The Power of Words - Mattot-Maasei

There’s a spectacularly interesting review in this week’s nation by Martha Nussbaum on Catherine Mackinnon’s new book Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues.

I’m not going to say much about either the review or the book, because I think you should go read the review yourselves, but the reason I mention it is because the first thing that popped into my head -no, really- was this week’s parsha. The beginning of parshat Mattot jumps into a set of commandments about what happens when people take oaths, but most of its focus is set squarely upon what happens when women take oaths. And the answer is not exactly pretty.

The Torah tells us that if a woman who is underage makes an oath, if the father acts immediately, he has the power to revoke the oath. Similarly, when a woman gets married, as soon as he hears about any oath she has made for herself, if he says something on that day, the husband can revoke it. Only a woman who is single - either divorced, or a widow- has ultimate power over her own vows. Of course this is nothing quite new. There are all sorts of ways in which the Torah makes quite clear that a woman is not a full agent, unless she has “acquired herself” through death or divorce.
in Parshat kedoshim on Vayikra 19:3
אִישׁ אִמּוֹ וְאָבִיו תִּירָאוּ וְאֶת־שַׁבְּתֹתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ אֲנִי יְהוָֹה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶֽם:
Every man his mother and father you shall fear and My sabbaths you shall observe.I am Adonai your God.
Rashi comments:
אין לי אלא איש, אשה מנין, כשהוא אומר תיראו הרי כאן שנים, ד א”כ למה נאמר איש, שהאיש סיפק בידו לעשות, אבל אשה רשות ה אחרים עליה:

I [know this] of a man, from where [do I know this of] a woman? When it says: “You shall fear,” this is two. If so, why is “man” mentioned? For it is in a man’s power to do, but a woman is under the control of others.
As Sifra explains, (Sifra Kedoshim, par. 1, 3) A woman must consult her husband about her activities outside the house.

This is only the very beginning of skimming through many texts where it is quite clear that women are not considered to be agents, nor have they the power to make themselves such. According to the commentators, even the power to obey commandments expressly given to them by God are mediated through the lesser social status of gender.
This is why the review of MacKinnon’s book reminded me of this week’s portion: here it is one of the places where women’s lesser status is made clear.

Vows - words- are a form of reality - God speaks and the world comes into being. In Judaism, unlike other religions, words are not transferrable. Any language isn’t as good as any other in all things: Hebrew is the holy language, and as soon as one translates, one loses something. Words aren’t symbols, they are, themselves, power.To say that one person can revoke another’s vows is to make literal one’s power over another - it is saying that one has the power to erase another’s speech, and in so doing, erase their deeds and their power, as well.

Is there an out? Yes - the out is that when women are free of others - widows or single adult women, others have no power over them, even biblically. In these days, we must recognize that speech reifies - it is not, in Judaism, simply sound waves that disappear like ripples in a pond. It is the movement of oceans - equaivalent both to the dripping of water on stones that wear them smooth, to the destructive force of tsunamis. When God speaks, the world comes into being. So, too when we speak. This is why the rabbis felt so strongly about vows.

The Talmud, in Nedarim 77b, states: “Rav Dimi, the brother of Rav Safra, learnt: He who vows, even though he fulfils it, is designated a sinner.” This isn’t the only position of the rabbis of course: others held that if one made a vow and fulfilled it, that was praiseworthy - but what all the rabbis shared was a deep respect for vows, and a horror of making vow that might not be fulfilled.

How can we understand the underlying meaning of these verses. Does the Torah really intend to tell women that the power of words is not for us? Are we really to be stripped of our humanity, only subject to others, always the silent servants in the room?

Of course, we shouldn’t forget that the Torah does leave an out: the woman who is no longer under the authority of her father or husband. This seems to imply that today, when we expect men and womento be equals in marriage, the ability to annul vows is not in effect: rather we should understand not just that women are always subject to men, but the reverse as well. What the Torah means is that in a house where there are two, they must take one another into account when speaking, when shaping the reality of their lives. It also means that we understand that silencing another person is in essence equivalent to murder: because if words are power, preventing speech stops not only their tongue, but their hands.

The Chofetz Chaim, commenting on a verse from this week’s portion, says, (31:8)
And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi…they also slew Balaam the son of Beor with the sword:
He came to Israel and changed his tools of trade for theirs, for the Jews are only saved by their mouths and by their prayers and entreaties, while he came and used their belief, by cursing them with his mouth. They too changed their tools of trade for his, for the other nations come with the sword as it states, “By your sword you shall live.” (Rashi) From this we see that the tool of the trade of the Jewish people is speech, and with it they can create worlds, both material and spiritual, as it states, (Isa. 51:16), “I have put My words in your mouth…to plant the heavenes and lay the foundations of the earth,” therefore a Jew must be very careful not to harm the tools if his trade, i.e. his tongue, by speaking that which is forbidden, but must utilize these tools for Torah and prayer.

What does it mean to be human? To be human, one must be heard, and one must have the power to carry out one’s intentions. Martha Nussbaum makes a very interesting comment in the review, in which she summarizes Mackinnon’s central theme as, ” the hypocrisy of the international system when it faces up to some crimes against humanity but fails to confront similar harms when they happen to women…There is a category of torture, and we think we know how to define it. We think we know what it does: It uses violence to control and intimidate. And yet when violence is used to control and intimidate women ‘in homes in Nebraska…rather than prison cells in Chile,’ we don’t call it torture, and we somehow think it is not the same thing. Torture in Chile is not explained away as the work of isolated sick individuals…”
Aside from the fact that only too often, we do rationalize torture as the work of isolated sick individuals (take for example the US government’s reaction to the exposure of methods of torture by American soldiers - in all sorts of places, but just for specificity’s sake, let’s focus on Abu Ghraib) let’s ask what’s really the point: that these women are treated in a way which undermines their status as human beings. The Torah of course isn’t advocating that women ought to be tortured: chas v’shalom! But it does lay the groundwork, when we read these commandments without subtlety, for women to be in situations where they cannot escape from being treated this way.

For generations - and even today, in some places- shalom bayit, peace in the home- was used as a bludgeon against abused women to prevent them from leaving, to place the blame on them for violence against them. Again, the Torah is not advocating this, but its words, used poorly, bolster those who would be naval bir’shut hatorah - villains within the boundary of Torah (or with the permission of Torah) and so abuse it. And so, ultimately, it is up to us to make sure that the Torah’s words are not made into a way to silence the powerless, but rather used as God intended, as a way to protect the powerless. But we have to be careful, because often, systems which have at their heart the desire to protect, reinforce systems in which people remain in need of protection, rather than fixing the actual problem, it perpetuates it.

We can read the verses on vows in many ways: focusing on the way that society was in those days, in which the Torah protected women, by giving them a way to not be held liable for their inability to fulfil their obligations; or we can focus upon the future, in which the Torah tells us that a woman who is a full agent has the power to carry out her vows. This shouldn’t make us wanton with our power: we should always take care to make sure that our actions don’t adversely affect those around us - we shoud take care with our power- but ultimately, we must be free to act, in order to use the tools of our trade.

Crossposted to Radical Torah

Pinchas - Tools of Power

This weeks thought - why does Pinchas contain both the story of the slaying of Kozbi and Zimri by Pinchas, and also the story of the daughters of Tzelophchad? Is there a relationship?

Our commentators understand that what Kozbi and Zimri, who are given names -as well as titles- during this week’s portion, were doing was actually fornicating (how often do I get to use that word) in front of the entire community, as well as Moshe, and it was for this reason that Pinchas slew them.

But let’s look a little closer at what was actually described. It is true that chapter 25 of Bamidbar begins by saying that the Israelites started mixing sexually with the Midianites, but that doesn’t actually seem to be what annoys God. In fact, according to the text, God gets mad when? After the Israelites slide into genuine idol-worship attaching themselves to the Baal -Peor (not when they have sex with the Midianites) and before Kozbi and Zimri show up on the scene. That’s when God really loses it and tells Moshe to get things under control. It’s at that point that an unnamed man and woman

בָּא וַיַּקְרֵב אֶל־אֶחָיו אֶת־הַמִּדְיָנִית לְעֵינֵי מֹשֶׁה וּלְעֵינֵי כָּל־עֲדַת בְּנֵֽי־יִשְֹרָאֵל וְהֵמָּה בֹכִים פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵֽד

“come and draw near to his brethren… and before the eyes of Moshe and all of Israel….and they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting ”

This week, we get some additional information: Kozbi and Zimri aren’t just any old Israelite and Midianite! Verse 14 and 15 tell us: 14. And the name of the Israelite who was slain, who was slain with the Midianite woman, was Zimri, the son of Salu, a prince of a father’s house among the Simeonites. 15. And the name of the Midianite woman who was slain was Cozbi, the daughter of Zur; he was chief over the people of a father’s house in Midian. This tells us two things: first, they’re of equal rank - Kozbi is the daughter of a tribal leader, Zimri is himself a tribal leader. Second: They aren’t just Joe Israelite and Jane Midianite - they’re important people. And the Torah makes a point of telling us this.

This immediately reminded me of the story of Korach, which we read just two weeks ago, in which Korach, a Levite accused Moshe and Aaron of arrogance, because they had “taken” the “important” positions, when all of Israel is holy, but revealed in the course of the rebellion that he wasn’t really worried about all of Israel, but about getting more power for himself.

So let’s go back to the strangely ambiguous comment from last week’s parshah about the crying. When we read, it actually isn’t quite clear who is doing the weeping here, whether it is Israel, or whether it is Zimri and Kozbi.
Later on in our portion there’s another story involving women which is quite different, the story of Tzlophchad’s daughters, which we’ll get to in a few minutes. Regarding that story, there is an interesting comment in the talmud to the effect that women cry easily - and it makes all sorts of hay out of this pronouncement - to which the Avnei Ezer comments that tears are a form of bribery by word.

Even though this comment was regarding the section about the daughters of Tzelophchad, perhaps it more properly belongs here, regarding Zimri and Kozbi. What we have here is a situation in which Israel is suffering from a horrible plague in which people are dying left and right. Moses’ response is to say that God told him to kill everyone who worships Baal with the Moabites. And there’s one more piece: At the end of the chapter on Pinchas, the Torah comments that the reason we are to harrass the Midianites (not, mind you, the Moabites!) is because the Midianites harrassed you

בנכליהם אשר נכלו לכם

- tough to translate, but more or less, “in their conspiracy of villainy that they conspired (or were villians) about the matter of Peor and Kozbi” -one translation is possibly, “they did the same to you with beguilement about the matter of Kozbi.”

