Drash Mishpatim - Onah, Sex, and Touch

For the first time in the Torah cycle, there is very little narrative, found only at the end of the parsha. This week is a continuation of the same day as God reciting the Ten Commandments, and God gives directly to Moses a rapid-fire nonstop set of mitzvot, mostly covering civil and criminal law. It includes other things, such as a more elaborate explanation of the Ten Commandments including Shabbat, honoring parents, not murdering, not being a false witness, and not stealing. There also the famous line about witches, and the schedule for the three festivals. Towards the end of this portion, Moses writes down this week portion, and then ascends Sinai for the forty days and nights to receive the rest of the Torah and the tablets.

It is also a commandment in this portion which has been the case of a lot of my exhaustion I discussed last week, though regrettably only from the study of the mitzvah, and not fulfilling it. In the Talmud, we have the following story:

R. Kahana once went in and hid under Rab's bed. He heard him chatting [with his wife] and joking and doing what he required. He said to him: One would think that Abba's mouth had never sipped the dish before! He said to him: Kahana, are you here? Go out, because it is rude. He replied: It is a matter of Torah, and I require to learn.

In case not everybody got the Idea, the 11th century commentator Rashi clarifies on what he required means sex, using the interesting euphemism serving his bed. This euphemism is very often used to discuss one commandment in this week’s portion. (Ex. 21:7-11)

7. And if a man sells his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do…10. If he takes for himself another wife; her food, her garment, and her onah, shall he not diminish.11. And if he does not do these three things to her, then shall she go out free without payment of money.

There is this strange word, onah, which is a requirement in the text. The rabbis wonder what it means, and come to two conclusions, both with the same upshot. One makes onah mean time, that there is a certain time that is guaranteed for a wife. The second meaning is one that means strife or oppression, that there is something hurting the wife. The strife is described in the curse Eve receives in Genesis 3:16 your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you. But the rabbis change the he to it. So it is not the husband who rules over, but her desire for the husband. Not fulfilling that desire with sexual pleasure causes extreme pain according to the rabbis. The rabbis believed it was proper for a man to contain his lust, his yetzer hara, since he was strong enough to do so. But women were too weak, and the pain of this desire was dangerous.

This rule in Torah was for a female slave, but the text says “another wife” in verse 21:10. So the rabbis believed that this was not about mere slaves, but instead about marriages. They essentially enacted a series of rules which made onah a critical part of marriage. In short they mandated a wife orgasm in marriage. They felt so strongly about this, onah is the only marriage requirement which cannot be waived in a marriage contract. The rabbis of the Mishnah even gave a schedule of how often a man is to give his wife sexual pleasure

The times for conjugal duty prescribed in the Torah are: for men of independence, every day; for laborers, twice a week; for ass-drivers, once a week; for camel-drivers, once in thirty days; for sailors, once in six months. These are the rulings of R. Eliezer. (M. Ketubot 5:1)

The rabbis go on to impose on scholars such as themselves the requirement of every Friday night, and few exemptions for students to go longer period when studying away. (B. Ketubot 62b) Along with this, there is the requirement that a woman must want the sex, a man must not force sex. Yet, a woman who refuses sex could also be divorced. And for the otherwise prudish rabbis who never want anybody to see another’s naked body, there is a rather startling ruling

R. Joseph learnt: Her flesh implies close bodily contact, viz, that he must not treat her in the manner of the Persians who perform their conjugal duties in their clothes. This provides support for [a ruling of] R. Huna who laid down that a husband who said, ‘I will not [perform conjugal duties] unless she wears her clothes and I mine’, must divorce her and give her also her ketubah. (Ketubah 48a)

Sensual touch of the whole body is necessary to satisfy the requirement of Onah. Not only that but it is onah that is in the center of another ruling: contraception. The rabbis allowed the use of some form of contraceptive sponge in the case of a woman who was either in physical danger or logistically unable to have a pregnancy. The rabbis separated be fruitful and multiply from onah.


In the 9th century, we have evidence that there was a downside. Jews in Islamic Persia wrote a parody of the Talmud known as The Alphabet of Ben Sira. And it is within this text we find the Story of Lilith. While there are records of the Lilitu in ancient Sumeria, and a few comments about Lilith in the Talmud and in 6th and 7th century amulets, no earlier source but Alphabet of Ben Sira have the story that Lilith was Adam’s first wife, and she divorced him over sexual power in the relationship. It is possible that the Alphabet criticized the sexual power inherent in the rabbinic rulings of onah, which pretty much left women controlling a disproportionate amount of sex between couples.

But others had other ideas. In the middle ages, a rabbi and vintner from Troyes, the capitol of the Champagne region of France spent most of his life commenting on both Talmud and Torah. Rabbi Solomon b. Isaac, known by the acronym Rashi, produced a phenomenal amount of commentary of virtually the entire Talmud and Torah. Rashi’s work is so incredible and comprehensive, it still is the prime commentary to this day. Rashi did qualify that the Talmudic discussion of onah was about sex. But he also went one step further. While in one Talmudic passage R. Hisda is admonishing his daughters to act modestly, Rashi’s comments on this verse is on the importance of foreplay by manual stimulation of the whole body before touching the genitals (b. Shabbat 140b)

Others, contemporary with Rashi’s grandsons and colleagues, also appeared. Some like the Rabad enumerated four permitted kavvanot for sexual relations with rewards in the world to come: for procreation, for welfare of the fetus, for a wife’s desire, and that a man has desire to act promiscuously and relieves that through intercourse with his wife. Yet the last one is a lesser reward, since the man should have had the strength to resist. If He does not show any strength, and has sex anytime he wants, this would not be rewarded.

To the south, in Spain and the Islamic world there were differing views. Their tastes included intellectual pursuits of the ancient Greeks. By the 12th century the rationalism of Aristotle were taken for granted. One Andalusian Jew, who after expulsions from Spain earlier that century was living in Egypt, championed the rationalists’ view of Aristotle. This or course was Maimonides. Maimonides, also known as the Rambam, saw everything as rational, and everything fit into a world of a rational God. Yet for Maimonides, the physical pleasure of touch was not rational, and thus was to be done away with.

We ought to limit sexual intercourse altogether hold it in contempt, and only desire it very rarely… I have already quoted the verbatim the words of Aristotle. He says: “The sense of touch which is a disgrace to us leads to indulge in eating and sensuality”, etc.

Maimonides and other rationalists saw sexuality and desire as an animal drive, not something for the rational man. Interestingly, Maimonides in his codification of Jewish law does not even mention onah.

There was a deep reaction to this about a generation after the Rambam. The growing movement of Kabbalah and other schools of the region had a negative reaction to this passage of Maimonides quoting Aristotle, referring to “the impure Greek” though given their tone it is not clear whether they are talking about Aristotle or the Rambam. The text this insult come from, The Iggeret Ha-kodesh continues:

But we who have the Torah and believe that God created all in his wisdom [do not believe he] created anything inherently ugly or unseemly. If we were to say that intercourse is repulsive, then we blaspheme God who made the genitals.

While this seems a relatively liberal attitude the rest of the Iggret Ha-kodesh outlines a very different view. Touch is necessary, not for onah but for pregnancy. Desire is still sublimated to an ideal holiness in the sexual union. The book main theme is how and when to perform the sexual act in order to have the ideal offspring: a male scholar for a child, a theme later repeated in the Kabbalists’ magnum opus the Zohar, though in this case emphasising unions in the upper spheres.

