ParshaNut

It’s not a very pleasant message. A lot of it is filled with vicious condemnation of the very people Moses is addressing:

For they are a treacherous breed,

Children with no loyalty in them. (Deut. 32:20)

כִּי דוֹר תַּהְפֻּכֹת הֵמָּה,

בָּנִים לֹא-אֵמֻן בָּם.

Not exactly a fond farewell.

So why turn to poetry? Is Moses really just a closet artist, who wants to compose one last piece? Is this some pre-death ritual performance? Does he think the people will remember his last words better if they rhyme?

Actually, the reason for the poem was given in last week’s parsha, and it was God who wanted it done:

Now, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this poem will be My witness for the people of Israel. (Deut. 31:19)

וְעַתָּה, כִּתְבוּ לָכֶם אֶת-הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת, וְלַמְּדָהּ אֶת-בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, שִׂימָהּ בְּפִיהֶם:  לְמַעַן תִּהְיֶה-לִּי הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת, לְעֵד--בִּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל.

Rashi and Nachmanides both understand “this poem” to refer to the upcoming Ha'azinu poem. And, in fact, Moses does end up writing it down right after he finishes.

And if that’s true, then we have our answer. The poem is meant as a “witness for the people.” Now what does that mean?

The Ibn Ezra is the only one of the classical commentators who gives a good answer. He says that:

It is as if the poem answers those who will say, “Why is all this happening to us?”

כאילו השיר' עונה לאשר יאמרו למה מצאתנו כל זאת

So, in the future, when some of the doom and gloom that is foretold actually comes to pass, people will turn to one another and say, “Hmm….remember that poem? Turns out Moses was right.”

That, I have to say, is a pretty depressing reason for a poem.

But there is another interpretation of this verse. The Talmud (Nedarim 38) reads “Now, write down this poem” as referring to the whole Torah.

The Torah is a poem! That’s a strange claim, and there’s some debate, but they bring a proof from the end of the verse, “In order that this poem will be My witness.” And that seems to settle it.

This interpretation does make more sense of the witness part of the verse - the Torah acts as God’s eternal witness, testifying to the Divine revelation and God’s will. But it leaves us with another big question: What does it mean to call the whole Torah a poem?

And for that, I’m going to step aside and let the great 19th-century commentator, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (the Netziv) take over. Because his answer is one of the most beautiful pieces on Torah, and on poetry, that I have ever read. He quotes the piece of Talmud we mentioned, and then goes on to say:

We still have to understand how the whole Torah could be called a poem! Surely it is not written in the language of poetry. Rather, the answer is that Torah has in it the nature and the richness of poetry.

הא מיהא יש להבין היאך נקראת כל התורה שירה, והרי לא נכתבה בלשון של שירה. אלא על־כרחך יש בה טבע וסגולת השירה

A. (The Nature) - For the Torah speaks in a fragmented language. And it is well-known to anyone who has studied that this language of fragments is very different from the language of prose.

In a poem, the idea is not fully explained the way it is in prose. And so, one has to look at it sideways, saying that one rhyme means this, and another rhyme means that. And that is not just creative interpretation. That is simply the nature of poetry, even the most basic poetry.

And it is further understood that one who deeply studies an idea expressed in this poetic form, becomes connected to it. The illuminating language of the poem and its unique grammar is far sweeter to him than to one who simply comes to read it quickly and extract the main idea…

This is the nature of the whole Torah as well, whose stories are not fully explained. Rather, one has to make insights and explanations based on the intricacies of the language. And this is not just creative interpretation. On the contrary, this is the most basic way to understand the verses…

א) דבשיר אין העניין מבואר יפה כמו בספור פרזי, וצריך לעשות הערות מן הצד — דזה החרוז כוון לזה הסיפור, וזה החרוז כוון לזה — ולא מיקרי דרוש, אלא כך הוא טבע השיא, אפילו של הדיוט. ומושכל עוד, דמי שיודע בטוב עניין בטוב עניין שהביא לידי מליצה זו שנתחבר עליו, מתוק לו אור לשון של השיר ודקדוקה הרבה יותר מלאיש שאין לו ידיעה מתכונת העניין, ורק בא להתבונן מן המליצה תורף העניין,ומזה עלול הוא להשערות בדויות, מה שלא היה מעולם ולא לזה כיוון המשורר. כך הוא טבע כל התורה, שאין הסיפור שבה מבואר יפה, אלא יש לעשות לו הערות ופירושים לדקדוקי הלשון, ולא נקרא דרוש, אלא כך הוא פשט המקרא.

B. (The Richness) In poetry, there is a richness that comes from it having been adorned with all kinds of hints, in a way that isn’t done with prose. Like the custom of using the first letter in each line to spell out the alphabet, or to write out the poet’s name. There is a richness that is special to this fragmented language and not to prose. And it is well known that in order to achieve this level of richness, the poet is often forced to bend the language, so that the beginning letters end up being the ones he is seeking.

ב) דבשיר יש סגולה לפארה ברמזים מה שאינו מעניין השיר, כמו שנהוג לעשות ראשי החרוזים בדרך א"ב או שם המחבר, וסגולה זו מיוחדת במליצה ולא בסיפור פרזי. וידוע דסגולה זו מכרחת הרבה פעמים להמחבר לעקם את הלשון כמעט, רק כדי שיחלו ראשי החרוזים באות הנדרש לו.

So it is exactly with the whole of the Torah, all of it.

Aside from the most basic, simple reading, there is in every word many secrets and hidden ideas. Because of this, there are many instances when the language of the Torah is not to be read literally.

And all this is not true for the Holy Torah alone, but with all sacred scripture.

ודבר זה ממש היא בכל התורה כולה. שמלבד העניין המדובר בפשט המקרא, עוד יש בכל דבר הרבה סודות ועניינים נעלמים אשר מחמת זה בא כל פעם המקרא בלשון שאינו מדוייק כל־כך. וכל זה אינו רק בתורה הקדושה, אלא בכל מקראי קודש.

We read poetry for the same reason that we read scripture. Because the mystery of the language beckons us in, invites us to take our time with it, to savor the experience. We soak ourselves in the words. And then we become connected to those words. We recite them over and over again, and they taste sweet on our tongues.

We read poetry because we sense that there are secrets hidden inside, ideas that cannot be expressed in everyday language. The possibilities for meaning are endless, and we are always chasing after more. We delight in the artistry of word-bending, and we suspect that even the particular form of the poem is telling us something - perhaps something about the poet, perhaps something about ourselves.

It’s true, we don’t “need” poetry. We can get by communicating in prose, and take care of the basic functions of human life. The fact that we write poetry is a testament to our search for something more. Some kind of hidden beauty, some kind of deeper meaning.

Poetry, like Torah, is a “witness to the people,” a witness to our eternal quest for transcendence.

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Ha’azinu:

http://parshanut.com/post/165546856531/a-rock-and-a-hard-place-parshat-haazinu

That is precisely the interpretation of the phrase given, in our parsha, by the Ibn Ezra:

I will hide My face - So if they call to me, I will not answer.

הסתר אסתיר. שאם יקראו אלי לא אענם

And the Seforno:

I will hide my face - from saving them.

אסתיר פני מהצילם

This hiding is, indeed, the worst punishment of all, because it indicates a potential relief from all the other punishments, which is then deliberately denied. What a terrifying image of God. It is almost as if God felt a kind of malice towards us!

The Chizkuni has a slightly gentler approach. He says that the hiding of God’s face:

…is done out of love. Like a person whose child has sinned, who says, “Just don’t lash him in front of me!” Because he loves him so.

זו היא דרך חבה כאדם שחטא לו בנו ואומר להלקותו שלא בפניו מתוך שאוהבו.

So here, the hiding is not born of anger, but affection. It does not represent God’s unwillingness to alleviate our suffering, but God’s own pain at having to witness it.

Still, this is not a good situation to be in. God may be hiding God’s face out of more tender motivations, but the end result is a feeling of abandonment. The Hidden Face, it seems, is always a bad sign.

There is, however, another way of understanding the whole phenomenon of hiddenness. The Book of Proverbs contains the following saying:

The glory of God is a hidden thing. The glory of kings is a knowable thing. (Prov. 25:2)

כְּבֹ֣ד אֱ֭לֹהִים הַסְתֵּ֣ר דָּבָ֑ר וּכְבֹ֥ד מְ֝לָכִ֗ים חֲקֹ֣ר דָּבָֽר

Here, the hidden nature of God seems like part of God’s essence, almost a good thing, made all the more sacred by its obscurity.

Now, the poetic style of Proverbs makes it easy to dismiss its aphorisms as mere rhetorical flourish. But really, isn’t this formulation of God’s hiddenness much closer to everything we’ve seen so far in the Torah’s narrative?

When, for example, Moses begged God, “Please, show me your glory!” God replied:

You cannot see My face, for a person cannot see me and live! (Exodus 33:23)

לֹ֥א תוּכַ֖ל לִרְאֹ֣ת אֶת־פָּנָ֑י כִּ֛י לֹֽא־יִרְאַ֥נִי הָאָדָ֖ם וָחָֽי

The hiding of God’s face, then, is not a punishment. It is simply a description of the vast distance between our powers of perception and the true nature of God’s essential being. We cannot see God’s face, for if we did, we would lose our separateness and cease to exist. It would kill us. In that sense, the true punishment would be not the hiding, but the revealing of God’s face.

In like manner, even when recalling the greatest moment of direct experience of the presence of God, the revelation on Mount Sinai, we are told to remember to:

Be very careful - for you saw no visual image on the day that God spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire - not to make for yourselves a sculptured image in any likeness of the form of a man or a woman. (Deuteronomy 4:15)

וְנִשְׁמַרְתֶּ֥ם מְאֹ֖ד לְנַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם כִּ֣י לֹ֤א רְאִיתֶם֙ כָּל־תְּמוּנָ֔ה בְּי֗וֹם דִּבֶּ֨ר ה' אֲלֵיכֶ֛ם בְּחֹרֵ֖ב מִתּ֥וֹךְ הָאֵֽשׁ׃ פֶּ֨ן־תַּשְׁחִת֔וּן וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֥ם לָכֶ֛ם פֶּ֖סֶל תְּמוּנַ֣ת כָּל־סָ֑מֶל תַּבְנִ֥ית זָכָ֖ר א֥וֹ נְקֵבָֽה׃

Revelation itself is a testament to the impossibility of seeing God in any form. The truest encounter with God is the one that shows that God is fundamentally hidden.

And then the first two of the Ten Commandments, the first utterances of the revelation, play out precisely this dialectic. The first is: “I am the Lord your God.” In other words, this is Me, here I am, in the purest form you will ever witness.  But that knowledge immediately prompts the second commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.” (literally, “upon my face” - על פני). And how does one refrain from placing other gods “upon God’s face”? The commandment continues: by not making “for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above…”

To commit idolatry, to corrupt one’s service of God, is to put a face on it. The visual image of God is a heresy, because God must remain forever hidden. God is - in Its true essence - unknowable, incomprehensible, and invisible. This is the very core of our faith.

The Talmud sums that notion up brilliantly when reflecting on our original “Hidden Face” passage from Deuteronomy:

“I will hide My face from them.“ Rabbi Bardela bar Tavyumi said in the name of Rav: To whomever ‘hiding of the face’ does not apply, is not one of ‘them.’ (Chagigah 5b)

והסתרתי פני מהם אמר רב ברדלא בר טביומי אמר רב כל שאינו בהסתר פנים אינו מהם

That is, to be one of them, one of the Children of Israel, means to have God’s face hidden from you. It is definitional. That is who we are. We are the people who believe God’s face is hidden.

But if that is so, then how do we make sense of the language of cursing in our parsha? In the verse we started with, God’s face was being hidden, “because of the evil that they had done, by turning to other gods.” If God’s hiddenness is integral to God’s being, if it is even a good thing - how can it be described a punishment?!

The key to this verse, however, is found in a nuance in the Hebrew language. Because the word for “turning” - pana (פנה) - is directly related to the word for “my face” - panai (פני).

There is a bit of wordplay here, such that the verse can actually be read:

I will hide My face (פני) from them on that day, because of all the evil that they have done, by making a face (פנה) of other gods.

In this reading, the hiding of God’s face is not so much a punishment as a lesson. It is as if to say, “I see you, desperately longing to see the face of God. So you do what you think it takes. You go following other gods, who promise to show their faces. Or you create images of the faces of new gods. You want to know God intimately, to actually see God, face to face. So I must hide My face, again, on that day, to remind you that the true nature of God is forever hidden.”

The Hebrew words used here are rosh and laanah, and scholars have tried to identify them with various plants, but many translations have landed on gall poppy - a type of opium - and wormwood herb - which produces a bitter, dark green oil. If that is so, then the two plants represent intoxication and bitterness.

The Torah provides its own explanation of the metaphor, in the next verse, when it says:

When such a one hears these words of this curse, he blesses himself in his heart, saying “I will have peace, for I will follow my own willful heart.” (v. 18)

וְהָיָה בְּשָׁמְעוֹ אֶת-דִּבְרֵי הָאָלָה הַזֹּאת, וְהִתְבָּרֵךְ בִּלְבָבוֹ לֵאמֹר שָׁלוֹם יִהְיֶה-לִּי--כִּי בִּשְׁרִרוּת לִבִּי, אֵלֵךְ

So this growth of bitterness and confusion is taking place in the heart. We have identified the location of the “root.” But that doesn’t help us much. For what does it mean that he then “blesses himself” in his heart, and “follows” his heart - and when he does, what peace does he seek?

A remarkable explanation is provided by Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenberg, one of the great 19th-century German commentators, in his HaKetav VehaKabbalah. Mecklenberg takes us deep into the psychology of such a person, and reveals a painful inner struggle underlying all the bitterness:

This is a man at whose core lies a deterioration of the fundamentals and features which are the very essence of our Torah. When he hears all of this - all the particulars of the covenant, and the specifics of the commandments, covering various topics - some of which have their reasons explained, and some that the intellect cannot grasp…ָ then he prays to himself, saying, “Look, the truth is, there are many commandments that we are baffled by. My heart struggles to understand them, and I find myself in constant battle and conflict. Sometimes I am able to bring myself to observe them, and sometimes I cannot. For they are things that reason does not seem to require, and I am unable to grasp their purpose. Therefore, I will only follow those which make sense to my heart and to my intellect, and what my conscience tells me is truly reasonable. And thus, I will have peace, free from internal conflict. For when I do only those things that seem reasonable and true, my soul will be content, and I will delight in them.”