The implication is that there was a political move going on here. Maybe sex is a kindof gateway drug to idolatry at most - but what Kozbi was doing was using this plague as an opportunity to seduce people over to Baal worship, and Zimri was involved in this intrigue. The crying is a technique, bribery, as the Avnei Ezer puts it, not real tears, but a show. It seems to me that what angered Pinchas was not this couple -as the commentators suggest- having sex, but that a local power player went to someone of equal rank amongst the Midianites and brought her there to stir up the crowds against Moshe during this moment of great panic and fear. That makes this an episode much more like that of Korach than a rant about intermarriage. That’s why the Torah is so careful to go back and tell us the name and rank of this slain man and woman, when it didn’t before, in last week’s portion, when the incident actually happened.

No matter how we understand what Zimri and Kozbi were doing, they are using some very specific kinds of tools to get power. And these tools are illegitimate. To the contrary, Tzelophchad’s daughters were no one special, their father was no one special, they didn’t have any special priveleges. Yet, instead of playing at power games, they were completely forthright. And Godself answered through Moses, saying that they were right.
And the reason that all of this is wrapped up here in this parshah is because there is a third piece here that talks about leadership: God tells Moses to take Joshua and bring him in front of the people and put his hands on him and commanded him (Bamidbar 27: 19 & 23) which he does.
ultimately, what can we draw from this? Joshua and the daughters of Tzelopchad represent two diferent stations of people, and how they can appropriately gain authority: the rabbis valorize the daughters of Tzlopchad (Bava Batra 119b) as

חכמניות הן, דרשניות הן, צדקניות הן

wise women, they were exegetes, they were virtuous. Anyone can legitimately wield power by pursuing justice and learning, but once you have the power of authority by some other means, one has to be very careful. Korach and Zimri, both people who had heriditary standing in the community - positions that they had come by only because of an accident of birth, are not forgiven for abusing that power. The Torah juxtaposes Joshua to them to show that the highest authority is one remains commanded - that is, someone who does things not because of hisown benefit, but because he is obligated to keep in mind his care for the community. That’s what made Moshe such a great leader; the Torah is very careful to say that Moses was the humblest of men -it was not for his own benefit that he led Israel, but because he combined the leadership qualities of the daughters of Tzlophchad and Joshua - he had a keen sense of justice, which he felt obligated to pursue, even when it menat he had to flee his home; and he was commanded - he maintained authority only in order to do the work that he must.

What’s the difference between Tzelophchad’s daughters and Kozbi? Kozbi gets up and starts acting like a stereotypical female - we don’t even know what it is that she and Zimri want, except that it clearly has to do with the Midianites and some sort of conspiracy to woo the Israelites away to worship their Gods. She is using sex to win Israel over. It’s a neat trick - and we all know, sex works.

But

שקר החן והבל היפי

- grace is false and beauty vain (Mishlei 31:30). In the end , the Torah sees the sexual antics of the Moabite women and Kozbi’s tears as two of a variety of different tactics - here they’re all about sex, but Korach as well numbers among these strategists - the fault is misusing the rules, rather tan changing them to make them better.
To the contrary, Tzelophchad’s daughters, who not only were women like Kozbi, but weren’t even powerful women - their father was no one special, they didn’t have any special priveleges. Yet, despite being powerless, they had the gumption to go before Moses, Elazar the Kohen, and the leaders and the whole assembly of Israel and speak out. They didn’t cry, and they didn’t use a man to make their case for them. They simply presented a rational case and hoped that despite living in a society in which they had little power, their argument would be enough. One might answer that they ran a pretty big risk - what if Moshe hadn’t brought their complaint to God? The answer is that it wasn’t going before Moshe that got God’s response. Not since Abraham, did someone think to go to the top and challenge, not the individual preference, but the rule. Everyone else challenges not God, but Moshe! (Think of Korach, which opens with Korach and his followers staniding before Moshe and Aaron and accusing them of being arrogant). The daughters of Tzelophchad were not after a personailty contest. Moreover, their challenge was not a challenge only for themselves and their personal status, but one which was brought for women as a whole - any woman who had no brothers was affected by their plaint.

The point we bring here is not that one should follow channels (as they say, Chas v’shalom!), but rather that there are legitimate and non-legitimate ways to acquire power. Even the powerless have choices. No matter how powerless an individual is, they have the ability to find a way to change society and make it right, rather than simply exploiting the tools which are already there to benefit themselves.

crossposted to RadicalTorah.org

Another beef with kashrut in the news

IN 2004, Agriprocessors (Rubashkin’s and Aaron’s), one of the largest of the kosher slaughtering facilities in the US, got caught skeezing like crazy: first, the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency joined a civil suit against them for violating the Clean Water Act. Then they were caught engaging in inhumane killing practices -incidentally bringing to the fore the question of whether tzaar baalei chayim - suffering of animals- actually makes meat unkosher, or whether it merely means that we shouldn’t do business with the companies that engage in it because they’re violating other halachot. Uh, yeah. Then last month, The Forward reported that AgriProcessors was mistreating its largely Latino employees.

Wait, that’s just the wind-up. Now Agriprocessor -and several other major kosher meat suppliers- have been served with federal subpoenas in connection with a criminal antitrust investigation according to The Jewish Week . Which other suppliers have also been served is not clear, but let’s be honest, is this shocking to those of us who keep kosher? While it is unclear whether Agriprocessors is the focus of the investigation or simply being consulted to help in the investigation of the market, don’t we hear all the time about kosher practices which are not quite cricket?

The current state of kashrut in this country is appalling. The stakes (steaks?) are about to be very high - for those who eat meat, the problems are racking up - of course there’s no reason to assume that Jewish business people are more moral than those of other religions - but they should be. As a traditional Jew myself, I find it enormously painful to have to revisit over and over again the open evidence of the startling lack of ethical behavior in the Jewish community. And although I can’t say this makes it worse, but it is at least a bit niggling (it would be just as bad to cheat anyone. It is not acceptable to rip off non-Jews!), this particular nastiness can’t even be attributed by the somewhat insular communities that occasionally say this sort of thing as, well, it’s only forbidden to cheat other Jews- well, this is other Jews who are being cheated.

I could console myself with my dairy kitchen, but I have to say that it’s a very small consolation for me. Where is the mussar (traditional ethics) movement for our day? I do not want to hear a single person saying that they won’t condemn these aveirot (sins) because if they tell people that the meat isn’t kosher, people who now keep kosher might start buying non-kosher meat. Let them eat seitan!

At least, where are our leaders who should be publicly condemning these practices instead of sweeping them under the rug in the hope that no one will notice? The Jewish community is now mired in the practices of don’t let the non-Jews know… guess what? - they know. It won’t go away if we ignore it. It is not an application of avoiding chillul hashem (desecration of God’s name) to pretend that everything is okay.

Crossposted to Jewschool

Korach - The Salt of the Earth

Although this week’s parsha, named for what appears to be its main character, begins with Moshe and Korach, it actually ends with Aaron and the establishment of the eternal priesthood. Why does this shift take place? Perhaps the explanation lies in a small detail that appears in Bamidbar 18:19. God tells Aaron that in place of an inheritance of land to support themselves, the Levites are to be given everything that is set aside for tithing forever, and it is a brit melach olam, an eternal covenant of salt. This brit melach is mentioned only three times in the Torah: in Vayikra 2:13, in which the meal offering is first explained as not being offered with honey or leavening, and then continues, “And every sacrifice of your meal offering shall you season with salt; nor shall you allow the brit melach of your God to be lacking from your meal offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.” The second mention is from this week’s parsha, “All the offerings of the holy things, which the people of Israel offer to the Lord, have I given you, and your sons and your daughters with you, by a statute forever; it is a brit melach forever before the Lord to you and to your seed with you,” and the third mention is from Divrei Hayamim 13:5, “Ought you not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David forever, to him and to his children by a brit melach?”

What is the connection between these three things? The brit melach is eternal – it is a covenant that does not fade over time, it cannot be undone or superceded. Salt comes to symbolize eternality because of its preservative properties. In Vayikra, melach is opposed to chametz: chametz, leavening, is temporary: one’s fortunes are a wheel in the world that turns (T. Bavli Shabbat 151b). Salt, to the contrary, is a constant. It does not ferment; it is stable and preserves food against rot.

But the preserving properties of salt have other symbolism, as well. Salt, unlike leaven, and honey, doesn’t have any obvious effects. Honey sweetens, leaven puffs bread up with air. Our sages note, that salt, however, disappears into that which it is used on – you can’t see it. Moreover, in itself, it doesn’t taste like much, but it makes that to which it is added tasty. It is therefore a symbol of humility and service. In this way, salt is contrasted in particular to leaven, chametz, which symbolizes haughtiness – as we might say today, someone who is “puffed up with their own importance.”

But one of the most powerful statements about salt appears in the Talmud (Berachot 5a) which states, “The word ‘covenant’ is mentioned in connection with salt, and the word ‘covenant’ is mentioned in connection with sufferings: the word ‘covenant’ is mentioned in connection with salt, as it is written: Neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking. And the word ‘covenant’ is mentioned in connection with sufferings, as it is written: These are the words of the covenant. Even as in the covenant mentioned in connection with salt, the salt lends a sweet taste to the meat, so also in the covenant mentioned in connection with sufferings, the sufferings wash away all the sins of a man.”

It is instructive to notice that in fact, Aaron seems to exemplify precisely what the Talmud is telling us. Aaron not long ago lost two of his sons, and yet not bitter, but of all the characters of the Torah, he is known primarily for his sweetness. The rabbis called him “peacemaker,” and the midrash reiterates over and over his gentleness and kindness. Avot d’ rabbi Natan (12:3) says, “When Aaron went on his way and a wicked person encountered him, Aaron greeted him. The next day, that man wanted to commit a sin, but thought, “Woe is to me! How will I raise my eyes afterwards and look at Aaron? I am ashamed before him, for he greeted me.” It continues, “When two people quarreled Aaron went and sat down with one of them and said to him, “My son, know that your friend has said, ‘I am ashamed before him because I have sinned against him.’ ” Aaron would sit with him until he had dispelled the ill feeling from his heart. Then Aaron would go and sit with the other one and say to him, “Know that your friend is saying, ‘Woe is to me! How shall I raise my eyes and look at my friend? I am ashamed before him because I have sinned against him.’ ” Aaron would sit with him until he had dispelled the ill feeling from his heart. When the two friends later met, they embraced and kissed each other. Because of this, when Aaron died, it says: “All of Israel cried over Aaron for 30 days.”

While many commentators focus on the difference between Moshe and Korach: Moshe’s humility compared to the haughtiness of Korach, only a few notice that in fact, Moshe may well also have had some small blame against him – a few note that he did tshuvah (notice that when Korach accuses him, he falls on his face, an act of contrition, or at least appeasement). But even granted Moshe’s lesser level of haughtiness, or complete lack thereof, no one mistakes him for a warm and fuzzy kind of guy. Aaron, however, is. The Sifra (Shemini 1) even claims that Aaron never said to a person, “You have sinned”
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One of the other effects that our sages noted from salt is that it shrinks that which it is placed upon. Aaron merited an eternal covenant because through that which he suffered, he was able to shrink himself, and through by doing so, he brought huge numbers of people to God and away from sin. Despite Rabbi Ismar Schorsch’s recent excoriation of touchy-feeliness, it seems that the tradition itself recognizes that there is a way in which eternity is often better promoted through human relationships than through other means.

