mitzvah concerning belief/knowledge of God, he cites Makkot 23a as to the status of this "exhortation" as a negative commandment. 

On the positive side (Positive Commandments - Mitzvah 2), he writes that to believe in God's oneness means "to believe [להאמין] that the Maker of the creation and its First Cause is one, as the Exalted One has said (Deuteronomy 6:4): "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." "The intent here," Rambam continues, "is that He took us out of the house of bondage and bestowed upon us what He did out of lovingkindness and beneficence only, so that we believe in the Unity, as is our obligation." This mitzvah, he says, is also known as "mitzvath yichud" (i.e., the commandment of unity).

In the Mishneh Torah, however, these mitzvot are explained slightly differently.  In Chapter 1.6, he explains that "Anyone who presumes [המעלה על דעתו] that there is another god transgresses a negative commandment" [emphasis mine] while in Chapter 1.7, he writes "The knowledge of this concept [that God is one] fulfills a positive commandment, [as implied by Deuteronomy 6:4]..." [emphasis mine]. 

Some preliminary thoughts and questions:

Torah Tidbits: Parshat Vaeira

6:2 - "And God spoke unto Moses, and said unto him: 'I am the LORD [יְהוָה];"  Funny, the relationship between God's "Lord" name and the present tense "is" never really occurred to me.  That word is the almost always unused word for "is", right?  I like the idea of using abstract words concerning tense (e.g., "I will be") to talk about God .

6:4 - Why does God refer to Canaan as "the land of Canaan, the land of their sojournings, wherein they sojourned"?  Isn't calling it Canaan enough?  Is there another Canaan?!?  When God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, he says something like "your son, your only son, the one that you love, Isaac," but here Abraham has two sons, so until Isaac is mentioned by name, it could be either one. 

6:20 - Okay, this verse bugs me.  To wit, "And Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife; and she bore him Aaron and Moses."  Uh, I thought you weren't supposed to do that (see Negative Commandment 333).  What gives?  Kehot's "A Closer Look" is, frankly, both incoherent and, interestingly enough, improperly edited so that we can't even say what they were trying to say:

The Torah prohibits a man from marrying his father's sister.  However, as we have seen [footnote refers to Genesis 23:16, where Joseph, apparently, serves improperly-slaughtered meat to his brothers the interpolation is hilarious], before the Torah was formally given, only the Torah's [sic] for non-Jews were legally binding, and non-Jews are permitted to marry paternal relatives, so Amram was permitted to marry his father's sister.

This is how Chabad (and others, presumably) evades dealing with the contradiction between (a) their insistence that the Torah is eternal and, therefore, in force for Jews from the get-go; and (b) the obvious fact that no one could have known even theoretically what was in it before its "revelation" at Sinai.  Why can't they just admit that the taryag mitzvot came long after the events of Exodus?!?

6:29-7:2 - God tells Moses to speak to Pharaoh; Moses complains about his speech impediment; God then tells him Aaron "shall be thy prophet."  Why doesn't God just fix Moses's speech?  Or tell him to go ahead and speak with his lisp anyway?  It seems strange, at least to me, that God would basically play along with Moses's insecurity on this point.

7:3-5 - Ah yes:  God tells Moses what to say to Pharaoh, but wait, God also plans to "harden Pharaoh's heart," basically in order to provide a pretext for unleashing the plagues.  Maybe I'm a simpleton, but it disturbs me that God would in essence inflict collective punishment on all of Egypt -- a dictatorship -- because of the quite understandable reluctance of Pharaoh to let all the Hebrews take a 3-day vacation in the desert (more on this in a bit).  Why not just unleash plagues until Pharaoh caved?

This speaks to a wider theme in the Torah that, for obvious reasons, is hard for some modern folk (myself included) to stomach:  Back in the day, entire peoples would be punished if not wiped out for standing in the way of the Israelites.  This isn't such a cool thing today.

7:9-13 - The "pre-plague":  Aaron's staff becomes a snake and eats Pharaoh's magicians staves, who are themselves turned into snakes.  First, the word used here for the magicians of Egypt -- חַרְטֻמֵּי מִצְרַיִם -- is excellent!  Second, how the heck could the Egyptians change their staves into snakes!?!  I buy (!) that God could do this, but that others could do it...no way.  So what gives?

7:16 - This verse, and others, make something clear that I never realized:  Aaron and Moses were not sent to Pharaoh to "free the slaves"; they were sent to get them a three-day break to go into the desert and make sacrifices.  Perhaps Pharaoh understood that this was essentially the same thing, or that it might have that as its net effect, but it is different than demanding total freedom.  Who knew?  But what if he had called the bluff?  Would the Hebrews have come back?  Or would God have "made sure" that Pharaoh didn't agree?

