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The truth is, I was not going to write anything this week - not because I'm on vacation after the end of the summer Fellowship program (vacation? You must be kidding. Here at BYFI the work is never done and the lights never go out!), but rather because I was thinking about next week's parsha. I am planning to write an attack on Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm's thinking on imagined communities and the construction of national identity, and his general animus towards nations and nationalism, based on the beginning of Ki Tavo, which we read next week. But while thinking about that, I realized that something in this week's portion also has a lot to say about someone who still, remarkably, calls himself a Marxist, and who apparently once said, in an interview with Michael Ignatieff, that 20 million deaths (more or less what Stalin was guilty of) would have been worth it had it led to the creation of a Utopian society. So here goes. Parshat Ki Tetse begins with a somewhat strange commandment, called the law of the pretty woman. It goes like this: If, in the course of a war, the Jews win, and a Jewish soldier wants to take one of the enemy women (a "pretty woman", in his eyes at least) as a captive , the Torah demands that he first let her have a month to mourn her family, and only then can he take her as a wife. The traditional understanding is that the Torah would actually have preferred to simply prohibit the taking of women as spoils of war, but, realizing the futility of that, instead tries to prevent it - maybe our soldier will be put off by a month of her mourning (which includes her shaving her head and other unattractive behavior) and forget the whole thing. Failing that, the Torah hopes to humanize her ordeal - she is given the space to make a transition to what is, after all, a marriage, rather than the rape which usually takes place in these circumstances (not when the conquering army belongs to the modern State of Israel, but that's another story, which you can ask me about). The question is, why didn't the Torah do what it really thinks is right, and simply prohibit the soldier from taking the pretty woman? Why does it compromise, by trying to make this union difficult to consummate, rather than just forbidding it? Rashi (France, 11th century) has an answer: The Torah allows the soldier to take the captive woman because of the evil inclination, for if God had not permitted him to marry her in this way, he would have simply taken her illegally. This is a remarkable admission of weakness by the Torah! Here we have God, in the Torah, constantly telling us how to live, what to eat and what to refrain from eating, who to marry and who to not, what is right and what is wrong, on just about every imaginable topic, and yet, according to this Rabbinic understanding, in this case, He feels unable to really demand what He knows to be absolutely right. In a perfect world, God would simply tell people to leave the women of the defeated enemy nation alone. However, He understands that people have an "evil inclination", and even if it's God Himself telling them how to behave, they sometimes will not listen. So he compromises, and comes up with this roundabout way to hopefully prevent, or at least humanize, this undesirable marriage. Not perfect, but better than nothing, and a step in the right direction. This humility on the Torah's part, this profound understanding of and respect for the autonomy of each human being, and of the need to recognize and respect that autonomy, and the acknowledgement of the concomitant impossibility - actually, the undesirability - of trying to legislate a perfect world, is remarkable. The Torah is not trying - here or anywhere else - to create a perfect society. The Torah recognizes the fallibility and individuality of all of us - our "evil inclination", and knows that a social or legal system, even a divinely given one, must take these weaknesses into account, and leave room for our humanity, our needs, drives, and desires. The Torah knows that it can not simply prohibit bad behavior, or demand good - people will not listen, and it is people we are talking to. Rather, the Torah tries, and we must continue to try, to make the world a better place within the limitations of an imperfect human nature; to do otherwise, and to try to legislate perfection, would be to deny, and ultimately destroy, the humanity of the people for whom we are ostensibly trying to create this perfect world. That is precisely what happened in the Marxist states created in the 20th century, with the ridiculous, and ultimately destructive and inhuman goal of engineering a perfectly planned, perfectly just, perfectly fair, society. There are many other examples of the Torah's humility, its respect for the humanity, autonomy, and will of the individual. Just last week, in Parshat Shoftim (Judges), the Torah told us, three times, that, as years and generations go by, and we want justice, we will have to "go to the judges who will be serving in those days". This phrase, "the judges who will be serving in those days", is understood to mean that the Torah knows that, in the future, we will not be going to Moses for judgement, but, rather, to some guy who lives around the corner, who went to school with us, and who, perhaps, we know is not so clever. And yet, the Torah emphasizes: those will be the only judges you have, they are the ones you will have to go to, and their judgement must be respected as you would respect that of Moses, because the Torah was given to human beings, to keep as well as they can, as fallible, full of lust, desire, and just plain silliness as they may be.These judges of the future (as well as the people they will be judging), may not be the material you want if you are building a Utopia, but that's the only material we have, and, anyway, a Utopia is not what we are looking for. Perhaps the ultimate expression of Judaism's cynicism about Utopias, and its profound understanding and acceptance of how imperfect - and immutable - human nature is, is this: In his Laws of Kings, Maimonides (Spain, North Africa, 1135-1204), basing himself on material from the Talmud, says the following: "Do not think for a moment that in the days of the Messiah any of the ways of the world will be undone, or that there will be some new thing in the nature of Creation. Rather, the world will go on in its usual way." Maimonides then goes on to explain that this world will be peaceful, and just, and bountiful, and better than it is today, but he tells us all that only after he has insisted that it will retain its essential humanity. This, a better world - not a perfect one, but a human one - is what the Torah attempts to legislate and teach towards, and what Judaism understands as its goal. Shabbat Shalom, Shimon