All of this today provides some food for thought. While the Law of Onah is on the books, it would be difficult for a woman to use it as grounds for divorce. Between Maimonides view and the view of the Zohar that onah is more about the man than the woman, the rule is know only as the mitzvah of sex on erev Shabbat.

But at its core, I believe is a piece of Wisdom here that cannot be forgotten, once that extends to far more than just sex. The three requirements of a bride, food, clothing and onah are requirements of our physical bodies; in that the Rambam was right. But where he and his contemporaries are wrong is that touch is an animal urge that is to be completely suppressed. Indeed we can go too far, and overeating is just as much as a problem as unbridled lust or inappropriate touch. Yet, touch is a need, something we must have to survive. This is true of not just women but men too. In a world where provisioning the family was the exclusive role of the male, then the rules of Exodus 21:10-11 were specifically directed at the female, for her to have the basic needs for survival. For the past 40 years or so, that assumption of male as exclusive provider is no longer as true, and the deeper wisdom, that both men and women have physical needs requires more thought. That the rabbis who had serious qualms of letting anyone see anyone else naked would mandate nudity for performance of onah is telling of the importance of touch. In a classic Modern experiment, infant primates were removed from their mothers and either given a surrogate mother made of cloth and fur or just fed like adults without any touch. The ones with the surrogate mother survived and grew up healthy, the one without a mother became withdrawn or psychotic.

Touch is important, be it hugging a teddy bear, petting a dog, or making love with our life partner. In our world it’s hard to touch, as we a never sure what is appropriate or not. But what this Law of Torah implies is that we must touch, that there is pain in not touching another. Whether we set up a schedule like the Talmudic Rabbis did for spousal satisfaction, or just have two people mutually agree to touch, such an act is as important as food for nutrition, and clothing to keep our bodies warm.


May you have a hug today.

Drash Yitro 5766 - Resting Away in Shabbosville?

This week, moving towards Sinai, Moses’ father in law Yitro catches up with the Israelites bringing Moses’ sons and wife with him. Yitro explains the concepts of delegation and bureaucracy, and then the people get ready for the Ten Commandments, which take up the last part of this portion.

Every time at this time of the year I seem to write the same Drash, and pick out the same commandment to talk about. This year is no different. We read in the text concerning Moses personally hearing every case of the people as a judge:

17. And Moses’ father-in-law said to him, the thing that you do is not
good.
18. You will certainly wear away, both you, and this people who are
with you; for this thing is too heavy for you; you are not able to perform it
yourself alone.

I understand the problem all too personally. I did once follow Yitro’s advice, and delegated much of what I do professionally to others. But, in lean times I made hard but necessary budget cuts and that meant much of this help was cut too. This brought me back to Moses’ dilemma of doing everything by myself. Many of us feel the same way, overworked and exhausted as the things continue to pile up upon us.

I, course have no one to blame but myself, much of what I got myself into outside of work is voluntary. Writing this Drash, grad school, and synagogue stuff is all voluntary, but it takes time and energy, energy that no number of venti coffees with extra shots in my favorite mobile offices can provide. It leads to mistakes I cannot afford, exhaustion and poor health. But someone recently mentioned something else it does too: it means I do not enjoy the world around me. I do things but don’t actually appreciate doing them. Thinking about that this morning I realized that as much as people complain about the bitter taste of this coffee in front of me, I never noticed because I only drink it, I never really taste it. I’m alive but not really appreciating living.

As Yitro points out, it is not only ourselves who are affected, but those we interact with, who also bear the burden of our exhaustion, in the irritability and loss of efficiency. I notice that inefficiency even as I wrote this, barely able to cement one thought to another. Yet while Yitro's solution of delegation is one that God will endorse wholeheartedly in the Book of Numbers, there is another solution that God comes up with, probably one of the most revolutionary concepts in all civilization, and make it one of the first of the Ten Commandments.

8. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9. Six days shall you labor, and
do all your work; 10. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God;
in it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your
manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is
within your gates; 11. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea,
and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed
the Sabbath day, and made it holy.

As the Jewish philosopher and apologist Philo of Alexandria explained to incredulous Romans, Shabbat is a day of rest in order to make the other days more efficient. Yet I find that efficiency hard to come by. For me, and I know for others, Shabbat and Saturday is no longer a day of rest but the day that we get no new responsibilities or interruptions, so we end up working to catch up with everything we didn’t do during the week. Of course that wasn’t the idea of the commandment, yet in a world strongly pushing us to perform, it’s very seductive to use the day of rest as a catch up day.

Interestingly, as I have more recently added Saturday morning services to my observance, I find myself even more stressed out and with bigger piles of incomplete stuff. For many years I used the early morning hours of Shabbat to do Hebrew translation, but now don’t have that time slot, and I’m having a very hard time squeezing it into my schedule. As I now am Taking Hebrew class for credit, the translations are now real work and are no longer recreation, adding to my stress.

I’ve written in the past of what I envision Shabbat as - some Jewish version of a Jimmy Buffet song, I’m resting away in Shabbosville. Its one particular harbor on a Tropical Island in time where I sit back, relax and enjoy the sights, tastes, sounds and smells of this world, to enjoy time with friends and family, and to enjoy a one-day vacation from everything else. Of course for each person that might have a different view of what that vacation looks like, but the idea is the same: to stop what we do for the other six days of week, and like God did, refresh our soul-life. I agree with the view Abraham Joshua Heshchel wrote in The Sabbath (pg.8):

Unlike the Day of Atonement, the Sabbath is not dedicated exclusively to
spiritual goals. It is a day of the soul as well as the body; comfort and
pleasure are an integral part of the Sabbath observance...To observe is to
celebrate the creation of the world and to create the seventh day all over again
the majesty of holiness in time "a day of rest a day of freedom" a day which is
like "a lord and king of all other days" a lord and king in the commonwealth of
time.

But rest and freedom seems elusive. The temptations are too great to work, as the piles, both literally and figuratively get higher around us. Yet, it may be like Philo says, that the Sabbath is the day of refreshing, and if we get a good day of refreshing then the other six work so much better. Given the number of silly mistakes and forgetfulness I’ve had lately, I’m sure stressing for seven days is the reason, and Shabbat is the solution. Of course things can get out of hand if I get work done seven days a week: there is the real possibility of true heath problems. Transgression of Shabbat does carry the death penalty, but it is a Caret penalty, one meted out by God. I have always belied that caret means we run the risk of heart attack and other stress related illnesses to a greater degree if we don’t observe the Sabbath. If we don’t stop and rest, we die an early death.

So I’m seriously looking towards making a few changes in my life, to more observe Shabbat than I have. It means some disappointments in my life, Grad school graduation is probably delayed by a year or so, but so it will be. And with that burden still on my back for a longer time my social life will continue to suffer, but so it will be. More important is this commandment from The Torah, uttered on Sinai. Hillel once said that our body is the receptacle our nefesh, the soul given to us by God, and the holy part of us. We must treat our bodies as well as the custodians of Roman temples treat the idols inside, says Hillel, even more so: our bodies really are the gifts from God.

With that, however hard it is to just stop, may you have a wonderful restful Shabbos.