והוא איש אשר מקורו משחת ביסודות ופנות שהן עיקריות בתורתינו, והוא שכשישמע דברי האלה הזאת, כל דקדוקי הברית ופרטי המצות מענינים שונים, קצתם מבוארים בטעמם וקצתם שאין לשכל מבוא בהם… ויתפלל בעצמו לאמר הנה באמת הרבה מצות יש אשר אני נבוך בהם ולבי נוקפי בהבנתם, ואני בענינם בקטטה ומלחמה תמידית, פעם אתעורר לקיומם ופעם אחדל, וכל זה להיותם דברים שאין השכל מחייבם, ואין ביכלתי להשיגם, לכן לא אלך אלא במה שמחשב לבי ושכלי ומה שדעתי גוזרת שהוא באמת דבר בטעמו, ובזה יהיה שלום לי מבלי שום התנגדות פנימי, כי בהיותי הולך אחר הדברים הנכונים בטעמם, שבעה לה נפשי ומשתעשעת בהם

Mecklenberg begins by condemning this corrupted man, who rejects “the very essence of our Torah.” But he ends up humanizing him - giving us a sensitive and nuanced treatment of the kind of turmoil that prompts this kind of rejection. It is hard not to relate.

His heart is struggling to understand the reasons for certain commandments. There are those commandments, after all, that we all acknowledge are mysterious, incomprehensible. Some of us simply accept them. But he is locked in a constant battle. He cannot ignore the dissonance he feels between his reason and his faith. All he wants is to feel an inner calm in his religious life. He wants his faith to make sense.

He does not propose to abandon the commandments entirely. Only to leave aside those practices which strain reason and credulity. He is seeking a religious life that he can truly embrace, with his whole heart. He wants nothing more than to be able to take delight in his service of God. Is that so wrong?

So who is this suffering soul? Who is cursed with this heart full of gall and wormwood?

Here in our parsha, he remains anonymous. But there is one figure, later in the Bible, who will return to this image again and again: the prophet Jeremiah.

In the Book of Jeremiah, we read the following passage, filled with language that seems directly borrowed from our parsha:

The Lord said: because they forsook the Torah that I had set before them, and did not heed My voice and did not follow it, but instead followed their own own willful heart, and followed the foreign gods as their fathers taught them. Therefore, says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to feed that people wormwood and make them drink gall. (Jer. 9:12-14)

וַיֹּאמֶר ה--עַל-עָזְבָם אֶת-תּוֹרָתִי, אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי לִפְנֵיהֶם; וְלֹא שָׁמְעוּ בְקוֹלִי, וְלֹא הָלְכוּ בָהּ. וַיֵּלְכוּ, אַחֲרֵי שְׁרִרוּת לִבָּם--וְאַחֲרֵי, הַבְּעָלִים, אֲשֶׁר לִמְּדוּם, אֲבוֹתָם. לָכֵן, כֹּה-אָמַר ה צְבָאוֹת אֱלֹהֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, הִנְנִי מַאֲכִילָם אֶת-הָעָם הַזֶּה, לַעֲנָה; וְהִשְׁקִיתִים, מֵי-רֹאשׁ.

And again, in the Book of Lamentations - also traditionally ascribed to Jeremiah - we read the following, more personalized passage:

Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. (Lam. 3:19)

זְכָר-עָנְיִי וּמְרוּדִי, לַעֲנָה וָרֹאשׁ.

So Jeremiah has ingested these bitter herbs on our behalf, has drunk from these dizzying opiates. They rot miserably in his gut. And if Rabbi Mecklenberg is right about wormwood and gall, then part of what Jeremiah is aching from is an inability to understand the Torah, a confusion over the purpose of the commandments. He wants to follow them, to return to the Lord, but he cannot fully reconcile the conflict in his mind, and in his heart.

Far be it from me to suggest that Jeremiah himself was lacking in faith. But of course, Jeremiah means to speak for us all. We forsook the Torah. We followed our own willful hearts. We ate wormwood and drank gall. We were bitter and confused. And we were miserable.

And when Jeremiah switches to the language of the first person, it is because he is encouraging us to do the same - to say, “I am the one who the Torah speaks about. I am the one whose heart sprouted wormwood and gall. I am the one who has abandoned my faith.”  Indeed, the chapter of Lamentations we quoted above begins famously with these words:

I am the man who has seen affliction… (Jer. 3:1)

אֲנִי הַגֶּבֶר רָאָה עֳנִי...

Perchance, the Torah asks us delicately, there is, among you, a man or a woman, a family or a tribe, whose heart is turning away from the Lord? We look around. Who is it? Where is the root of this evil? Who is poisoning our waters?

I am the man. I am the woman. We are the family. We are the tribe.

These things grow inside every one of us.

More from Parshanut on Parshat Nitzavim:

http://parshanut.com/post/165339284926/may-you-live-to-120-parshat-nitzavim-vayeilech

The whole earth had one language, and singular words.

וַיְהִי כָל-הָאָרֶץ, שָׂפָה אֶחָת, וּדְבָרִים אֲחָדִים

The Bible says that once upon a time, everyone spoke the same language. And the Bible is written in Hebrew. So, one might presume, that was the language that everyone spoke. And since no other language had been mentioned before this, Hebrew must have been the only language on earth from the time of Adam and Eve on - until God came down, after the Tower of Babel had been built, and “scrambled their language” and scattered them throughout the world. (vv. 7-8)

In Rabbinic literature, however, the story of language development is not so straightforward. In fact, there is a sharp debate in the Talmud over exactly what it means that, “the whole world was one language.”

Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Yochanan disagreed. One said that they spoke seventy languages, and the other said that they spoke the language of the Great One: the Holy Tongue. (Jerusalem Talmud, Megilah 10a)

ר’ לעזר ור’ יוחנן חד אמר שהיו מדברים בשבעים לשון וחורנה אמר שהיו מדברין בלשון יחידו של עולם בלשון הקודש

Rabbi Yochanan seems to share Frederick’s assumption that the first language must have been Hebrew - commonly referred to in ancient Jewish literature as the “Holy Tongue.” But Rabbi Elazar’s opinion is harder to understand: “they spoke seventy languages.” How then, can the earth have been “of one language”? My great namesake, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kasher, explains in his Torah Shleimah that:

This means that everyone understood the language of his fellow, even though their words were “singular,” in that each one had his own language.

שפה אחת שהיה כל אחד  מבין שפת חבירו, אע’’ג שדבריהם מיוחדים שלכל א׳ היה לשון משלו

Rabbi Elazar, then, does not seem to believe that there was a primary language, but instead that a certain degree of language diversity was always a feature of human life. But where does he get the number seventy?

That seems to come from an ethnological table in the previous chapter, where Noah’s grandchildren are listed as the founders of the nations of the world. There are seventy of those descendants, and so, a tradition develops that there were seventy founding nations in the world after the flood.

But what about before the flood? Would even Rabbi Elazar have to admit that in the prehistoric days of Adam and Eve there was only one language for all humankind - since after all, we all descend from that primeval pair?

Not necessarily. An intriguing comment of Rashi’s in this week’s parsha draws from an alternate vision of our linguistic origins. As we near the end of the Torah narrative, Moses begins to recount and write down everything that has happened. And this process is described, both here in Parshat Ki Tavo, and earlier, in the first parsha of Deuteronomy, with the unusual language of be’er (באר) - a word related to “well” (as in, a well of water), which suggests some great depth to the kind of communication Moses was engaged in. In both instances of this usage, Rashi says the same thing:

Moses expounded (be’er) this Torah (Dev. 1:5): That is, He explained it in seventy languages.

באר את התורה: בשבעים לשון פירשה להם

and

Moses wrote all the words of the Torah most distinctly (be’er heiteiv) (Dev. 27: 8) : That is, in seventy languages.

באר היטב: בשבעים לשון

So, it seems that for Moses to fully clarify and record the depth of the Torah, he must do so in seventy languages. This seems to be a reference to the seventy nations of the world; that is, Moses must articulate the message of the Torah in every one of the languages that resulted from the scattering at Babel, in order to give it full expression.

But the Midrash Tanchuma that Rashi is drawing from in these comments goes back even further in its account of the seventy languages:

The Holy Blessed One said, behold, the First Person, Adam, who had not been taught anything, how do we know that he spoke seventy languages? For it says, “And Adam called [all the animals] names.”(Gen. 2:20) It does not say, Adam called each animal ‘a name,’ but ‘names.’ And now you, Moses, who said, “I am not a man of words,” at the end of this forty years after leaving Egypt, you will begin to explain this Torah in seventy languages. As it says, “and Moses expounded (be’er) this Torah.”

אמר לו הקדוש ברוך הוא, והרי אדם הראשון שלא למדו בריה, מנין היה יודע שבעים לשון, שנאמר, ויקרא להם שמות (בראשית ב כ). שם לכל הבהמה אין כתיב כאן, אלא שמות. ואתה אומר, לא איש דברים אנכי. בסוף ארבעים שנה שיצאו ישראל ממצרים, התחיל מפרש התורה בשבעים לשון, [שנאמר] באר את התורה הזאת

In this account, when Moses renders the Torah in seventy languages, he is not merely opening it up to the nations of the world, but reconnecting it back to the primary forms of expression. For the first human language was not Hebrew, nor any one single language. We were born into linguistic diversity. A return to our natural state will not simplify our modes of communication, but complexify them. There is no one holy tongue, but instead a primordial, cacophonous babble.

Now this is a message that some in the tradition simply cannot swallow. One of the most famous responses to Rashi’s “seventy languages” comment comes from the 19th-century German rabbi, Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenberg, in his HaKetav VeHaKabbalah. He writes:

Rashi, borrowing from our rabbis, says that Moses explained the Torah in seventy languages. But they cannot mean that he wrote it in the languages of the other nations! For what would be the purpose of that for Israel?! No, the rabbis would not change their language so that it could be spoken by some other nation. Rather, it is the way of the rabbis to refer to “intention,” with the word “language”… and so, too, here: “seventy languages,” is “seventy intentions.”

לשק רש׳׳י מרבותינו בשבעים לשון פירשה להם; אין כוונתם על לשונות שאר העמים, כי מה תועלת היה להם לישראל מזה. וגם לרבותינו לא שנו את לשונם לדבר בשפת אומה אחרת. אבל דרך רבותינו לקרוא הכוונה והמכוון במאמר במלת לשון…וכן כאן בשבעים לשונות ר׳׳ל בשבעים כוונות

Rabbi Mecklenberg cannot accept the idea that the Torah is simply being translated by Moses. So he instead takes Rashi to mean that Moses delivered the Torah with seventy different connotations - the same message, in the same language, but each time spoken with different nuances and implications. He compares this process to the well known rabbinic maxim that there are “seventy faces to the Torah.” Moses was illuminating them all.

What motivates Rabbi Mecklenberg to suggest such a (lovely but) far-fetched reading of Rashi? Well, first of all, he simply cannot seem to fathom the possibility that the Torah might be available for study and engagement by all peoples. The only question that concerns him is the Torah’s “purpose for Israel.”

Secondly, it must be noted, he was clearly a passionate Hebraicist. His commentary, HaKetav VeHaKabbalah, is one of the most linguistically oriented works in the genre. Nearly every comment is an in-depth explanation of the roots of a particular Hebrew phrasing. A work like that is the product of a person convinced that an analysis based on the power and depth of the Hebrew language, alone, is capable of uncovering all the hidden layers of meaning in the Torah. Why would we ever need a translation?

But I suspect that Rabbi Mecklenberg was also driven by a vision he shared with Rabbi Yochanan - and perhaps also the Emperor Frederick and King James of Scotland - of a discovering a pure, original, Holy Tongue. These men were obsessed with the idea of a primary language because it was something akin to the code of the universe. If they could learn the language of God, they could understand the how the world was created through its words - and they could enter into dialogue with the Creator. It was that potential that excited these linguistic purists.

There is another vision of the power of language, however, that emerges in response to that same piece of Rashi’s commentary - a very different but equally exciting vision. It is well-expressed by the 18th-century Hassidic Master, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev.  “Why is the Torah expounded here in seventy languages?” he asks in his masterwork, the ‘Kedushat Levi.’ He first points out that the Torah itself contains fragments of Aramaic, Greek, and some African languages. So even the original text, it seems, is not linguistically “pure.” And then he explains:

One of the reasons for this is that the language of every nation is the life-force of that nation. Hebrew, the Holy Tongue, is the distinct language of Israel. And indeed, they heard first the Torah at Mount Sinai in the Holy Tongue. But the Holy Blessed One, who sees from beginning to end, saw that Israel would have to be in exile, and so for this reason wrote into the Torah the languages of all nations. So that, through this, they would have the ability to hold on to the life-force of each one, through the language of the Holy Torah, in order for Israel to be able to survive in exile.

וחד טעם הוא, כי הלשון של כל האומות הוא החיות מן האומה ולשון הקודש הוא של ישראל לבד. ובאמת ישראל שמעו התורה בסיני רק בלשון הקודש והקדוש ברוך הוא המביט מראשית אחרית שראה שישראל צריכין להיות בגלות לזה כתב בתורה לשון של שאר אומות שעל ידי זה יהיה להם אחיזה בחיות שלהם שהוא הלשון בהתורה הקדושה בכדי שישראל יוכל להיות להם תקומה בגלות

According to this understanding, very language represents a life-force, an entire culture. Just as the Holy Tongue created a new reality for Israel in the great moment of Revelation - so, too, does every language create a whole, unique world. And we, a wandering people, will find ourselves, in the course of history, living in all of those worlds. 

How will we survive? How will we, so foreign and estranged, find a foothold in terrain so alien to us?

In this mystical vision, then, we can find our place in the world - in every world - through our Torah. For our Torah - singular, particular, distinct in its form of expression - has been embedded with every other language in the world. Somewhere in our own tradition, we can find a point of intersection with every other culture we encounter. 

He is indeed the first-born of Jacob’s 13 children. We might have expected him to be destined for glory. But even at the moment of his birth, there are portents of pain:

Leah conceived and bore a son, and named him Reuben [meaning, ‘See, a son], for she declared, “The Lord has seen my affliction. And now my husband will love me.” (Genesis 29:32)

וַתַּהַר לֵאָה וַתֵּלֶד בֵּן, וַתִּקְרָא שְׁמוֹ רְאוּבֵן:  כִּי אָמְרָה, כִּי רָאָה ה בְּעָנְיִי  כִּי עַתָּה, יֶאֱהָבַנִי אִישִׁי.