One of the most enjoyable aspects of my job is meeting with alumni. Many of you spend time in Jerusalem at one point or another, and I am always happy to get an e mail from one of you suggesting we meet for coffee, or, even better, breakfast. Recently, I had the good fortune to meet with Elisheva Goldberg ('05), who is here studying at Midreshet Ein Prat, a Yeshiva with secular and religious students, run by Michah Goodman, older brother of the late Tani Goodman (Amitim, '01), of blessed memory. We were sipping our onion soup, talking about one of the male educators at her program, who sometimes does and sometimes does not wear a kippah. I told her that this was something of a trend in Israel (I talked about this, briefly, at our "But Seriously" alumni event in New York in March), and that a small but growing number of Orthodox males, while otherwise remaining Orthodox, do not want to wear kippot. The reason for this is a sense that the kippah creates an unwanted and unnecessary division between Jews. Here we are, the thinking goes, all living in a Jewish state, serving together in the army, paying taxes, talking Hebrew, not going to work on Shabbat and celebrating the Jewish holidays, what need is there to announce my "superior" Jewishness, my extra measure of religiosity, with this little cap? Aren't we, here in Israel, all in this Jewish thing together? The absence of the kippah is also connected to a sense of Jewish identity which is national, rather than religious, and which all of us here share: by simply living in Israel one is already living and acting like a Jew, advancing the Jewish cause, doing the Jewish thing, and a kippah, announcing that fact, is seen as unnecessary, and, in fact, arrogant, in that it seems to claim that one is a better Jew than those who are bare-headed. (This, of course, only works if you are a part of the Jewish majority, which might explain the popularity of the keffiya headgear, often worn as a scarf, among some of the the Arab minority here.) Elisheva, clever Bronfman Fellow that she is, immediately pointed out that this thinking was similar to that of Korach, the villain in this week's eponymous parsha, in which he rebels against Moshe and his high priest brother Aharon: "You have taken too much, for all of the congregation is holy, and God is among them, why do you lord it over the congregation of God?" Korach seems to feel that a religious hierarchy is unnecessary, and that Moshe and Aharon are wrong to claim the sole right to leadership. After all, he says, we all stood at Mt. Sinai, we are all part of this holy nation, why should you two present yourselves as somehow special, holier, closer to God, more in touch with the truths of Judaism, than the rest of us? As democratizing as this might seem to us, the Torah sees this challenge as a bad thing: Korach and his band of rebels end up being swallowed up by the earth, in one of the Bible's more dramatic and unambiguous punishments. The message is clear: Korach was wrong, a religious hierarchy is necessary and essential, we do need a religious leadership, with priests, Rabbis, judges, to lead the nation in the right direction. So, it looks like Elisheva is right in connecting the non-kippah wearing trend with Korach's rebellion, and seeing it, therefore, as a bad thing. Both Korach and the kippah-less are saying that Jews are Jews, we are all part of the Jewish project, why distinguish some as being somehow higher on some scale of Jewishness or religiosity than others? Is that not divisive? Arrogant? Would we not be better served by a sense of collegiality, egalitarianism? Should we not see ourselves as all equal partners in the Jewish project? If the two positions are essentially the same, as Elisheva suggests, then there is definitely something wrong with the removal of the Kippah. The story of Korach teaches us that equality only goes so far, and religious hierarchies are necessary, and that differences in religious observance, knowledge, and commitment are real, and should be recognized and privileged. The anti-kippah team is, therefor, misguided, and its members would do well to watch out for any sudden openings in the ground underneath their feet. On the other hand, the sentiments behind the kippah removal feel healthy, motivated by a positive sense of community and shared destiny. Can we not find room for a position which, while not actually rebelling against the Torah's notion of religious hierarchy, does somehow recognize and support an egalitarian tendency, a desire to see all Jews as equal? Happily, and not that surprisingly, there is a Talmudic text that bears on this question (one of my sons likes to throw it at me whenever I say anything he thinks is too Orthodox). It's from Tractate Pessachim (the volume of the Talmud which deals with the laws of Passover), page 66a. It tells the story of a year during which the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nissan, the day on which the Passover sacrifice is offered (and eaten that night at the Seder) came out on a Shabbat. For some reason, the leading Rabbis in the Jerusalem area did not know if one is permitted to slaughter the Passover sacrifice on the 14th which is a Shabbat (slaughtering an animal is forbidden on the Sabbath). Hillel, a Rabbi who had recently made aliyah to Israel from Babylon, was called upon to solve the problem, as he was known to be a great scholar, a pupil of two other great scholars, Shmaya and Avtalyon. He successfully supplies the answer, which is that one should offer the sacrifice, even when the 14th falls on a Saturday. He is then asked another one: OK, the Passover sacrifice will be brought this year, on Shabbat, as you say. But what if one forgot to bring a knife to the Temple area on Friday, in preparation for the next day's sacrifice? Since carrying from place to place is forbidden on Shabbat, and the knife could have been brought to the Temple on Friday, may the knife be carried to the Temple on Shabbat itself? Interestingly, Hillel says that he once learned this law, and somehow forgot it, but not to worry: "leave the people of Israel alone; if they are not prophets they are the children of prophets". In other words, let's see what the Jewish people do about this Shabbat knife-carrying problem, and, whatever they do, it will be OK. The next day, Shabbat, the people all came to the Temple, leading their animals to be slaughtered. Those who brought sheep (with a woolly fleece) stuck the knife in the fleece, and those who brought goats (not so hairy) placed the knife between their horns. Hillel saw them doing this and suddenly remembered that, in fact, that was the law as he had learned it: if one forgot to bring the knife to the Temple before Shabbat, one may bring it in this tricky, not-really-carrying way on Shabbat itself. The bit that interests us in this story is the part about the Jewish people being at least "the children of prophets". When unable to come up with the answer to a halachic question, Hillel says we can rely on what the people remember and do as being legitimate - the people, with their customs and actions, decide what the halacha is, not through intellectual argument, but by the way they behave. This approach would seem to be in line with the anti-kippah team: we are all in this together. The Jewish people, and not only their Rabbis, are a legitimate source for what is the correct Jewish thing to do. Therefore, let them be, let them behave in the way which they believe is authentically and correctly Jewish, because, if that's how they behave, it is authentic. The question is, how do we reconcile this populist attitude with the preference for a top-down Judaism we see in our parsha, which privileges the leadership of Moshe and Aharon and rejects Korach's claim that "the entire congregation is holy"? Perhaps one explanation might be this: Korach, in his attack on the leadership of Moshe and Aharon, claims that "the entire congregation is holy". His equality is one of shared privilege: we are all equal to Moshe, we are all equally touched by and in touch with the divine. This egalitarianism of arrogance is false, and unacceptable - not everyone is a Moses, not everyone has really achieved his intellectual and spiritual heights. Hillel's point, on the other hand, is that, although the average Jew may not be a prophet, all Jews are the children of prophets, i.e., heirs to a national tradition, part of a shared cultural, intellectual, and ethical heritage. When acting from a sense of equality based on our shared past and common destiny, all Jews are, in fact, equal, and all Jews, as part of the ongoing Jewish project, have an equal voice in determining its contours and direction. It is this kind of shared responsibility for the Jewish future which forms the rationale for removing the kippah: if we are all in this Jewish thing together, then why behave in ways which divide us? This is not Korach's claim to equal rights and privileges, but, rather, a recognition of equal obligations, responsibilities, experiences, and commitments. It is especially interesting, I think, that Hillel said this after he made aliyah (went up from Babylon to Israel), as he was perhaps, at that time, especially sensitive to issues of peoplehood and shared national destiny. It is also apposite that his topic should be the Passover sacrifice, which commemorates the creation of the Jewish people as a separate nation as they prepared to leave Egypt. Shabbat Shalom, Shimon

Where's the Beef? Tonight, we celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, which, in Biblical and Temple times marked the opening of the harvest season and the bringing of the first fruits to Jerusalem, and which today is more commonly celebrated as the holiday of the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, which took place 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt. Here in Israel, Shavuot has become a gigantic dairy food festival, with ads and commercials running for the past few weeks for fancy cheeses, cheesecakes, recipe books, etc. The custom to eat dairy on this holiday, as opposed to the law to eat meat on all the other holidays (that's right, it is, in fact, a law, not a custom), is steeped in mystery and conjecture; no one really knows why we do it. In addition to this culinary conundrum, there are a few other obvious questions which need to be asked about Shavuot. Why is it so short? Unlike the two other pilgrimage festivals, Passover and Sukkot, which are seven days long, Shavuot is just one day (traditionally celebrated as two in the Diaspora for technical, calendar-related reasons). Why so short? We couldn't take a week to celebrate the giving of the Torah, the most important event in Jewish history? And, as long as we are asking, why is there no ritual connected to it? On Passover there is the matzoh, the seder, the refraining from bread. On Sukkot, the sitting in the Sukkkah (booth) and the taking of the 4 species, lulav, etrog, hadass and arava. Shavuot has no ritual at all connected to the receiving of the Torah (the custom to stay up all night studying Torah is very late, and appears nowhere in the Rabbinic sources). Why does Shavuot get such a rotten deal? Why is it so empty of ritual? Why can't we even get a good, heavy, meat meal out of it; chicken soup, some chopped liver, a brisket, or a piece of roast chicken? Why is this one-day, ritually-challenged holiday also insulted by being celebrated with cottage cheese and sour cream? As you know, the people of Israel received the Torah in the desert. The exact location of Mt. Sinai is unclear, but the Torah reminds us again and again - as it did at the opening of last week's portion Ba'midbar ("in the desert", which is the classical Hebrew name for the fourth of the five books of Moses, rather than the English "Numbers") - that it was given in the desert. The Rabbis note this, and have a whole series of drashot which explain that the desert is the appropriate place in which to hear the word of God, and receiving it there teaches us what we need to know and do in order to continue to receive, study and understand the Torah: "Why was the Torah given in the desert? To teach you that only if one makes oneself hefker (ownerless, unfettered, free), as the desert is, will one merit the words of the Torah." "Just as the desert has no end, so, too, the words of the Torah have no end...as its reward has no end." "Had the Torah been given in the Land of Israel, the Jewish people would have said to the nations of the world 'you have no share in it' so, rather, it was given in the desert, an ownerless place, so whoever wants it can come and get it." These beautiful Midrsahim point to the desert as the right place for the Torah, and a model for the ongoing receiving of the Torah, precisely because of its lack of specific features, it's ownerlessness, openness, and absence of boundaries. Only someone who cultivates these characteristics can hope to receive, and to truly study and understand the Torah. Only someone who is unencumbered by preconceptions and prejudices, and is open to the infinite, universal possibilities and implications of the Torah, can ever really hope to understand it. The holiday of Shavuot reflects the need for this open, unfettered receptiveness. Just one day, concentrated, focused, emptied of all other concerns, unencumbered by ritual, by process, even by cold cuts, without any identity or character other than being set aside as the day to receive the Torah. This is the appropriate way to accept the Torah, to study and teach it. Shavuot's shortcomings are, in fact, its strengths, its lesson for all of us who would like to continue to receive and understand the word of God. I wish you all an open, free, enjoyable and meaningful Shavuot, and encourage you to find a place in your area to study Torah tonight. Chag sameach, Shimon