Drash Beshelach 5766 - Drumming on the Edge of Prophecy

This Shabbat is Shabbat Shira, the Shabbat of song. Pharaoh, in the wake of the last plague, lets the people go, and they travel via the reed sea. Stopping at the shore, they find out that Pharaoh has had a change of mind, and has his chariots in close pursuit. But a miracle occurs and the sea splits, allowing the people to walk on dry land through the sea. When they reach the other shore the sea closes up on the approaching Egyptians, swallowing them up in the sea. Moses and the people rejoice by singing a song. So important was this song, parts are recitesd in the liturgu every day after the Shema, mi chamocha

Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? (Ex 15:11)

After the Song, we are told

20. And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines, dancing.

Midrash is created when there are questions about what the Torah has as its words. This verse about Miriam has many such questions. The question the rabbis ask is why Miriam is mentioned here as a prophetess, but as the sister of Aaron, not of Moses. From this they deduce that she only prophesized about the birth of Moses, once Moses was born she stopped prophesizing.(Megillah 14a)

This is the third instance of the wordנביא navi, "prophet" in the entire Torah, and the first as a title and the first in the feminine. The first use of prophet is in reference to Abraham (Gen 20:7) the second to Aaron (Exodus7:1). Both are God declaring them prophets, but Miriam is the first where it is part of her title. Aaron is known as “Aaron the priest” Moses is either known as “the man of God” or “the servant of God” but Miriam is know as “the prophet” The next two people to be called “the prophet” will be Gad and Nathan in David’s time, and of course Elijah much later.

There is another word that also interests me. תףTof or frame drum. Often translated as tambourine, this word is not often found in the entire biblical text, only in 17 places and only twice in the Torah. Yet these verses give us lot of ideas about this instrument. Five of these references (Exodus 15:20, Judges 11:34, I Sam 18:6, Jer. 31:3, Psalm 68:26) mention women playing the drum. Dancing is noted 7 times (Exodus 15:20, Judges 11:34, I Sam 18:6, Jer. 31:3, Psalm 149:3, Psalm 150:4, Job 21:12) Other instruments, namely stringed instruments and flute occur 11 times and 4 time respectively. All but Isaiah 30:32, which use the harp and drum as weapons, have a connotation of joy involved. Most like Exodus 15, concern victory, but Job 21, and Isaiah 5 are about drunken frivolity.

But it is I Samuel 10, where Saul is instructed to become king, which provides one of the most intriguing comments:
5. After that you shall come to the hill of God, where the garrisons of the Philistines are; and it shall come to pass, when you have come there to the city, that you shall meet a company of prophets coming down from the high place with a lute, and a tambourine, and a pipe, and a lyre, before them; and they shall prophesy; 6. And the spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and you shall prophesy with them, and shall be turned into another man

Miriam is called a prophet in Exodus 15:20, but in no other verse in Torah. Saul prophesizes here, but does not prophesize again. It could very well be that it was the music, and most notably the one instrument found in each case, the frame drum, which might be the element which transforms a person temporarily into a prophet.

Frame drums are known in the Middle East as duff, daf, or tar; all have names with similar phonetics to tof. In both ancient Egyptian and Sumerian cultures goddesses played drums, and hence their priestess played frame drums. Near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, there was Innana, by the Nile there was Hathor, maybe not coincidentally a horned cow goddess. Significantly, they play drums without visible bells or clappers, but instead are perfectly round like the sun or moon, not tambourines but simple frame drums.

As drum historian, ethnomusicologist, and former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart noted, a lot of drummers in ancient time were women, especially of frame drums. Priestesses would communicate with their goddess through the trances created by drum. The evidence from the biblical text would seem to indicate that in Israelite culture as well women were very often playing the frame drum. Like Miriam and Saul the drum induces brain states leading to a trance like state - the state of prophecy. As Hart write his book Drumming on the Edge of Magic these changes in the brain do happen and do have effects on the human psyche, utilized by many cultures as the bridge to communicate with the spiritual. Rashi makes an interesting comment about frame drums too - that the righteous women of Israel knew to bring them to celebrate a miracle with songs of praise and drum - a miracle that hadn’t happened yet. Not only Miriam was involved in prophecy, but other women too.

Miriam very well could have been a prophet because of her drum, and may have as a prophet filled a role a priestess would have. She, like many others had the power of prophecy though the beat of a drum. It is therefore interesting to note what the Babylonian Talmud does with frame drums: it seemingly bans them.

AND AGAINST [THE USE OF] THE DRUM [IRUS]. What means IRUS? — R. Eleazar said: A drum with a single bell. Rabbah the son of R. Huna made a tambourine for his son; his father came and broke it, saying to him, ‘It might be substituted for a drum with a single bell. Go, make for him [an instrument by stretching the skin] over the mouth of a pitcher or over the mouth of a kefiz’.(B. Sota 49b)

According to R. Eleazar, a drum with a single sounding chamber, like a frame or barrel drum is banned by rabbinic prohibition. The Gemara continues with R. Huna destroying his grandson’s frame drum, and telling his own son to make an acceptable drum, a two-belled (or goblet shaped) Arabic טבלא tabla better known as a darbouka. The feminine drum is replaced by a decidedly masculine drum, and the drum of prophecy all over the globe is replaced with a drum of very different utility. But following this idea of prophecy, we need to first remember the rabbinic view of prophecy:

R. Abdimi from Haifa said: Since the day when the Temple was destroyed, prophecy has been taken from the prophets and given to the wise (Baba Batra 12a)
In short, the role of divine connection is in the hands of the Rabbis and their learning. The above Gemara is commentary on a line of Mishnah:

Mishnah. During the war with Vespasian they [the rabbis] decreed against [the use of] crowns worn by bridegrooms and against [the use of] the drum.

The war with Vespasian ended with the destruction of the second temple. In one sense, this Mishnah might be a banning of a prophetic device outside their control. There may be another explanation, since in many other parts of the Talmud drumming is discussed as an almost everyday activity. The Mishnah verse, and several pieces of Gemara which use it as proof of other halakah, believe the drum is banned from use as part of the wedding ceremony only, to take some of the joy out of a joyous event in remembrance of the destruction of the temple.

Yet that does not completely explain R. Huna’s actions, unless his grandson was getting married. Ironically, it seems R. Huna was the one who explained the drum prohibition applied only to weddings. His obsession might have to do with a dream (Brachot 57a):

R. Papa and R. Huna the son of Joshua both had dreams. R. Papa dreamt that he went into a marsh and he became head of an academy. R. Huna the son of R. Joshua dreamt that he went into a forest and he became head of the collegiates. Some say that both dreamt they went into a marsh, but R. Papa who was carrying a drum became head of the academy, while R. Huna the son of R. Joshua who did not carry a drum became only the head of the collegiates. R. Ashi said: I dreamt that I went into a marsh and carried a drum and made a loud noise with it.

A dream of a drum in a marsh means you will become powerful. Huna didn’t dream of the drum and got a second in command position. R. Ashi and R. Papa were both heads of Academies. Yet the drum in the marsh was not a tof, but a double-belled tabla. The story wasn’t about destroying a frame drum because frame drums are banned, but that his grandson was not playing the kind of drum he needed to dream about.

In this exploration of one verse of Torah, we’ve talked about the beginning of the verse. But Exodus 15:20 does not end with Miriam alone playing the tof but with all the women. Prophecy comes not just from individual effort but from a collective one. Saul was not alone in his prophecy, and neither was Miriam. It is here that we can appreciate King David’s conclusion to the book of psalms in Psalm 150, which not only mentions drums but all the instruments, that “All life praise YAH!” For those who have played in a drum circle, song circle, or band, this advice hits home. There is something intensely spiritual in the collective beat that isn’t there in the single beat, as all that noise joins into one beat.

Mickey Hart in his introduction to Drumming On The Edge Of Magic wrote an interesting creation story and commentary.