The next time we hear about Reuben, it is a strange scene indeed. He is still a boy, the family is still growing, and his mother and Rachel are still competing for Jacob’s affections. Reuben - with intentions somewhat unclear  - ends up getting himself in the middle of this drama:

Once, at the time of the wheat harvest, Reuben came upon some mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.” But she said to her, “Was it not enough for you to take away my husband, but you would also take my son’s mandrakes?” Rachel replied, “I promise, he shall lie with you tonight, in return for your son’s mandrakes.” (Genesis 30:14-15)

וַיֵּלֶךְ רְאוּבֵן בִּימֵי קְצִיר-חִטִּים, וַיִּמְצָא דוּדָאִים בַּשָּׂדֶה, וַיָּבֵא אֹתָם, אֶל-לֵאָה אִמּוֹ; וַתֹּאמֶר רָחֵל, אֶל-לֵאָה, תְּנִי-נָא לִי, מִדּוּדָאֵי בְּנֵךְ. וַתֹּאמֶר לָהּ, הַמְעַט קַחְתֵּךְ אֶת-אִישִׁי, וְלָקַחַת, גַּם אֶת-דּוּדָאֵי בְּנִי; וַתֹּאמֶר רָחֵל, לָכֵן יִשְׁכַּב עִמָּךְ הַלַּיְלָה, תַּחַת, דּוּדָאֵי בְנֵךְ.

The word for these “mandrakes,” in Hebrew, dudaim (דודאים), is related to “love,” and suggests that they are some kind of aphrodisiac. In context, however, it seems that they must be understood to increase fertility (Rachel doesn’t need love, after all - what she wants is a child). Whatever they are, the deal goes down between the two women, and when Jacob comes home from the field that day, Leah tells him that he is now obligated to sleep with her. And it is Reuben, somewhat oedipally, who secured her that right.

We will return to the oedipal, but for now, let’s push forward in Reuben’s life. As we’ve already said, Joseph is shown particular favoritism by Jacob, and this drives his brothers wild with hatred. They decide to kill him, and throw him into a pit. We remember this story as a team effort, of all against one. But look how Reuben responds to their murderous plot:

When Reuben heard of it, he tried to save him from them. He said, “Let us not take his life!” Reuben said, “Shed no blood! Cast him into that pit out there in the wilderness, but do not send him to his death.” For Reuben intended to save him from them, and return him to their father. (Genesis 37:21-22)

וַיִּשְׁמַע רְאוּבֵן, וַיַּצִּלֵהוּ מִיָּדָם; וַיֹּאמֶר, לֹא נַכֶּנּוּ נָפֶשׁ. וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם רְאוּבֵן, אַל תִּשְׁפְּכוּ דָם הַשְׁלִיכוּ אֹתוֹ אֶל-הַבּוֹר הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר בַּמִּדְבָּר, וְיָד אַל-תִּשְׁלְחוּ בוֹ:  לְמַעַן, הַצִּיל אֹתוֹ מִיָּדָם, לַהֲשִׁיבוֹ, אֶל-אָבִיו.

Reuben was, in other words, playing the role of the first-born, and looking after the younger ones. He was the one brother who did not want to kill Joseph from the start, and the only one who ever intended to bring him back home.

But his plan failed. As we know, Joseph is sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt. This must have happened without Reuben present, because just afterwards we read:

When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes. He returned to his brothers, and said, “The boy is gone! Now what am I to do?” (Genesis 37:29)

וַיָּשָׁב רְאוּבֵן אֶל-הַבּוֹר, וְהִנֵּה אֵין-יוֹסֵף בַּבּוֹר; וַיִּקְרַע, אֶת-בְּגָדָיו.

Here we have the first sign that Reuben is cracking. He has failed in his capacity as the first-born. He feels responsible for what has happened - but not so much that he is willing to confess. In like manner, he felt compelled to save Joseph, but not powerful enough to insist that the other brothers simply back off. He is a man torn between competing moral impulses, between bravery and cowardice.

This inner conflict will continue, and end up producing a man with instincts both noble and troubling. Years later, when Shimon has been captured by Joseph, who is calling for Benjamin to go down to Egypt, Jacob is understandably terrified of losing more children, and refuses. Reuben, who must once again feel panicked with the responsibility of the first-born, this time for the brother closest to him in age, suddenly blurts out this disturbing offer:

Reuben said to his father, “You may kill my two sons if I do not bring him back to you! Put [Benjamin] in my care, and I will return him to you.” (Genesis 42:37)

וַיֹּאמֶר רְאוּבֵן, אֶל-אָבִיו לֵאמֹר, אֶת-שְׁנֵי בָנַי תָּמִית, אִם-לֹא אֲבִיאֶנּוּ אֵלֶיךָ; תְּנָה אֹתוֹ עַל-יָדִי, וַאֲנִי אֲשִׁיבֶנּוּ אֵלֶיךָ.

Jacob, not surprisingly, declines. For why would Jacob ever want to kill his own grandchildren? And what kind of father offers his own sons as a pledge? Clearly, someone willing to sacrifice his own children is not the person you trust your children to.

Judah then steps up and offers himself as a pledge - and not his life, but his honor - and Jacob accepts. From then on, it is Judah who assumes the symbolic place of the first-born. Reuben has failed, and begins to fade into the background.

The last we hear of him is in that moment of blessing we mentioned above. And yes, Jacob starts by calling him“the first fruit of my vigor, exceeding in rank and exceeding in strength.” Reuben must have grasped thirstily at those words, finally feeling his father’s love. But then Jacob goes on:

Unstable as water, you shall excel no longer. For when you mounted your father’s bed, you disgraced yourself! My couch he mounted! (Genesis 49:4)

פַּחַז כַּמַּיִם אַל-תּוֹתַר, כִּי עָלִיתָ מִשְׁכְּבֵי אָבִיךָ; אָז חִלַּלְתָּ, יְצוּעִי עָלָה.

Oh dear. This isn’t a blessing at all. It is more like a curse - and one filled with venom. Jacob is angry at Reuben, and - most bizarre - it sounds like he thinks Reuben has committed some kind of sexual transgression. Is he really saying that Reuben slept with one of his wives - that is, Reuben’s own mother or one of his aunts?!

But then… that’s exactly what happened. That’s the one fragment of Reuben’s life I left out before - the most shocking one of all.

While Jacob and his family are traveling back to the land of Canaan, Rachel dies, and Jacob (also called “Israel”) travels on ahead, to be alone. And then, out of nowhere, we read the following:

While Israel stayed in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine, and Israel heard about it… (Genesis 35:22)

וַיְהִי, בִּשְׁכֹּן יִשְׂרָאֵל בָּאָרֶץ הַהִוא, וַיֵּלֶךְ רְאוּבֵן וַיִּשְׁכַּב אֶת-בִּלְהָה פִּילֶגֶשׁ אָבִיו, וַיִּשְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל

The verse breaks off there, and moves on to another topic, as if the Torah doesn’t even want to talk about it.

Now it’s somewhat unfair of me to have left this massive detail out earlier. If you’ve come across it before, certainly you noticed the glaring omission. But in a sense, that’s just my point: Here we have one of the strangest, most perverse incidents in the whole Torah - a son sleeping with his father’s wife (in the holy family that founds the twelve tribes of Israel, no less)... and the narrative simply moves on. We forget about it.

We forget because it’s Reuben, who himself is forgotten. Reuben, who lives in the shadows, and whose sad life is only exposed in rare sightings, scattered about here and there.

But Jacob didn’t forget. How could he have? Nor did Jacob forgive. We know that, for it is not only a final blessing that Reuben is denied. In the Books of Chronicles, which recounts the lineages of all the Biblical characters, this is what it says when they come to Reuben:

He was the first-born. But when he defiled his father’s bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph son of Israel, so he is not reckoned as first-born in the genealogy. (1 Chron. 5:1)

וּבְנֵי רְאוּבֵן בְּכוֹר-יִשְׂרָאֵל, כִּי הוּא הַבְּכוֹר--וּבְחַלְּלוֹ יְצוּעֵי אָבִיו, נִתְּנָה בְּכֹרָתוֹ לִבְנֵי יוֹסֵף בֶּן-יִשְׂרָאֵל; וְלֹא לְהִתְיַחֵשׂ, לַבְּכֹרָה.

Reuben lost the birthright. Not just symbolically, but literally. His portion was taken and given to Joseph. The first born of the hated wife - who became hated himself - was passed over in favor of the first-born of the beloved wife.

In other words, what happened to Reuben is exactly what our law in Deuteronomy warns against: “When he wills his property to his sons, he may not treat as first-born the son of the loved one in disregard of the son of the hated one.”

The question is: Was Reuben supposed to be an exception to the rule? Did he disgrace his father, and himself, so thoroughly that he deserved to have the birthright stripped from him? Lord knows his crime was appalling.

That is what the great rabbi of the Italian renaissance, the Seforno, seems to think, in his commentary on this law:

The birthright must not be passed away from the son because of the hatred of this one or the love of that one. But if is done because of the wickedness of the first-born son, then it is appropriate to pass him over… And that seems to be what Our Father Jacob did. For it says, “when he defiled his father’s bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph son of Israel.”

לא יעביר הבכורה מן הבן בשביל שנאת זו או אהבת זו אבל אם יעשה זה בסבת רשעת הבן הבכור אז ראוי להעביר… וכן נראה שעשה יעקב אבינו כאמרו ובחללו יצועי אביו נתנה בכורתו לבני יוסף בן ישראל

But there is another possible reading of this law, with all its hints back to the story of Reuben. Perhaps it is meant as a subtle critique of Jacob. As if to say, no, you can’t deny him the birthright, no matter what he did. Because he was born into pain, born into hatred.

He tried. You hated his mother, and so he tried to win your love for her. You loved Joseph best, so he tried to save him for you. And no one seemed to love him, so he tried to steal love for himself.

He failed to be the first-born he should have been, wanted to be. And then he failed further, in unspeakable ways, and slowly came unraveled.

But he never really had a chance. You never wanted him as the first fruit of your vigor. You were always waiting for someone else. His name, Reuben, means, “See, a son!” But you never saw your son, never took notice of him - until it was too late. And then you took away the birthright that was his due, and gave it to the one you really loved.

That you should not have done.  But it is done. And the only thing we can do now, is to make sure it is never done again.

Reuben, we see you there, between the lines. Your story has not been lost.

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Ki Teitzei:

http://parshanut.com/post/164850397026/the-bastard-king-parshat-ki-teitzei

The defect of bribery and bias is not one of those mysterious commandments whose reason the Torah did not reveal. The reason for this defect is explicit in the Torah: “For bribery blinds the eyes of the wise and corrupts the words of the righteous.” And in the Talmud (Ketubot 105) it says: “What is the reason for the prohibition of bribery? When a judge receives a bribe from someone, his mind mind becomes close to that person, and he becomes like a part of him. And a person never sees his own self as guilty. It is called bribery (shochad - שוחד) because he becomes one (shehu chad - שהוא חד) with the briber.” Which is to say, the defect of bribery is founded on a psychological force embedded in the soul of a human being.

He actually uses the word “psychological” - פסיכולוגי - which gives you a sense not only of the spirit of the Mussar movement, but also of the century they were living in! What is especially significant, however, is the way he shifts the relevance of bribery away from the realm of legal decision-making alone, and suggests that it is related to a kind of temptation that confronts every human being. And lest you think anyone is immune to its power, he goes on:

It might seem that these matters are only relevant to regular people, but from the words of the sages, we learn that this problem plagues even the greatest of the great, the greatest people in the world, and there is no man who can say that he is free from it.

Now here is where the debate begins. Because the Alter of Slobodka is saying, very explicitly, that all people - even judges, even scholars, even the greatest of rabbis - are corruptible, capable of succumbing to temptation and making grave mistakes. How far is he willing to take the implications of this critique?

All the way up to the Patriarchs.

For the Alter then quotes several midrashim which link Isaac’s blindness to his willingness to be lured by his son Esau’s food offerings, to favor him even though he was wicked. One such example:

“Those who justify the wicked because of a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous” (Isaiah 5:23)- This is Isaac, whose eyes dimmed because he justified the wicked. (Yalkut Shimoni, Toldot 113)

מצדיקי רשע עקב שחד וצדקת צדיקים יסירו ממנו - זה יצחק על ידי שהצדיק את הרשע כהו עיניו

Then the Alter, hesitatingly, suggests what this might mean for how we think about even the great figures of the Torah themselves:

Now, while it is forbidden to even raise the thought that the Patriarchs, beloved of the Most High, who ascended to the level of angels, were caught - God forbid - in the trap of bribery… nevertheless, we do learn that there is some aspect of what the torah calls “the influence of bribery,” which can take control of even Angels of God like the Holy Forefathers.

So he almost takes it back… but then he as much as says it: Isaac took a bribe. Even Isaac - who we remember as the ultimate holy man, who was willing to give his life for God - even he could succumb to favoring the wicked, with just the right bit of influence. Esau was his son, after all. Isaac loved him dearly, as any father would. But he still needed that extra offering, that food from the field, to blind him, and to tip him into favoring Esau.

If it could happen to Isaac, it could happen to anyone.

Well, this was a message that another great Jewish mind of the 20th-century, Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, the “Chazon Ish,” simply could not take. The Chazon Ish was perhaps the greatest legal decisor in Israel at the time, and is often thought to have spearheaded the Haredi (or Ultra-Orthodox) movement there, a religious philosophy organized around a strict reverence for the authority of both Jewish law itself, and especially of the recognized masters of the law - the Gedolim. These great rabbis were thought to have so deeply immersed themselves in Torah study that their minds had transcended regular human consciousness and achieved “Daas Torah” - Torah Consciousness - a kind of perfect clarity and truthfulness. So you can only imagine what the Chazon Ish would have to say about the idea that human corruptibility in judgment is universal, affecting even the most righteous.  He does not reference the Alter of Slobodka directly, but it is clear who he is talking to in his book, “Faith and Trust,” at the end of the third chapter:

There is an evil sickness with which temptation deceives us, to diminish the faith in the sages from our hearts, which is to falsely attribute bias to them. It is an obligation of the student to believe that there is no bias in the world powerful enough to sway the mind of the sage to err in judgment…

And see how temptation seeks to entrap those who wish to become sophisticated, by bringing them a piece of Talmud that suggests that bias is a force that affects both the small and the great together, that the wise are especially affected by it, even the pious men of great deeds. And this is no shame for the sages, really, because it is embedded in human nature.

They do not know that it is through this assumption that the whole generation is orphaned, and there is soon no judge on the earth,  and the courts of the land are invalidated. For even if a person agrees to the greatness of the wisdom of a sage, he will not obligate himself to listen to the sage - for after all, he may have some bias driving his teaching… And so a generation arises that judges its own judges, and everyone does what is right in his eyes. In any important case, clever ones will whisper to one another of some personal interest that caused the sage - sometimes the greatest man in the generation - to judge wrongly. And then the atmosphere of the whole city, and then the whole world, becomes one of slander, and quarreling and feuds, when faith in the sages is not strong in the land.

He goes on, and continues his pointed attacks at the philosophy of the Alter. He says that prohibition against bribery is divine edict, and not so easily understood by human psychology. He calls out the Mussar movement explicitly and says that when the idea of personal introspection and self-questioning brings people to the notion that anyone can be second-guessed - even the greatest Torah scholars - for all ideas are rooted in personal bias… then we are in danger of losing all sense of order and righteousness in the world.