In a certain sense, the covenant itself is a reflection on the family to whom it is given. If the way that the House of Levi relates to the world is through kindness, which made them so loved that “thousands in Israel were called by the name Aaron,” (Avot d’rabbi natan 12:3), then who could better stand a covenant which in giving up any inheritance of land, requires that family to rely on the gifts of others for their livelihood? What other family could be charged with bearing the sins of the entire people Israel – who better than the family which through their gentleness, drew people to Torah.

While Korach is a symbol of everything that can go wrong in how one approaches service to God and one’s people, Moshe turns out also not to be the model for us. Moshe, no mater how you slice him, is different than the rest of us. In theory, sure, anyone could aspire to being a Moshe, but in reality, the one who is really successful in bringing people together are not the prophets who speak face to face with God, but those who speak face to face with us. That is, the salt of the earth.

Crossposted to RadicalTorah

Shavuot

1st Torah:
In the talmud in Pesachim (68b) the rabbis engage in an argument about what the obligations are or various holidays. It comes down to two basic commandments is one obligated to sepnd the entire day instudy of holy texts? Or is one obligated to eat and drink and be festive? After quoting some sources and arguiing amongst themselves about Pesach and Succot, they turn their attention to Shavuot:Rabbi Eliezer says: All agree that in the case Shavuot (which they refer to as Atzeret) we are rquired to celebate festively as well as study - one may not fulfil their obligation only through study.. The talmud continues, "What is the reason?" It is the day on which Torah was given.

This does not strike me as a particularly complete answer. The chatam sofer offers some explanation: claiming that the obligation of festive celebration stems from the universal nature of Matan Torah. God did not give the Torah only to the scholars; it is bequeathed toall of the Jewish people alike. All segments of the population, therefore, must rejoice on this festival. However, if you are a regular Joe or Jane, if you don't read Hebrew - yet- or have someone with whom you can study and really begin to understand the tradition that you are a part of, how can you still be a part of the Jewish people? How can you fulfill your obligation to God and Torah? God does not ever demand the impossible of us: God sometimes asks what is difficult, but always we have a way to fullfil it. So the Torah instructs us not only is study mandatory, but physical celebration as well: spend timewith your family, eat and drink, don't spend money, refrain from the stresses of the world. Eating and drinking provides a means by which everyone can truly rejoice.
The Chatam Sofer reminds us that everyone is a part of the people and each of us is beloved by God. The Torah portion that we read today reminds us "You have seen…that I bore you on eagles wings (Ex.19:4). As we prepared to stand before Sinai, God told us that if we obey God faithfully and kep God's covenenat, we shall be God's segulah mikol ha'amim - a treasure out of all the people. It is worth noting that the wording of the Torah stresses that we aren't treasured by God for no reason, but because we are willing to do those difficult tasks that we are called to. The verse continues: Since all the earth is Mine. All people are God's people, but we have a special role - we have the Torah, and to do what the next verse requires - to be a kingdom of preists and a holy nation- means that we have to be willing to do more.
You may be thinking, well, hwat's the big eal about eating and drinking on Shavuot? What's so chosen about that? Anyone can do that.
This is true. Anyone could do that - but of all the people in Washington DC (let's say) how many are actually doing it. Even of all the Jews in this city, who has set aside time to honor the idea that Torah matters, that God has a plan for us, an that holiness and blessing make a difference in our lives?
Very near the end of what we read today, God says, "In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you."
And truly, what is Torah and the gift of Torah, if not a moment where we make every place where we are a place in which God makes God's name remembered - for a person who receives the Torah, takes Torah with her everywhere she goes, and so everywhere she goes is blessed.

Haftarah:
I have to admit, that Ezekiel is one of my favorite books - it' s full of incredibly bizarre details and reads like a hallucination.How many of us when we envision angels think of fat little pig-babies in renaissance paintings? Well, let Yechezkel set you straight. No pig-babies here: these angels have four faces and four wings per face and one straight leg - no knees; their faces are like a lion, an ox, a human, and an eagle. Or take the ofanim, which also seem to be a sort of angel: they look like a wheel within a wheel, they have four sides and they don't turn, but just travel toward the direction of one of their -er- faces. Their backs are full of eyes.
With details like this, it's hard to even envision what this all must look like. And perhaps that's the point. Fat litle cherubs are a lot easier to picture - and much easier to dumb down. The recent trend of talking to angels that took over not long ago seems to me to be partially because angels as presented in Christian popular culture aren't majestic or hard to understand - they're sweet, they're like humans, thy're even -shudder- cuddly. But Ezekiel's angels are not. They're at best difficult to understand, and even harder to picture. How can a wheel within a wheel have a back full of eyes? That's not cuddly. It's not something you feel you can talk to. It's not particularly comprehensible for humans.
Perhaps that's why the rabbis chose this as the haftarah for the first day of shavuot. When we receive Torah, it's full of mystery and confusion. It's not cuddly. The people stood back from the mountain and struggled with synesthesia - they saw sounds, and they were afraid of what was happening.
Torah is the posession of Israel, but it is not a tame book, a collection of human platitudes and fun ideas for civil society. It is the wisdom not of humans, but of God,and we find it difficult to reconcile ourselves to obeying anything that we can't understand - but of course, when we do understand, or think we do, that becomes our excuse for ignoring, also. Once something is put into its little box of "explicable," then we are free to ignore it and chase after our comfortable lives.
So on Shavuot, when we stand before God and receive the Torah, we do want to remember that we are the possessors of Torah, that it is made for us and not for angels, and that it is so written that we will understand and do. But at the same time, it is also a work of God: God beyond vision, beyond human senses, beyond comprehension. God is not a human being, not a body, not a thing that we can say, oh God is just like us, defined and full of moods and well, you just have to know how to talk to Him.
And yet, we still have to have a way to enter into relationship with God, to love God and to understand what it might mean for God to love us.
Perhaps that's why the haftarah ends with a verse from two chapters later. Instead of trying to explain what Ezekiel sees, it says instead Then a ruach -spirit or wind- lifted me and I heard behind me kol ra'ash Gadol - a great noisy voice or sound, saying "Blessed be the glory of God in Its place."
Rather than trying to rely on our primary sense - vision, a sense which in reality is not so completely reliable, but a sense which our brains use as a filtering tool to try to make sense of a lot of different kinds of stimuli - instead of vision, our verse closes the haftarah with a sound, a voice. Of course, this reminds us also of when Elijah encounters God, and standing in front of the cave in which he had hidden from the troops of the queen, God sends reassurance to Elijah of God's power and presence: a great wind which tore up mountains and smashed rocks, and God was not in the wind, and then there was an earthquake, and God was not in the earthquke, and after the earthquake was a fire, and God was not in the fire, but after the fire came a kol d'mamah dakah - usually translated "a still small voice," but d'mamah which can mean "still," can also mean "silent:" a voice of thin silence.
Yet another paradox, of sound, and yet somehow, unlike the vision of Ezekiel, which floods us with an incomprehensible rush of images, Elijah's vision somehow speaks to us: a place of calm after a terrifying violence. And both Ezekiel and Elijah are pieces of the experience of encountering God. Today we stand before God to receive the greatest gift ever given to humans: the Torah. And the Torah is not a human document, but one of overwhelming power. Both Ezekiel and Elijah describe the confusion and un-humanness of an encounter with God - just as Israel at Sinai, they describe a confusion of the senses, something so beyond human that our bodies cannot really grasp what's going on - and so we experience it as terror or hallucination. But. Yet.
The wind lifted me, and I heard behind me a kol ra'ash gadol. An overwhelming sound. Close your eyes and don't try to look. Just take a moment and try not to be limited to the experience of your vision. Imagine the terror and awe of actually encountering God. Perhaps this is the real reason that we are commanded on Shavuot to eat and drink and celebrate as humans. In the moment of encountering God, truly reaching out to God in intimacy, there must be terror and awe. How could there not? And so, we are commanded to also remember our human-ness. Torah is awesome, but it is also meant for us. Every year, we return again to the moment at Sinai where we encountered God directly, and could not stand it. We fled and begged Moses to stand between us. Every year, though, we return to try again, to stand at Sinai and try to understand the incomprehensible, to open ourselves to something we know is beyond us, so that we can carry God's message into the world. How heroic is that?
As a nation we choose not to make God into a copy of ourselves, but try to meet God where God is, even knowing that the potential for our own destruction lies in the overwhelming otherness of God. No wonder God loves us. Even in human relationships it is incredibly difficult to be with another human and to understand them as they are, rather than as we wish them to be. And yet year after year, we return to Sinai, and try to become the one who is not only Beloved, but lover.

Jewish Dr. Seuss Fans

Not really seasonal, but I have a two year old, so someday he'll probably run into this classic tale of one poor young child struggling with dealing with the wide, non-kosher world, the rejection of treif and how that child is cajoled, nay, browbeaten, into violating our obligation to follow God's plan. Here is a far, far happier ending from the internet, one which allows the child to remain faithful to God and God's people, and yet to be open to the world of interesting new foods - at least those which are kosher!
(postscript - if anyone knows the original author so I can post b'shem omro, that would be great. Thanks)


Will you never see?They are not KOSHER, So let me be!
I will not eat green eggs and ham.
I will not eat them, Sam-I-am.

But I'll eat green eggs with a biscuit.
Or I will try them with some brisket.
I'll eat green eggs in a box.
If you serve them with some lox.

And those green eggs are worth a try
Scrambled up in matzoh brie!
And on a boat upon the river,
I'll eat green eggs with chopped liver!

So if you're a Jewish Dr. Seuss fan,
But troubled by green eggs and ham,
Let your friends in on the scoop:
Green eggs taste best with chicken soup.

Day WIthout an Immigrant

Today is May 1st. Today the stores are empty, restaurants are closed, and much work is going undone, because today immigrants stand up to say, "we make this country happen."
Today I remind all of us who are Jewish, that today, we are immigrants too - and alwaטs have been. Don't forget your brothers and sisters. Remember that you too were strangers in a strange land, which took us in, and fed us and made us fabulously secure. Did we not just read: Let those who are hungry come and eat. Let those who are in need come and celebrate the Passover. This year we are slaves, next year we will be free..."

הוי כל צמא לכו למים ואשר אין לו כסף לכו שברו ואכלו

ישעיה נה :א

must watch you-tube

OK, not as funny as the Chinese boys, but a very interesting Israeli ad for... chocolate snacki of some sort. not the sort of thing I recommend eating, but definitely an ad worth watching.