In the beginning there was noise. And noise begat rhythm and rhythm begat everything else. This is the type of cosmology drummer can live with. Strike a membrane with a stick, the ear fills with noise. Unmelodic, unharmonious sound. Strike it a second time, a, third, you’ve got rhythm.

The first rhythm of the world according to Torah is “and there was evening and there was morning.” Day and night created on the first day of creation was rhythm. (Gen. 1:5) As Rabbi Andrea London pointed out to me recently, the first of the mitzvot of Torah given collectively to the Israelites is the mitzvah we read last week; “This will be the first of months for you.” (Exodus 12:2) The first of Nissan is the beginning of the Beat of Judaism, of the syncopated rhythms of time and ritual and life. The beat of our hearts and the rhythm of a woman’s body are always with us. It should be no surprise that Miriam was a prophetess in rhythm, the same way a strong beat cannot help but make us dance.

Let us all then, in the words of the Psalms, Praise Yah in drum and dance.

Note: For those interested in all the biblical and talmudic passages I mentioned, I have collected and posted them to the website www.shlomosdrash.com.

Getting more High Tech

Just wanted to tell everybody that I now have a website www.shlomosdrash.com, which, beside here, will have the current weekly portion. I have not done a lot on the site yet, but Its my plan to make it a incredible place for free resources for text study and other Jewish related topics within the next few months. Here's a preview of the things to come.

1. The "Prayerbook Hebrew you Know by Heart" series of tutorials for self teaching. These are short exercises to help people learn the aleph-bet.
2. Jewish Drumming site. My knowledge is still limited, but I'd love to have a place to get resources on good things to do and what drums and beat work in Jewish drum circles.
3. Text study resources such as a guide to numbers and gematria, rabbinic histories, and the work in-progress "Shlomo's guide to Talmud"
4. Handouts from presentations I give and announcements of upcoming seminars.
5. Holiday related guides

Once I finally figure out how to upload and post adobe acrobat files, a lot of this will go on line pretty fast. But if there is other things you'd like to see, or have something to contribute, let me know by replying here on the blog or writing me at shlomosdrash@aol.com.

Drash Bo 5766 - Signs

This week we have the last three plagues, locusts, darkness, and finally the death of the first born. Before the last plague hits, however, there is a lot of preparation done beforehand. God gives a set of directions to first chain up then kill a lamb as an assembly, eating it all in the night of the plague, and spreading its blood on the doorposts of the houses of the Israelite so to indicate whose house to pass over. Further instructions mentioned not eating leavened foods for seven days and eating Matzah instead. This was the first Passover.
In modernity we wonder on the need for plagues, on hurting that much people and property. The text does give us an answer at the beginning of this portion (Exodus 10:1-2)

1. And the Lord said to Moses, Go to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might show these my signs before him; 2. And that you may tell in the ears of your son, and of your grandson, what things I have done in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that you may know that I am the Lord.

And at the beginning of the last week’s portion is this: (Exodus 7:3)

3. And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.

At the end of this week’s portion it this (exodus 13:7-9)

7. Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with you, neither shall there be leaven seen with you in all your quarters. 8. And you shall tell your son in that day, saying, ‘This is done because of that which the Lord did to me when I came forth out of Egypt.’ 9. And it shall be for a sign to you upon your hand, and for a memorial between your eyes, that the Lord’s Torah may be in your mouth; for with a strong hand has the Lord brought you out of Egypt.

Tying these three passages together is the Hebrew word oht, the word for sign. Interestingly it is not the word for plague. Torah only associates four of the plagues with the word plague: frogs, death of cattle, pestilence, and death of the firstborn. Interestingly all of these involve death. The other six, which do not directly cause death, have no such designation. But all are signs, yet by convention we call them collectively plagues.

As the signs begin with the blood of the Nile, and work towards Darkness, Pharaoh’s heart and the heart of his servants is hardened each time, yet slowly softens in a sense. At first Pharaoh wont even listen and his servants, the magicians, scoff and imitate Moses and Aaron. But eventually the magicians can’t do the same things, and they tell Pharaoh this is the finger of God. They too fall victim to the plague of boils not even being able to use their magic to defend themselves. Pharaoh’s advisors even beg Pharaoh to let the Israelites go after the Locusts. Yet Pharaoh does not let them go, but does begin to change his tune. First he acknowledges Moses and asks for them to be removed, and then he admits he sinned against the God of the Hebrews, then allows only adults to leave and keeps the kids as hostages, then allows the children, but keeps the livestock. Of course he goes back on his word each time, or makes it an offer that Moses will refuse.

That Pharaoh and his servants changed at all says something about the signs - they did their job. Like I said last week, actions speak louder than words. Pharaoh, like most executives and politicians was a big talker with promises, but never followed through. Yet his rhetoric changed, which shows they had some effect. If they did not, Pharaoh would have completely ignored Moses for the first nine, and taken different measures on the tenth. The plagues were started by actions but the signs were sights. What we see is far more powerful than what we speak and hear. Signs we see, as in the case of tzizit. We see the fringe and remember the mitzvot. You can tell people there’s a bridge out till you’re blue in the face, but unless there’s a big sign and a barricade saying BRIDGE OUT many will not pay attention and fall to their deaths.

Signs are reminders and indicators; they are sources of information. They are, however, not symbolic. Symbols are things which stand in for another thing. An idol is a symbol for a god for example. We do not worship tzitzit or tefillin; we use them to remember something else. In the case of tefillin, the text within their boxes contains two verses from this weeks portion: “as a sign upon your hand and as bindings/remembrances before your eyes.” We are to remember the Exodus from Egypt when we put on tefillin. Eating matzah is also a sign to remember our freedom from the Egyptians, and who’s responsible for that.

I think about signs today, not necessarily religious ones but ones of identity. Wearing a kippah or tefillin or a tallit are all symbols one is Jewish. Actions themselves such as lighting Shabbat candles are also signs of identity, because they can be seen. In modern American consumerist society, what you own, the place you call home, the car your drive, and the clothes and music you give your kids all are signs of identity. This need for signs is all consuming. In the comedy Baby Boom there’s a scene in a playground where mothers were talking about how picking the right daycare leads to Harvard. The sign of a good previous school, in this deluded mothers mind was all that was necessary to get into the next school, which was also a sign of the education that will inevitably lead to Harvard. In my professional career as a consultant, I have numerous times seem business owners so consumed by showing the right signs and symbols, they ignore their core business to the point it is a real danger to others.

There is so much that is sign, we don’t even think about it any more. So much so if there is not a sign for something, it does not exist. Take knowledge and learning for example. More often than not there is no easily accessible sign to signify learning. Without the symbol of a title, no one remembers you have something precious. If one spends a massive amount of time on study, and there are no visual signs that they learned, then that person does not exist, they are a mere ghost or doormat. We are too steeped in signs, and we forget too easily without it.

At the beginning of our portion this week, this concern is voiced by God. Unless the meaning of a sign is transmitted it will be forgotten. And if the sign is forgotten, so will be the thing it represents. Thus God commands that the sign be transmitted to the next generation, against the possibility that God’s deliverance of the people from Egypt be forgotten. That too is of course a sign of God, and thus God worries that without our transmitting that sign for two generations after us, God will be forgotten.

In a little more literal reading than the usual mitzvah for tefillin in Exodus 13:9 the sign in the hand and the remembrance between our eyes are the signs of Passover, particularly eating matzah seven days and forgoing leavened foods. By doing this, we continue to remember God, and remember to speak in the ways of the Torah and the signs within the mitzvot. The more we teach the signs of the past, the less we will forget who we are as a people and what we believe. The more we sublimate those signs with other signs, the more we forget. The story of the plagues bound to the redemption from Egypt reminds us that there is power in the visual sign greater than the spoken word. But the visual sign is nothing without the spoken word. One needs the other.

