Thursday, November 02, 2006

Lech Lecha 5766 Avram Ha Ivri

Gen 12:1-17:27

This week we begin the story of Abraham. While Abram's early life begins at the end of Parshat Noah, it is here that he is told to Lech Lecha, to leave everything behind and go to a new place with his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot in tow. When he gets there he finds a famine, and so he ends up in Egypt, tells his wife Sarai to tell everyone that he is her sister, and ends up very rich from the fallout of that fib. From there, he returns to Canaan, gets into water rights battles with his nephew, who moves towards Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot is captured and taken hostage in a battle between local principalities, and in order to rescue him allies himself with Sodom and Gomorrah, and in a guerilla raid, beats the crap out of Lot's captors, saves Lot and the women of Sodom. Abram makes a strange sacrifice of animals and is told of the future of his progeny. Sarai who has not borne children then tells Abram to have a child by Hagar her Egyptian maidservant. This child Ishmael causes some contention between Hagar and Sarai. Finally God tells Abram that he will have a physical sign of their covenant through circumcision, and he will have a son from his wife Sara. Abram's name is changed to Abraham, and Sarai's to Sarah. We end with Abraham, at age 99 and Ishmael at 13 and the rest of the males of his household getting circumcised.

In the middle of all this Abram performs a Ramboesque hostage rescue of his nephew Lot.

12. And they took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son, who lived in Sodom, and his goods, and departed. 13. And there came one who had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew; for he lived in the plain of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshkol, and brother of Aner; and these were confederate with Abram. 14. And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them to Dan. 15. And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and defeated them, and pursued them to Hobah, which is on the left side of Damascus. 16. And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people.[Genesis 14:12-16]

Here Abram is called "the Hebrew" as a form of identity. This is the only time he is called such in the text. Yet others are called by this identity as well. Shiphrah and Puah are called the Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1. Joseph too is identified by language as the “Hebrew servant” by Potiphar’s wife: In Jonah we read that Jonah identifies himself as a Hebrew. And most interestingly, it is the identity of language which is the determining factor in the text about slave’s rights. (Exodus 21:2, Deuteronomy 15:12)

I’m writing about this because of a discussion I had the other day, which I listened but did not participate concerning the increasing use of Hebrew in the Reform movement. Yet in this discussion, I found one thing disturbing. We weren’t talking Torah. One important Bit of Torah involved was of course the origin of language at the Tower of Babel.

4. And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach to heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men built. 6. And the Lord said, Behold, the people are one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have schemed to do. 7. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. 8. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there upon the face of all the earth; and they left off the building of the city.[Genesis 11:4-8]

I’ve looked up a few things and wanted to chime my two scents in on this topic, but this time based on Torah and tradition -- and Abraham’s example. The debate about Hebrew is not a new one. It goes back quite a way, to the book of Genesis itself. It definitely is a story of the Diaspora, one the rabbis did have to contend with. In Genesis we know that Abram spoke differently than his own relatives. Laban we know speaks Aramaic, from the time that Jacob and Laban make a pact over a set of stones:

And Laban called it Jegar sahadutha; but Jacob called it Galeed. [Genesis 31:47]

Both words mean the same, but Laban names it in Aramaic, Jacob in Hebrew. In following Lech-Lecha Abram also stopped using the language of his family and home, and transmitted to his descendants Hebrew. Yet, Jacob could communicate with Laban, and his son Joseph will be literate enough in Egyptian to run Potiphar’s household, and later so literate in Egyptian he can use the screen of an interpreter (who might have been Manasseh) to jerk the chain of this own brothers. Both knew more than one language.

We find this true in later times too. Maimonides wrote his codification of Jewish Law, the Mishneh Torah in Hebrew. Yet, he was literate in the language of his time and place and knew Arabic fluently. His major philosophical work The Guide for the Perplexed was not originally written in Hebrew, but Arabic. Rashi, living in the Champagne region of France, often would translate confusing words in both Talmud and Torah into medieval French, leaving one of the best records of medieval French vocabulary we have to day.

Primary parts of the Talmud Balvi, the Gemara is not in English but in Aramaic, the primary academic language of the Diaspora for hundreds of years. And even among the Rabbinic Hebrew which makes up the Mishnah, one is struck by the number of borrowed Persian, Greek and Latin words. Yet the biblical quotes are always the original word of Torah and thus always in Hebrew. Hebrew, because it is the language of the Torah is the language we always come back to.

All those loan words amid all that consistency for thousands of years points for me to one conclusion, one that the rabbis themselves hint at in the story of the tower of Babel. Found in Genesis Rabbah, 38:10, we read:

R. Abba interpreted it: Through their own lips will I destroy them. Thus one said to his fellow- worker, ' Bring me water,’ whereupon he would give him earth, at which he struck him and split his skull; ' Bring me an axe,’ but he brought him a spade, at which he struck him and split his skull. Thus it is written, Through their own lips I will destroy them.

The failure to communicate was the cause, and yet when there was a misunderstanding, in their arrogance, one who asked for something and didn’t get it would merely kill his fellow man, instead of trying to learn the other language. Nowhere in the story of Babel does it say that God wants to destroy the tower, but instead that he wanted to confuse their language, because they could do anything with one language. It was not the tower that was the issue, but the potential for human beings to plan and do anything they wanted. Thus God confuses their languages to slow them down and see if their determination remains.