Boingboing (one of my favorite sites!) paired it with this genderbending campari ad
A very interesting justaposition.

Pesach, 7th day

שמות פרק טו פסוק כב-כז

ויסע משה את ישראל מים סוף ויצאו אל מדבר שור וילכו שלשת ימים במדבר ולא מצאו מים: ויבאו מרתה ולא יכלו לשתת מים ממרה כי מרים הם על כן קרא שמה מרה: וילנו העם על משה לאמר מה נשתה: ויצעק אל יי ויורהו יי עץ וישלך אל המים וימתקו המים שם שם לו חק ומשפט ושם נסהו:ויאמר אם שמוע תשמע לקול ידוד אלהיך והישר בעיניו תעשה והאזנת למצותיו ושמרת כל חקיו כל המחלה אשר מתי במצרים לא אשים עליך כי אני יי רפאך: ויבאו אילמה ושם שתים עשרה עינת מים ושבעים תמרים ויחנו שם על המים:

Moses caused Israel to journy from the Sea of Reeds and they went out to the wilderness of Shur; they went for a three-day period in the Wilderness, but they did not find water. They came to Marah, but they could not drink the waters of Marah because they were bitter; therefore they named it Marah. The people complained against Moses, saying, "What shall we drink?
He cried out to God, and God showed him a tree; he threw it into the water and the water became sweet. There He established for [the nation] a decree and an ordinance, and there He tested it. He said, "If you hearken diligently to the voice of Hashem your God, and do what is just in His eyes, give ear to His commandments and observe all His decrees, then any of the diseases that I placed upon Egypt, I will not bring upon you, for I am HaShem, your Healer."
They arrived at Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy date palms; they encamped there by the water. (Ex. 15:22-27)

In the morning, one of the first blessings that we say during Bircot HaShachar is the blessing on studying Torah

ברכות התורה:
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְשָֽׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו, וְצִוָּֽנוּ לַעֲסוֹק בְּדִבְרֵי תוֹרָה:

וְהַעֲרֶב־נָא יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ אֶת־דִּבְרֵי תוֹרָתֶךָ בְּפִֽינוּ, וּבְפִי עַמְּךָ בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְנִהְיֶה אֲנַֽחְנוּ וְצֶאֱצָאֵֽינוּ, וְצֶאֱצָאֵי עַמְּךָ בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל, כֻּלָּֽנוּ יוֹדְעֵי שְׁמֶֽךָ, וְלוֹמְדֵי תוֹרָתֶֽךָ לִשְׁמָהּ: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ, הַמְלַמֵּד תּוֹרָה לְעַמּוֹ יִשְׂרָאֵל:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר בָּֽחַר בָּֽנוּ מִכָּל הָעַמִּים, וְנָֽתַן לָֽנוּ אֶת תּוֹרָתוֹ: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ, נוֹתֵן הַתּוֹרָה:

After we praise God for commanding us to busy ourselves with words/matters of Torah, we continue in the middle paragraph, "Adonai, our God, may the words of Your Torah be sweet in our mouths... [ and in the mouth of your people, the house of Israel and let it be that we and our descendants and the descendants of Your people, the House of Israel, all of us will know Your name and study Your Torah for its own sake. Blessed are you God, the Teacher of Torah to His people Israel."]

In addition to reminding ourselves every morning that we should see the words of Torah as something that sweeten our lives, there is a Jewish tradition that when a child reaches the age of three, we begin their education by giving them a page of the Hebrew alphabet with a little honey on it, or cookies shaped like the aleph-bet, in order that they should associate learning Torah with sweetness.
But the Israelites in our Torah portion have not yet made this connection. The Israelites, as usual, are as full of complaints as a pumpkin has seeds. Immediately following the miracle of the sea splitting for them, just after they sing and dance on the shore, the first thing they do is start complaining .The Torah tells us,

ויבאו מרתה ולא יכלו לשתת מים ממרה כי מרים הם

They came to Marah but they could not drink the waters of Marah because marim hem. The words literally mean, "They were bitter" mayim, water, in Hebrew is plural. But the referent of marim hem is unclear, and so the midrash explains that it was "they," the people, not "they," the waters, which were bitter. Itturei Torah adds: "Bitterness was not the actual condition of the water; rather, the Israelites felt bitter and, therefore, whatever they tasted was bitter to them." It's worth noting that the Torah hints at this broadly,.

In verse 22, it says וילכו שלשת ימים במדבר ולא מצאו מים they went three days in the wilderness and they did not find water, not that there was no water. Why didn't they find any water? Perhaps because they were unable to see, because of their state of mind. After all, in verse 27, just one verse past our portion, the Torah tells us that the arrived at a place where there were twelve springs of water, and seventy trees - quite a lush place!
So why were they unable to find water to drink until then? What changed for them?

The Torah tells us, [Moses] cried out to God, and God showed him a tree; he threw it into the water and the water became sweet. Nachmanides notes, "I have not found the expression of moreh [from the root of Torah and yoreh] except in the sense of instruction."
The midrash Tanchuma, says," See what is written there. It does not say VaYareihu (God showed him), but VaYoreihu -God taught him. Rabbi Shimon Ben Yohai said, "[God] taught him from the Torah, concerning that which it is written (Prov 3:18) 'It is a tree of life.' The Holy One taught [Moses] [the living tree of Torah]..." According to the midrash this is proven, because the next verse continues, There He established for [the nation] a decree and an ordinance, and there He tested it. In other words, the tree that Moses was shown was the Etz Chaim - the tree of life, Torah. God Taught Moses the Torah, and this made the waters sweet.

A number of commentators riff off this, that Torah can make our lives sweeter, or that if only we would commit ourselves to Torah study, we would be able to see that many of the things of life that seem bitter are actually sweet. But I take a different message from these words.

It wasn't just that God taught Moses some Torah and all of a sudden everyone was able to drink the water! In fact, what the Torah actually says was, [Moses] cried out to God, and God showed him a tree; he threw it into the water and the water became sweet.
So we see that God teaching Moses was not enough, in fact, Moses had to actually do something with his learning in order for change to happen. And what did he do? He threw the tree into the water. If that tree is Torah, then the water, which is bitter, stands for the bitter circumstances of peoples' lives. Water is something which can be both good and bad: think of the sea which we have just crossed through, for the Israelites, it was moments before a terror - the cliff up to which they were backed, with the Egyptians in pursuit. In a moment, it changed and became their salvation as God split the sea and they came through, with God closing the sea after them, to prevent the Egyptians from pursuing. Water is one of the basic needs of life, we cannot live without it, but in the desert where sometimes we find pools of water which are chemically undrinkable, people can be poisoned by it as well. It can be the rains which grow the crops, or the hurricanes which kill and disposses people of their homes, belongings, and in some cases their families, and even their political enfranchisement.
And so the water that Israel was immersed in at that time was bitter, it was undrinkable, they could not stand the circumstances of their own lives. And so God gave to Moses a tree, Torah. But Torah was not enough. Moses had to take that Torah and throw it into the water. He had to not just know the Torah, but do the Torah; to take the Torah he had learned and live it.
I know that many Jews feel that living out the words of commandment is a pain in the neck. How many Jews actually keep kosher, shabbat, holidays - just to start with? yet we are commanded to do these things as well as many others. The decrees and ordinances that God taught Moses at Marah though, are part of a holistic system that must be fully lived for the world to achieve justice.The Torah is a system of law which commands us to a network of obligations that makes us part of the force for change in the world.
The next verse tells us that God said, "If you hearken diligently to the voice of Hashem your God, and do what is just in His eyes, give ear to His commandments and observe all His decrees, ... I am HaShem, your Healer."
The verse that we are reading parallels the verses at the beginning of the book of Shemot, the beginning of the story of Pesach: Egypt embittered -y'mar'ru- the lives of the Israelites, and because of this, God heard their crying out and brought them out of slavery to serve, not a human tyrant, but the Creator of the universe. It's not easy to live Torah. To live Torah often means that we have to put ourselves aside to honor something that is bigger than us; Torah can be inconvenient. It can even feel - dare I say it?- bitter. But Torah is the lever to upend tyrrany; Torah is the tree that turns the bitter waters into sweet, but it means that we have work to do. Learning Torah is the beginning - the very beginning. To live Torah, we have to take the Torah and use it to make the bitter, sweet.
God is our healer, but not without us doing the work that we were given to do. The word Marah, also has echoes with in it of Moriah - another name for the mountain from which Torah was given to us. If we wish to make the bitter sweet, then it's not enough to think we already know what to do, we have to study Torah. But it's also not enough to study Torah without going out and doing. It's not enough to have Torah. We have plenty of examples of people who supposedly "have Torah" but then go out and do things which are a chillul hashem - an embarrassment to God's name. There are plenty of examples of people who supposedly have Torah, but believe - and act- as though learning words is enough. They are happy to spend their days in the beit midrash, the place of learning, simply examining the words written on the page. But Torah is not written on the page. In (Shmot 25:8) it says –

ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם

Let them make me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them.
The Lubavitcher rebbe says , one can read this verse as " and I will dwell inside them." – And how can God dwell inside us?
There is no sweetness unless Torah -that is, we ourselves- are immersed into the bitter, used to make lives better; we ourselves must be willing to bring Torah to the oppression that makes people cry out. Like God, when someone cries out under the weight of

וימררו את חייהם בעבדה קשה (שמות א:יד

"Their lives were made bitter with hard work," we too must be willing to hear. Unless we take our Torah into the Marah, there is no Moriah.There He established for [the nation] a decree and an ordinance, and there He tested it

We were given the Torah, and it is a test. We are tested with a world full of oppression. and we need not go very far to find it. If you yourself are bitter, become Torah: go out and fix the world and make it sweet. Thus the 12th Century sage, Rabbenu Ephraim said, "Any ill person who would drink from those sweetened waters would be healed. That is the reason why in the next verse the Torah says, “ .. .I am Hashem your Healer”. R’ Chaim David Azulai, known as the Chida, adds, that after “ .. .I am Hashem your Healer", comes the verse: “Then they came to Elim, and there were twelve springs of water. . .” . He maintains this is a proof for Rabbenu Ephraim's statement. On Passover, we are required to remember as if we ourselves came forth out of Egypt. if we took this seriously, how much more work might we be willing to commit ourselves to than we do now? Would be be working to make sure the African Americans of New Orleans had a say in the rebuilding of their city, instead of letting those who hope that they will be distributed around the country for other cities to "deal with" while the culture they built is mined for its tourist appeal? Would we be satisfied for people all over the city to go hungry as we ate our fabulous seder meals in comfort? Would we be shouting to make sure that immigrants to the US were treated with respect and given all the advantages that we ourselves had when our parents and grandparents came here, from the enforcement of labor laws, to the building of unions? Would we be content to live in a city where the middle class who supports the economy and fills the jobs of teacher, police, fire fighter must commute in from homes far away because they cannot afford to live here? What would we be doing, if we threw ourselves into the water? What water will you make sweet tomorrow, and the day after. And the day after that? If you can become Torah, you will come to a place of lushness where water springs up from the ground: the waters of Torah, sweet and life-giving, will come forth from the ground along with the seventy trees - the seventy nations of the world, which will become fruitful as the world is filled with Torah, and they themselves are fed by its sweetness, in turn becoming sweet, and building a future for all people. I am God, your healer. This is the final line of our portion today, and I bless us all that we can recognize the disease of the Egyptians - callousness, disregard, racism, xenophobia. Let it be that we will heed the Lord diligently doing what is upright in God's sight, keeping all God's laws, so that God will not bring upon us any of these diseases of the Egyptians; let it be that God is our healer, as we become Torah and ourselves sweeten the world.