Where's the Beef? Tonight, we celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, which, in Biblical and Temple times marked the opening of the harvest season and the bringing of the first fruits to Jerusalem, and which today is more commonly celebrated as the holiday of the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, which took place 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt. Here in Israel, Shavuot has become a gigantic dairy food festival, with ads and commercials running for the past few weeks for fancy cheeses, cheesecakes, recipe books, etc. The custom to eat dairy on this holiday, as opposed to the law to eat meat on all the other holidays (that's right, it is, in fact, a law, not a custom), is steeped in mystery and conjecture; no one really knows why we do it. In addition to this culinary conundrum, there are a few other obvious questions which need to be asked about Shavuot. Why is it so short? Unlike the two other pilgrimage festivals, Passover and Sukkot, which are seven days long, Shavuot is just one day (traditionally celebrated as two in the Diaspora for technical, calendar-related reasons). Why so short? We couldn't take a week to celebrate the giving of the Torah, the most important event in Jewish history? And, as long as we are asking, why is there no ritual connected to it? On Passover there is the matzoh, the seder, the refraining from bread. On Sukkot, the sitting in the Sukkkah (booth) and the taking of the 4 species, lulav, etrog, hadass and arava. Shavuot has no ritual at all connected to the receiving of the Torah (the custom to stay up all night studying Torah is very late, and appears nowhere in the Rabbinic sources). Why does Shavuot get such a rotten deal? Why is it so empty of ritual? Why can't we even get a good, heavy, meat meal out of it; chicken soup, some chopped liver, a brisket, or a piece of roast chicken? Why is this one-day, ritually-challenged holiday also insulted by being celebrated with cottage cheese and sour cream? As you know, the people of Israel received the Torah in the desert. The exact location of Mt. Sinai is unclear, but the Torah reminds us again and again - as it did at the opening of last week's portion Ba'midbar ("in the desert", which is the classical Hebrew name for the fourth of the five books of Moses, rather than the English "Numbers") - that it was given in the desert. The Rabbis note this, and have a whole series of drashot which explain that the desert is the appropriate place in which to hear the word of God, and receiving it there teaches us what we need to know and do in order to continue to receive, study and understand the Torah: "Why was the Torah given in the desert? To teach you that only if one makes oneself hefker (ownerless, unfettered, free), as the desert is, will one merit the words of the Torah." "Just as the desert has no end, so, too, the words of the Torah have no end...as its reward has no end." "Had the Torah been given in the Land of Israel, the Jewish people would have said to the nations of the world 'you have no share in it' so, rather, it was given in the desert, an ownerless place, so whoever wants it can come and get it." These beautiful Midrsahim point to the desert as the right place for the Torah, and a model for the ongoing receiving of the Torah, precisely because of its lack of specific features, it's ownerlessness, openness, and absence of boundaries. Only someone who cultivates these characteristics can hope to receive, and to truly study and understand the Torah. Only someone who is unencumbered by preconceptions and prejudices, and is open to the infinite, universal possibilities and implications of the Torah, can ever really hope to understand it. The holiday of Shavuot reflects the need for this open, unfettered receptiveness. Just one day, concentrated, focused, emptied of all other concerns, unencumbered by ritual, by process, even by cold cuts, without any identity or character other than being set aside as the day to receive the Torah. This is the appropriate way to accept the Torah, to study and teach it. Shavuot's shortcomings are, in fact, its strengths, its lesson for all of us who would like to continue to receive and understand the word of God. I wish you all an open, free, enjoyable and meaningful Shavuot, and encourage you to find a place in your area to study Torah tonight. Chag sameach, Shimon

Where's the Beef? Tonight, we celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, which, in Biblical and Temple times marked the opening of the harvest season and the bringing of the first fruits to Jerusalem, and which today is more commonly celebrated as the holiday of the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, which took place 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt. Here in Israel, Shavuot has become a gigantic dairy food festival, with ads and commercials running for the past few weeks for fancy cheeses, cheesecakes, recipe books, etc. The custom to eat dairy on this holiday, as opposed to the law to eat meat on all the other holidays (that's right, it is, in fact, a law, not a custom), is steeped in mystery and conjecture; no one really knows why we do it. In addition to this culinary conundrum, there are a few other obvious questions which need to be asked about Shavuot. Why is it so short? Unlike the two other pilgrimage festivals, Passover and Sukkot, which are seven days long, Shavuot is just one day (traditionally celebrated as two in the Diaspora for technical, calendar-related reasons). Why so short? We couldn't take a week to celebrate the giving of the Torah, the most important event in Jewish history? And, as long as we are asking, why is there no ritual connected to it? On Passover there is the matzoh, the seder, the refraining from bread. On Sukkot, the sitting in the Sukkkah (booth) and the taking of the 4 species, lulav, etrog, hadass and arava. Shavuot has no ritual at all connected to the receiving of the Torah (the custom to stay up all night studying Torah is very late, and appears nowhere in the Rabbinic sources). Why does Shavuot get such a rotten deal? Why is it so empty of ritual? Why can't we even get a good, heavy, meat meal out of it; chicken soup, some chopped liver, a brisket, or a piece of roast chicken? Why is this one-day, ritually-challenged holiday also insulted by being celebrated with cottage cheese and sour cream? As you know, the people of Israel received the Torah in the desert. The exact location of Mt. Sinai is unclear, but the Torah reminds us again and again - as it did at the opening of last week's portion Ba'midbar ("in the desert", which is the classical Hebrew name for the fourth of the five books of Moses, rather than the English "Numbers") - that it was given in the desert. The Rabbis note this, and have a whole series of drashot which explain that the desert is the appropriate place in which to hear the word of God, and receiving it there teaches us what we need to know and do in order to continue to receive, study and understand the Torah: "Why was the Torah given in the desert? To teach you that only if one makes oneself hefker (ownerless, unfettered, free), as the desert is, will one merit the words of the Torah." "Just as the desert has no end, so, too, the words of the Torah have no end...as its reward has no end." "Had the Torah been given in the Land of Israel, the Jewish people would have said to the nations of the world 'you have no share in it' so, rather, it was given in the desert, an ownerless place, so whoever wants it can come and get it." These beautiful Midrsahim point to the desert as the right place for the Torah, and a model for the ongoing receiving of the Torah, precisely because of its lack of specific features, it's ownerlessness, openness, and absence of boundaries. Only someone who cultivates these characteristics can hope to receive, and to truly study and understand the Torah. Only someone who is unencumbered by preconceptions and prejudices, and is open to the infinite, universal possibilities and implications of the Torah, can ever really hope to understand it. The holiday of Shavuot reflects the need for this open, unfettered receptiveness. Just one day, concentrated, focused, emptied of all other concerns, unencumbered by ritual, by process, even by cold cuts, without any identity or character other than being set aside as the day to receive the Torah. This is the appropriate way to accept the Torah, to study and teach it. Shavuot's shortcomings are, in fact, its strengths, its lesson for all of us who would like to continue to receive and understand the word of God. I wish you all an open, free, enjoyable and meaningful Shavuot, and encourage you to find a place in your area to study Torah tonight. Chag sameach, Shimon

This week, we read a double portion, Acharey Mot and Kedoshim. The second one, Kedoshim, which begins with the commandment to be holy, as God Himself is, is full to the brim with moral/ethical material, a real treasure chest of beautiful and insightful laws and practices. One of the most famous ones is the commandment to "Love your neighbor as yourself." The Rabbis of the Talmud come up with a long list of interesting actions and behaviors which they feel exemplify and define this mitzvah, and I'd like to focus on one of them.

The Talmud in Tractate Niddah - which deals with the laws of ritual purity pertaining mainly to menstruant women and sexual activity in general - quotes this interesting statement (page 17a):

"Rav Chisda says: It is forbidden for a man to have sexual relations during the day, as it is written 'and you shall love your neighbor as yourself'. How does this verse imply this law? Abayye says: lest he see in her [his wife] an unseemly thing, and she become unattractive to him."

The idea seems to be that in the daytime, as opposed to in the dark of night, one sees things more clearly, and therefore, during the act of sex, one runs the risk of seeing something unattractive, unaesthetic, and being turned off. This risk is lessened in the dark, so making love in the dark (it would seem that Rav Chisda is playing with the word "love" here) would seem to be an expression of loving your neighbor - in this case your wife - as yourself (not sure about that, but we will come back to it) by giving her a break, being nice to her, taking the pressure off of her to always look perfect, and love her even if she has an unseen blemish or two.

Immediately after this statement, the Talmud continues:

"Rav Huna says: The people of Israel are holy, and do not have marital relations during the day. Rava says: If it was in a darkened house it is permitted, and a scholar may make it dark with his cloak and have relations [presumably scholars in particular are to be trusted to get this tricky little maneuver right].''

This rule, that one should have sex only at night, or in the dark, is stated a few more times in the Talmud, and is in fact codified by Maimonides and others. In this formulation, the reason would seem to be that it is brazen and immodest to have sex in the light of day - not holy - and good Jewish men and women are meant to be holy and make love modestly. Rav Chisda's 'love they neighbor as yourself' reason for making love in the dark seems aimed, if not in the opposite direction, then at least in a different one, that of enhancing and encouraging a positive erotic connection between husband and wife; he does not seem to be concerned with modesty. Rather, he seems to focus on the aesthetic aspect of intimate relations: merely seeing something unseemly in one's partner would, it seems, render her (and perhaps him, as well, though that is not the point of view from which the men of the Talmud were operating) undesirable, so, for a happy love life, keep the lights off.

These two statements seem, at first glance, to be somewhat contradictory; the one a kind of marital advice to couples type of thing, the other an expression of a desire to minimize excessive passion in the sex act. Interestingly, however, the Talmud does not in any way see these two positions as adversarial, it just quotes one after the other, as if they go together. Perhaps this is the case. Perhaps the two statements are coming from the same place, and basically expressing the same thing - a desire to improve the quality of intimacy in a relationship. I will try and explain how.

I am sure that all of you have noticed (no matter how hard you have tried not to) that pornography has entered the aesthetic mainstream. The way that women are represented in music videos, Hollywood, fashion, even works of "serious" "art" (have I used enough quotation marks to make my point, Jeff Koons, et al.?) more and more takes its inspiration from pornography, where woman is objectified by the male gaze as a personification of a posed, sleazy, voyeuristic, often fetishized sexuality, divorced from love or even relationship, always available, and, crucially, always on display. In this dynamic, the woman is an object enjoyed visually by the male watcher/lover, who functions primarily as a voyeur, of both his partner and of the very act of sex. Sex, in this aesthetic, is something that is first and foremost watched, rather than engaged in.
(The above has always been true, to some degree, in western art; I am claiming a worsening of the situation, a coarsening of this essentially male, voyeuristic way of representing women and sexuality).