This was not a destruction of the people, but a stumbling block, a test. It was a test they failed miserably. God would have let them complete the tower under one circumstance -- if one had learned his neighbor’s language. If they had achieved rapport with each other and understood each other, the tower could have continued and completed. The Midrash, written by men in a world where at least Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic were around these scholars every day, continues that the people hated each other because of their different languages they then dispersed on their own to form nations. The Torah continues that one of those nations would be Abram. Speaking his singular language, he still can communicate with others around him, including the Pharaoh and king of the Philistines, Sodom and Gomorrah. He knew languages. Hebrew might have been his national tongue, his identity, but that did not stop him from communicating with his neighbors and his servants who did not speak Hebrew, and being a hero to most of them.

And that is the heart to of the matter. Hebrew is a language of national identity since the time of Abram. When asked by the nations “who are you?” the answerer often is “I am Hebrew” Hebrew is one of those portable things that does not need a land to identify a people as a nation -- for those in the Diaspora it is a link to home. To those in Israel, it is a way they say “we are home.” No matter what the intellectual language of the time Aramaic, Arabic, German, etc. the text itself was still in Hebrew. Hebrew tells us that we are a people. Granted, there is some Aramaic that crept in, but for close to a thousand years that was the language of commentary for the text. Even today we still say something every service in Aramaic, no matter what stream of Judaism you are in: the Kaddish. But most would agree, even those who do not know Hebrew, the saying the mourners Kaddish in anything but Aramaic sounds wrong. To recite “Magnified and sanctified is his great name” just doesn’t have the impact of the Aramaic Yitgadal v’yitkadash Shmei Raba. It’s never prayed in English, and even some Native Israeli speakers can’t understand it completely. But it remains because it is a connection to our past, and to those who came before us. How much more so the rest of Hebrew.

Yet I understand the frustration of many who don’t know Hebrew. Mine is still slow and I do certainly not know every word I’m reading in a text. I know no Modern Hebrew, as I emphasize the language of our ancient Holy books more than the language of the State of Israel in my studies. I was once in a rather hostile environment about not knowing Hebrew too. I had to learn my bar mitzvah portion in an Orthodox Hebrew school, yet knew less Hebrew than the first graders there. I was outright scorned and insulted, not just by the students but by the teachers. I saw around me in my traditional Synagogue the competition of Hebrew versus English. This was not about holiness but about egos, and being the exclusive club. That if anything was my reason for straying East into Taoism and Zen for a decade. Like many objectors, I want to know what I am saying as well, is what I’m praying actually what I believe. I am critical enough to want to know that, and to explore what that means. But I am also aware that translations never do justice to the actual text, and often translations, from Targum to English siddurim, often edit the objectionable parts of the text. Artscroll’s translation of the Song of Songs isn’t even a direct translation but Rashi’s notes, so that no one “misunderstands” the meaning. Translation by nature changes the meaning; no translation tells you what it means.

Hebrew is about identity, and commonality of a people -- the Jewish people. We all can say the Shema in any synagogue on the world, not matter the stream, for we all say it exactly the same. When we say it in Hebrew we are as unified voice just as God is One. As our identity, it is important, and in my mind we should all learn at least the letters and be able to pronounce the words.

The sin of the tower of Babel was that people did not make the effort to learn another language -- they took the easy route and thought theirs was superior to everyone else’s and thus those who did not understand deserved to die. Yet, we are also told in Talmud Tractate Megillah that Mordecai, a member of the Sanhedrin’s precursor, Knew seventy languages and that it was a requirement for a high judge to have such knowledge so that they could understand any witness or case. The righteous make the effort to learn, though it may not be easy.

Hebrew to the modern English mind is not easy, but Hebrew makes us Jews into Jews. As many left Judaism because they did not understand Hebrew, even more left because they saw no need to do anything else Jewish when a major part of identity is completely eliminated. One of the biggest proponents of English, the early Reform movement, known as classical refom, believed in such of such hard core English arrogance. The modern Reform movement, however, has embraced Hebrew, so much so that there is more Hebrew in the new Mishkan Tefila siddur than any other Reform Siddur to date. And to show their commitment to praying in Hebrew, even for those who do not know the Aleph-Bet, the entire siddur is transliterated.

I’m writing the Drash this week, in Disneyworld, and as I walk around the parks I realize how many languages surround me that I do not know. People chatter away in dozens of languages, as they do at home, both as a matter of identity to their nationality and because their ability at the North American majority languages, English and Spanish are poor or nonexistent. Watching Japanese tourists taking flash photos when we are told not to, I remember, unlike the Mexicans next to me in a ride or show, they didn’t understand what was said as we entered the ride.

Maybe, for those of us who know only one language, the Example of Abraham is a good one: know as many languages as you can and be understood by as many people as you can. It’s reward is being in a peaceful place with all your neighbors. Its failure is Babel. Yet, as at Babel and with Abraham Hebrew is our unique attribute that makes us a unique people. Both of these positions we should preserve.

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