Troubling and ironic

http://jewschool.com/?p=10053

Museum of Tolerance building atop Muslim cemetery.
Seriously.

Originally reported to me by Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights, thanks to Danya for posting it to a site where people can link to it.
Please write and make sure that this desecration stops.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center “Museum of Tolerance” is building on top of a Muslim cemetary in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Mamila.
The Antiques Authority has reported the removal of at least 250 gravesites so far. A Muslim NGO has appealed to the High Court, and is due to be heard in two weeks–but a lot of graves can get dug up in that time.
Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights reports,
I spoke yesterday with the executive director of the Wiesenthal Center,Rabbi Marvin Hier. One of our Orthodox founders, Rabbi David Rosen, hasalso been in touch with them. To his credit, he almost immediately returned my call. He indicated concern for the feelings of Muslims, but said that they have passed a point of no return, having spent large amountsof money and after plans were published in the newspapers, City Councilhearings were held with no Muslim objections expressed, etc. I told himthat this was very strange, seeing as we have heard concerns about thedesecration of this cemetery for years and that unfortunately bitterexperience from years of work in the field of human rights has taught usthat the authorities may not have been entirely honest with them. Islamic authorites have told us that they did not know about this specific plan until the work began.
A Haaretz op-ed in English on the subject can be found here.
A Haaretz article on the building plans can be found in Hebrew here.
The Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information also has some information about the building, under “What’s New”, here.

Register your protest against the desecration of Muslim graves by calling the Wiesenthal center:310 553.9036,
800 900.9036 (toll-free from within the U.S.)
310 553.4521 (fax)
information@wiesenthal.net
Address all correspondence to Rabbi Marvin Hier, Director and Founder of the Wiesenthal Center.

Hmmm

I happened to turn up this interesting post on Whiskey Bar about the parallels between the Zealots and Islam and the US in Afghanistan (or elsewhere at war) . I don't know that I buy it all, but it's a very interesting post.
http://billmon.org/archives/000219.html

Am I a bad person?

Since I find this site excessively funny? It's totally NOT PC.
http://engrish.com/

Munich

I finally saw Munich. For those who have been decrying the film as anti-Israeli: what planet are you on, exactly?


Granted, it's not the most serious film I've ever seen, but it certainly portrayed the Israelis as complex and thoughtful, disturbed by their actions and struggling - all lacking in the portrayal of Palestinians. The Palestinians were given one moment to express why they might be so desperate as to commit terrorist acts, but hardly was the portrayal positive - and there isn't any room for complex portrayals of say, Palestinians who are appalled at terrorism. It doesn't say there aren't any - the topic simply doesn't come up.
I'm not going to give a long political deconstruction of the film. But the number of people who have yowled "foul" about this film really makes me wonder - I mean, I was looking for it!
The only thing I can think is that these are people who can't live with any amount of moral ambiguity - that to show that there might have been a reason for the characters to struggle with their actions was in itself what they considered anti-Israeli.

Dragon Fruit

For some reason, I had the urge to write about Dragon Fruit today. Dragon Fruit are
also known as Hylocereus undatus or the Pitahaya. They are possibly one of the strangest looking fruit I have ever eaten. I think I ws thinking about them because I' ve been thinking about Israel, and Israel was where I had them for the first time. During the year I lived there, I had a particular fruit seller to whom I always went (also a particular makolet where I always bought my dairy items, etc. I loved that!) And he occasionally had these things. Yes, things is the only word for them. They are violently pink with green protuberances, kind of like a pineapple, but softer and longer. Just the outside is a little daunting looking. When you open them up, they're no more normal. Some of them are white with black seeds, others are dark red with black seeds, the seeds looking somewhat kiwi like - and the texture of the fruit flesh is kiwi like, too - except in color.
Here's the surprise. These scary looking fruit, I was hoping would be spicy or sharp or tart or something unique:: guess what: bland, bland, bland. It's pleasant in texture, but the taste is just mildly sweet with no discernable flavor. Imagine mixing a spoonfull of sugar into a glass of water. Really.
I'm thinking of analogies: high school goth girls. Dress dangerously, but dont do anything worse than wear eyeliner and dye their hair black and write bad poetry in their journal.
Well, I guess at least the fruit isn't poisonous, right?

Vaera

The unusual number of “have-to-see” movies that have come out recently has made my life very difficult. It seems to me that this year, there have been just SO many films that everyone is seeing and talking about. That’s why when I finally got around to seeing “Brokeback Mountain” I felt for a moment like I had finally rejoined the 21st century, at least pop culture-wise. If there actually remains anyone else who hasn’t yet sent the movie, I’m going to let you know ahead of time, that it doesn’t matter that I’m going to be mentioning the film today – this isn’t the kind of movie that you can spoil by talking about it.
Although Brokeback Mountain has been discussed endlessly as a breakthrough romance of gay characters, really it’s a very classical tragedy in which the flaws of one or more of the characters cause them to take a path which leads to sorrow, and ends in death. In this, the character of Ennis, bears not one, but two, of these flaws. And both of these flaws make an appearance in our torah portion this week, with different outcomes.
Ennis Del Mar is nicely described by the Nation’s Stuart Klawans as “light-haired, square-faced, mush-mouthed, stolid.” But that hardly begins to describe the inability to speak suffered by Ennis. He is the absolute paradigm of the strong but silent type. Only with Jack is he able to occasionally open up and speak a few sentences about himself. With no one else in the film is he ever able to articulate anything that is going on inside himself.
How much does this make him like our teacher, Moshe? Shemot 6:12, “
And Moses spoke before the Lord, saying, Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips

Ennis: If you can’t fix it, you just have to bear it.

Both of these men suffer a deep lack of faith in their ability to effect any kind of change. The word Orlah (foreskin) means a covering. The word orlah appears in several different incarnations in the Torah: "Orlat HaLev" (uncircumcised heart), "Orel Sfataim" (uncircumcised lips) as we have here, or "Orlah" from a tree (fruits of the third year). It implies a spiritual "barrier" between which has to be removed. Is Ennis’s problem a spiritual one? Not entirely,- he does in deed live in a world dangerous for men like him. Jack can dream about moving in together and running a ranch, but Ennis’ father made sure that his sons knew what happened to gay men, and indeed, toward the end of the film, we do see that Ennis’ fears about how the world treats people like them were justified. Or were they?

Deep down, What is the cause of Ennis’ inability to speak? The orlah of Ennis Del Mar, is an orlah of fear. It isn’t enough to say that Ennis is wisely avoiding the outcome that eventually falls upon Jack by keeping his inclinations secret. In fact, he completely fails at that. Rather, Ennis is sealed into himself in all things. He is never able to open himself up to others fully – even to Jack, whom he loves, he can only commit himself briefly, sporadically, and in relative silence. A few minutes of self-revelation here and there, leaving the wealth of his emotions under lock and key, Ennis is a man alone in the world, and unable to circumcise his lips – unable to break through and open his heart to others.

And this is related to Ennis’ second, related flaw. Ennis never moves very far from the person he was at the beginning of the film. He starts out a man dedicated to living a certain way, in a certain place. He has a particular notion of himself, and never moves very far from it, even as the circumstances change drastically. He spent the summer of 1963 learning that he wasn’t the man he thought he was. He fell in love but never changed his plans to go back to Alma and marry her. In fact, throughout his entire life, he is unable to go to Jack, even after his wife divorces him, because Ennis Del Mar simply cannot change himself. He cannot recognize his place in the world is subject to any power not his own, as if by sheer will power, he can make himself other than what he is. And this is the flaw of Pharaoh.

Pharaoh can simply not recognize that there are times when one simply doesn’t control the circumstances of one’s life. He thinks that if he only insists long enough, the world will bend to his will. Maimonides notes that for the first five plagues, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and only beginning with next week’s Torah portion does it say that God hardened pharaoh’s heart.

Maimonides explains that the reason for this curious change in phrasing is that in reality, Pharaoh is simply being human. God does not remove Pharaoh’s free will, he merely watches as Pharaoh sets down a path. Human beings are very strange creatures. The first time we act a particular way, it’s not so hard to turn back. But each time we commit to that action again, it becomes harder and harder to stop doing it.
The first time we skip going to the gym, it’s just this time, but after a week, it becomes, oh, why bother, and soon enough, we’re back to being couch slugs.


So how is it that Moshe’s story becomes one of redemption, and Pharaoh’s remains ultimately a tragedy, not only for himself, but for his nation?



The Rabbi of the Warsaw ghetto, Rabbi Kalonymous Kalmish Shapira, writes in the Esh Kodesh, about our portion, In the Talmud, (Arachin 10b) it says, ‘There was a magrefa in the holy temple that had ten holes, each of which produced ten different kinds of music. A tanna taught: It was one cubit long, one cubit broad, and from it projected a handle with ten holes. Each hole produced one hundred kinds of sounds, amounting for the whole to one thousand tunes.’
Rashi explains that the magrefa was a sort of trowel or spade, used in a daily Temple ritual of terumat hadeshen – the tithing of the ashes, in which the ashes on the sacrificial altar were gathered, heaped and removed.
Rabbi Shapira asks, “Why does an implement used for moving ashes need to sing – and not just to sing, but to sing a thousand songs, which is something that other instruments cannot do? In fact, from other references to the magrefa in the mishnah (Tamid 3:8) we learn that this instrument was so loud, its sound could be hears as far away as Jericho…

He goes on to mention, “There is a teaching in the book sha’ar HaKedusha by R. Chaim Vital, “The evil inclination in humanity is patterned after the four elements from which human beings and the entire universe are fashioned. From the element of fire comes anger, from the element of air comes pride, from the element of earth comes sloth and indifference.”
For the moment, let’s put aside the science of the matter.

In his holy book, Imrei Elimelech, the father of the Rabbi Shapira explains how one may exploit the passion inherent in the evil inclination derived from the element of fire, by harnessing it to good purpose and using it to worship God. ‘The same passion a person might use to do wrong can be used for doing good, because a person in his progress toward spiritual renewal can utilize passion. However, the principle does not work with the characteristics of sloth and indifference resulting from the evil inclination derived from the element of earth. There we are dealing with Amalek, who functions by chilling the passions of the Jewish people. Indifference and cynicism are devoid of passion, so they cannot be inverted and sanctified.’”