The Talmud, here, in the laws of modesty during intimacy, is polemicizing against this approach, and argues for modesty as a positive and crucial element in an intimate relationship - not only for the sake of modesty, but, more importantly, for the sake of relationship. A sexuality that reveals all, and puts everything (typically everything the woman has) on display, is not only immodest. It also sets up a kind of sexual aesthetic that a woman can almost never live up to, for, in an interaction of this type, the lover/voyeur will inevitably find something unpleasing in the object of his desire, something not quite good-looking enough, and move on. The modesty prescribed in the Talmud calls for a sexuality which is based not primarily on the visual and aesthetic pleasure given by an object of desire to the beholder/enjoyer of that object, but, rather, on a commitment to find something deeper, something beyond an inevitably fleeting aesthetic experience. (The connection between the above and the prohibition against making a graven image, which is essentially about making a divine, rather than sexual, figure, is worth thinking about.)

Perhaps Rav Chisda, with his use of the 'love your neighbor' verse, is asking us to love our closest neighbor - our spouse - the way we love ourselves, which is a love based on who I really am, not on how I look. All of us realize (well, should realize, anyway) that, even when we see a pimple in the mirror, put on a few extra pounds, or notice a receding hairline, we are still us, and we, hopefully, still feel good about ourselves, still know and like who we really are. Rav Chisda in the Talmud reads the 'love your neighbor as yourself' verse as asking us to use modesty to help us achieve and maintain that same kind of love, a love of knowing and experiencing, with our partner, rather than just seeing her - or him - as an object to be enjoyed.

Shabbat Shalom,
Shimon

I'd like to wish the entire BYFI community, along with our families and friends, a Happy Passover, and share with you a thought for the holiday. 

One of the best known sections of the Haggadah is the discussion of the four sons: the wise, the wicked, the simple, and he who is unable to even ask a question. One of the questions often asked about this section is about the order: why is it presented in this way, from the wise son down to the non-asker? One answer sees the four sons as actually one individual, and understands this section as a recapitulation of the growth and development of each and every one of us, from unengaged  toddler, to unfocused but inquisitive child, to rebellious adolescent and, finally, hopefully, maturing into a wise young adult. The order is reversed so that we can tell the story from its happy ending - the wise son - and then move back in time, to recall the stages of our development. 

One can tweak this idea, and view these different personalities not as developmental, but, rather, as co-existing in each and every one of us. The Haggadah starts with the wise, focused, empathetic, engaged questioner, the person who asks intelligently and creatively because he cares and identifies deeply; this is  the person we would all like to be. We then admit that there are times or situations in which we feel angry, disturbed and distanced by our people, their actions and their traditions, and attack, rather than discuss, what the Jews are doing. At  other times we are too tired, or lazy, or uninspired, to ask anything more than a simple question, hoping, at best, for a simple, superficial  answer. Interestingly, this form of almost mechanical semi-engagement would seem to be worse than the anger felt by the evil son, who cares enough to fight. And then, last and worst, there are times when we are so alienated from Jewish life and tradition that we really don't care enough to ask, engage, question,  at all. 

The Haggadah has responses for all four of these attitudes. I wish for all of us, in whatever one of these states we happen to find ourselves, whatever kind of son or daughter we might happen to be at any particular time, that we always find those people - parents, teachers, friends, spouses - who can respond creatively and helpfully to us. And, alternatively,  when faced with one of these questioners, or with someone too alienated to even ask the question, we can perhaps find the words which will help them on their way, supply  the response that will begin to answer their questions, whether actually asked or not.  

Pessach kasher v'sameach,
Shimon    

To the unsuspecting reader: This is about something about which I often speak on BYFI summers, so if it looks like one you've heard already, you can get off the train any time you like.

In this week's parsha, Mishpatim, the Torah repeats - with the wording somewhat changed - the admonition to rest on Shabbat which was in the Ten Commandments, which appeared  in last week's parsha, Yitro:

"Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the slave born in your household, and the stranger as well, may be refreshed."

The Talmud, in Tractate Yevamot, page  48b, says that the slave and the stranger ("ger" in Hebrew) referred to here are non-Jews. The word "ger" could, and in other instances does, mean a convert to Judaism, and there are Jewish slaves, but the Talmud insists that in this version of the commandment, we are expanding the range of those who benefit from the Shabbat beyond what other verses may be referring to, beyond the members of  the Jewish community, to include our non-Jewish slaves and the gentile strangers in our midst. These people, who are not usually the target of the Torah's commandments, must rest as well.

If this is the right reading, and we are referring to non-Jews here, a question arises: the verse seems to make these people the whole point of the Shabbat, the focus of the entire exercise, as we are told to not work on the seventh day "so that" ("l'ma'an" in Hebrew) these non-Jews, as well as our animals, can rest. Surely this is wrong. We keep the Shabbat so that we can rest (and remember the creator of the universe, and do other neat stuff on our day off). The fact that the non-Jews within our community rest as well must only be a fringe benefit. After all, the Mitzvot of the Torah are for the Jewish people: Jews eat matza on Pessach, sit in the Sukkah, and keep kosher, not non-Jews. And yet, this verse clearly says that we rest on the Sabbath so that they can rest - they are the point here. In addition, the Torah seems to be telling us this strange law in an unnecessarily complicated fashion. If, for some reason, it wants these non-Jews to rest, why not just say so? Why say that we have to rest so they they can? Just say that non-Jewish slaves of Jews and non-Jews living in a Jewish society have to rest on Shabbat. Actually, that would make a lot of sense: how are we going to get any peace and quiet on Shabbat if these people are busy working all around us? Surely, the Torah should just directly tell them to rest so that we can, not the other way around.

To understand what is really happening here, we need to look back a few verses, and put this Mitzvah in context. It goes like this: first the Torah says "Do not oppress a stranger; you yourselves know how it feels to be strangers, because you were strangers in Egypt." Then, the Torah, in what looks like a change of topic, starts a section about the calendar, beginning with the seven-year Sabbatical cycle, and then moving on to our verse on Shabbat:

"For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unploughed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove."

And then, after that, the Torah gives us our verse on the Shabbat: "Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the slave born in your household, and the stranger as well, may be refreshed."

Looked at in context, the point of our verse now becomes clear. Just as the law of not working your land during the Sabbatical year is presented here, after the law of not oppressing the stranger, as  social action ("the poor among your people may get food from it"), so, too, the law about Shabbat, which immediately follows, is about a Shabbat of social action as well, part of our ongoing  attempt to learn from our bitter experience in Egypt and treat the stranger well. Though it does want them to rest, the Torah does not tell non-Jews to not work on Saturdays - they are, after all, not members of the Covenant. The Torah does, however, want us to take responsibility for the non-Jews in our society, and arrange it so that they can,unlike the Jewish slaves in Egypt, be free, and have at least one day a week to themselves. From this perspective, we see that we rest on Shabbat not so that we can get the day off - as members of the sovereign Jewish nation to whom this verse is addressed, we can take off any damn day we want. Rather, the Torah is telling us that there is an aspect of Shabbat that is not for us, not about us and our well-being. It is, rather, about running a decent, humane society, in which everyone, even the slave, even the stranger, has some measure of freedom and autonomy. The only way to do that, to not treat the weakest elements in our society like slaves, is to structure our society in such a way that people must get a day off. If we don't work on Saturday, if we are all in shul, if we are all taking a Shabbat nap, studying a little Torah, and eating all that Shabbat food, there is no one to make our non-Jewish minority work on that day. They will, no matter what, get a day off. The Shabbat in this verse is neither an expression of our covenantal relationship with God, nor a day of rest for our sake; it is not about us. It is a demand that we organize our society "so that" even those whom the Torah does not address, but whom the Torah clearly cares about, get this particular benefit - the freedom, denied us in Egypt, to not be a slave, but to be free, autonomous, at least once a week.

For this reason, I am pretty hard-core about Shabbat in Israel. If stores are open, someone will have to work the cash registers (guess who that's going to be. I'll give you a hint: will it be someone rich? Who can afford to take Tuesday off, if he likes? And is choosing to work on Shabbat because it suits her (and it is so often a her)? Or is it someone who probably needs to work all seven days a week, like a slave,  to make ends meet? Go on, take a guess.) If buses are running, someone will have to drive them. If movie theaters operate, someone will have to take the tickets, sell the popcorn. Only by enforcing a universal day off for the people who run the country, can we guarantee a day off for those who don't. Only by "sacrificing" our malls, movies, and mobility, can we truly end the oppression of the slave and the stranger, the weakest, most marginalized among us.  