7:19-22 - The magicians of Egypt are able to reproduce the First Plague and turn water into blood.  Pretty nifty.  Again, how exactly were they able to do this?!?

8:1-3 - And then the frogs...  How did these "magicians" have any power at all?!?

8:12-15 - Finally the magicians drop the ball:  They can't make lice.  And how do they react:  "'This is the finger of God'"  Again, I thought the Egyptians didn't believe in "God" as in, Adonai.  So what's the deal?!?

8:21-24 - This is kind of funny...  So after the swarm comes, Pharaoh relents:  "'Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land.'"  That is, go take your three-day break, but do you sacrifice here (i.e., in Egypt) as opposed to out in the desert.  Moses's response, taking from Kehot, is classic:  "It would not be proper to do so, for it is the deity of Egypt that we would sacrifice to God, our God. We are going to sacrifice sheep, one of the animals you worship as an idol. If we were to sacrifice the deity of the Egyptians before their very eyes, would they not stone us?!"  Does Moses really believe this baloney?!?  But it works!  Pharaoh relents!

Hard to even know how to respond to such bile...

Last night, before turning in for bed, I turned to a 9:30pm Queens Public Television (QPTV) program on Channel 82 called (!) "Judaism."  (Based on the programming guide, it seems like a regular spot.)

I know, I know:  big mistake.

The entire 30 minute segment was of a single guy standing in front of a bookcase, ranting directly into the camera.  I really should have known better, but photos of Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein were visible over his right shoulder, and in light of my recent foolhardy attempt to take a dip into that pool of quicksand (here, here and here), I couldn't resist.

It's not that the guy (whose exact name I can't remember) said anything I haven't heard before:

• he likened the Maccabees revolt against the Seleucids and Hellenistic Jews in the 2nd Century BCE to Yigal Amir's assassination of Rabin:  in both cases, he claimed, "real Jews" did what was necessary to save Judaism from "assimilationist, evil Jews"
• he claimed that the "so-called Chassids or Chassidic Jews" do not have the spirit to keep Judaism alive
• he repeated many times -- actually screamed -- "No Arabs, No Terror!!!"
• he discussed how "Rabin HaRasha" ("Rabin the Evil One"), among other things, was responsible for murdering unarmed, innocent people during the Altalena affair; was an alcoholic and a "nicotine addict" (!); and "ate swine, pork" when he visited the U.S. and that, in sum, "what went around, came around," viz., his assassination

And so on.

As I said, nothing new here. 

But listening to this sad, angry little man, and thinking about what he said and what he represents, I became deeply sad...and very angry.

It makes me sad and angry that bigoted, fundamentalist nutjobs like him put on their kippas and spew this hateful, murderous bile...while insisting that Jews who eat pork are the evil ones.

It makes me sad and angry that many Jews think that it's only other religions that have crazies like this guy; "goyyim, sure, but not us."

It makes me sad and angry that my religion -- the beautiful, comforting and meaningful tradition without which I don't know who or what I would be -- gets perverted and twisted by the dirty hands and foul mouths of such sick people.

It makes me sad and angry that anyone could ever turn to a literal interpretation of a book written thousands of years ago as justification for inflicting pain and suffering on other people.

It makes me sad and angry that many American Jews turn a blind eye to this billious intolerance out of a misguided and misdirected "support for Israel."

It makes me sad and angry that so many people are so narrow-minded to think that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is "all the Arabs fault," and that if they would all just move to the Saudi desert, everything would be perfect.

It makes me sad and angry that saying these kinds of things leads others to think I'm a "self-hating Jew."

It makes me sad and angry that some Jews have spent so much of their time and effort to give the veneer of intellectual legitimacy to philosophies that only lead to the misery and suffering of other human beings.

It makes me sad and angry that I once thought there was something different and special about Jews...only to learn that we're just as screwed up, crazy and ignorant as everyone else in the world.

But listening to the broadcast reminded me of something else as well that I don't remember enough, and is part of the reason I'm writing this blog in the first place:  What other people say, think and do affects me as a Jew, but it does not -- it cannot -- define my Jewishness.  I too get to say what I feel, think and believe and in doing so play my part in shaping what it means to be Jewish.  To paraphrase Hillel,

If I do not play an active role in defining what Judaism means to me, who will do it?  But if all I do is think and write about myself, failing to speak out against the ignorant, the intolerant, and the fundamentalists who routinely arrogate to themselves the right to define authentic Jewishness, then what does that make me?  And if not now, when?

Mitzvah of the Week: #1 - To know/believe there is a God

Okay, after a lot of work on this, I'm back on track!  Except doing so meant some re-jiggering of "week 1."

That post, now significantly reworked, is here.

Onward to Week 2: Not to believe in/consider the thought of a divinity other than God.