This fierce debate between the Alter of Slobodka and the Chazon Ish - between the psychological understanding of human motivations and the sanctity of Daas Torah - is really just a particular version of a larger ideological battle taking place in western society. The Chazon Ish is pushing back against what some would call a postmodern relativism, which sees truth claims emerging from the perspective of one’s subjective experience, rather than conforming to some identifiable objective standard. In such a framework, morality is particularly vulnerable to deconstruction, for one’s moral values can be traced to personal preferences, which are often influenced by unconscious desires. Once we go down that rabbit hole, it becomes difficult to establish any consensus on questions of right and wrong. The Chazon Ish is worried that this is destabilizing, and leads to social chaos. If you are a social conservative, you probably agree with him. If you are a liberal, you likely preferred the analysis of the Alter of Slobodka. And just as this war of ideas plays out in our contemporary political landscape, so it continues in the Jewish community, each side with its loyal adherents.

There is one figure in modern Jewish thought, however, who complicates the picture we have been painting. Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, who was at the head of yeshivot in England and then Israel, was another of the leading figures in the Mussar movement. So we might well expect him to come out on the side of the Alter of Slobodka. And indeed, in his collection, Michtav M’Eliyahu, he has a famous essay on Truth that gives even more precise articulation to the psychological perspective:

When we begin investigating the mind’s capacity for accuracy of judgment we come up against one basic fact. There is no thinking without prior interest…

What is the source of interest? Clearly it is the will. It is my will which promotes my interest, either positively or negatively. That is to say, I am interested primarily in what I want, or conversely what I wish to avoid. There can be no interest except in relation to the will. If follow that any matter on which we exercise our judgment is a question proffered by the will to the intellect for decision. [translation by Aryeh Carmell]

Here is the relationship between desire and judgment that we saw above in the writings of the Alter. Rabbi Dessler then takes up the same example of bribery, even quoting the same passage of Talmud, which he summarizes as follows:

We see that the mere acceptance of a gift disqualifies a judge by inclining his interest to the side of one or the other of the parties. Even if he fully intends to judge correctly, the Torah tells us that he is no longer capable of coming to an unbiased decision; he can no longer see anything to the detriment of the person from whom he received the gift. His will blinds his intellect.

So far, we would place Rabbi Dessler squarely on the side of the Alter of Slobodka, in opposition to the Daas Torah philosophy of the Chazon Ish. His is the psychological perspective, which sees all human intellect as susceptible to the corrupting influence of bribery.

But in a letter to a student, also published in this collection, we see a very different side of Rabbi Dessler. The correspondent had asked if the rabbinic leadership of Europe had made a grave error in not encouraging Jews to emigrate to Israel before the Holocaust:

From your words I see that you believe that all the great ones of Israel, all of whose deeds were for the sake of Heaven, who combined intellectual genius and heroic righteousness, whose judgments and decisions were without doubt made with the participation of Almighty God…all of them are supposed to have made a terrible mistake. God forbid that such a thing be in Israel! It is forbidden even to listen to words like these, let alone to say them…

First of all I want to tell you that I had the merit to know several of these great ones personally…and I can tell you with all sincerity that the amazing agility of their minds could be perceived by even puny intellects such as ours; the depth of their wisdom penetrated down into the very abyss; there was not the slightest chance that anyone like you or me could follow completely the crystal-like clarity of their understanding…

Our Rabbis have told us to listen to the words of the Sages “even if they tell us that right is left,” and not to say, God forbid, that they must be wrong because little I “can see their mistake with my own eyes.” My seeing is null and void and utterly valueless compared with the clarity of their intellect and the divine aid they receive.

To question the motivations of our judges, he suggests, is a great heresy. The only judgment we should be suspicious of is our own. Here is the strongest articulation of faith in the infallibility of the sages since the Chazon Ish. And indeed, Rabbi Dessler is known, along with the Chazon Ish, as the other great proponent of the Daas Torah concept.

But how can we reconcile this total faith in the sages with what Rabbi Dessler wrote above about the influence of the will on the intellect? How is it that they are impervious to such influence? Don’t they have prior interests like anyone else? Or are certain great rabbis somehow exempted from everything he said about the potential for the blinding of the intellect? If so, how do we know who is in this special class?  

The Chazon Ish, at least, seemed to reject the whole notion of imputing bias to the decisions of our judges. But Rabbi Dessler, like the Alter of Slobodka, sees in the Torah’s warning against bribes a fundamental insight into the workings of the human mind. Yet, when it comes to certain minds, it seems we are to presume that the corrupting force of bias is never at play.

Rabbi Dessler himself would answer that it is possible to root out one’s bias completely, through constant work on one’s character. In fact, he writes at the end of his essay on Truth, he sees this work as the whole point of Mussar: “He has worked on himself to such an extent that he has achieved purity of heart. Then and only then is his insight clear and his judgment reliable.”

But again, how would we know who has achieved this state? How could we trust our own judgment about trusting someone else’s judgment? There is, it seems, an inescapable paradox here.

However, there is another way of resolving the seeming contradiction in Rabbi Dessler’s thought. Perhaps his own will influenced his intellect. Perhaps he was simply blinded by his love for his teachers - much like Isaac was blinded by his love for his son - and came to think they could do no wrong. He became so close to them that they became a part of him, and - as the Talmud says - a person never sees his own self as guilty.

Or perhaps, you might be thinking, it is my judgment of Rabbi Dessler that is biased. Perhaps I am just a modern liberal who wants to be free to do as I wish, unfettered by the dictates of any higher authority.

Or perhaps it is you who are biased when you question my motivations.

How do we ever decide what’s true? Or is truth just a matter of trust?

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Shoftim:

http://parshanut.com/post/164577695411/kings-of-flesh-and-blood-parshat-shoftim

If you hear it said, that in one of the cities that the Lord your God is giving you to dwell in, that the people have become Children of Belial, and have subverted the residents of the city, saying, “Come, let us worship other gods…” (vv. 13-14)

כִּי-תִשְׁמַע בְּאַחַת עָרֶיךָ, אֲשֶׁר ה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לְךָ לָשֶׁבֶת שָׁם--לֵאמֹר.  יָצְאוּ אֲנָשִׁים בְּנֵי-בְלִיַּעַל, מִקִּרְבֶּךָ, וַיַּדִּיחוּ אֶת-יֹשְׁבֵי עִירָם, לֵאמֹר:  נֵלְכָה, וְנַעַבְדָה אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים...

Hold on there. “Children of Belial”?! Who or what is this Belial? Is it the name of a god? It certainly sounds like it. Or perhaps it refers to a particular form of strange worship - some kind of necromancy or black magic. What legend lies behind this mysterious name? What strange tales of the occult are we about to uncover?

Ah, but Jewish commentary gives us nothing so dramatic. Rashi tells us that Belial is not a name at all, but a compound word: ‘bli - ol’, meaning, ‘without - yoke.’ In other words, these people are unrestrained by obligation. They do what they want. In fact, most translations do not even use the word, ‘belial.’ They simply say, “lawless people,” or just “scoundrels.” But it this usage seems a bit odd. Why have a separate, compound word for this description which could easily have been made with the two short words we already know, and why describe these people as “The Children of…” lawlessness?

Rabbeinu Bachya gives an even weaker version of the same kind of interpretation. He says it may mean, ‘b’lo - al’, meaning ‘no - going up.’ These folks will never rise up towards God. Still others suggest, ‘bli - ya’al,’ or, ‘without - worth.’

Is this getting tiring? One gets the impression that they are trying a bit too hard, and that no one really knows what this word really refers to. But why not just go with what it looks like - a name? Only the Ibn Ezra ventures this suggestion, but even he seems rather uncertain:

Belial - A name. Though there are those who say it is a compound word.

בליעל - שם, ויש אומרים שהיא מלה מורכבת

That’s as strong a suggestion as we get that belial might refer to someone specific. But if so, who would it be?

If we leave the classical Jewish canon, however, we start getting some scintillating suggestions. Belial is mentioned in several of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in language like this:

You made Belial for the pit, angel of enmity; in darkness is his domain, his counsel is to bring about wickedness and guilt. All the spirits of his lot are angels of destruction, they walk in the laws of darkness; towards it goes their only desire. (The War Scroll)

Here Belial is an angel, who has been created by God to rule over darkness, and who seems to command a host of other angels. Then, in early Christian writings, Belial is given even more power. Here a description of him from book called the Ascension of Isaiah (a sort of of long-form Christian midrash on the prophecies of Isaiah):

And Manasseh turned aside his heart to serve Belia[l]; for the angel of lawlessness, who is the ruler of this world, is Belia[l], whose name is Matanbuchus. (2:4)

Now Belial is ruler of this whole world. And now he is collecting other names: Matanbuchus. By the time we get to the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, St. Jerome will add one more:

And bringing two men, sons of the devil (belial: diaboli), they made them sit against him: and they, like men of the devil, bore witness against him before the people. (I Kings 21:13)

The Devil himself! That, according to Christian tradition, is who has been haunting this condemned city. That is who these heretics worshipped. And that is who must be purged through death and fire.

Now why did Jewish tradition never go this way? Of course, the obvious answer is that we simply don’t have the same concept of “The Devil.” But we do have plenty of angels and demons floating around in midrashic literature. This blog has toured that kind of mythology several times. But here, in the story of the Condemned City - where the explicit crime is idolatry and we might expect a particular emphasis on strange forms of worship - nearly all the commentators avoid any trace of supernaturalism, and stick to a strictly moral interpretation of belial. It is lawlessness; godlessness; worthlessness - but it is not sorcery or witchcraft. Why is it so clear in Jewish tradition that following belial is an ethical violation, rather than a theological heresy?

I believe the answer to that question is actually quite close at hand. For while there are twenty-seven occurrences of the word belial in the whole of the Hebrew Bible, the only other mention it receives in the Torah itself is right here in our parsha, two chapters later. But this time it appears in a totally different context. It is the source text for the commandment to give tzedakah, charity, to the poor. And we are famously told to:

Open your hand to him and lend to him whatever he needs. (Deuteronomy 15:8)

פָתֹחַ תִּפְתַּח אֶת-יָדְךָ, לוֹ; וְהַעֲבֵט, תַּעֲבִיטֶנּוּ, דֵּי מַחְסֹרוֹ, אֲשֶׁר יֶחְסַר לוֹ.

But there is a potential problem. Jewish law mandates that all loans are forgiven every seven years. The Torah anticipates that people will be less likely to loan to the poor towards the end of this cycle, knowing they may not be repaid. To combat this tendency, in the next verse, this stern warning is issued:

Beware, lest you have a thought of belial in your heart, and say, “The seventh year of remission is approaching,” so that you are wicked to your needy kinsman and give him nothing. (15:9)

הִשָּׁמֶר לְךָ פֶּן-יִהְיֶה דָבָר עִם לְבָבְךָ בְלִיַּעַל לֵאמֹר, קָרְבָה שְׁנַת הַשֶּׁבַע שְׁנַת הַשְּׁמִטָּה וְרָעָה עֵינְךָ בְּאָחִיךָ הָאֶבְיוֹן וְלֹא תִתֵּן לוֹ

Here is belial again. But it is no foreign god. It is no cultish worship. He is not haunting you from out there somewhere.

Belial is in your heart. It is your selfishness. Your greed. Your lust for wealth, and the cruelty you will show to the most needy. You will defy the Torah, and you will defy God in order to keep what you have all to yourself. Belial is no angel up in the heavens, or down in hell. Belial is as human and terrestrial a thing as could be.

But, of course, it goes both ways. These two reference points inform one another. If the idolatrous children of belial in the condemned city are to be understood as ethically corrupt, then the thought of belial in the heart of the one who refuses to give must be, on some level, an idolatrous thought.

The rabbis of the Talmud, never missing a beat, make exactly that connection:

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korkhah says: Whoever turns away his eyes from one who asks for charity is considered as if he were worshipping idols. For it is written In one place, “Beware, lest you have a thought of belial in your heart,”  and in another place, “the people have become children of belial.” Just as in that case the sin is idolatry, so in this case the sin is idolatry. (Bava Batra 10a)

רבי יהושע בן קרחה אומר כל המעלים עיניו מן הצדקה כאילו עובד עבודת כוכבים כתיב הכא (דברים טו, ט) השמר לך פן יהיה דבר עם לבבך בליעל וכתיב התם (דברים יג, יד) יצאו אנשים בני בליעל מה להלן עבודת כוכבים אף כאן עבודת כוכבים

You, who hoarded your money - you worshipped a god of greed. You, who let the poor go hungry - you let a devil into your heart. You, who turned your eyes away from your brother’s outstretched hand - you are the true heretic.

And we will burn your city down.

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Re’eh:

http://parshanut.com/post/164305792296/the-body-politic-parshat-reeh

And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you? Only this, to fear the Lord your God…(Deuteronomy 10:12)

וְעַתָּה, יִשְׂרָאֵל--מָה ה אֱלֹקיךָ, שֹׁאֵל מֵעִמָּךְ:  כִּי אִם-לְיִרְאָה אֶת-ה אֱלֹקיךָ

The verse continues, but the Talmud, in a famous passage, seizes on this strange phrasing - only this - to indicate something distinct about fear:

Rabbi Hanina said, everything is in the hands of heaven, except for the fear of heaven. As it says, “And now, O Israel…” (Berachot 33b)

ואמר רבי חנינא הכל בידי שמים חוץ מיראת שמים שנאמר ועתה ישראל מה ה׳ אלהיך שואל מעמך כי אם ליראה

This is the only thing that God has to ask for. That tells us both that it is important to God, and that God cannot force it out of us. We decide whether or not we will be afraid.

But this is puzzling indeed. First of all, can’t the all-powerful God just actively terrify us? Surely the God who created the heavens and earth and sent the plagues to Egypt - surely this God can do something scary enough to provoke fear from mere mortals.

But stranger still - what does it mean to be in control of our own capacity to fear? If it is within our power to choose to be afraid, isn’t that - by definition - not fear? Fear is instinctual and overwhelming. It takes ahold of us, whether we want it or not. And more to the point - we never want it.

Nachmanides complicates things even further by suggesting that although God seems to be explicitly asking for fear, God doesn’t really want it:

God is not asking for something from you that God needs, but that you need… it is all for your own benefit.

איננו שואל מעמך דבר שיהיה לצרכו אלא לצורכך … רק הכל הוא לטוב לך

Now, come on! God may want me to cower in fear, for some sadistic reason I cannot imagine, but how do I benefit from being afraid? What need of mine does it serve? What could possibly good about fear?