Shabbat Shalom,
Shimon

This week, in parshat Beshalach, the Israelites leave Egypt, and finally get rid of the Egyptians for good at the splitting of the Reed Sea. The scene is extraordinarily dramatic: the newly-freed slaves are in the desert, with Pharaoh's chariots closing in on them on one side, and the sea on the other. Miraculously, the sea splits, they walk through it, and it then closes in on the pursuing Egyptians, drowning them. This really is the end of the nation's bitter experience of slavery. Seeing the hand of God in the destruction of the Egyptian forces, Moshe and the Israelites respond in this way: "And Israel saw the mighty hand which God had brought down upon Egypt, and the nation feared God, and they believed in his servant, Moshe. And then Moshe and the children of Israel will sing this song to God, and they said: I will sing to God for He is great, horse and rider he cast down in the sea." The song that follows is known as shirat hayam, the song of the sea, and is also known by the first two words of the verse, quoted above, which introduces the song itself "az yashir" - "then will sing". This epic poem, which goes on for a while, is traditionally recited in its entirety every day at morning prayers. After it's over, Miriam the prophetess, sister of Moshe and Aharon, goes out with the women, tambourine in hand, and also sings an apparently abbreviated version of the song.

I'd like to focus on the difficult words which preface the song itself, and by which it is known, "az yashir": "And then Moshe and the children of Israel will sing this song to God...". The grammar is difficult; surely "And then Moshe and the children of Israel sang this song to God" would make more sense. Why is it written "az yashir Moshe"  - "and then Moshe will sing" - in the future tense, and not "az shar Moshe", "and then Moshe sang", in the past?

Some of the commentaries take a grammatical or linguistic approach. The Ibn Ezra says that that's how Hebrew works (I won't go into the details). Nachmanides says that the narrator of the Torah sometimes puts himself in the action, rather than telling it like a story which has already taken place, and therefore often uses the present or future tenses to describe things as they are happening or are about to happen. Famously, the Rabbis of the Talmud see the use of the future tense as the Torah's proof of the existence of the world to come  - the song was not only sung at the splitting of the Sea:  in the future, Moshe, once again, "will sing" this song, that future being the next world. Rashi, however, takes a different approach, and I'd like to look at it. He says that the Torah, with the use of the future tense in the phrase az yashir,  is going beyond a simple description of events. Az yashir tells us what Moshe was feeling, and thinking, before he started singing. This is how Rashi explains it: "and then, when he saw the miracle, he felt in his heart that he should sing a song...his heart told him to sing, and that is what he did."  In other words, az yashir  does not refer to the singing itself, rather, it refers to the inner workings of Moshe's heart, it tells us that his heart told him to sing, and then he starting singing.

This is, it seems to me, remarkable. Although various bits of the Bible do seem to be written by an omniscient narrator, who tells us what people are thinking, here, the point is not the narrator's omniscience, but, rather, the Torah's decision to report in this roundabout way the seemingly simple and straightforward act of singing a song of praise and thanksgiving. The Torah goes out of its way to write the verse in this strange fashion - "then Moshe will sing", rather than "then Moshe sang" - just to let us know about the moment before the singing, when Moshe, in his heart, was moved to sing. Surely, just about every act we do, other than jerking our knee in response to the doctor's little hammer, is preceded by a moment or two of thought - we want to or are moved to do something, and then we do it. But who, when reporting an action, bothers to point out that first we were moved to do it?  Just say "and then he kissed her", or "and then he strangled him" and we will understand that, just before doing those things, our hero was moved to do so. Why point out to us that Moshe was first moved to sing - just tell us he started singing. All the motivation we need to know about is already clear in the narrative itself: the sea, the miracle, the dead Egyptians. What more are we taught by this awkward phrase, whose only message is that Moshe was motivated to sing and then sang - what else would we have thought?

It would seem that the point of the "az yashir"  is to tell us about the importance of motivation, here, and in general. By motivation I don't simply mean that the song was sung as a result of the miraculous events which preceded it. That would have been clear without "az yashir", az shar would have been enough: "and then Moshe and the Israelites sang this song", and we would certainly, based on the story itself, know the reason behind the singing. The point of az yashir is to tell us that Moshe and the Israelites acted here out of a deep, inner, personal feeling, from the heart, rather than from some sense of external pressure, commandedness, tradition, or obligation. Their hearts told them what to do, what to say and sing, and the result is the poem we have in the Torah.

This understanding certainly seems to underscore the value of the deeply felt inner emotion, as opposed to a sense of obligation, as motivation for a religious expression (or an artistic one - this is, after all, a poem. Perhaps, by extension, the same is true for moral and ethical acts as well.). It is as if the Torah is saying: "hey, get this, this song is the real thing, it is special, because it came directly from the heart, from an emotional compulsion to sing it. this, therefore, is really worth paying attention to."

Here in Israel, we have just received the applications for the 2010 Amitim. I read many of them. One of the things I noticed in the essays about "your Jewish identity" is that, especially among those who identified themselves as secular, acting out of a sense of religious obligation is seen as a bad thing. Many of these kids were careful to point out that what religious or Jewish behavior they do engage in is done out of an inner desire and conviction, a sense that this is what they personally wanted to do, rather than out of a sense of duty or obligation. Although Kant would probably take exception to this view, Rashi's take on az yashir would seem to agree: what's special about the Song of the Sea is that it came from the heart, from a deeply felt emotion. The expression of that inner compulsion, the Song of the Sea, is given a very special place indeed, in the Torah and in our liturgy, thereby emphasizing the value and strength of such autonomous, personal feelings and their expression.

It's also worth noting that these emotions, rather than being articulated in the Torah's usual prose, are presented as a song, a poem, with, at least in the case of Miriam and the women, some musical accompaniment. Today, in the synagogue, there is even a special tune to which the entire Song of the Sea is read, different from the usual one. It may be that, in trying to give voice to his inner feelings, Moshe was moved to use a more artistic mode; the only way to describe his feelings, and to express them to others, to get this particularly personal message  across, was to use a language and style different from those used to describe more mundane matters, things which are less heartfelt. When what needs to be said is personal, overwhelming ("his heart told him to sing"), and deeply felt, an artistic, poetic expression is called for, in order to fully and truly give it expression. Prose will not do.

There is a poem by Billy Collins which, I think, describes the power of art - song, poetry, music - and the insufficiency of every-day speech, to express that which we most deeply feel and want to communicate.

The Blues

Much of what is said here
must be said twice,
a reminder that no one
takes an immediate interest in the pain of others.

Nobody will listen, it would seem,
if you simply admit
your baby left you early this morning
she didn't even stop to say goodbye.

But if you sing it again
with the help of the band
which will now lift you to a higher,
more ardent and beseeching key,

people will not only listen;
they will shift to the sympathetic
edges of their chairs,
moved to such acute anticipation

by that chord and the delay that follows,
they will not be able to sleep
unless you release with one finger
a scream from the throat of your guitar

and turn your head back to the microphone
to let them know
you're a hard-hearted man
but that woman's sure going to make you cry.     