The question we must ask ourselves, to keep remembering the Exodus from Egypt for generations to come, is what signs should we speak and see?

Drash Va'era 5766- Uncircumcised Tongues

After Moses’ first disaster talking to Pharaoh and the Israelites, God talks to Moses again and tells him to talk to the Israelites again, who are so stressed out, they promptly ignore them. Then God tells a despondent Moses to talk to Pharaoh once again, and Moses objects. God tells Moses that he will use signs and wonders to make sure everyone knows God’s power. First there is the wonder of the staff being turned into a snake, then the staff eating the other snakes. Then begins the plagues, where we have the first seven of the ten.

Moses, in response to God’s command to go see Pharaoh a second time, complains

And Moses spoke before the Lord, saying, Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips? (Ex. 6:12)

The text then does a detailed genealogy of the Levites, ending with the verses (ex. 6:26-30)

26. These are Aaron and Moses, to whom the Lord said, Bring out the people of Israel from the land of Egypt by their hosts. 27. These are those who spoke to Pharaoh King of Egypt, to bring out the people of Israel from Egypt; these are Moses and Aaron. 28. And it came to pass on the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, 29. That the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, I am the Lord; speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say to you. 30. And Moses said before the Lord, Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharaoh listen to me?

These two passages appear to be describing the same incident where God talks to Moses and Aaron. Interestingly in both cases Moses uses a phrase found only here: uncircumcised lips. What are uncircumcised lips? What does this phrase mean? Once before in Exodus 4:10-11 Moses objects:

And Moses said to the Lord, O my Lord, I am not a man of words yesterday nor the day before, nor since you have spoken to your servant; but I am a heavy mouth, and a heavy tongue. And the Lord said to him, Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Is it not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you shall say.

As discussed last week, one Midrash blames this on an injury while Moses was young, and he burned his mouth. But on evidence from Gods reply, the Midrash for these verses goes with the obvious answer to God’s rhetorical question: this was an intentional defect in Moses; if God wants to remove it, he will. The cause however does not help us understand what uncircumcised lips are. The word for uncircumcised has some interesting meanings. When not linked with speech it shows up thirty eight times in Tanach, and by context in these sentences has two meanings: In its natural state and dirty foreigner.

For the last few weeks I’ve been working on a final research paper for a class on medieval Judaism. While I’ll talk about the subject for that final in the Drash for Parshat Mishpatim, it’s the process of research here that I find interesting. Many of the primary sources I’m working on have no easily accessible nor reliable translation. Thus I have to translate the material from Medieval Hebrew. The commentator I’m translating, also named Shlomo, had a similar problem, though with a different language. Rabbi Shlomo b. Yitzchak, know to the world by his nickname Rashi, was one of the most prolific commentators in all of Jewish history, writing a commentary not just to Torah, but to all of the Talmud. Using a very literal method, he more or less gives his reader the bottom line about a phrase in the work he is commenting on. Often, they are incredibly short statements. For example, there’s the lead up to my tag line in Ber 62a. Compared to the Talmud obliquely describing the “talking and laughing and doing his requirements” of the Sage Rav, Rashi makes clear what going on: “he’s having sex.” Rashi, who spoke French, also understood that sometimes words don’t translate easily and would place French words transliterated in to Hebrew to explain a strange vocabulary word.

As I read Rashi in the original, it’s not easy. Italian printers, centuries after Rashi, decided their texts need a little visual something for segregating commentary from text. So they typeset Rashi in a wildly different font from most Hebrew. We today call this script Rashi script after the texts which get printed in this font, not the font’s inventor. Secondly, Rashi writes in a derivative of Rabbinic Hebrew, and I’m just learning Rabbinic Hebrew. While the basic rules of grammar are close to Biblical, they are not quite the same, and, even worse, Rabbinic Hebrew added a lot of colloquial expressions. For example the phrase for having sex I mentioned above is literally “serve his bed.” Thinking about the trouble I have in my studies, I have a different Midrash why Moses was not a man of words with an uncircumcised tongue.

Moses had to have known at least three languages: Hebrew, Egyptian, and Midianite. The forty years prior to the Exodus would have been in Midianite. After forty years of an exclusive use of a language, people forget a lot of their former use of language. Of course they do not know the contemporary colloquialisms. What this means is that his slowness of speech and unformed words were a matter of always being the foreigner in his speech, no matter who he talked to. He reminds me of my own struggles with Hebrew and Aramaic. I can put together a sentence and translate, but it takes me a long time, it is far from instantaneous and always requires a dictionary. Uncircumcised lips means with a naturally foreign accent and demeanor, one that makes the speech of Moses far from convincing. Imagine replacing Charleton Heston with Bob Marley as Moses in The Ten Commandments. To American audiences at least, particularly in the 1950’s but even today, this would be bordering on the ridiculous. As hard as we try not to be racist, Moses has to be the white all-American reciting from King James, not a black Jamaican with alien speech patterns. Such would be true of Pharaoh and the Israelites when Moses the Midianaite at first talks for God to Egyptian and Hebrew audiences. Moses knows this, and does have a better speaker there: Aaron, though with the “foreigner” tagging along even Aaron loses creditability.

God’s solution to all this is "Go anyway". At the burning bush God intimates that Moses not being a man of words is intentional. In the text of Exodus 6, we get two other responses. One response is these two who speak for God are not foreigners at all. They are direct line descendents from Levi. Their mother Yocheved, and grandfather Kohath are Levi’s grandchildren. Their father Amram was among Levi’s great grandchildren. They are far from foreign.

The second is what takes up the rest of the narrative of this portion. In the Perkei Avot there is this quote from R. Simeon b. Gamliel:

All my days I grew up among the sages, and I have found nothing better for a person than silence. Study is not the most important thing, but deed; whoever indulges in too many words brings about sin. (M. Avot 1:17)

From the time Moses and Aaron begin to act instead of talk things change. By the end of this portion they have not only the attention of all the Israelites, but even Pharaoh’s magicians concede “This is the finger of God!” On the other hand, the too many words of their first attempts not only didn’t work, they had a negative effect. Being a man of deeds and not a man of words turned out not to be a bad thing at all.

As Mark Twain once summarized this whole argument “Thunder is impressive, but lighting gets the job done!” Study is of course important, the rabbis were clear that knowledge led to action. But in the end it is what we do that matters. Moses may not have spoken well in Egypt, but he did the job and by doing so succeeded in freeing the Israelites. The lesson of uncircumcised lips is that we don’t always have to talk our way out of things; sometimes we won’t be able to. Often doing the good deed is far more effective.