Well, here is a answer given by the great Moroccan commentator, the Or HaChaim. But alas, it will only add to our confusion. For he makes this audacious suggestion:

Fear provides an opening to enter into the Gate of Love. That is why when the verse says, “…what does God ask of you,” it very specifically starts by saying, “And now…” meaning, when God asks for you to fear, that is for now, in this moment, for you to take the yoke of God upon you. But this is not the ultimate goal He wants. Rather, this is what will bring you up into the realm of love.

הרי שהיראה היא פתח ליכנס לשער האהבה, ולזה כשאמר הכתוב מה ה' שואל כי אם ליראה דקדק לומר ועתה פירוש מה שהוא שואל ליראה הוא עתה בזמן הזה שאתה בא לישא עול האלהות אבל אין זה תכלית מה שחפץ ממנו עשות אלא שזה יעמידנו בגדר האהבה.

We might have assumed fear was the opposite of love. But no, says the Or HaChaim - the path of fear is precisely the one that leads to love. Fear and love are all bound up in one movement, where fear is the prelude and love is the climax.

So, putting all these pieces together, we have the following claims: 1.) We decide whether or not to feel fear, 2.) Fear is good for us, and 3.) Fear leads us to love.

Well, we certainly can see that fear was celebrated in the rabbinic tradition, but we still don’t understand why. Say all the wonderful things you want about fear, but it doesn’t match up with so many our own experiences of being uncontrollably afraid, and suffering greatly under the weight of that terror. These traumatic encounters with fear do make us not more capable of love, but less.

To make sense of the disparity between these two very different descriptions of fear, we need the help of Rabbi Nissim of Gerona - the “Ran"- a great 14th-century Talmudist who also published an important collection of essays on major Biblical themes, called Derashot HaRan. In the tenth of these essays, he lays out a key dichotomy between two kinds of fear. And he uses none other than our verse in Deuteronomy as his starting point:

There is… the fear of punishment…. [But] when it says, “to fear the Lord your God,” the intention is a higher kind of fear, which is: when a person fears God because of God’s Exaltedness and Greatness, not because he will be punished.

כי זה הצד... יראת העונש… נראה כי באמרו ליראה את ה' אלהיך כוון אל היראה היותר מעולה והיא להיות האדם ירא את הש"י מצד רוממותו וגדולתו לא מצד היראה מענשו.

This distinction, between ‘Fear of Punishment’ (יראת העונש) and ‘Fear of the Exalted’ (יראת הרוממות), is one that will be taken up by Jewish thinkers again and again throughout the centuries to explain two very different kinds of religious attitudes towards God.

The first is a straightforward fear of a God who gets angry with people and punishes them. This is like the fear of a child who wants to avoid upsetting her parents, so that she will not be grounded. Indeed, this sort of relationship to God may be described as a “childish” one, in which the terms are dictated by strict rules and serious consequences, meted out by a wise and stern authority.

This simple dynamic may be necessary in one phase of our development, but if we stay in it, we have not grown at a healthy rate. This is the kind of fear that is uncontrollable and unpleasant, the kind we associate with trauma. When this is how we fear God, we have a poor relationship to God indeed.

But the other form of fear the Ran describes, the ‘Fear of the Exalted,’ is a very different sensation. In fact, the word “fear,” in our modern usage, is not such a good translation for it. The 20th-century German theologian, Rudolph Otto, writes that the Biblical concept of fear might best be translated, in modern European languages, into the English word, “awe.” So we stand in awe of the majesty and grandeur of God, and we are overcome with a trembling. It is actually pleasant feeling - even an ecstatic one - although it is surely a little scary. We marvel at the vastness of the universe and are immediately struck by a sense of our own smallness. There is a fear there, one born of vulnerability. But there is also a sense of gratitude that comes in recognition of our ability - despite our insignificance - to exist and to partake in the wonder of it all.

And at the moment that this sensation of wonder strikes us, we suddenly feel a great love for everything around us, and love for the God that has allowed us to stand in the midst of it. Where once we stood in awe, we come to fall in love.

That is the Fear of the Exalted. That is the fear God is asking of us. And it is very good, indeed.

One question remains unanswered, however. What did Rabbi Hanina mean when he suggested, in the Talmud, that this fear of heaven is “in our hands”? How is it that we cannot control the lower, more basic level of fear, but we have the power to decide whether or not to feel the more exalted fear?

But that’s just it. Our capacity for wonder is something we have the power to turn on or off. It is no mere instinct. It is a choice - an attitude we adopt; an orientation we cultivate.

Fear of God, driven by the threat of punishment, we do not want. Love of God we may want, but cannot always find. But allowing ourselves into the feeling of great awe which leads to love - that is up to us.

And make no mistake, it is scary; there is a reason it is called “fear.” For it requires us to recognize how very small we are in the face of existence. We must allow ourselves to be swallowed up into the unfathomable universe in order to feel held by its embrace.

The price of love is humility.

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Eikev:

http://parshanut.com/post/164037627656/there-was-a-crooked-man-parshat-eikev

That is a question that Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (the “Netziv”), asks, implicitly, in reflecting on this week’s parsha. The Netziv was the last great head of the Volozhin Yeshiva, in 19th-century Lithuania, and his commentary on the Torah is a modern classic of the genre. But his volume on Deuteronomy is particularly stunning (I can’t recommend it highly enough; I’ve been kvelling over it all week).

His comments come at the beginning of the fourth chapter of Deuteronomy. The first major section of the book - a kind of a long introduction in which Moses recounts the whole journey through the desert - is over. Now Moses is turning to deliver the people the inspirational speech of a lifetime. And in his first line, we encounter a verse that is reminiscent of everything we’ve discussed so far:

And now, O Israel, listen to the rules and laws that I am teaching you to perform, so that you will live… (Deuteronomy 4:1)

וְעַתָּה יִשְׂרָאֵל שְׁמַע אֶל-הַחֻקִּים וְאֶל הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְלַמֵּד אֶתְכֶם לַעֲשׂוֹת לְמַעַן תִּחְיוּ

Rules and laws to perform, so that you will live. That sounds a lot like our verse back in Leviticus. But this presents a bit of a problem. Because according to a fundamental interpretive principle in parshanut, the Torah speaks in a language of economy. That is, nothing is extra, not even a word. So what is the purpose of another verse telling us to perform the laws so that we will live? We’ve already learned the principle of pikuach nefesh from an earlier verse. So this verse must - according to this interpretive assumption - be here to teach us something else. The Netziv offers us a remarkable possibility of what that might be:

So that you will live… The intention here is that “Life” in many places means the joy of the soul, the pleasure it receives when it arrives at its complete fullness. The general principle is that any spiritual feeling increases life. So the life-force of every person depends on the feeling of pleasure that comes from knowledge and glory. This is much greater than the life-force of an animal, that feels only pleasures like eating and drinking.

If it happens that a person loses or destroys his spiritual feelings, and becomes immersed only in the desire for food and such things, then he becomes like an animal. And then he cannot be truly called a “Living Person.” For he has wasted his potential to truly live well.

So it is that when a Jew serves God faithfully, she takes great pleasure, and feels the life-force from her service. But a Jew who loses this form pleasure is considered dead, for she has destroyed the potential life-force within her…

Someone who has been able to rise up on the path of life, and to begin to understand and feel the pleasure of clinging to God, is then able to add much more life-force than someone who has not had this feeling…

And Moses is saying that listening to these rules and laws - which is immersing oneself in learning - brings about the greatest life-force possible.

למען תחיו… הכונה הוא כמש״כ בס׳ בראשית ב׳ ז׳ וכ״פ דמשמעות חי כ״פ הוא עליזת הנפש ועונג שמשיג בהגיעו לתכלית שלימותו. והכלל דכל הרגש רוחני מוסיף חיות וכמו שחיות האדם תלוי במה שמרגיש עונג הדעת והכבוד והוא מרובה יותר מחיות הבהמה שאינה מרגשת עונג אלא באכילה ושתיה וכדומה. ואם יקרה אדם שמאבד ומשחית הרגשותיו הרוחניים וישקיע עצמו והרגשו רק בתאות אכילה וכדומה ה״ז נחשב כבהמה ואינו נקרא אדם חי שהרי מאבד מה שהי׳ בכחו לחיות בטוב. כך העובד את ה׳ באמונה מתענג ומרגיש חיות מזה העבודה ומי מישראל שמאבד הרגשה נעימה זו נקרא מת. שהרי הוא משחית חיות שהיה בכחו.... מי שזכה לעלות באורח חיים למעלה למשכיל להרגיש עונג מדביקות בה׳ הוא מוסיף עוד חיות הרבה ממי שלא הגיע לזה ההרגש ... ואמר משה דשמיעת החקים והמשפטים שהוא עסק התלמוד יביא לידי חיות היותר אפשר.

So the Torah, according to the Netziv, is repeating the injunction to “live by” these laws, not simply to re-emphasize the principle of pikuach nefesh, but to take the mandate to preserve life to the next level. The idea that the law can be broken to save a life has been well established. The question now is: What kind of lives are we saving?

We have come to take great pride in the humanist quality of Judaism’s emphasis on the importance of everyday life. But how do we fill those days? With eating and drinking? Yes, of course. But is that all? Physical pleasures are indeed celebrated in Jewish tradition, as a gift from God. But they are not the highest pleasures.

Have we immersed in Torah, cultivating the pleasures of the mind? Have we clung to God, and felt the sweet pleasures of the soul? What are the untapped potentials in our life-force?

Our obsession with the preservation of basic, physical life is understandable. We are a people who have had to struggle to survive. And so survival has become like a national ethos for us. But we have been so busy surviving that we have forgotten how to live.

And this is exactly the state that our ancestors must have been in, at the conclusion of their long journey. They had escaped from slavery, and then wandered for forty years in the desert, plagued by hunger, and always guarding against enemy attacks. It took all they had just to survive.

But now, as they prepare to finish their journey, and enter into the land where they will build a real society, they must be reminded that life is more than mere survival. So Moses tells them again that the Torah is meant to be be lived. Yes, yes, they know - they can break any law to save a life. No, but this time, he means something more: the Torah has not come just to preserve life, but to perfect it. In that spirit, just three verses later, he then adds this line:

And you, who cling to the Lord your God, you are all alive today. (4:4)

וְאַתֶּם הַדְּבֵקִים בַּה' אֱלקיכֶם חַיִּים כֻּלְּכֶם הַיּוֹם.

This is the verse that the we chant together every week on Shabbat, right before we begin the reading of the weekly parsha. For in that moment, when we unscroll the Torah and begin to immerse ourselves in the words that have sustained us throughout our long journey, we remember once again what it means to truly live.

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Va’Etchanan:

To answer those questions, let’s start with the battle that Moses is describing in our parsha, and work our way back. This battle took place in the Book of Numbers, and while we hear about the start of the conflict - “King Og, of Bashan, with all his people, came out to Edrei to engage them in war” (21:33) - and its conclusion - “They defeated him and his sons and all his people, until no remnant was left of them and they took possession of his country” (21:35) - there is no detailed account of the battle itself. So the Talmud steps in to tell the story. And it is a wild one:

There is a legend about the rock that Og, King of Bashan, tried to throw at Israel. He said, “How large is the camp of Israel? Three parasangs (approx. 10 miles). I will go and uproot a mountain three parasangs wide and throw it on them and kill them!

He went and uprooted the mountain and hoisted it up over his head. But the Holy Blessed One sent ants, which dug holes in the the mountain, and it collapsed around Og’s neck. He tried tried to cast it off, and gnashed his teeth from side to side, but he could not get it off…

Then Moses, whose height was ten cubits, took an axe ten cubits long, and jumped ten cubits into the air, and struck Og in the ankle, and killed him. (Berachot 54b)

אבן שבקש עוג מלך הבשן לזרוק על ישראל גמרא גמירי לה אמר מחנה ישראל כמה הוי תלתא פרסי איזיל ואיעקר טורא בר תלתא פרסי ואישדי עלייהו ואיקטלינהו

אזל עקר טורא בר תלתא פרסי ואייתי על רישיה ואייתי קודשא בריך הוא עליה קמצי ונקבוה ונחית בצואריה הוה בעי למשלפה משכי שיניה להאי גיסא ולהאי גיסא ולא מצי למשלפה…

משה כמה הוה עשר אמות שקיל נרגא בר עשר אמין שוור עשר אמין ומחייה בקרסוליה וקטליה.

Mountain-tossing! Ants to the rescue! Wow. And how is Moses suddenly 10 cubits tall? That’s about 15 feet - looks like we’ve got another giant on our hands!

To make some sense of this fantastic tale, we’ll need more information. The only other thing we read in the Torah itself is that God said to Moses:

Do not fear him, for I will deliver him and all his people into your hands. (Num.  21:34)

אַל-תִּירָא אֹתוֹ--כִּי בְיָדְךָ נָתַתִּי אֹתוֹ וְאֶת-כָּל-עַמּוֹ, וְאֶת אַרְצוֹ

Why, the Midrash Tanchuma asks, is Moses particularly afraid and in need of reassurance? And they answer:

For no one mightier than him had ever stood in the world. For “Only Og, King of Bashan was left of the remaining Rephaim. (Deut. 3),” He remained from those mighty ones that Amraphel and his troops had killed. As it says, “They struck the Rephaim at Ashterot-karnaim.” (Gen. 14) But he was the survivor among them, like the pit of an olive, that survives the olive press. As it says, “And a survivor came and brought news to Abram the Hebrew.” (Gen. 14) (Tanchuma Chukat 55:1)

שלא עמד בעולם גבור קשה ממנו, שנאמר כי רק עוג מלך הבשן וגו' (שם ג יא), והוא נשאר מהגבורים שהרגו אמרפל וחביריו, שנאמר ויכו את רפאים וגו' (בראשית יד ה), וזה הפסולת שלהם, כפריצי זיתים שיוצאין ולפיטים מתחת הגפת, שנאמר ויבא הפליט וגו' (שם שם יג)

So there was once a race of giant men, in the days of Abraham, and they were destroyed. But Og was too tough to kill - he survived as all his compatriots fell. He even came and told Abraham that his relative Lot had been captured in the war. So Moses is afraid of him not just because he seems invincible, but also - as Rashi explains - because his kindness to Abraham gave him extra merit in God’s eyes. Og is suddenly not just a monster. Yes, he is massive, and terrifying… but there is also something righteous in him.