Shabbat shalom,
Shimon

This week, in parshat Bo, the Jewish people leave Egypt. Besides the ten plagues, the last three of which occur in this week's portion, there is also a fairly long and involved process which much be gone through before the Jews can be free: the first Passover Seder. Moshe is commanded by God to tell the people to prepare for the big night by choosing sheep, and getting ready for a fairly complicated feast. The sheep are slaughtered, symbolizing, variously, the defeat of the Egyptians whom, we are told earlier in the Torah, worship sheep in some way, or the ascendancy of God over fate and the power of the stars, as the sign of the Zodiac at that time of the year is Aries, the ram. Its blood is put on the doorpost of each Israelite home, and then it is roasted and eaten in a highly ritualized way: "...with matzot and bitter herbs you shall eat it. Do not eat it undercooked or boiled in water...do not leave any of it over until the morning...and eat it thus: with your loins girded and your shoes on your feet and your staffs in your hands, and you shall eat it quickly, it is a Passover unto God." Now, the bit about the girded loins, staffs and shoes makes sense - they are in a hurry, about to dramatically leave Egypt as the Egyptian first born are dying, and they need to be ready. But the rest of it is strange. First of all, if you are in a hurry, why all the rigmarole with the sheep, the blood on the doorpost, the specificity of the roasting (which takes more time), and eating the matzo and marror (bitter herbs)? Get a move on! Get ready, if you're hungry eat something, and go! Furthermore, what purpose do these dishes serve at this time? The bitter herbs commemorate a bitter, oppressive time in Egypt. Surely that food will make sense as a side-dish at the Seder in a few generations, as a remembrance of our ancestors' experience; it is not necessary now, in Egypt. These people have been working as slaves and feeling the bitterness of that experience all their lives, up until the that very day. They don't need the herbs to commemorate what they are living through right now. Similarly, the matzo. Understood as both the bread of affliction - the cheap, filling, crummy food the Egyptians gave their slaves - and the culinary result of the speed in which the Israelites left Egypt, leaving no time for their dough to rise, this commemorative food also, surely, will be needed only in a few years, as an act of remembering and celebrating. The people experiencing the Exodus just had matzo for lunch, and breakfast, and will eat it tomorrow morning for breakfast again, as they hurry out of Egypt. Why, if they are in such a rush to leave, do they need to eat it, ritually, now? Would it not make more sense for them to leave all this unnecessary symbolism aside, just act naturally, eat their real matzo, rather than the symbolic matzo at the meal, experience the real bitterness of slavery, rather than the symbolic bitterness of the herbs, hurry up and leave Egypt? Let's worry about the symbolic commemoration of these events later, when they need to be recreated and remembered. Why do the people who are leaving Egypt need to symbolically ritualize what they are actually doing? To put the question a bit differently, I'd like borrow categories first introduced by Professor Yosef Chayim Yerushalmi, who passed away just over a month ago: history and memory. The Passover Seder and its rituals are acts which Jews do to create and pass on memory, the memory of an event, the Exodus from Egypt, whose historicity may be challenged, but whose conceptual, communal, and emotional reality are alive and well, thanks to these and other rememberances. But the generation of the Exodus needs no such observance. According the story told to us by the Torah, they are living the actual events, as they happen. They are in the actual historical moment of the Exodus. Why, then, do they need to ritualize these events, and experience them as symbolic as well as real? Surely only we, the rememberers, need to do that, to observe the rituals in order to make an ancient historical moment real for us. I think the answer lies in the nature, meaning, and purpose of symbolism. The later generations who want to remember the Exodus, along with its meanings, morals, and lessons, are not the only ones who need to explain to themselves what the Exodus is all about. The actors in that story, the people who lived through and experienced it, also need symbolic acts and objects, to help them more deeply and fully understand and articulate to themselves what they are experiencing. Simply living through a historical moment in no way guarantees that one will fully, or even partially, understand its import, its moral freight, its message and its implications. The first Passover Seder, celebrating events which were happening simultaneously with their being celebrated, was meant to give the participants an opportunity to think about and more fully understand what they were experiencing, to more profoundly appreciate what was happening to them. The first Seder enabled them to see and articulate, if only for themselves, the events occurring around them in a richer context, with a greater depth of understanding. Without the Passover Seder in Egypt, the Israelites may well have missed some or all of the points of the Exodus, may not have fully understood the implications of God's demand for His people's freedom from an oppressive, totalitarian empire, nor fully grasped the import of His intervention in history. Those Seder rituals underscored for them the deeper conceptual messages of that intervention, and of their freedom. This is the purpose of symbolic acts: to allow us to stop a moment, even (especially) when, like the Jews in Egypt, we are in a hurry, in the middle of sometimes tumultuous events, and think more clearly and deeply about who we are, what we are doing, what is happening to us, and what it all means. Living in a modern world (I refuse to live in the post-modern one; anyway, it's not a world at all, just a bad attitude), which, by and large, eschews the symbolic in favor of the functional, practical, and necessary, we need, more than ever, to create symbolic, ritualized ways with which to better understand the present, as well as observing the time honored rituals we have inherited to try and fathom our past. Shabbat Shalom, Shimon

This week, we begin the book of Exodus. The Israelites are in Egypt, where they have been brutally enslaved. Moshe has emerged as a would-be savior, killing an Egyptian taskmaster, and failing to break up a fight between two Israelites (a sure sign of a real Jewish leader). Because of his having killed the Egyptian, he is forced to flee the country, and takes refuge in the Land of Midian, where he marries, and herds sheep for his father-in-law. While doing so, he is visited by an angel of God, who gets his attention, so that God can then tell Moshe to return to Egypt and finish the job he started - free the Jewish people, take them out of Egypt, give them the Torah, and bring them to the promised land.

The angel appeared to Moshe "in a flame of fire, in the bush. And Moshe saw, and behold, the bush was burning with fire but was not consumed. And Moshe said, I will go, and see this great vision, why is the bush not burning up?" At that point, once he begins to approach the bush, God speaks to him, informing him of the plan to free the Israelites and bring them back Io the Land of Israel.
Nowhere in the Torah is the symbolism, if there is any, of the burning bush elucidated. On a simple level, it would seem that the bush contains no information, and is just a call of some sort to Moshe to pay attention and come over to see what's happening so that God can talk to him, with no intrinsic message or meaning of its own. However, the Italian commentator, Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno (1475-1550), feels that there is a message, a statement from God, which is communicated by the bush's burning but not being consumed. The bush, in his thinking, represents Egypt, and the fire is the punishment, the ten plagues, which God will bring upon the Egyptians in order to free His people. So far so good - Moshe is being shown that the wrath of God, the fire, will come down on the Egyptians, the bush, for the sake of the Israelites. Great. What, however, we might ask the Sforno, is the message of the most salient and fascinating feature of this vision: the fact that the bush is not consumed? After all, a little fire in the desert may be rare, but is not such a big deal, it is not miraculous. It is the bush's not being burnt up which seems to be the main event here, the real message. What is the bush's survival saying to Moshe, and to us, in the Sforno's understanding?
The Sforno explains that this is the message that God was communicating by not allowing the bush to be consumed: "Even though I saw the oppression of My people in Egypt, as indicated by the presence of the [burning] angel in the bush [Egypt], and even though I will raise My hand against their suffering, as the fire in the bush indicates, in any event, the Egyptians, who are oppressing them, will not be destroyed by all the plagues I will bring upon them, as is taught by the fact that 'the bush was not consumed', for it is certainly not My intent with these plagues which I shall visit upon them to wipe them out, and settle Israel in their place, but, rather, to save Israel from their hand and settle them elsewhere."
Is it not remarkable that the real weight, the thrust, of the prophetic vision - the fact that the burning bush is not consumed - is all about God's concern for the Egyptians? God's concern, and assurance, that His response to their inhuman treatment of the Israelites be measured, fair and reasonable? And that the Israelites - that God Himself - take no unfair advantage of them, but simply demand and receive the freedom which is theirs by right, and not take any vengeance or retribution from the Egyptians? Remarkable.

Shabbat Shalom,
Shimon

PS - Back in 2002, I seem to have written a much longer piece, which, among other things, includes a different approach to the question of the message and function of the burning bush. If you are interested and have the patience - http://byfi.org/news/?q=node/47

This week the portion we read is Vayishlach, in which Yaakov returns to the Land of Canaan after twenty years of exile, an exile which was necessitated by his need to escape his brother Esav's murderous anger at having been cheated out of his birthright. Upon his return, the first thing Yaakov must do is face Esav, who is approaching Yaakov and his family with four hundred men. Yaakov takes the necessary steps - he defensively divides his family into two camps, he prays to God, and he sends a gift to Esav, in an attempt to placate him.

Just before he does these three things, the Torah tells us his state of mind: "And Yaakov was very afraid, and upset." The obvious textual difficulty is the double language: what is indicated by his being both "very afraid" and "upset"? Rashi, quoting the Midrash, supplies a well-known answer: Yaakov was afraid that he might be killed by Esav, and upset at the possibility of his killing others in the fight with his brother.

This midrash is often used as a model for and example of Jewish morality in war-time: we not only worry about our own safety, we are also concerned about the moral dimension of how we wage war: the safety of others, the lives we will take. Although, perhaps, there are some who would not agree, here in Israel we tend to pat ourselves on the back for our morality in war time, our reluctance to take human life, the care we take to avoid it, and the real distress we feel when forced to do so (not all of us feel this way, but I think I can safely say most of us do). Famously, Golda Meir, Israel's Prime Minister during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, said to Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt:"We can forgive you for killing our sons. We can never forgive you for making our sons kill yours."

At least one of the Rabbis of the Talmud, however, did not like what Yaakov what thinking in this verse. Rabbi Yaakov Bar Idi, in Tractate Brachot asked: Why should Yaakov be afraid? After all, God had already, years earlier, promised him that He would protect and watch over him, wherever he may go. He should have faith, believe. Why is he nervous about Esav now? The answer he gives is that Yaakov was afraid that he might have sinned during the intervening years after God's original promise to protect him, and his sin, or sins, may, perhaps, cause him to lose his position as God's favorite, and, along with that, His protection.

In trying to understand exactly what sins Yaakov may have committed during this time, some of the Rabbis hypothesize a very specific one: during the years he was away from home, he, obviously, failed to carry out the mitzvah of honoring his parents. To further complicate things, Esav, who stayed at home, is seen by the Rabbis, based on his behavior in the Torah, as an exemplary son, always honoring and caring for his father, a model, in fact, of a dutiful child. Esav, during the twenty years of Yaakov's absence, actually did do this mitzvah; in fact, he did it very well. This is what creates the disadvantage which Yaakov now feels.