Drash Shemot 5766 - dissing DeMille

This week we start the book of Exodus and are introduced to the setup for the rest of the Torah. A Pharaoh who does not know Joseph arises and appealing to national security, has the Israelites enslaved. Things get worse. Pharaoh has the midwives try to kill all the newborn boys but they do not heed him. In response Pharaoh then decides to kill all male Israelite newborns by drowning, though one baby escapes this by being sent down the river, ending up living in the palace, until this now grown man murders an Egyptian task master. The slave who this guy saves rewards him by ratting him out. To escape Pharaoh’s anger, this man flees to Midian where he finds a bride, becomes a shepherd and has a rather interesting conversation with a burning bush. This man is of course Moses. And this week is really his story. We read of his upbringing:

10. And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses; and she said, Because I drew him out of the water. 11. And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brothers, and looked on their burdens; and he spied an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brothers. (Ex. 2 10-11)

Midrash very often tries to resolve the contradictions, extraneous elements, and missing gaps in the text of Torah. In the story of Exodus 2, there are plenty. One of most known Midrash is not rabbinic however, but 1950’s American Christianity: Cecil B. Demille’s The Ten Commandments. A good amount of movie time is midrash of what happened between Exodus 2:10 and 2:11. There is no rabbinic text which really describes Moses being Ramses’ best buddy growing up, nor the implications of sibling rivalry over both women and power. But like most midrash, once written, it tends to stick. So when the animated version The Prince of Egypt came out, this midrash was still a critical part of the story, though this time with a plotline with shades of the Shoah, the issue which Moses links his heritage with. This movie midrash primarily answers one question: how much of his heritage did Moses know? For Demille and Dreamworks, the answer was none at all.

But was that the case in the rabbinic mind? Is it how an audience fifty years after DeMille’s movies should read this story? Oddly enough, at first glance, the Midrash and other commentaries do not seem to think there is much to add between verses 10 and 11. The only story is found in Exodus Rabbah I:26 about Moses as a young boy loving to put Pharaoh’s crown on his own head. Pharaoh’s advisors think this might be the child who the prophecies say will usurp Pharaoh’s power, so devise a test of putting a chunk of gold and a burning coal in front of the infant. If he reaches for the gold, they’ll kill him, if he reaches for the coal, then he’s just an imbecile. Moses reaches for the gold, but at the last minute the angel Gabriel pushes his hand onto the coal. Moses then reacts by jerking the live coal into his mouth, burning his tongue, and thus his speech impediment mentioned in Ex. 4:10.

Reading this story in the English seems to indicate that this is the story of a little baby. If that is the case, the story of Moses not knowing his heritage also makes sense. One assumption of Midrash however, is that every word is significant since in the mind of the rabbis every word of Torah was given by God, and thus has meaning. Like the name of another movie, we may have here a case of meaning lost in translation.

The phrase for “and the boy grew up” in Hebrew is ויגדל הילד vayigdal hayeled. In Biblical Hebrew, coming from the same root as gadol “big,” this is the verb for growing up. Yeled is the Hebrew for young child, and has the same root as the verb to give birth. This phrase shows up in two other places in Tanach. The first is in Genesis 21:8, speaking of Isaac:

When the child grew and was weaned, then Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned.

From a parallel analogy between the Exodus and the Genesis verse, it appears that grow in Moses’ case means that the child is weaned. Of course we read in Exodus 2: 8-9

8. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the girl went and called the child’s mother. 9. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it.

This would seem to confirm that growing means to an age where nursing is no longer required. If this is true, then Moses was so young, that indeed he could have never known his birth family. Conversely, the second use of vayigdal hayeled is found in II Kings 4:18, speaking of a child promised to the Shunnamite by the prophet Elisha, who after his birth and growing up Elisha will have to now resurrect from the dead.

18 When the child was grown, he fell one day, when he went out to his father to the reapers. 19. And he said to his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad, Carry him to his mother. 20. And when he had taken him, and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon, and then died.

Here the boy grows up to the point that he can walk out to a field to his father, and even speak. He certainly is not an infant or toddler, but much older. After the phrase, when referred to as a child he is not a yeled, but a na’ar (נער), best translated as a “lad” or “youth.” The age of a na’ar is problematic. Ephraim and Manasseh were somewhere in their twenties when blessed by Jacob, yet were both called na’ar (Gen 48:16) Moses then might have been much older than an age where he would not know his birth family.

The rabbis, when looking at phrases, would find that the more words that match in the two different passages would mean they have more significance with each other. In Exodus we have “the boy grew up” and then “he went out to his brothers” In II Kings we have “the boy grew up” and then “he went out to his father.” Thus there would be a stronger association between the Exodus and II Kings passages.

Interestingly, when referring to Moses in Exodus Rabbah I:26, he is several times called a na’ar, never a Yeled. For the rabbis, Moses may have been much older, and did understand to some degree his heritage. Exodus 2:11 does say he went out to his brothers, and saw their burdens. He had to have known who his brothers were. DeMille and Dreamworks have his identity revealed to him through others before he does that.

While each of these explanations is valid, I believe Moses knew who he was. There’s a phrase I’ve played with found at the beginning of this discussed Exodus Rabbah passage, that the Socino translation reads as Moses grew abnormally, literally it reads, “He did not grow up as the way of all the earth.” The phrase “way of the earth” (דרך הארץ) usually means manner or custom, or even good manners. The Ethics of the Fathers (M. Avot) 3:17 reads with this phrase,

R. Eleazar b. Azariah said: where there is no Torah there is no good manners; where there is no good manners there is no Torah.

Yet, all indicates the customary practices of all people, hence it means human practice or custom. Such a term is used for sex in Genesis 19:31 in terms of Lots Daughters thinking they will never have normal husbands since all men except their father are dead. It meaning as abnormal growth could also work. Yet another explanation is Moses was not raised with general practices of all humans, but with particular Jewish ethics and manners, the ones that lead to Torah. Since Moses knew who his brothers were, and they were not Egyptians, he learned on his mother’s knee who he was. His identity was an Israelite, not an Egyptian even while growing up in the ultimate Egyptian household.

I came up with this argument in Hebrew, not English. Much of the translations were inadequate for identifying what was going on in any of these texts. Too much is lost in the translation. And it is that that I think about when I think of this story of Moses’ early years. I think back to my own experience, and realize that most of my knowledge was acquired in my thirties, not when I was young. Yet, it was between before my sixth or seventh birthday when I gained my Jewish identity, not the one of my birth but the one in my head. It was an identity so strong even leaving Judaism for eastern religions meant I would eventually come back. Could Moses the Egyptian Prince really have had that revealed about him by some mere slaves? Would he believe it? Would he respond as he did in The Ten Commandments? More likely as the Egyptian prince, if he learned me was an Israelite, he would have had Aaron and Miriam killed to keep the secret and keep power and the girl. No one would have stopped him or even cared there were two more dead slaves. But his identity was already established in his youth. AS Isaiah 28:8 reminds us, to whom do we teach knowledge? To the one weaned from the breasts. In the biblical text that was Isaac, and that was Moses. With that knowledge and ethics Moses could do nothing but go out to his brothers because they were a part of him.

My Hebrew and knowledge of Torah keep getting better. But I am a minority. As I write this I know all to well, there are people out there who think movies like The Ten Commandments were the narrative of the Bible and not a mere Hollywood fiction. Indeed people would rather passively watch a movie than actively read the actual text, if they care at all. And that bothers me, watching the process of apathy and ignorance enslave and kill Jews as effectively as Pharaoh, that I feel the need to stop such slavery with knowledge of Torah.

May my efforts here at Shlomo’s Drash help in that effort.

Drash Vayechi 5766 - Who is a Jew?

Seventeen years after Jacob moved to Egypt, he becomes ill and close to death. He first blesses Ephraim and Manasseh as his own sons, though oddly changing the birth order around. Later, he blesses, if not prophesizes about all of his sons not of their birth order but on their merit. Jacob dies, is carried back to Canaan, and then the brothers fret Joseph will finally exact revenge, But Joseph tells them once again it was God who did all this and there is nothing to worry about. Fifty four years later, Joseph makes his brother promise that when they or their descendants leave Egypt they will take his bones with them. Joseph lives to see three generations and then at 110, dies ending the book of Genesis.