Now, there is another tradition that also identifies Og as the “survivor” who brought news to Abraham. But in this version, what he had survived was not just the war. Take a look at this passage from the Talmud, again attempting to explain why Moses feared Og so much:

[Moses] thought, maybe the merit of our father Abraham will stand with him, for it says, “And a survivor came and brought news to Abram the Hebrew.” This is Og, who survived the generation of the flood. (Niddah 61a)

אמר שמא תעמוד לו זכות של אברהם אבינו שנאמר (בראשית יד) ויבא הפליט ויגד לאברם העברי ואמר רבי יוחנן זה עוג שפלט מדור המבול

The flood?! We thought only Noah and his family survived the flood. But no! Og managed to make it through somehow, even as the entire world was being destroyed. What did he do? Did he just swim for 40 days? Was he so tall that the water did not drown him? Another Midrash - this time Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer - gives an even stranger answer:

“All existence on earth was blotted out…” (Gen. 7:23) Except for Noah and all who were with him on the Ark, as it says, “Only Noah remained, and those with him on the Ark.” And except for Og, King of Bashan, who sat on a rung of one of the ladders on the Ark, and swore to Noah and his sons that he would be a servant to them forever. So what did Noah do? He drilled a hole in the Ark and would stick out food for Og every day. And so Og also remained, as it says, “Only Og, King of Bashan was left of the remaining Rephaim.” (Deut. 3:11) (Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer 23:8)

וימח את כל היקום אשר על פני האדמה, חוץ מנח וכל אשר אתו בתבה שנאמר וישאר אך נח ואשר אתו בתיבה, וחוץ מעוג מלך הבשן שישב לו על עץ אחד מן הסולמות של התיבה ונשבע לנח ולבניו שיהיה להם עבד עולם מה עשה נח נקב חור אח' בתיבה והיה מושיט לו מזונו בכל יום ויום ונשאר גם הוא שנ' כי רק עוג מלך הבשן וגו'.

So now, Og’s story goes back to the days before the flood. And not only was he connected to Abraham, but he forged some kind of eternal pact with Noah. Think of it: the whole point of that story was that only one righteous family survived - and now we learn that, of all people, Og was there, too!

But there is one piece of this account that doesn’t fit. In this version, what do we make of this last verse the Midrash quotes, the one we started with up top, that only Og was “left of the remaining Rephaim.” Earlier, we thought that meant he survived an attack against the Rephaim. But where were the Rephaim before the flood? Rashi answers that question for us, revealing the final piece of Og’s origin story:

“The remaining Rephaim,” refers back to what it says in Genesis: “And the Nephilim were upon the earth.” (Rashi on Gen. 14:13)

וְזֶהוּ מִיֶּתֶר הָרְפָאִים, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר הַנְּפִלִים הָיוּ בָאָרֶץ וְגוֹ'

Remember how there are three words for giants in the Torah? Well, the first one to appear is Nephilim, and it takes us to one of the strangest passages in Genesis:

It was then, and also afterwards, that the Nephilim were upon the earth - when divine beings came and cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the ancient mighty ones, the men of renown. (Gen. 6:4)

הַנְּפִלִים הָיוּ בָאָרֶץ, בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם, וְגַם אַחֲרֵי-כֵן אֲשֶׁר יָבֹאוּ בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים אֶל-בְּנוֹת הָאָדָם, וְיָלְדוּ לָהֶם:  הֵמָּה הַגִּבֹּרִים אֲשֶׁר מֵעוֹלָם, אַנְשֵׁי הַשֵּׁם.

These giants, it seems, were more than just enormous men. They were divine beings. In fact, the word,‘nephilim’ (נפילים), means ‘fallen,’ and many think that this refers to fallen angels. The Targum Yonatan, for example, says that among them was the fallen angel Shemchazai. And the Talmud - in the very last clue of our story - tells us that Og was the grandson of Shemchazai.

So Og was not just ancient; he was primordial. He goes all the way back, almost to the beginning. And he was not just a giant; he was partly divine. Partly, that is, but not all. Og may have had angelic parentage, but he was not himself an angel. He was some kind of blend: in some ways just like us, and in some ways otherworldly.

That is the long and twisted story of Og.

But we still have not answered any of the questions of what it all means? What is it about this giant that keeps him coming back? What role does the story of Og play in our own story?

The key to understanding all of this, I believe, can be found in one line from the Book of Numbers. It appears in the infamous story of The Spies, who are sent to scout out the Land of Canaan - that promised land that is supposed to flow with milk and honey. They are expected to bring good tidings. But when they come back, their report is… not so good.

They bring back some of the fruit of the land, which is gigantic. That seems like a good sign of abundance. But then, they tell of great dangers. The nations who dwell there are powerful. The cities are large and fortified. And, above all, they warn, “we saw the Anakim there.”

Remember ‘Anakim’? That was our third world for ‘giants,’ along with Rephaim and Nephilim. And the spies make this connection explicit:

All the people we saw there are men of great size. We saw the Nephilim there - the Anakim come from the Nephilim - and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we were in their eyes. (Numbers 13:32-33)

וְכָל-הָעָם אֲשֶׁר-רָאִינוּ בְתוֹכָהּ, אַנְשֵׁי מִדּוֹת.  וְשָׁם רָאִינוּ, אֶת-הַנְּפִילִים בְּנֵי עֲנָק--מִן-הַנְּפִלִים; וַנְּהִי בְעֵינֵינוּ כַּחֲגָבִים, וְכֵן הָיִינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶם.

So the Anakim come from the Nephilim. These giants come from those mysterious giants in back Genesis, just as Og was descended from those same angelic beings. It seems that all the giants in the Torah are related.

But the strangest thing about this verse isn’t how the Anakim looked. It is the last phrase, about how the spies looked. For the spies don’t just say that “we looked like grasshoppers to them.” They say, “we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves… and so we were in their eyes.”

The fruit, the cities, the people - everything and everyone looked overwhelmingly big to the Israelites - primarily because in their own self-perception, they were so small. The Anakites may indeed have been people of great stature, but God certainly doesn’t think they are unbeatable. To the spies, however, they are simply giants. More, even - they are the legendary Nephilim, the kind of giants that possess supernatural powers, the kind of giants that take the daughters of men.

But then, when you feel like a tiny insect, every person you come across is a giant.

The persistence of Og in our collective story, then, is a testament to our persistent feeling of smallness. Giants haunt us because we fundamentally do not believe that we are big enough, or strong enough, to survive.

That is why, in the crazy story of Og and the mountain, God sends ants to save the day - as if to say, even the smallest creatures on earth have the power to defeat a giant. And that is why, perhaps, Moses is then suddenly 15 feet tall. At first he was afraid of Og, just as the spies were afraid of their giants. But when one arrives at a place of a confidence in one’s own stature in the world, then one walks tall like everyone else.

Og is gone, but there will always be giants in the world. So long as we are small in our own eyes, there will always be some new, oversized monster, threatening to annihilate us. To defeat giants, we must begin see ourselves as normal-sized. And then, remarkably, the giant begins to shrink.

Maimonides, the great rationalist, held that Og was:

Twice the size of most other people, or a little bit more. This is undoubtedly rare in the human race, but in no way impossible. (Guide to the Perplexed 2:47)

Yes, he was big. But he wasn’t inhuman.

That confusion has been with us from the start. All of the stories we’ve seen have this element of uncertainty in them. Is Og human, or not? Is he righteous, or evil? Is he our friend, or our enemy?

We remain suspicious, nervous, wary of everyone around us. We are always worried that the giant will come back. But the truth is, we are not really afraid of how big the giant is. We are afraid, have always been afraid, of how small we are.

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Devarim:

http://parshanut.com/post/163498111626/the-original-chabad-parshat-devarim

The name, in Hebrew, is Avel Sheetim (אבל שטים), and it is often translated as something like “The Meadow of Sheetim.” But the words literally mean: “The Mourning (avel) at the Acacia Trees (sheetim).” Now, this is apparently the same place that was mentioned earlier, at the beginning of Chapter 25. But there it was just called Sheetim - ‘Acacias.’ Why is it suddenly prefaced with this extra word, Avel - which has such distinct overtones of grief?

Two incredibly rich answers, offered at different moments in the long history of Torah commentary, both attribute the “sadness” in this forest to Moses.

In the first, taken from the rabbinic period, we are told that Moses was crying for us. The Midrash Tanchuma first takes us back to Chapter 25, to the original stop at Sheetim, and to a scene where the Israelites were “whoring with the Moabites” and “worshipping their God.” The midrash then keenly reminds us that in verse 6 of that chapter it says that:

The whole Israelite community were weeping at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.

כָּל-עֲדַת בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל; וְהֵמָּה בֹכִים, פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד.

So there was, explicitly, a sadness over there by the Acacias! What was it about? And why specifically mention it now, 8 chapters later? The midrash answers:

Why were they crying? Because it was at that point that they dropped their hands in despair.

What is this like? It is like a princess who is all dressed up in her bridal gown, with her chariot awaiting to take her to the wedding… when suddenly she is discovered sleeping with another man! Her parents and relatives would surely drop their hands in despair.

So it was with Israel, that at the end of forty years, when they were camped on the banks of the Jordan, ready to cross over into the Land of Israel - that they suddenly broke out in mass orgies. So Moses and the righteous dropped their hands in despair.

למה בוכים, שנתרפו ידיהן באותה שעה, משל למה הדבר דומה, לבת מלך שנתקשטה ליכנס בחופה, לישב באפריון, ונמצאת מקלקלת עם אחר, נתרפו ידי אוהביה וקרוביה, כך ישראל בסוף ארבעים שנה חנו על הירדן לעבור אל ארץ ישראל, ושם נפרצו בזנות, ורפו ידי משה ויהי צדיקים עמו

So close! Here they were, at the very last stop before crossing over. The Promised Land was within sight. But they just couldn’t keep it together.

Sometimes, the midrash suggests, people are like that. They love someone deeply, and they want so badly to be faithful and true. But at the very last minute, on the night before their wedding, somehow the pressure is too much. And in a fit of nervous energy they go out and do something stupid and ruin everything. As if they were deliberately sabotaging their own happiness.

It’s so pathetic, so hard to watch. All Moses - our “best man” - can do at this point is throw down his hands and cry.

Or… maybe he was crying for a different reason.

Our second answer is taken from the medieval period, from the great Don Isaac Abarbanel, a Portuguese statesman and philosopher who also managed to be of the great Biblical commentators of the period. Abarbanel offers a penetrating analysis of Moses’ psychology at this moment. It’s a beautiful piece, worth quoting in full. He picks up, again, right at this strange name that ends the list of places in our parsha:

When Moses had finished writing down all of the journeys, from the day they left Egypt until they came to the Plains of Moab on the banks of the Jordan in Jericho, he remembered that God had said to him, “you will not cross the Jordan.”  He saw that his days of reckoning and his end had come, and that this is where he would no doubt die.

So he made a sign for himself from the name of that place, and called it Avel-Sheetim, the ‘Mourning of the Acacias,’ for this is where they would mourn his death.

And because of this, he worried, and was very sad, and said, “I toiled, but rest I never found. I took this people out of Egypt, and I led them through the desert for forty years, to bring them into the Promised Land. And I then came to the bank of the Jordan, but I was not allowed to cross over and deliver it to my people.

Instead, another man will prepare it and deliver it to them. It was I who planted the fig tree, but I will not eat its fruit. Joshua, my attendant, will eat it, and the Land will be remembered for him. For he will conquer it and deliver it to Israel. And my name will never be mentioned again.”

And because of this, his heart twisted inside of him, and all of his bones trembled.

כאשר השלים מרע"ה לכתוב כל המסעות מיום צאתם ממצרי' עד בואם בערבות מואב על ירדן ירחו שה' אמר אליו לא תעבור את הירדן. ראה שבאו ימי הפקדה ימי השלום ששם ימות בלי ספק ולקח סימן לעצמו ממקום תחנותם שמה שהיה אבל השטים כי שם התאבלו עליו. והיה מפני זה דואג ועצב מאד באמרו יגעתי ומנוחה לא מצאתי אני הוצאתי את העם הזה ממצרים והולכתים במדבר ארבעים שנה להנחילם את הארץ ובאתי על שפת הירדן ולא זכיתי לעבור עליה ולא להנחילנה לעמי אבל איש אחר יחנכנה וינחילנה להם ואני נצרתי התאנה ולא אכלתי את פריה ויהושע משרתי יאכלנה ותקרא הארץ על שמו שיכבוש אותה מידי העמים וינחילנה לישראל ולא יזכר שמי עוד עליה. ומפני שהיה על זה נהפך לבו בקרבו רחפו כל עצמותיו

In this version, poor Moses wasn’t crying for us. He was crying for himself.

Here he had led a revolution, delivered a revelation, and defended against constant rebellion.  Sometimes he defended us before God. Sometimes he defended God before us. Always his job was hard. But he devoted his whole self to it. Devoted his whole life to it.

Yet for one mistake, for losing his temper in one moment, God took from Moses the only thing that would have made it all worthwhile: the chance to finish the journey. The man who made the return to the homeland possible would die on the other side of the river.

It does seem unfair. Not just to Moses, but to any reader who has been following along with this story. It is one of the most tragic things in all of the Torah. This is a sadness we can surely share with Moses.

But if that were not enough, Abarbanel is also describing an even greater sadness. His Moses is so overcome with bitterness and grief that he begins to lose his grip on reality. He becomes convinced that not only will he die - he will be forgotten.

How could he think such a thing?! The leader, the prophet, the national hero? Could he really believe that when he was gone, no one would remember his name?

Only a man consumed by a massive, all-consuming, terrible sadness could entertain such a delusional thought. This is a great sadness indeed - the kind of sadness that deserves to have a whole forest named for it.

Oh God, what will You do? Will You leave Moses in this forest all alone?

Abarbanel actually has an answer to that question, an answer that also explains much of the rest of our parsha. For immediately after its opening list of places, the parsha moves on to: the commandment of settling the land and ridding it of idolatry; the mapping of its borders; the division of the land amongst the tribes; and the establishment of special garrison cities for Levites and for criminal refugees.  

Why command all these things right now, Abarbanel asks? Why not either give these laws earlier, along with all the other laws at Mount Sinai, or later, when Joshua actually takes them into the land and all these things issues become relevant?

The answer, he says, is that all of this is mentioned right after Moses names the ‘Forest of Sadness,’ specifically, “in order to comfort Moses, and to speak to his heart.” God has heard Moses crying, heard his fear of being forgotten. And so God says: Look, take these things, command them to the people, and then you will always be remembered for them.  Even when they leave you behind, they will take your words with them, and through these commandments, it is as if you will live on in the Land. “And with this,” Abarbanel concludes, “your mind will be at peace, just as if you had crossed over yourself.”

ובזה יתפייס דעתך כאלו עברת בארץ

I imagine that if Moses did find this sense of peace, it was above all through the detailed mapping of the land given in our parsha - which seems at first so unnecessary.  I’d like to think that this map is here because God said to Moses, “You want to see the Promised Land? Close your eyes. I’ll describe it to you. Put your hand in Mine, I’ll trace out the shape for you.”

I hope, when Moses spoke out the borders of the Land to the Children of Israel, that in his mind, he was already there - flying above, surveying every hill and valley, from north to south. I hope it felt so real that it was just as good as actually being there.

I hope Moses found his way out of the forest. I hope he made it home.