IN other words, when a person – or for that matter a nation- is angry in a passionate way, they are still able to connect. Anger and passion are still a kind of engagement. Granted, not exactly the ideal kind of engagement, but there’s something there to work with. But the kind of feelings that leave us cold, as it were, indifference, or despair, kills a piece of us, and leaves us disengaged – what can you do with that?
Rabbi Shapira says, “Once a Jew is trapped in depression and apathy, his heart, mind and all those parts of his body influenced… are dragged down, growing incapable of shaking off their depression. When thus prevented from cleaving to holiness, his faith is damaged, God forbid. That explains why calamities and crises that beset a person, God forbid, breaking him or forcing him to succumb, can also damage his faith….This is why even in the Temple, where the Jewish people offered sacrifices upon the holy altar, wanting nothing but to elevate everything to God in a fire of holiness, the ashes – the element of earth- remained on the altar. The earth element could not be elevated to holiness, and so the ashes had to be consecrated in the daily ritual of terumat hadeshen, tithing the ashes. How can this tithing be done? Only with the music of the magrefa, representing joy …-for with joy and an expression of salvation anything can be elevated, and darkness can be transformed into light.”

Rabbi Shapira also adds, “…The ashes themselves because they are disconnected from their spiritual source, are filled with longing and hence, even more song.” That when there is that feeling of detachment from holiness, it is an opportunity or the longing for God to grow out of that disconnection, which inspires within us song. The song comes “directly from the pain of separation.” In other words, song, or “the expression of salvation,” can awaken the chill of despair to an awareness of the pain causing the despair, and through the song, a connection is forged, not only banishing the despair and bringing us back to God, but the very pain itself, has caused an even deeper connection to God than we might have had without it.

Pharaoh’s story is a tragedy because he never breaks out of his chill. We are never told that he gets angry – he never, as far as we know, flares his nostrils at Moshe. He is always the calculating pharaoh; even at the very end – he will ask only “What have we done, why did we send Israel out from serving us?” Even after all the plagues, after the deaths, after the destruction, he still is mired in himself, and never breaks free of the idea that he can somehow get ahold of the situation. There is no “expression of salvation” to raise him up to a more rational evaluation of the world, and he never changes. He never breaks through the orlah of his heart, which remains hard, impervious. He is stuck doing the same things over and over again, hoping for a different result.

Moses’ story becomes one of redemption because he was not, in the end trapped in himself. Moses did not despair because God was there to remind him, “You are not alone, you have a brother Aaron, who can help you speak.” And he does. The orlah of Moses’ lips, is circumcised by the relationship he has with his beloved brother. His relationship enables him to break out of his silence. And his brother is not the only one in whom Moses confides, his father in law, later on, gives him advice, which he takes. His sister, is clearly dear to him, as we read in Numbers, even when she speaks against him because of his wife, Moses pleads to God on her behalf in one of the shortest prayers in the Torah, 5 words, el na refah nah lah – please God please heal her.
He grows from being a sheltered child of the Egyptian palace to being a leader who is involved in every aspect of his community, whom he leads to freedom and to God, for them to be healed, as he was healed, of the spiritual blockage of his lips – his inability to relate to other people, perhaps a malady he caught from Pharaoh, is healed by God.

And in fact, Moses’ expression of salvation saves not just himself from despair, but an entire nation. And that is why Brokeback Mountain is such a moving film. In it, we see ourselves, isolated, unable to truly be intimate with others, trapped in our same patterns, over and over again. Ennis is unable to express himself to the ones he cares about. There are moments of passion with Jack, but he can’t sustain them, just as pharaoh had moments of insight, which he then immediately retracted.
Ennis may very well have cared deeply about his wife, despite not having a great passion for her, but he can’t tell her – even when she confronts him with it- the truth. He loves his daughters, but he can’t make them part of his life.

A final point, there’s a very odd little midrash about pharaoh which suggests that even the greatest tragedy may not be the final end we expect.
According to one opinion, Pharaoh later became the king of Nineveh, who repented in the times of Jonah.

The one glimmer of hope that Brokeback Mountain leaves with us is at the end of the film, when his daughter comes to ask him to attend her wedding. He at first, answers her in the way he has been accustomed to doing his entire adult life, making himself absent, isolating himself in his work, but finally, when he sees the disappointment in her face, he relents, and allows himself to say that for once, they can do without him, and agrees to take part in her joy, and to himself, have a moment of joy with others, and perhaps, after all, he may yet hear the song of the magrefa, as ashes of chill are turned into notes of joy, and the song of salvation connects him to those he loves.

Parshat Miketz

Miketz 05
Who here has not woken one morning, head filled with a dream from the night before, thinking, "What a horrible dream," and just shuddered a bit, with a creeping superstitious feeling, hoping that it wouldn't come true. Throughout history, humans have shuddered or delighted in the visions that our minds have given us at night. And throughout history, humans hav believed in the power of dreams, that dreams hold the power to unlock the future for us.
The rabbis, too, stated that a dream is 1/60th of prophecy. The Torah portion of Miketz is enthralled with dreams. Pharaoh dreams of cows and and grain, and he sought someone to interpret his dreams for him. Strangely, though, even though he sent for all the magicians and wise men of Egypt, no one could help him, until the head cupbearer remembered the young servant who had correctly interpreted his dream and that of the head baker years before. Joseph is summoned and sure enough, does provide a dream interpretation that proves later to be perfectly correct.
In light of this, it is somewhat interesting to note that in a chapter of the talmud in which the rabbis extensively discuss dream interpretation, the end conclusion they give is that in fact, dreams are, as they are interpreted.
The midrash tells the story of
Midrash Rabbah - Genesis LXXXIX:8
8. AND WE TOLD HIM... AND IT CAME TO PASS, AS HE INTERPRETED TO US, SO IT WAS (XLI, 13).
A certain woman who went to R. Eliezer and said to him: ' I saw in a dream how that the loft of the upper storey of my house was split open.’ ‘You will conceive a son,’ he told her. She went away and it happened even so. Again she dreamed the same and came and told it to R. Eliezer, who gave her the same interpretation, and it happened even so. She dreamed this a third time and repaired to him but did not find him, so she told his disciples, ' I saw in a dream that the loft of the upper storey of my house was split open.’ ‘You will bury your husband,’ they told her, and this did happen. R. Eliezer, hearing a cry of wailing, asked what was amiss, whereupon they related to him what had occurred. ‘You have killed the man,’ he upbraided them; is it not written, AND IT CAME TO PASS, AS HE INTERPRETED TO US, SO IT WAS?
R. Johanan said: All dreams are dependent on the interpretation given to them, save a dream about wine. Sometimes a dream of drinking wine augurs well, and sometimes it betokens misfortune. When a scholar drinks [in a dream], it is a good augury; when an ignoramus drinks, it betokens misfortune.
Rabbi Yochanan's statement is an interesting response. It suggests that a dream interpretation is more natural than the sages stattement that it is 1/60th prophecy would seem to suggest: one whose life is in general in good order, one might expect to have a good outcome, whether or not they had a dream about it. Someone whose life is not so together, one might predict a negative future. But in fact, if this is how we understand the rabbi's views on dreams we would be very mistaken.In fact, what the rabbis man is that speaking the dream makes it happen, even if the speaker is completely without knowledge of the circumstances of the dreamer.
A key tothe rabbinic view of dreams can be found in the portion itself. When Pharaoh tlls Joseph I dreamt a ream, but there is no one who could interpret it; I heard it said about you that if you hear a dream you are able to interpret it," Jospeh responds (Ber. 41:16):
áÌÄìÀòÈãÈé àÁìÉäÄéí éÇÍòÂðÆä àÆúÎùÑÀìåÉí ôÌÇøÀòÍÉä:
"That is beyond me [to interpret a dream]; God will answer for pharaoh's welfare."
That is, unlike the students of our story whose interpretation killed a person, Joseph made himself transparent in a way; a window for God to be seen through.
There is a saying of the rabbis that appears in the talmud:
Yevamot 49b
ëãúðéà: ëì äðáéàéí ðñúëìå áàñô÷ìøéà ùàéðä îàéøä, îùä øáéðå ðñúëì áàñô÷ìøéà äîàéøä
All the prophets looked into a dim glass, but Moshe rabeinu looked into a clear glass.
Why would we say that the prophets only saw God through a dim glass? So often when we seek God, we see God only through the lens of -ourselves. IN fact, instead of seeing God, we see ourselves: we make of our religoin a mirror. We do what we wnt and hear what we wish for. The prophets were better at this than most of us - they were able to scrape a little of the silver off the mirror and see through to God's wishes of us, but still, one can see by the different tones of the prophets, that they, too, revealed themselvs through their prophey evn as they were revealing God to us. But when Moshe sought to reveal God in the world, he made of himself a clear glass, one through which not his wishes, but God's, came through - at least most of the time. Even Moshe, after all, wasn't perfect.
In Isaiah 59:21 which appears at the end of the weekday morning service,
it says:
As for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord; My spirit that is upon you, and my words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your seed, nor from the mouth of your seed’s seed, says the Lord, from now on and forever.
God promises Israel that we and our children will always have the power of prophecy. Now you may think that this has turned out not to be true, not withstanding bubbe's uncanny ability to call when one of her grandchildren have broken a leg or dinged the car on the last trip out. But if we think about Jospeh's response, perhaps we might come to a different conclusion.
It's true that none of us are Moses. We're mostly - especially today when we're accustomed to living however we wish and thinking that whatever we wish must be the right thing- unable to put ourselves aside to make a clear glass for God's will. But God doesn't expect that of us, anyway. God doesn't ask, why weren't you Moshe rabeniu, God asks us, why weren't you, you?
But while we my not be able to be a clear glass, we o hav the capability of avoiding being the mirror, inwhic we see only ourselves, when we look for God.
While perhaps we don't have the power to make our dreams come true through interpretation, we have something almost as good, the power to make our lives be true through the power of making them a window for God.
When Jospeh told pharaoh that he didn't hve the power or wisdom to interpret dreams, he took himself out of the mirror, and made a little space for God to act in the world. Thus through him, thw beginning of Israel's destiny to come down into Egypt so that we could be redeemed and made holy at Sinai began. Who knows what our dreams may hold, if we open our minds to God?