I don’t normally do requests, but I can’t break the mitzvah of Ex. 20:12, and it just so happens this one fits so well with one of my favorite passages in this portion that I decided to follow it up. This week, seventeen years after Jacob is in Egypt, there is an interesting exchange between Joseph and Jacob (Genesis 48:5-12)

8. And Israel saw Joseph’s sons, and said, Who are these? 9. And Joseph said to his father, They are my sons, whom God has given me in this place. And he said, Bring them, I beg you, to me, and I will bless them. 10. Now the eyes of Israel were dim from age, so that he could not see. And he brought them near to him; and he kissed them, and embraced them. 11. And Israel said to Joseph, I had not thought to see your face; and, lo, God has shown me also your seed.

In a scene quite similar to Isaac and Jacob, we have the granting of privileges on two who were part of the next generation, as though they are of the previous generation. Jacob, like his father, is unable to see clearly, and most believe his question “who are these?” is merely for Joseph to verify these are Joseph’s kids, even though Jacob must have seen them on occasion as they grew up from their very early years. Both were born during the seven years of plenty. At a maximum, the oldest, Manasseh was eight at the time Jacob came to Egypt, and his grandpa had seen him grown till a maximum possible age of twenty five. Ephraim would of course be younger than that. He knew them, knew their voices, and their shape. That may not have been the Issue.

Several midrash note that Manasseh and Ephraim wore Egyptian clothes - they did not dress in traditional Canaanite grab, and that would eventually be reflected in the look of their standards during the Exodus from Egypt. Part of this might be assimilation. Yet some Targums such as Pseudo Jonathan change the question to “whose are these?” questioning their heritage. More likely the pashat, the simple plain version is true for those reading or hearing this story during most of Biblical times up to the construction of the second Temple and Ezra.

However, it is the commentators after this time, the Rabbis, who ran into problems due to issues in their own times. They have a real problem in Joseph’s wife, Asnat, daughter of the Egyptian priest of On, Potiphera. Reflected in those Aramaic targums, they have Jacob ask of their heritage. Because Asnat is the mother, are Ephraim and Manasseh Jewish? Throughout history, there has been the question of who is and is not included in the covenant, in short who is a Jew. By rabbinic times, there was an institution in place know as Matrilineal decent to deal with this issue. Essentially, being Jewish is inherited by the mother. Its most concise discussion of this issue comes in the issue of permissibility to marry a gentile in Mishnah Kiddushin.
And whatever [woman] who can not contract kiddushin with that particular person or with others, the issue follows her status; this is the case with the issue of a bondmaid or a gentile woman.

The rabbis seem to be more concerned here with the negative case, when a woman is not Jewish, her children are not Jewish. This statement gets explained in B. Kiddushin 68a-b.

How do we know [it of a freeborn] Gentile woman? — Scripture says, neither shall you make marriages with them. (Deut 7:3) How do we know that her issue bears her status? — R. Johanan said on the authority of R. Simeon b. Yohai, Because Scripture says, For he will turn away your son from following me: (Deut. 7:4) ‘thy son’ by an Israelite woman is called ‘thy son’, but ‘thy son’ by a heathen is not called ‘thy son’. Rabina said: This proves that thy daughter's son by a heathen is called thy son. Shall we say that Rabina holds that if a heathen or a [non-Jewish] slave cohabits with a Jewess the issue is mamzer? — [No.] Granted that he is not [regarded as] fit, he is not mamzer either, but merely stigmatized as unfit (to marry into the priesthood).

Exodus 21:4 talks about keeping the wife and children of a freed slave, when the freed slave had married another slave and had the children under his term of indenture. The rabbis believe this means that children issued from the wife are part of the wife, and thus their status is transmitted via the mother. The rabbis then connect that with the prohibition in Deuteronomy 7:3 of marrying into Canaanite populations inhabiting Israel, to note that this applies to free women as well. Here the rabbis, going back to a teaching from the 2nd century CE scholar Shimon b. Yochai comments on the grammar of Deut. 7:4. The text says he will turn your son. Because it is in the masculine singular, the “he” must be the husband in intermarriage. Had it been gentiles in general, both male and female, the pronoun would have been “they.” R. Shimon then notes “your son” means that this child is Jewish, since the child would not be part of the “your” Moses is speaking to if he was a gentile. Hence if the father is not Jewish, but the child is Jewish, then the mother must be Jewish. One of the compilers of the Babylonian Talmud, Rabina, then concludes with the formula we know today, a child is Jewish if the mother is Jewish.

But to make this whole thing more complex for poor Jacob on his deathbed, there are more specific prohibitions about conversion, based on the following verses of Deuteronomy 23:

4. An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord forever; 5. Because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when you came out of Egypt; and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you….8. You shall not loathe an Edomite; for he is your brother; you shall not loathe an Egyptian; because you were a stranger in his land. 9. The children who are fathered by them shall enter into the congregation of the Lord in their third generation.

One problem with this passage is Ruth, who was a Moabite, but also the ancestor of David. But Ruth cannot convert according to the Deuteronomy passage. If Ruth cannot be Jewish according to Torah, then is David, or for that matter the Messiah, Jewish? That’s a big problem. The rabbis then notice 23:9, that for Edomites and Egyptians, only if the children are fathered by an Edomite or Egyptian, would there be a restriction of three generations. But here is it specifically fathered, not mothered. Therefore Egyptian women are excluded from the prohibition. By the logic of the early rabbis, if that is true of the Egyptian woman such would also be true of the women of Moab. While The Mishnah for Yevamot simply spells this out with only a little argumentation, the Gemara continues to argue this point for several folios, (76b-78b) However, the conclusion is kept. The prohibition does not extend to women; hence Ruth can legally convert, marry Boaz and be the legitimate ancestor of King David.

But in this discussion, we encounter still more problems. Most notably is this “third generation” concept for Egyptians. Who do you count the generations by, mother or father? Given this fathered phrase and the already decided matrilineal decent, the rabbis are not clear here, and debate back and forth between mother and father, never really reaching a conclusion. It is here that Asnat runs into Ambiguites. Given the rabbinic assumption that Torah extends to deeds of the Patriarchs before Sinai, then Ephraim and Manasseh, heads of two tribes from marriage of a Jew and an Egyptian, might not be legitimately part of the assembly. There were several ways of getting around this problem however. The Targum Pseudo Jonathan, an Aramaic translation of the Torah, and the Aggadic commentary Perkei d’Rabbi Eliezer adds that Asnat was the adopted daughter of Potiphar. Her real parents were Dinah and Shechem, the daughter from Dinah’s rape. As Dinah is a daughter of Jacob and Leah, she definitely is part of the assembly. Hence her daughter would be too, making Asnat part of the congregation, and thus matrilineal decent removes all problems. On the other hand Numbers Rabbah and Ecclesiastes Rabbah have her as a convert. This still leaves the problem of the third generation of an Egyptian of course, but we also read in Gen 50:23

23. And Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation; the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph’s knees.

Joseph lived long enough to see the generation who was allowed in the assembly. From these rabbinic interpretations we can see that Jacob’s question in the Rabbis’ mind was one not of personal but national identity - was the two grandsons he was about to bless as his sons really Jewish? The Rabbis, boxed into a corner by their own legal opinions, found ways to make sure they were.