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Matot-Masei:

http://parshanut.com/post/148449132111/facing-the-enemy-parshat-matot-masei

The Daughters of Tzelophehad speak correctly. You shall surely give them a holding among the brothers of their father, and you shall cause the inheritance of their father to pass over to them. (v. 7)

כֵּן, בְּנוֹת צְלָפְחָד דֹּבְרֹת נָתֹן תִּתֵּן לָהֶם אֲחֻזַּת נַחֲלָה, בְּתוֹךְ אֲחֵי אֲבִיהֶם; וְהַעֲבַרְתָּ אֶת נַחֲלַת אֲבִיהֶן, לָהֶן

That’s it. They’re right. And just like that - the law has been changed! There was a clear rule, given by God. It was contested, on the basis of a fairness principle. And then God Almighty, the Lawgiver, the ultimate and absolute source of truth and justice, simply affirms the merit of the claim and rewrites the law.

Now this is astounding, for all kinds of reasons. First of all, this case is often held up as a testament to a kind of proto-feminist streak in the Bible. It is certainly striking how prominently the story highlights women advocating for their rights. Of course, the rights gained do not constitute full equality (remember that in a family with sons, the men still inherit), and would hardly satisfy a contemporary feminist. As an ancient beginning, however, it is not bad; and the explicit claim for women, by women, is unusual in the Torah’s narrative.

But the implications of this case go far beyond the realm of women’s rights, and ultimately begin to raise provocative questions about the nature of Biblical Law itself.

Jewish tradition often operates on the assumption that the Law of the Torah is perfect and unchanging. If God commands something, it becomes inscribed in reality with the permanence of a physical force - like gravity. There is room for all kinds of theological speculation in Judaism, but the laws of the Torah - these are fixed!

Then we come upon many stories in the Talmud that suggest that the rabbis had the unique license to challenge or reinterpret Biblical Law, and these moves appear quite radical. The rabbinic method of legal interpretation seemed to some almost like a new religion - and it was often challenged it as such. Entire books - many of them - have been written attempting to understand the nature and extent of rabbinic legislation.

But the idea that in the Torah itself there is an explicit case of legal amendment - this seems almost paradoxical. It is as if God hears the Daughters of Tzelophehad challenging the legitimacy of a Divine edict, and responds: “Oh. Good point. I hadn’t thought of that. Ok, yeah, let’s just change it.”

What?! What kind of God is this? What kind of Law is this?

But perhaps most importantly, what kind of women were these? Who were the Daughters of Tzelophehad, and how did they manage to bring a claim of injustice all the way to the top - to the very Arbiter of justice - and win their case instantly?

The Talmud answers this question directly, though somewhat cryptically, with three words:

The Daughters of Tzelophehad were wise, seeking, and righteous. (Bava Batra 119b)

.בנות צלופחד חכמניות הן, דרשניות הן, צדקניות הן

Wise, seeking, and righteous. Well, that’s lovely. And we might assume these are just three nice things to say about these nice ladies. But in fact, the Talmud goes on to take great pains to prove each one of these attributes to be true of the Daughters, through a careful reading of verses.

Why do we need such exacting proofs for what seem to be just general personality traits? Perhaps because instead of mere personal qualities, these adjectives can be seen as describing three possible approaches to the question of what it was the Daughters of Tzelophehad managed to do to overturn the law. And if we view the descriptives this way, as three theories of law, we find that each approach has further echoes in rabbinic tradition. Let’s take a look.

1. Wise

The Daughters of Tzelophehad were just smarter than anyone else. They understood things that others had missed - even Moses. In this version of the story, God isn’t actually changing the law; God is revealing the true law to the people who were wise enough to intuit it.

This characterization of the event is best articulated by the rabbis in the Sifrei, a running commentary on the book of Numbers, as follows:

“The Daughters of Tzelophehad speak correctly…” Their claim is correct [said God], for this is exactly what was written before Me on high.

ויאמר ה' אל משה כן בנות צלפחד דוברות. יפה תבעו בנות צלפחד, שכך כתובה פרשה לפני במרום

And Rashi adds to this:

Their eyes saw what Moses’ did not.

ראתה עינן מה שלא ראתה עינו של משה

Even though Moses heard it directly from the mouth of God, he must have misunderstood. And the Daughters of Tzelophehad were essentially saying to him, “Are you sure you got that right? Maybe you want to check again?” So he did. And it turned out, they were right. Case closed.

2. Seeking

This category is tricky, because it requires some re-translation. “Seeking” is the literal meaning, but the word in Hebrew, “darshan,” has the very clear connotation of a particular learning style - midrash - which suggests a “seeking” of meaning in the text by way of a creative re-reading of the words.

So the Daughters of Tzelophehad were not just smart enough to get the “true” meaning of the law; they were also bold enough to suggest a new truth, a new understanding of the law, informed by their own ethical sensibilities, but cleverly read into the original words.

This suggestion is particularly radical, because it implies that they challenged God directly, and somehow God relented. And this is - shockingly - precisely how the Midrash Tanchuma puts it:

“The Daughters of Tzelophehad speak correctly…” For the Holy Blessed One admitted to the truth of their words.”

כן בנות צלפחד דוברות, שהודה הקב"ה לדיבורן

God “admitted” they were right! This means that God was not revealing the original intent of the law, but conceding to their claim against it. The Daughters of Tzelophehad won.

3. Righteous

This is actually the dominant approach. These women were just saints, and that’s why God changed the law for them. They merited it through their personal righteousness. Here’s how another passage in the Talmud puts it:

The Daughters of Tzelophehad merited that the law be written through them…This is to teach you that punishment is brought about through the sinful, and reward is brought about through the righteous. (Sanhedrin 8b)

זכו בנות צלפחד ונכתב על ידן… ללמדך שמגלגלין חובה ע"י חייב וזכות על ידי זכאי

Now, it’s wonderful that these women were so righteous. But this approach seems to put the whole interchange less in the realm of legal argument, and present the change in the law instead as a “gift” to these women - based not on the nature of their claim, but on the content of their character.

Doesn’t that answer, however, take away the whole force of the story? This has nothing to do with feminism, or with legal change, or with anything out of the ordinary. This is just another story of God doing good for the righteous.

But then, we cannot forget our original point of amazement: the fact that God changed a law that had already been given. God may bestow reward and punishment in all kinds of ways, but we do not expect that to come in the form of rewriting the Torah.

So perhaps this last approach offers certain a kind of legal theory after all. Perhaps the point is that when people bring claims of injustice, part of the process of evaluating their case is to consider the righteousness of the people standing before us. If truly good people are outraged, doesn’t their goodness itself testify to the truth of their outrage?

This notion would not carry weight in every legal system. But in the Court of God, Law must be more than abstract, unchanging principles of order; it must take into account the human subject which is also the creation of God.

We live in a time when laws are changing. And many in the religious camp are rushing to maintain firmly that Divine Law can never change. Some offer sympathy for those who may suffer within it, who seem to be good people, righteous people. But, they say, what can we do? Our hands are tied. A law is a law if the Torah says it is. We can express our compassion, but we cannot undo what God has done.

Apparently, however, God can - and does - undo what God has done. But God does not do so unilaterally. God waits for us to make the case.

God is waiting for us to be wise. God is waiting for us to seek justice. God is waiting for the righteous to come forth, and receive their reward.

Where are the Daughters of Tzelophehad when we need them?

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Pinchas:

http://parshanut.com/post/162969224721/the-bulls-of-the-festival-parshat-pinchas

His donkey said to him…I’ve let you not only ride me during the day, but also sleep with me at night.  (Avoda Zara 4b)

אמרה ליה …  שאני עושה לך רכיבות ביום ואישות בלילה

Well, as insults go, it doesn’t get much lower than, “You have sex with your donkey.”

So why are the rabbis so anti-Bilaam, when he seems from the plain text of the story to be such a righteous man? Most of the answers come down to the fact that he was willing to ask God again if he could go perform this curse for Balak, after he had already been told by God that this was a bad idea. Didn’t he get it? God said no. So the rabbis suspect that deep down, he really wanted to hurt the Israelites. He was dying to curse them, chomping at the bit, looking for any opening.

But even so, what about the fact that God allows Bilaam to go? Surely Bilaam can’t take the blame for that! It’s pretty clear that he would never defy God openly. If God had said no, he’d never have left.

The rabbis of the Midrash respond to this difficulty with a startling theological statement:

From this, you learn that a person is led down the path that he wishes to go. (Bamidbar Rabbah 20:12)

מִכָּן אַתּ לָמֵד שֶׁבַּדֶּרֶךְ שֶׁאָדָם רוֹצֶה לֵילֵךְ בָּהּ מוֹלִיכִין אוֹתוֹ

Well, this is bizarre! Is the suggestion really that God will tell you anything you want to hear? What kind of God is that, then, and what is the meaning of following God’s will if it is really only an echo of your own deepest desires?

The moral significance of this radical claim may perhaps be discovered by sifting carefully through another rabbinic motif: their constant linking of Bilaam with Abraham.

The Mishnah in Pirkei Avot (5:19), for example, asks:

What is the difference between the students of our father Abraham and the students of the wicked Bilaam?

מַה בֵּין תַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַבְרָהָם אָבִינוּ לְתַלְמִידָיו שֶׁל בִּלְעָם הָרָשָׁע.

…and then goes on at length to explain how different the two figures were - how one was humble and the other haughty, one was rewarded and the other one taken down to the pit of destruction.

The rabbis imagine Bilaam himself drawing this comparison, later, when he proposes to make an offering on “seven altars - I will offer bull and a ram on each altar…”:

“And Abraham only offered a single ram!” (Rashi, v. 23:4)

ואברהם לא העלה אלא איל אחד

It is as if Bilaam is in competition with Abraham, knowing that he stands in Abraham’s shadow and trying to outdo him.

But for all the rabbinic effort to distinguish between Abraham and Bilaam, the Torah itself offers some striking parallels between the two.

First of all, we are told (in Deuteronomy 23:5) that Bilaam is from Aram-Naharayim. This is a place we know from back in Genesis, when Abraham tells his servant to go back to the land of his birth to find a wife for his son, and then we read that the servant “made his way to Aram-Naharayim.” (Genesis 24:10) So Abraham and Bilaam come from the same homeland. They are, in a sense, kinsmen.

And, of course, the whole of the Bilaam story hinges on blessings and curses, which hearkens back to the opening scene in the Abraham narrative, where we read that:

I will bless those who bless you and curse him who curses you. (Gen 12:3)

וַאֲבָרְכָה מְבָרְכֶיךָ וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ אָאֹר

This is from the scene where Abraham is told by God, “Go forth!”... just as Bilaam is eventually told by God to “go.”

In fact, it is this scene in which Bilaam finally goes - the very part of the story that he is most criticized for - that has the most pronounced echoes of Abraham:

Bilaam arose in the morning and saddled his donkey. (Numbers 22:21)

וַיָּקָם בִּלְעָם בַּבֹּקֶר, וַיַּחֲבֹשׁ אֶת אֲתֹנוֹ

Abraham arose in the morning and saddled his donkey. (Genesis 22:3)

וַיַּשְׁכֵּם אַבְרָהָם בַּבֹּקֶר, וַיַּחֲבֹשׁ אֶת חֲמֹרוֹ

He  was riding on his donkey, and his two young men were with him. (Numbers 22:22)

וְהוּא רֹכֵב עַל-אֲתֹנוֹ, וּשְׁנֵי נְעָרָיו עִמּוֹ.

He saddled his donkey and took with him his two young men. (Genesis 22:3)

וַיַּחֲבֹשׁ אֶת-חֲמֹרוֹ, וַיִּקַּח אֶת-שְׁנֵי נְעָרָיו אִתּוֹ

An Angel of the Lord stood on the path to stop him. (Numbers 22:22)

וַיִּתְיַצֵּב מַלְאַךְ ה בַּדֶּרֶךְ, לְשָׂטָן לוֹ

An Angel of the Lord called to him from  heaven…and said, “Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him…” (Genesis 22:12)

וַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו מַלְאַךְ ה, מִן הַשָּׁמַיִם… וַיֹּאמֶר, אַל תִּשְׁלַח יָדְךָ אֶל הַנַּעַר, וְאַל תַּעַש לוֹ, מְאוּמָה...

So the incident for which the rabbis accuse Bilaam of wickedness, of pride, and of following his own murderous instincts under the cover of Divine command… turns out to be an eerie replay of that most difficult chapter in the Abraham story: the Binding of Isaac.

And the Binding of Isaac also begins with God’s calling out of that same command: lech lecha - Go forth!

So of course the rabbis hurry in to show how Abraham was righteous and Bilaam was wicked; that command to go was from straight from God while that one was from Bilaam’s own heart; that donkey should have been saddled while that one should have been left alone.

But there is another way that the critique of Bilaam can be read: as a subtle - almost subconscious - critique of Abraham.

Abraham, who like Bilaam, spoke in the language of faith. Abraham, who like Bilaam had the power to deliver blessings or curses. Abraham, who, after all, was only following the voice of God.

We cannot condemn Abraham outright. For he is our father. And his unwavering faith is his greatest virtue, celebrated even by God.

Yet still… the story of the Binding of Isaac has never sat right with us. Was Abraham really supposed to obey that command? Didn’t he jump up a little too quickly to carry it out? Shouldn’t he have known that this wasn’t really what God wanted? Shouldn’t he have protested?

But maybe it wasn’t just a matter of what God wanted. Maybe a part of Abraham didn’t want to protest. Maybe he wanted to show what a great man of faith he was, and was willing to sacrifice his own son to do it.

A person is led down the path that he wishes to go.

God forbid, we could never say such a thing about Abraham.

So instead, we say terrible things about Bilaam. We accuse him of longing for a cursed thing, even though he blessed us. And we condemn him for going, even though God told him to go.

Because he should have known better. Because sometimes, even when you think God is telling you to do something, you don’t do it. Even though it sounds exactly like the call you’ve gotten before - Go forth! - this time, you just know it’s wrong.

And if you don’t, well then we have to wonder, where is this voice of God coming from? Is it really out there, calling to you from somewhere up above? Or is it all in your head?

Be careful walking down this path of destruction - this path you thought God told you to take. For there may be an Angel of the Lord standing in your way, telling you to go no further.

Let’s hope to God you see it in time.

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Balak:

http://parshanut.com/post/162686369246/the-view-from-the-top-parshat-balak

That is the question. And out of it springs a whole universe of parshanut. Now, most weeks, I bring you a selection of some of the major answers to whatever question we are looking at, and then focus in on one or two particularly rich commentaries. But this week, I want to do something different. Because I want you see what can happen when the commentators come upon a real doozy of a question. I want you to get a sense of just how vast the catalog of attempts to reckon with one problem in the Torah can be.