Parshat Vayeishev

Vayeishev 05
In the talmud, we read a story about one of the rabbis and his wife:
Ketubot 67b
Mar ‘Ukba had a poor man in his neighbourhood into whose doorstep he used to throw money every day. Once [the poor man] thought: ‘I will go and see who does me this kindness’. On that day [it happened] that Mar ‘Ukba was late at the house of study and his wife was coming home with him. As soon as [the poor man] saw them moving the door he went out after them, but they fled from him and ran into a furnace from which the fire had just been swept. Mar ‘Ukba's feet were burning and his wife said to him: Raise your feet and put them on mine. As he was upset, she said to him, ‘I am usually at home so the poor have easy access to me; while you give money to the poor which they must then go and buy food with, I cook food for them which they can eat right away, thus my merit is greater than yours.". And what [was the reason for] all that? — ... Better had a man thrown himself into a fiery furnace than publicly put his neighbour to shame. Whence do we derive this? From [the action of] Tamar; for it is written in Scripture, When she was brought forth, [she sent to her father-in-law].
The story of Yehudah and Tamar is a strange interlude in the otherwise unbroken story of Joseph. Judah's son Er, has married a woman, but God becomes angry with him and he dies. Through levirate marriage, his brother, Onan ought to marry Tamar to produce an heir, but because he dislikes the idea of his own child being an heir to someone else, he spills his seed on the ground to prevent Tamar from conceiving. This annoys God, and he dies as well. Tamar is now beside herself: the youngest son, ought to now be married to her, but Judah is worried that Tamar is a sort of black widow, and doesn't really want her to marry him, so he puts her off. Tamar, after some years, seeing that Judah has no intention of giving her his last son, takes matters into her own hands, seducing Judah by the roadside, taking only a few markers to prove that he was the one who was with her. When she became pregnant, Judah is outraged, and allows her to be condemned to death, yet she sends to him the possessions that she had taken from him as collateral for his payment of the woman he supposed was a prostitute, and asks him if he knows whose they are. He recognizes them, and acknowledges them, saving her life, and admits, to boot, that she is more righteous than he for taking matters into her hands to produce an heir for his son.
Many of our commmentators have asked why this interlude was dropped into the middle of our portion, and what is it about? The midrash explains that we can take two lessons from the story of Tamar and Yehudah.
The first is that it is better to burn alive than to shame another human being. The second is that God returns what we do to one another midah kneged midah - measure for measure:
The midrash suggests that it is because of Yehuda's dying the coat of Yosef in goat's blood to fool his father into thinking that Yosef was dead that Tamar used the expression "Recognize" that she used when presenting Yehuda's signet and cloak to him to save herself from being burnt to death.
According to the midrash:
Beresheit Rabbah 85:11
[Tamar] SENT TO HER FATHER-IN-LAW, SAYING: BY THE MAN, WHOSE THESE ARE, AM I WITH CHILD. He wished to deny it, whereupon she said to him: ‘Acknowledge thy Creator in these, for they are thine and thy Creator's.’ RECOGNIZE, I PRAY THEE, WHOSE ARE THESE, THE SIGNET, etc. R. Johanan said: The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Judah: ‘Thou didst say to thy father, [Do you]Recognize[ this garment?] [know] I pray thee (Gen. XXXVII, 32); as thou livest, Tamar will say to thee, RECOGNIZE, I PRAY THEE.
Midrash tanchuma also connects this measure for measure punishment more directly, saying that the reason that Yehuda's son Er died, it was God saying to Yehuda, "When you showed your father Yosef's garmnt dipped in blood, you did not take into consideration the pain that a father feels at the loss of a child. You too, will lose your wife and bury your children, to experience the pain of losing children.
Thus when Tamar said to Yehuda, "Recognize these please," he experienced the shock of recognition for his past sins in selling off Yosef and letting his father think that Yosef was dead.
In fact, the Talmud hammers at this point with another passage about King David.
Baba Metzia 59a
Better it is for man to cohabit with a doubtful married woman rather than that he should publicly shame his neighbour. Whence do we know this? ...David exclaimed before the Holy One, blessed be He, ‘Sovereign of the Universe! You know full well that had they torn my flesh, my blood would not have poured forth to the earth. Moreover, when they are engaged in studying "Leprosies" and "Tents" they jeer at me, saying, "David! what is the death penalty of him who seduces a married woman?" I reply to them, "He is executed by strangulation, yet has he a portion in the world to come. But he who publicly puts his neighbour to shame has no portion in the world to come."
King David underscores that one who shames another is among the worst of sinners. But the reverse is true as well. One who honors other human beings by taking extra care not to shame them is honored.
And so the Talmud rewrites the story so that we understand that the true ending of the story is Judah recognizing Tamar's righteousness, but also that Judah's public acknowledgement of Tamar's righteousness - thus restoring her honor- in turn restores him in God's eyes.
Sotah 10b
...Better for a man to cast himself into a fiery furnace rather than shame his fellow in public. Whence is this? From Tamar.
Discern, I pray thee. R. Hama b. Hanina said: With the word ‘discern’ [Judah] made an announcement to his father, and with the word ‘discern’ an announcement was made to him. With the word ‘discern’ he made an announcement — Discern now whether it be thy son's coat or not; and with the word ‘discern’ an announcement was made to him — Discern, I pray thee, whose are these. The word ‘na’ [‘I pray thee’] is nothing else than an expression of request. She said to him, ‘I beg of thee, discern the face of thy Creator and hide not thine eyes from me’.
And Judah acknowledged them, and said: She is more righteous than I. ...
And so why do we find this story in the midst of the story of Joseph? The two themes of measure for measure and honoring one's fellow humans mirror each other.
It is said that refraining from evil speech is the hardest of the mitzvot.
Speaking ill of others - even when one tells the truth, which is what we call lashon hara, let alone when it is false - motsi shem ra - literally giving another a bad name- together in the category of evil speech, they are shaming a human being and are considered akin to murder. The rabbis call it whitening of the face. Literally, think of what happens when you embarrass someone - sometimes they blush, but when you really humiliate someone, if you've ever seen this, humiliation causes the blood to drain from a person's face, and they look, momentarily, like a corpse drained of blood.
So actually, these two themes are really one: we are looking at a story in which we are dealing with words that cause utter disruption. The point of the story of Joseph being paired with that of Judah and Tamar is to tell us that speech is not idle: ones' words lead to action. Lashon haRa, evil speech, like the musings of the brothers on how much they hate Joseph, leads them to commit an action that only narrowly avoids being murder outright. Conversely, Tamar's incredible bravery and refusal to engage in lashon hara even at the expense of her own life, brings not only honor to her, but forgiveness to another. Judah sees her righteousness and publicly admits it.When this happens, he is himself forgiven of his own sins, and it is at that moment when he truly becomes an adult. Of the twelve brothers, although Joseph is the more or less prodigal son, it is the descendants of Judah who recieve the honor of having a a kingdom named for him.
And why is Judah given the opportunity for such a glorious repentance? Remember that it was he who saved Joseph from death - through the power of his words. He was the one who suggested that there was no profit in murder, and suggested selling him to the Ishmaelite caravaners. Okay, this is perhaps not the greatest act of heroism that we have ever encountered, but it is the mark of at least an ability for rational thought to overcome pure hatred.
And so we're meant to be left with a message: even the smallest act can be returned to one. Our language is not empty. Every word is full of meaning, as full of meaning as a dream. In tractate brachot of the talmud, there is a very lengthy story about two rabbis. One was sort of a cheapskate, and he and this other rabbi had a dream - in fact they both had the same dream. Each in turn went to a dream interpreter, who offered them a meaning. The one who paid well, he gave a wonderful interpretation to, and for the cheap rabbi, he interpreted the dreams as full of horror and terrible outcomes. Both of these rabbis came back to the interpreter having had identical dreams for many nights running, yet the interpreter continued to give them differing interpretations.
Finally, after the cheap rabbi had been bereft of his business, his family and his health, he discovered a book of interpretation which suggested that dreams come true according to how they are interpreted. That is to say: if the dream interpreter had given him a positive outcome for his dreams, his family would still be living and healthy, his job still safe and his health still good. His response was to forgive the interpreter of everything except the death of his wife, for which I cannot blame him.
But the talmud's point is particularly meaningful in the story of Joseph, which is also full of dreams and their interpretations. Speech is a powerful tool, and a holy one: after all, God spoke, and the world was created.
Too, when we speak, worlds are created, and so it is especially important for our speech to be holy. Not just in shul when we come and speak the words of prayer to God, but at at every moment, our words create worlds, our interpretations make people's lives better, or disastrous. Our visions can build lives or destroy them. And it is up to us to make sure that we pay atttention to the words we speak, so that our words may lay the path to redeem us from exile, not to sell us into slavery.

Parshat Vayera

Vayeira 05


The midrash asks

Why was Sarah granted a son only in her old age, after she had nearly despaired of having
a child? It was to be a lesson for future times; a sign for all coming generations. If anyone
should give up hope that God will ever rebuild Jerusalem, he would be told, " äÇáÌÄéèåÌ
àÆìÎàÇáÀøÈäÈí àÂáÄéëÆí åÀàÆìÎùÈÉøÈä úÌÀçÍåÉìÆìÀëÆí ëÌÄÍéÎàÆçÈã ÷ÀøÈàúÄéå åÇÍàÂáÈøÀëÅäåÌ åÀàÇøÀáÌÅÍäåÌ:
Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you (Isaiah 51:2). As God
rejuvenated Sarah in her old age, giving her children, thus will God do to Jerusalem. God
will bring about its redemption in a supernatural manner.
The British war time prime minister, Winston Churchill invited the Hasidic Rabbi of Gur
to come and see him and advise him on how to bring about Germany's downfall. The
Rabbi gave the following reply: "There are two possible ways, one involving natural
means and one involving supernatural. The natural means would be if a million angels
with flaming swords were to descend on Germany and destroy it. The supernatural would
be if a million Englishman parachuted down on Germany and destroyed it." (Hasidic
Tales of the Holocaust by Yaffa Eliach)
I will say with perhaps just a touch of postmodern irony, that today we might be more
likely to reverse the midrash and say, if anyone should ever give up hope that Abraham
and Sarah were real, that Israel's soul was built by our ancestors whom we read about,
should desire to look to Abraham your father and Sarah who bore you, look to Jerusalem,
whose shining walls, in which we again hear the voice of the groom and bride and the
youths in the street, look to the redemption which has already begun, in the most
supernatural way one could imagine.

Similarly, Midrash rabbah offers an interpretation of Sarah's gving birth:
Midrash Rabbah - Genesis LIII:1

1. AND THE LORD REMEMBERED SARAH AS HE HAD SAID (XXI, 1). It is thus
that Scripture writes, And all the trees of the field shall know that I the Lord have brought
down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green tree, and have made
the dry tree to flourish; I the Lord have spoken and done it (Ezek. XVII, 24). AND THE
LORD DID UNTO SARAH AS HE HAD SPOKEN. ‘And all the trees of the field shall
know’ refers to the people, as you read, For the tree of the field is man (Deut. XX, 19)1 '
‘And [I] have made the dry tree to flourish’ alludes to Sarah. ‘

These verses from Ezekiel refer to the blossoming of Jerusalem as well, that Zion shall
be rejuvenated. But it isn't simply that Jerusalem has been rebuilt, but that there is still
work to be done: it is not enough for a miracle to happen, but as we know from
Chanukah, it's a requirment that the miracle be publicized.
Of coure, everyone knows that Jerusalem has been reborn, but how many people think of
it as a miracle - even among Jews?
But I want to focus on two instances of laughter, both from Sarah.