I think this additional wrinkle not only clarifies the notion of Yaakov's worrying being killed and killing others, it takes it a crucial step further. As Yaakov thinks about his upcoming meeting with Esav, which may well end in violence, he realizes that he, Yaakov, may not only be about to shed blood. Worse than that: he really might not have the right to shed that blood at all, as he might not even be the good guy in this interaction, he might not even deserve to beat Esav, from a moral/ethical perspective. Their relationship with their father Yitzchak was what Yaakov and Esav's negative interactions were all about, it defined who they were: who is the real heir, who is his chosen son, whom will he bless? Yaakov has always acted under the assumption that he was the proper heir to his father's legacy, not Esav. Now, twenty years later, he is no longer so sure, no longer able to state with certainty that he has behaved better than Esav, is a better and more loving son than him, and therefore deserves not only his father's blessing but God's help and protection as well. He is no longer certain that he has God on his side.

Except for the Canadians, everyone reading this is a citizen of a country at war, a country which is, almost on a daily basis, killing people whom we define as bad guys. Worrying about being responsible for this killing is certainly the moral position we all need to take. Wondering if we are really the good guys, if God is really on our side, is, apparently, a question our tradition wants us to ask as well.

Shabbat Shalom,
Shimon

In this week's portion, Va'yetze, Yaakov, fleeing from his brother Esav, leaves home and goes to Charan, the ancestral home of Abraham. There he marries Rachel, whom he loves, and is tricked into marrying her older sister Leah, whom he does not. Rachel, we are told, is barren, whereas God takes pity on Leah, and blesses with children. Her first three sons are given names which indicate that: God saw her suffering and now caused her husband to love her by giving her a son - Reuven; He heard that she was unloved and therefore gave her another child, Shimon; and, with the birth of this third child, Levi, Yaakov will now come to love her.

The fourth son she names Yehuda, saying: "This time I will give thanks (odeh) to God". The obvious question is why she thanked God only now, after the birth of her fourth son. The earlier sons were named for the kindness God had shown her by blessing her with children, but only now, with the fourth birth, does she actually thank Him. Why?

Rashi answers in this way: as the Torah tells us, there were four wives involved here - Rachel and Leah, and their two servant girls, Bilha and Zilpah, who also bore Yaakov sons. The four wives prophetically assumed that each one would bear three children, adding up to the grand total of twelve tribes. When Leah bore a fourth son, she thanked God for privileging her above the other wives. The Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, Provence, 1160-1235) seems to agree, and adds that thanks were appropriate as Leah, with the birth of a fourth son, received more than she had ever asked for, and the Ibn Ezra (Spain, 12th century) adds that she now, therefore, will stop asking, as she has more than enough, so the thank is like a 'that's enough, my plate (or my crib, in this case) is full'.

An interesting understanding of the dynamics of thanksgiving emerges from all of this: Leah, until she had Yehuda, was glad that God was answering her prayers, and, with the names she gave her first three sons, she recognized and celebrated the good He was bestowing upon her. However, she pointedly was not moved at that stage to actually thank Him. It would seem that Leah fully expected a just God to give her the three children she 'deserved', her fair share of the twelve tribes. She fully expected a just God to have pity on an unloved wife, and give her both her fair share of offspring as well as her fair share of love. Only the birth of the 'extra' son, Yehuda, which was more than she expected, moved her to thank Him.

This could be an interesting way for us to look at issues of justice, equality, and fairness. As Leah felt she deserved her first three children, and the love of her husband, we all deserve our fair share of things. We all deserve to be treated equally, and with love. We do not owe anyone, not even God, a thank you for being dealt with reasonably; God, or man, owes us that - we are supposed to be treated with kindness, mercy, and fairness. When this happens, we recognize it, even celebrate it, but it's no big deal, we don't need to go out of our way to thank God, or anyone else, for it. And, if and when we are in a position to give these things to others - to treat someone fairly, to supply them with what they need (and actually deserve anyway) - we should not expect to be thanked for doing so, they are, after all, owed it, and we should be giving it to them.

This basic expectation of a fair and decent world, in which we all assume we will get what we deserve, for which no thanks are in order, may not be realistic, but it certainly make an assumption which would be a healthy and productive one for all of us to make, about ourselves and others; namely, that we all deserve our fair share. We all deserve to be treated equally. And we all deserve to be loved.

Shabbat shalom, and enjoy the turkey,
Shimon

This week we are introduced to Yaakov and Esav, twin brothers, children of Isaac and Rebecca, who are already at odds in their mother's womb. The Torah tells us that Rebecca suffered from their strange in utero hijinks - the Rabbis posit a fetal Esav trying to get out of the womb in order to go and worship idols, while Yaakov wanted to go learn Torah in a Yeshiva. Immediately after their birth, we are told that Esav, the first-born, was a man who knew how to hunt, a man of the outdoors, while Yaakov was a simple man, a stay-at-home, "dwelling in tents". The Rabbis see Esav as being more than just your run-of-the-mill hunter: he in fact 'hunts' Isaac, his father, taking every opportunity to trick and mislead him about who he, Esav, really is. The Rabbis tell us that Esav would act as if he were extremely religious, asking his father how one tithes salt and straw (items which are actually exempt from the law of tithing - Esav is thus shown as both a phony and a halachic ignoramus), in order to mislead him about his true personality and behavior. Later on, the Torah tells us that, at the age of 40, Esav married two Canaanite women, much to the displeasure of his parents. The Rabbis point out that Isaac also married at the age of 40, and posit that here, again, Esav was trying to imitate his father in order to produce a false, positive, picture of who he really was. Again, as with the salt and straw question, he seems to fool Isaac, but the reader knows that he has actually failed, marrying at the right age, but the wrong people.

A pattern emerges: Esav, by his nature, is not Isaac-like: he is wild, aggressive, very physical, (the Rabbis describe him as a lascivious murderer, but they have already decided that he is not one of us), not a natural candidate to succeed his father as the man of God. His solution to this obvious failing of his is to imitate his father, to try and behave just as he thinks his father would, to be like him. Although he does seem to fool his father, (though, interestingly, not his mother), and Isaac does want to bless him, and not Yaakov, as his successor, he ultimately fails, and Yaakov takes the birthright and blessing away from him.

Why? What's wrong with Esav's plan? In a way, he really is trying, by doing what his father before him had done, to do the right thing, to be dutiful, to go in the right path, his father's path. And he almost succeeds - it does seem to work on his father, who accepts him as his rightful heir - but, of course, he ultimately fails, as Yaakov manages to take everything from him, and the Jewish tradition sees him as almost irretrievably other. Why can he not build a successful, acceptable 'Jewish' personality this way? Why is he doomed to not be accepted as a real heir, a real son of Abraham and Isaac, as his brother Yaakov is?

Perhaps what's wrong with Esav is precisely the fact that his behavior is so consciously imitative, so unnatural to him, so not his own. Esav fails to figure out how to express Isaac's values in his own way (whatever that would have been). He does not work through the very real differences he has with his parents' world view. Instead, he remains who he is, with his own values, and fails totally to integrate his parents' values. Instead, when trying to live up to their standards, he engages in fruitless, pointless, imitative behavior. To ask how one tithes salt is to miss the point - every halachist knows that salt is not subject to these laws, (salt is also, suggestively, the opposite of fruitful - salt in the ground makes the soil barren). Esav's attempt to be like his father by marrying at forty again misses the point, as he marries two idol-worshipping women, which is completely at odds with the wishes of his parents. Rather than taking his father's legacy and really living it, he fails to make Isaac's values his own, and all his imitative Isaac-like behavior rings hollow, false, ridiculous.

Yaakov, on the other hand, really is like Isaac, in that he tries in his own way to claim for himself his father's relationship with God. He outwits Esav, first by buying the position of first-born (the one who inherits) from him for a bowl of soup when Esav was very hungry, and famously, by tricking Isaac into thinking he is Esav and thereby receiving the blessing Isaac meant to give to his oldest son. Even when Yaakov is going against his father's wishes, he is more like him than Esav is, more in tune with his values and goals, in that he truly wants to become the heir to the covenant. Yaakov is an appropriate heir to Isaac precisely because he is not exactly like his father - he does it his way. He is a good son because he acts independently and authentically, making his parents' values his own. Esav, with his empty, unintegrated imitation of his father's actions, ends up being no son to him at all.

Sadly, Isaac (unlike Rebecca, who does distinguish between Yaakov's real behavior and Esav's empty posturing), doesn't see this, and wants to privilege and bless Esav as his true heir; he seems, after all, so like him in so many ways. It's not easy for Isaac, or any parent, to let go of his natural desire for his kids to be like him, to believe and act and think just like him, and, instead, encourage them to integrate the values he has given them into something honest, something real, something that's truly their own.

When discussing the holiday of Purim, people (and by people I mean the kind of people who discuss Purim and things like Purim for a living, not much of as living, but a living) often focus on two verses. The first tells us how Haman suggests to King Ahashverosh that he kill all the Jews in his empire:
 
"And Haman said to King Ahashverosh, There is one nation dispersed and divided among the nations in all the provinces of your kingdom and their laws are different from those of all other nations and they do not keep the king's laws, and it is of no benefit to the king to tolerate them."
 