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at - as the saying goes - “how much ink has been spilled” trying to solve this problem. Here then, is a brief history - chronologically arranged - of (just some of) the answers to the question, “What did Moses do to deserve it?”

1. Rashi (France, 1040-1105) - We always start with Rashi, the Father of the Commentators. And his answer is simply that Moses hit the rock instead of speaking to it as God had commanded. So he disobeyed the order.

2. Ibn Ezra (Spain, 1089-1167) - The problem wasn’t the striking of the rock per se, but the fact that Moses hit it twice. The first time he hit it out of anger, so it did not produce water. So then he had to hit it again to fulfill God’s wishes, and at that point it worked. But that repetition made it look like God was less powerful, and could not produce the water in one try.

3. Maimonides (Spain 1135 - Egypt 1204) - The problem was not with the rock and the water at all, but in the fact that Moses lost his temper. That was a sin in and of itself, but especially so when he was acting as God’s representative, because he made God look angry and unmerciful.

4. Nachmanides (Spain, 1194-1270) - Borrowing from the 10th-century Rabeinu Chananel, he says that Moses made the mistake of saying “Shall we get water for you from this rock,” instead of “Shall God get water for you,” making it look like he was actually performing the miracle instead of God.

5. Bechor Shor (France, 12th-century) - Moses just didn’t explain properly to the people what was happening.

6. Rabbeinu Bachya (Spain, 1255-1340) - Earlier (in Exodus 17), they had produced water from a rock by hitting it once. Now, by hitting it twice, Moses made it look like God’s power had weakened since those days.

7. Rabbi Joseph Albo (Spain, 1380-1444) - Moses should have believed enough in God that he didn’t even have to ask, but simply called out for a miracle himself, and known that God would deliver.

8. Don Isaac Abravanel (Portugal, 1437-1508) - They aren’t actually being punished for this, but for previous sins (Moses for sending the spies, Aaron for making the golden calf). But God uses this event as a pretext to finally address those crimes without having to shame Moses and Aaron by bringing up the past.

9. Seforno (Italy, 1475-1550) - Moses and Aaron deliberately lessened the miracle from something totally supernatural (speech producing water) to something that seemed semi-natural (somehow they were able to strike the rock in such a way that it released water), because they didn’t think the people were worthy of a full-blown miracle.

10. Maharal (Prague, 1520-1609) - The fact that they displayed anger simply showed that they lacked faith. If they had faith, they would have performed the miracle with joy.

11. Or HaChaim (Morocco, 1696-1743) - When they said “Shall we get water for you from this rock,” they made it sound like water could only come from that particular rock, as if it were a magic rock, instead of making it clear that God could produce water from any rock.

12. HaKetav V’HaKabbalah (Germany, 1785-1865) - Their job was to teach the people theology. They should have explained carefully the nature of God’s power to create something from nothing, instead of just performing the act itself.

13. Kedushat Levi (Poland, 1740-1809) - In calling the people “rebels,” Moses humiliated them, and in doing so, missed the opportunity to bring them into a higher spiritual consciousness, a greater awareness of the kindness of God.

14. Samson Raphael Hirsch (Germany, 1808-1888) - When Moses heard God ask him to take his staff and raise it up, he assumed that he needed the staff as proof of his credibility (as he did 40 years before when he first led the people out of Egypt) and he was hurt because he assumed the people still did not trust him. So instead of just raising the staff, he bitterly smashed it against the rock.

15. HaEmek Davar (Lithuania, 1816-1893) - They should have led the people in prayer before they performed the miracle, to show that God was answering their prayers.

16. Meshech Chochmah (Latvia, 1843-1926) - Because Moses made it appear that he had performed the miracle himself, God was worried that the people would come to worship Moses in the land of Israel as a deity.

17. Sefat Emet (Poland,1847-1905) - This was not a punishment at all, but a proof that the people were unable to deal with Moses’ harsher style of leadership. Because Moses saw the divine vision clearly, he felt no need to explain it to people, to “speak” things out to them as he was supposed to speak to the rock. His hitting the rock instead represented his more rigid kind of leadership, which God now realized the people would not be able to handle in the land of Israel.

18. ParshaNut (United States, 1976 - present) To all of these answers, perhaps we can add one of our own. Maybe the sin had nothing to do with the incident at the rock at all. Maybe God was upset that when the people complained, Moses and Aaron had immediately come to God looking for a quick solution. Instead, they should have taken the opportunity to assure the people that God would take care of them somehow, as God had all these years. They should have encouraged faith, and thus “sanctified” God in the eyes of the people. Instead they went begging for a miracle.

Eighteen is a good Jewish number, so we’ll stop here, though we could surely go on and on.  

So how do we choose among them? Which is the right answer?

Well, maybe one of the above answers seems better to you than all the others. Or maybe you can come up with a different solution to the problem. But there is a more important point here about how we read parshanut. Whenever we are confronted with a case like this in the Torah, which seems to have prompted every commentator in history to come up with a new answer to an old question, one thing is clear: The question is better than the answers.

And in this case, the underlying question is one of the most difficult theological problems of all: Why do the righteous suffer?

Why do good people receive greater punishment than they seem to deserve? Why does God seem so merciless? Why is there no order to the world of pain and pleasure, reward and punishment?

Why is Moses left outside to die?

There are a million answers. But really, there are no good answers.

I like to think, however, that somehow Moses is comforted by all of our efforts to make sense of his death. Wherever he lies, perhaps the words of all the commentaries throughout the centuries have reached him, and wrapped around him, holding him like a shroud of woven letters.

I hope he knows that we have never forgotten him, and that we are still trying to figure this all out.

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Chukat:

http://parshanut.com/post/147400228141/snakes-on-a-plain-parshat-chukat

That’s right, I said it: Dead. Babies.

Korach and Moses are going to settle their dispute the only way things get settled in the wild - with a showdown. Except that instead of drawing guns, here in the Wild, Wild East, the weapon of choice is a fire-pan. Each side will bring an incense offering to the Lord in their fire-pans. God picks the winner.

How do we know who God picks? Well, Moses promises, you will know that Korach is guilty of treason if…

…the ground opens its mouth and swallows them, with everything they have, and they go down alive into Sheol. (16:30)

וּפָצְתָה הָאֲדָמָה אֶת פִּיהָ וּבָלְעָה אֹתָם וְאֶת-כָּל-אֲשֶׁר לָהֶם, וְיָרְדוּ חַיִּים, שְׁאֹלָה

And that, I’m afraid, is exactly what happened.  No sooner had Moses finished speaking, when the ground burst open and they went down, “all of Korach’s people.” (v. 32)

Wait…all of Korach’s people? That’s right. That includes Korach’s main henchmen, of course. But that’s not all. Look at who else was there:

…they stood at the entrance of their tents, with their wives, their children, and their infants. (v. 27)

וַיֵּעָלוּ, מֵעַל מִשְׁכַּן-קֹרַח דָּתָן וַאֲבִירָם--מִסָּבִיב; וְדָתָן וַאֲבִירָם יָצְאוּ נִצָּבִים, פֶּתַח אָהֳלֵיהֶם, וּנְשֵׁיהֶם וּבְנֵיהֶם, וְטַפָּם.  

And they all went down, into the ground.

Now, I don’t care how bad Korach was. You’re not going to convince me that his children - even the little infants - deserved to die.

Rashi is as bothered by this glaring detail as I am, and he addresses it with a lesson from the Midrash Tanchuma:

Come and see how destructive conflict is! For, see now, an earthly court does not punish someone unless they’ve reached puberty. And the heavenly court does not punish someone under twenty. But here, even those still nursing at their mothers’ breasts were destroyed.

בֹּא וּרְאֵה כַּמָּה קָשָׁה הַמַּחֲלֹקֶת, שֶׁהֲרֵי בֵית דִּין שֶׁל מַטָּה אֵין עוֹנְשִׁין אֶלָּא עַד שֶׁיָּבִיא שְׁתֵּי שְׂעָרוֹת, וּבֵית דִּין שֶׁל מַעְלָה עַד עֶשְׂרִים שָׁנָה, וְכַאן אָבְדוּ אַף יוֹנְקֵי שָׁדַיִם 

Okay, so Rashi is acknowledging that this is pretty horrifying. And he’s saying that no just court would ever execute a minor. Good, I agree - killing kids is wrong. But… that doesn’t solve our problem.

Because doesn’t God Almighty do just that here in our story?? What good does it do me to hear that we generally don’t believe in punishing children when we just did it anyway?! And yes, sure, conflict is destructive, very true - but it's God who sent them all to Hell!

I say 'Hell,’ and I know some of you are thinking, “Hey, Jews don’t believe in Hell!”  And anyway, it doesn’t say they went down to Hell. It says they went down to 'Sheol.’

So, first of all, it’s not totally clear what 'Sheol’ is in Hebrew literature, but it seems to be some kind of dark underworld where the dead go and are cut off from God. That might not be hell, but it sounds close enough to me.

Secondly, I’m sorry to tell you this, but…Jews do believe in Hell. Or, at least, the concept exists in Jewish literature. And we’ve even got our own word for it: Gehinnom.

Now, I don’t know if the Sheol in our story is the same as the rabbinic concept of Gehinnom, and if it’s really fair to say that these babies went to Hell. But let’s assume for a moment that it is. Because that gives me a chance to show you one of the most profound pieces of Torah commentary I’ve ever come across.

It’s by Rabbi Yehuda Loew, the Maharal of Prague, who wrote one of the greatest works of parshanut in the genre - a commentary on Rashi’s commentary (a supercommentary) called ‘Gur Aryeh.’

First of all, the Maharal is also troubled by this same question: how can God punish babies?? But what he says not only does away with the question entirely, but also reconceptualizes our whole notion of Hell. Listen to this:

If you ask, 'What is different about this sin from any other sin in the world, that children are not punished for?’ You should know the essential reason, which is that when we say that a child is not punished, we mean that God would not bring punishment on a child. But conflict does. Because the essence of Hell is conflict…. And therefore even the child is punished, because the punishment comes from the thing itself. For the Blessed God does not bring punishment upon a child - but the conflict itself is the punishment. So no one has to bring punishment upon the child for the child to be punished.

‎ואם תאמר, מאי שנא חטא זה מכל חטאים בעולם, שאין הקטן נענש. ויש לך לדעת עיקר הטעם, כי מה שאין הקטן נענש, כי אין הקב"ה מביא עונש על קטן. אבל במחלוקת, שגוף הגיהנום דבק במחלוקת… ולכך נענש אף הקטן, כי העונש בא מעצמו. כי השם יתברך אין מעניש הקטן להביא עליו עונש, אבל עם המחלוקת עצמו הוא העונש, ואין צריך להביא עליו, והוא נענש. 

According to the Maharal, when we say that these children are in Hell, we are saying that when adults bring violence into the world, they create a living hell for themselves - and their innocent children are swallowed up into it with them. So the story which appears, on its face, to be about God’s punishment of the mutineers is really just a representation of what is already actually happening in human society when it starts to unravel. This kind of Hell is not a punishment, but everyone must suffer in it.

But is the Maharal really saying that Hell - as a physical place - doesn’t exist?? Or am I just reading into him what I want to see? Well, bear with me, and take a look at one other place where he discusses the concept, and is much more explicit. This is in another one of his books, Derech Chaim, his commentary on Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers)

The idea of Hell and the idea of conflict are one thing. It is known that Hell is the name for the loss of a person. And so it is, itself, conflict. For conflict is nothing but loss. That is, when one thing is divided into two, like one vessel broken into two, there is no doubt that this is loss and brokenness. It only really existed when it was one. And therefore, conflict and Hell - which is the loss of existence… are really one idea. 

ענין הגיהנם וענין המחלוקת דבר אחד הוא. וידוע כי הגיהנם שם הוא הפסד האדם ומי שראוי אליו ההפסד מקומו הוא הגיהנם, שתראה כי הגיהנם הוא ההפסד בעצמו. וכן הוא בעצמו המחלוקת שאין המחלוקת רק ההפסד, וזה כי כאשר דבר אחד נחלק לשנים כמו כלי אחד שנחלק לשנים אין ספק כי דבר זה הוא הפסד ושבירה וקיומו כאשר הוא אחד, ולפיכך המחלוקת והגיהנם שהוא הפסד הנמצאים... ענין אחד להם 

There you have it. Hell is conflict. Conflict is Hell. They are one and the same. Hell is not a place we go to. Hell is a state of being. And it is one we bring about ourselves.  Sarte famously said, “Hell is other people.” And General Sherman, of the Union Army, said that, “War is hell.” Well, I think the Maharal would say that Hell is people at war - or in any kind of bitter conflict with one another.

But wait. Could Jewish thought actually reject conflict as a concept? Doesn’t the whole of our intellectual tradition celebrate heated discussion and disagreement? Doesn’t the very genre of parshanut, Torah commentary, suggest the multiplicity of legitimate interpretations and conflicting ideas? What ever happened to, “Two Jews, three opinions”?

Well, as a matter of fact, the word I have been translating all along as conflict - machloket (מחלוקת) - is also frequently translated as, 'debate.’ Indeed, here is how it appears in the very piece from ‘The Ethics of the Fathers’ that the Maharal was referencing:

Every debate that is for the sake of Heaven is destined to endure.  Every debate that is not for the sake of Heaven will not endure.  What debate was for the sake of Heaven? The debate of Hillel and Shammai. What debate was not for the sake of Heaven? The debate of Korach and all of his community. (Pirkei Avot, 5:16)

כָּל מַחֲלֹקֶת שֶׁהִיא לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם. וְשֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, אֵין סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם. אֵיזוֹ הִיא מַחֲלֹקֶת שֶׁהִיא לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, זוֹ מַחֲלֹקֶת הִלֵּל וְשַׁמַּאי. וְשֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, זוֹ מַחֲלֹקֶת קֹרַח וְכָל עֲדָתוֹ

Conflict doesn’t have to be Hell. Debate doesn’t have to tear the community apart. The debate between the two great schools that started rabbinic Judaism - Hillel and Shammai, is still celebrated as having produced the richness of our tradition of Torah study - a tradition that endures up to this very day.  This was a debate for the sake of Heaven.

But the debate of Korach was conflict for its own sake. Debate for the purpose of division, an attack meant to break everything apart. Korach separated himself (ויקח קרח) in order to bring about loss to the whole. He created a Hell on earth. And everyone around him fell into it.

If Hell is division and separation, then Heaven would be unification and togetherness. So can we debate fiercely with one another, but in search of common ground? Can we allow ourselves to fight, sometimes bitterly, but always with the recognition that we are all one people? Can we create Heaven on earth?

Alas, thousands of years after Korach’s rebellion, we are still trying to figure this out.  And the ground is getting shaky beneath our feet.

More from ParshaNut on Parshat Korach:

http://parshanut.com/post/162155735821/guardian-angels-parshat-korach