è åÇéÌÉàÍîÀøåÌ àÅìÈéå àÇéÌÅä ùÈÉøÈä àÄùÑÀúÌÆêÈ åÇéÌÉàîÆø äÄðÌÅä áÈàÍÉäÆì: é åÇéÌÉàîÆø ùÑåÉá àÈùÑåÌá àÅìÆéêÈ ëÌÈòÅú
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àÇÍçÂøÅé áÀìÉúÄé äÈÍéÀúÈäÎìÌÄé òÆãÀðÈä åÇÍàãÉðÄé æÈ÷ÅÍï: éâ åÇéÌÉàîÆø éÀäåÉÈä àÆìÎàÇáÀøÈäÈí ìÈîÌÈä æÌÆä öÈÍçÂ÷Èä ùÈÉøÈä
ìÅàîÉø äÇàÇó àËîÀðÈí àÅìÅã åÇÍàÂðÄé æÈ÷ÇÍðÀúÌÄé: éã äÂéÄôÌÈìÅà îÅÍéäåÉÈä ãÌÈáÈø ìÇîÌåÉòÅã àÈùÑåÌá àÅìÆéêÈ ëÌÈòÅú çÇéÌÈä
åÌìÀùÈÉøÈä áÅÍï:

Beresheit 18:9. And they said to him, Where is Sarah your wife? And he said, Behold, in
the tent.
10. And he said, I will certainly return to you at this season; and, lo, Sarah your wife shall
have a son. And Sarah heard it in the tent door, which was behind him.
11. Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well advanced in age; and it had ceased to be
with Sarah after the manner of women.
12. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am grown old shall I have
pleasure, my lord being old also?

then, later, we read:

ä åÀàÇáÀøÈäÈí áÌÆïÎîÀàÇú ùÑÈðÈä áÌÀäÄåÌÈìÆã ìåÉ àÅú éÄöÀçÈ÷ áÌÀðÍåÉ: å åÇúÌÉàîÆø ùÈÉøÈä öÀçÉ÷ òÈùÈÉä ìÄé àÁìÉäÄéí
ëÌÈìÎäÇùÌÑÉîÅòÇ éÄÍöÂçÇ÷ÎìÄÍé: æ åÇúÌÉàîÆø îÄé îÄìÌÅì ìÀàÇáÀøÈäÈí äÅéðÄé÷Èä áÈðÄéí ùÈÉøÈä ëÌÄÍéÎéÈìÇãÀúÌÄé áÅï ìÄæÀ÷ËðÈÍéå:

Beresheit 21:
3. Abraham called the name of the son that was born to/for him, that Sarah had borne
him, Yitzchak (He will laugh/laughter)
5. And Abraham was a hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born to him.
6. And Sarah said, God has made me laugh, so that all who hear will laugh with me.
7. And she said, Who would have said to Abraham, that Sarah should suckle children?
For I have born him a son in his old age.


The midrash offers interesting commentary on Sarah's laughter.


Midrash Rabbah - Genesis LIII:8

8. AND SARAH SAID: GOD HAS MADE JOY FOR ME; EVERY ONE THAT
HEARS WILL REJOICE WITH ME (XXI, 6). R. Berekiah, R. Judah b. R. Simon, and R.
Hanan in the name of R. Samuel b. R. Isaac said: If Reuben has cause to rejoice, what
does it matter to Simeon? Similarly, if Sarah was remembered, what did it matter to
others? But when the matriarch Sarah was remembered [gave birth], many other barren
women were remembered with her; many deaf gained their hearing; many blind had their
eyes opened, many insane became sane. For ' making ' [HAS MADE òÈùÈä] is mentioned
here, and also elsewhere, viz. And he made a release to the provinces (Est. II, 18). As the
making mentioned there means that a gift was granted to the world,l so the making
mentioned here means that a gift was granted to the world.

The midrash asks, why should anyone othr than Sarah be happy and rejoice? It's normal
for humans that they feel happy when they themselves gain something, but not when
someone else does.
The answer that the midrash provides is that in fact, there was a reason for rejoicing, that
at the same time as Sarah gave birth, many other people were given reason to rejoice;
illnesses were cured, other women who had been barren gave birth; when Sarah was
noticed by God, the world in general received a gift.
There is another midrash that explains that the gift wasa identified by the name that their
child was given: rather than reading Yitzchak as "laughter" the rabbis read that "éöà ç÷
yatza hok" Law had gone forth to the world, a gift was made to the world.

But we know, of course, that law had not yet gone forth to the world. Although the rabbis
believed that our ancestors even prior to Sinai themselves observed the laws, even if we
accept that, certainly it had not yet gone forth to the world.
So what could this gift have been?

(Midrash Rabbah - Genesis LIII:7



I want to draw our attention to another midrash. This midrash also focuses on the later
laughter of Sarah. After Sarah says, "God has made laughter for me..." she continues,
perhaps in explanation of the statement, åÇúÌÉàîÆø îÄé îÄìÌÅì ìÀàÇáÀøÈäÈí äÅéðÄé÷Èä áÈðÄéí ùÈÉøÈä
ëÌÄÍéÎéÈìÇãÀúÌÄé áÅï ìÄæÀ÷ËðÈÍéå: "she said, 'Who would have said îÄìÌÅì milel to Abraham, that Sarah
should suckle children? For I have born him a son in his old age."
The rabbis point out that contrary to normal usage, the Torah doen't use the word amar or
diber for "said," but rather the extremely unusual word milel.

Midrash Rabbah - Genesis LIII:9


As we know, the Torah uses its words very precisely and sparingly. If it uses an unusual
word, we are meant to notice something about the statement.
The wordîìì mem lamed lamed is a word in Hebrew for speech, but it also has a number
of other meanings. It can mean to stitch together, and it can also mean to wither or fade.
In aramaic, the word is mil'la, which also means embers or gold ore.

I'd like to suggest that Sarah used this word very purposefully. When Sarah laughed for
the first time, hearing that she would give birth, she asked, " now that I am worn out, I
will have pleasure?"
Now that indeed, she has given birth she is using a word that is related to the word
éÀìÅì or éÀìÈìÈà
which means uluation - the trllling noise middle-eastern women make in times of both
joy and sorrow.
So the first of Sarah's meaings is personal: her withering: malal îÈìÇì has turned into
uluation y'lala éÀìÈìÈà .
The second meaning is universal:
God wished to give a gift to her, Sarah, but this gift was a gift for the world as well.
Sewing in many cultures was traditionally women's work, and so Sarah used a sewing
metaphor to speak of this gift to the world: God embroidered into the world a new thing:
Yitzchak - Isaac- was traditionally understood to have invented afternoon prayers -
minchah. This was drawn from next week's portion in which when Rebecca comes to
meet him for the frst time, he is out in the field having sichah - conversation or
supplication - in the late afternoon, with God. The rabbis saw Yitzchak's gift as bringing
law to the world, but although he was great, I think that perhaps this was not the gift that
he brought. The gift that Isaac brought was one of relationship with God. Remember, this
is the Isaac that was perhaps traumatized all his life by his near slaughter for God. And
yet, he was able to have a loving relationship with God. His relationship with God was
not one of testing and trial, but of calm sureness and contemplation. His relationship with
Rebebcca, too, was greater than those of either his father or his sons: he took no other
wives, and he is the first of whom we hear åÇéÌÆàÁäÈáÆäÈ vaye'ehavehah - and he loved her.
Sarah stitched Yitzchak out of her own heart. God embroidered for her a son who would
give a gift to the world: his gift was -unlike Abraham's hot fires, îÄìÀìÈà . Embers: warm,
burning, but not out of control; a campfire to warm your self by, not a forest fire that
burns everything in its path.
Today, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the future of the people of Israel, can seem
more like fire than embers. Today we look at Israel and see the clashing fanaticisms on all
sides: not just between religions, but among them as well. Is it possible that the future of
Judaism really lies with wilfull ignoring of history and other peoples? Can it really be that
God wishes us to cut ourselves off fromt he rest of the world? I highly doubt it.. In
thinking about our future, we should indeed, "Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah
who bore you (Isaiah 51:2)" We have there two models. There is the model of Abraham's
singlemindedness. Rabbi David Hartman in his book A Heart of Many Rooms, talks
about the Akedah model of Judaism as one in which submission and surrender must be
total. But there is another mode as well, exemplified by Sarah. In this model, Judaism is
a religion of surprise and joy: the model in which laughter of incredulity and disbelief, of
one's vision of the future being bleak and even truncated, becomes laughter of hope
turned to reality.
This is Sarah's milel: withering turned to jubilation. Israel, and Judaism, too, has
these modes. Submission to God's commands is important, but it is not a whole
relationship. Abraham and Sarah are both needed for our relationship with God. There is
no Judaism without commitment to mitzvot, but therecan be no commitment to mitzvot
without the possibility of the futuree being different form the past, and joyful surprise
around every corner. When you leave here today, take on a new mitzvah. DO something
for God you've never done before; perhaps it will bring you laughter, too.

a dream

Last night I had a very strange dream, which I happen to know simply means that I drank too much liquid before going to bed, but I think it's really funny.

I was working with a conversion student, and I waws very pleased with him, because he told me that he had been praying the Amidah (a daily prayer which most people don't actually pray every day, let alone the three times a day one ought) every other day ( remember this person wasn't even officially Jewish yet!), and I was answering some questinos about it some of the different blessings in it.

After we finished the discussion, I was walking with him to his apartment where he was going to lend me some rounds of pita bread. He was explaining to me that someone had told him I wanted the bread to go to the mikvah ( purifying waters - literally living waters - mayim chayim) with my son. I was quite indignant, since first of all, what on earth would I do with bread at a mikvah? and my son -a toddler- doens't have any reason to go the mikvah.

In any case, I was explaining to him that I just wanted the bread to make a motzi on (to say the prayer before eating a full meal, for which bread stands in as the representative of what makes something a full meal). As I was explaining this, I realized I needed to use the bathroom, so I went to find his, in his apartment.

I went in, and I was looking over the magazines stacked on the back of the toilet tank, and I noticed among a bunch of professional photographic magazines, one called This is the Torah produced by National Geographic. That was actually the point at which it occurred to me that I should shake myself to make sure that I wasn't asleep, which of course, it turns out I was, and needed to actually get up and go to the bathrom. This was rather a disappointment, as I was extremely curious what would appear in the magazine....