This verse is often seen as a clever and correct assessment by Haman of the weakness of the Jewish people: they are "dispersed and divided" throughout the kingdom. It is precisely this lack of unity, the lack of a central place or position within Persian society, which is what makes the Jews so vulnerable, and such an inviting and easy target.
 
Later on in the Megillah, when Esther decides to try to save her people and plead their case to the King, she gives Mordechai  the following instructions:   
 
"Go, gather together all the Jews who are to be found in Shushan and fast for me; don't eat and don't drink for three days..."
 
Esther's instructions are often seen to be in dialogue with Haman's speech, as a kind of 'tikkun' or corrective to the Jewish problem that he so correctly points out, the fatal weakness of being divided and dispersed among the nations. Go and gather together all the Jews, she demands, unite them, put an end to the differences which divide them, and make them one nation. With that done, I will feel able to go to bat for them with Ahashverosh. Typically, this verse, juxtaposed with what Haman said to the king, is used as a plea for Jewish unity, pointing out the danger of being divided, and the strength in being united.
 
It seems to me, however, that Haman's words to the king should be understood differently. Although he does point out that the Jews are "dispersed and divided",  he also calls them "one nation" ("am echad") and ascribes to them a unique and separate legal system, which sets them apart from the other nations. Perhaps a more correct reading of Haman's analysis of the Jewish condition is this: they are a nation which manages to be dispersed and divided and yet, at the same time, unified and distinct. Haman may, in fact, be pointing not to their weakness but, rather, to their strength: their ability to be a single nation while at the same time being multi-faceted, holding different opinions, living in different places and doing different things. Perhaps he is actually pointing to something strange and powerful in the Jewish people, that they are one, but are not monolithic. In fact, perhaps they are one by virtue of being dispersed and divided, by being flexible enough and open enough to include all kinds of Jews from all kinds of places together in one Jewish nation. It is precisely this duality, this ability to be "one nation...[whose] laws are different from those of all other nations", while at the same time being "dispersed and divided" that gives us the ability to defeat a Haman, and which so frightened him. Haman understood that, paradoxically, our unity derives from our differences.
 
Purim sameach,
Rabbi Shimon Felix
The Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel

One of the central themes of Rosh Hashanah is, of course, the blowing of the shofar. Although the Torah is not that clear about what instrument we are actually meant to  use to sound a blast on this day, tradition mandates a ram's horn. The reason for this is that we are thereby reminded, and, at the same time, we remind God, of the akedah - the binding of Isaac - in which Abraham fulfills God's commandment to offer up his beloved son as a sacrifice, only to be stopped at the last moment, and have a  ram substituted in his son's stead. For this reason, we not only blow the shofar, but also read the story of the akedah in the synagogue: Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment, is when we want to focus on Abraham's loyalty and dedication, both as a kind of plea to God for our sakes, as well as a model for us of religious devotion.  
 
The akedah is, famously, one of the most difficult stories of the Torah. Why did God demand this horrific sacrifice? Did He really mean it at first, and then changed His mind? Why did Abraham acquiesce? What was Isaac thinking? The medieval commentator on the Bible, Rashi, tries to solve at least one of these problems. In his commentary, he tells us - twice, once at the beginning of the story and once at the end - that God never meant for Abraham to actually kill Isaac. If you read the Biblical text carefully, Rashi claims, you will see that all God said was to "raise him up there as an offering". He never actually says to slaughter  him. Once you take him up to Mount Moriah, bind him, and place him on the altar, you have done what  I commanded you to, "raise him up as an offering", and not kill him; you've done that, now bring him down.
 
This clever reading is all well and good, in as much as it saves God from being a liar, or inconsistent: he always meant one thing, offer Isaac, don't slaughter him. But what about Abraham? What was he meant to be thinking? Clearly, if he had been as clever as Rashi, and read God's commandment as ending with just raising Isaac up, the entire exercise would have been a joke: Abraham, with a nod and a wink, going through the motions of sacrificing his son, while knowing full well how it would all end. Surely, for the akedah to have any meaning, he must have read the commandment incorrectly (from Rashi's point of view), and thought that he was really meant to slaughter Isaac. What then, is the point of Rashi's clever reading of the mitzvah? Is it just to get God off the hook from the charge of being false and inconsistent with Abraham, on a technicality (no,no, pay attention, look at the text more carefully, I didn't really say that)? Is Rashi like some clever lawyer with a contact he's trying to wriggle his client out of (sorry, lawyers)?
 
It seems to me that we, and not God, are the actual focus, and the beneficiaries, of Rashi's tricky literal reading of the text. Rashi shows us that once we know the whole akedah story, including how it ends, with God teaching Abraham that He does not want this human sacrifice, we then can go back and see that, if read carefully, the happy ending was clearly there from the beginning, in the words of God, if we only know how to read His words properly. This going back and re-reading the original divine commandment, based on the story's denouement, teaches me, the reader, that if I know that something in the Torah can NOT be so, can NOT be what God is really saying to or demanding of me - just as the slaughter of Isaac, we learn at the end of the story,  could not possibly have been what God really wanted - then I must find a way to read the Torah accordingly. I must find a way to read the words of God so that they match what I know to be moral, decent, and true. Just as Rashi, at the end of the story, learns a lesson in morality, and then goes back and finds that lesson embedded in the initial commandment -"I said raise him up, I never said to slaughter him" - we, too, must read the Torah so that it contains the moral positions we know to be true. Any other reading of the Torah would be as wrong as Abraham's initial misunderstand of God's commandment, when he thought, impossibly, that God could really ask him to kill his son.
 
I'd like to wish you all, with your families and loved ones, a happy and healthy new year, l'shana tova tikatevu v'taychatemu - may you be written and sealed for a good year.
Shimon

Since Hegel introduced it, the concept of the "Other"  - the notion that individuals and groups are, to a large degree, defined by their interaction with and understanding of those outside of and unlike themselves - the Other - has been central to the work of many philosophers (including many Jewish ones, such as Buber and Levinas), psychologists, social scientists, and ethicists. In Hegel's original presentation of the notion of the Other, he used a kind of parable, in which two people ("self-conciousnesses") meet. This meeting is complicated, and I will not discuss most of what Hegel has to say about it, other than to point out the negative nature of the interaction, which is, at first, seen as a kind of struggle to the death, and which then progresses to an unsatisfactory Master-Slave relationship. In subsequent, mostly socio-political treatments of the Other, it is the way one is oppressed, marginalized, or denied, that gives one that status.
 
In this week's parsha, Bereshit (Genesis), the world is, as we know, created by God. There is a well-known and much-discussed question connected with the creation, one which especially interested the later (16th-17th century) Kabbalists: Why? Why did God create the world? What need could have possibly motivated or compelled Him to move beyond His perfect, solitary, all-inclusive existence, and create something outside of, Other than, Himself?
 
There is an equally well-known answer, supplied by, among others, Rav Chaim Vital, a student of the Ari, who lived in Zfat, in the Galilee, in the 16th-17th centuries: God created the world in order to "do good for his creatures". In this understanding,  God really was perfect in His pre-creation all-encompassing aloneness, but something was missing: the opportunity for God to do good, to show kindness, to do kindness, to another being. As Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzato puts it in his book Sefer Hadrachim: "Behold, the goal of creation was to do good with His goodness, to those other than Him."
 
The contrast with Hegel's description of the initial fraught encounter with the Other, and with the normative understanding of social scientists of the Other as the oppressed and marginalized, could not be more pronounced. According to the Kabbalists, the original Other - the entire created universe, which stands outside of God, the Creator - exists solely as an opportunity for God to do good; to help and sustain beings other than Himself. The Other - the universe - is that which gives God the opportunity to express and actualize an attribute of His - goodness - which He could not actualize in isolation.
 
If, as the Rabbis encourage us to do with the mitzvah (commandment) of l'hidamot b'drachav (to be imitative of God and His attributes),  we are meant to understand God and act like Him, then we should emulate God in this as well: The Other should be seen as an opportunity to fully actualize ourselves, to express that which exists within us potentially and make it real - to act on all that is good within us, and bestow it upon others. This is the most basic, elemental way in which we can imitate God, whose first act as God was to create an entire universe, just so that he could take that which was good within Him and make it actual by sharing it with the Others Her created.   
 
I write a lot of stuff about the Torah, and who knows when I'm right, but I know that the above is true. My granddaughter Atara, who is five, was absolutely wonderful from the day she was born. However, when her brother Ido was born, we began to see a goodness in her that we always knew was there, but which could not really exist in the world until she had someone to share it with, someone to give it to. She has taught me how the existence of the Other - a baby brother, about as Other as it gets -  gives us the opportunity to make real the best that is within us: to take our potential for good, create a positive interaction with an Other, and thereby make the good within us, and ourselves, fully real. (My own kids were wonderful when they were little, too, but the first five were boys, so they didn't show it so transparently, and the last, our daughter, was our last, and had to struggle with five older brothers, so she needed to find other arenas in which to be wonderful, which she has.)   
 
Shabbat Shalom,
Shimon