While the Talmudic Rabbis were busy writing all these legal opinions, what is now known as matrilineal decent, as is often the case, they do not give us good reasons why they were dealing with the issue in the first place. These reasons or ta’amei mitzvot, really began to show up during the middle ages. Probably the best known of these is of course Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed. But there were others that attempted to determine what were the reasons we did what we did. The status of Ruth’s and Dinah’s children illustrates the two major rationalizations. The case of Ruth, following the context of the Talmudic arguments in Kiddushin, is the status of children of intermarriage. Then there is the case of Dinah, obliquely mentioned in a few commentaries, the status of the child of rape. Historically, the time of Shimon bar Yochai was the period just after the Bar Kokbah rebellions and there were more than few Roman soldiers around. While there are estimates of up to 600,000 killed in retribution for the rebellion, it is not unlikely that Roman soldiers did other things as well and hence the concern. So today we hear rationalizations about the rabbis did this to handle the issues of jewish identity from intermarriage issues and from rape.

The Matrilineal decent standard in modern times has been questioned from the more liberal parts of Judaism, which has tried to address this all in the context of the current intermarriage issues. Reform and Reconstructionism have moved to a Patrilineal decent, or ‘either parent is Jewish’ model, stipulating that the child and parents must do, in the words of the CCAR, “appropriate and timely public and formal acts of identification with the Jewish faith and people. The performance of these mitzvot serves to commit those who participate in them, both parent and child, to Jewish life. ” In some aspects, Reform Jews now hold Jewish children and parents to a higher standard than the Orthodox in determining Jewish identity. Another challenge, one which might be more serious, to the question “Who is a Jew?” and matrilineal decent is court cases such as Doswell vs. Smith in the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1988, where an inmate in prison who have no Jewish parents nor gone through conversion declare themselves Orthodox Jews in order to get the better quality kosher meals than standard prison fare. If such challenges continue, Who is a Jew might be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court that Jewish identity must be decided only on the declaration of a person that they are Jewish. Jacob back in Genesis, straining to see his grandsons, first asked the question, and we still ask the question, time and time again.

Drash Vayigash 5766

This week Judah pleads for the freedom of Benjamin, and is so moving Joseph reveals that he is their brother in a fearful and tearful reunion. Eventually Jacob comes down to Egypt too and they all live happily off the fat of the land of Egypt at the request of Pharaoh.

All this happy ending stuff makes me want to burst out in song. But no, it’s not some chorus from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In many ways it’s the song that summarizes not just the story of Joseph but the theme of the entire book of Genesis. Next week, the last Parsha of Genesis, is merely to finish the plot lines, bless everyone on their merits instead of birth order, record the death of both Jacob and Joseph, and set us up for the sequel, namely the Exodus from Egypt.

I was considering this song and its theme, but I was having trouble with it in one particular place, at the beginning of the story, with Adam and Eve. While I was on vacation last week, however, I was busy watching my twin nephew and niece, with my sister. Out of the blue, my sister asks me if Adam and Eve were born on the same day. “Technically yes, if you read literally” I said. “Well, then Adam and Eve are twins,” she concluded. I suppose they are, at that. Then I realized that completes the pattern: Adam and Eve; Cain and Abel; Ham, Shem, and Japheth; Isaac and Ishmael; Jacob and Esau; Joseph and his brothers. As Q was once again trying to steal his sisters’ toys from a lounge chair, I thought of how many times, like Adam and Eve either one of them will say “She made me do it! It’s your Fault! No, it his fault!” Fortunately at fifteen months they are barely walking so except for some serious crying this argument hasn’t started yet. But thinking about that, I realized the theme song of Genesis does follow all the stories of Genesis. It was not written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, but a Maalot of David, Psalm 133 (Socino tr.).

1. A Song of Maalot of David.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
2. It is like the precious ointment upon the head,
That runs down upon the beard, Aaron’s beard,
That runs down to the hem of his garments.
3. Like the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion;
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
Life for evermore.

Although I have heard many melodies for this psalm, my favorite is still the same old haunting melody, singing that first verse over and over again, often in a round: Henei ma tov u’ma nayim shevet achim gam yachad. Genesis is a book with a theme, that siblings should live together, yet more often, they don’t. Time after time in Genesis siblings fail to get along, at best having a tenuous peace. Maybe they bury a parent together, but yet won’t live together. Only with Joseph does everybody live together, able to keep together as a family. Genesis is the story of getting it right. Until we do, the story repeats once again.

Genesis then was about the multiple times this didn’t happen, when it does, the book ends. What is interesting is that all too often it is lashon hara, evil speech of one form or another that is at the center of the sibling conflict. As already mentioned, blaming someone else or following a forbidden suggestion was the contention between Adam and Eve. When Noah got drunk and naked, Noah’s son Ham gossiped to his brothers. Ishmael in some way teased Isaac, and their mothers’ were even worse in their words against each other. Jacob conned Esau - not just once but twice. At the beginning of the Joseph story, Joseph was a gossip and braggart, and his brothers were liars.

In the late nineteenth century in Lithuania, a very humble rabbi, who was so humble he didn’t even want a congregation but to work in the back of a small grocery store, wrote his first book. Being so humble Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan did not even let himself be acknowledged as the author, but instead insisted he was the publisher. The book, however became a classic, the Chofetz Chayyim, and R. Israel was nicknamed for this incredible work. A codification of the rules of Lashon Hara, he wrote the definitive text on the subject, read even today. I have yet to read this work, and I do hope I do have the chance to soon, since I do have an interest in the halakah of lashon hara. Indeed it was an act of slander against a rabbinic candidate which started Shlomo’s Drash four and a half years ago. In response to this slander, I came out with a response on Lashon Hara and, Baruch Hashem, never stopped writing.

That original slander happened on e-mail, and while the work of the Chofetz Chayim is timeless, I wonder if he were alive today, he would still need to write a new chapter when it comes to this medium. I’ve thought a lot about lashon hara on the Internet, as I’ve crossed the line a few times myself on this medium, though I try to guard myself as much as possible not to let that happen again. Yet lately, one variety of lashon hara on the Internet has my attention.

Joseph and Judah exchanged words, and both understood what the other was saying. It was clear that Joseph heard Judah, given his cry was heard all the way to Pharaoh. Both knew they were dealing with people. I find it interesting that most of the Talmudic and Midrashic statements concerning lashon hara group it with the crimes of idolatry and murder. Idolatry is taking a god as mere object. Murder is removing the life from a person. In a sense lashon hara can do both, and this Internet case might prove insightful. I have a friend in the Pacific Northwest, and she has a real problem with her e-mail. She has several times noted that not only does this happen on e-mail, but in human to human interactions as well in that part of the country. If you try to establish contact with someone, or send them something, they never acknowledge they got the message. In fact they never say anything. If they have bad news, even face to face, instead of telling you the bad news, they simply ignore you and hope the issue goes away.

While the lashon hara of Joseph’s brothers, lying that he was killed, was obviously a bad thing, would it have been worse to say nothing? At least faking Joseph’s death let Jacob grieve. Not saying anything would have left him in the distress of wondering. But how many times do we do this? By not speaking we save ourselves the stress of telling bad news, and sometime even good news. But in an e-mail message, we leave the sender anticipating a response that never comes. We treat the person not as a human being but name@something.com, a mere name, an object, an empty smashable idol. The sender loses life; we murder the person then throw them in a pixilated garbage can.

How easy is it to change this? All e-mail systems have a reply button. Hit it. Type T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U and hit send. With eight letters, or six of you type “thanks,” you have accomplished a lot - you have given life to the bit of person’s soul they just sent you. The key is to simply acknowledge there is a person on the other side of that message. Granted it’s even better to write more, yet most of us don’t have the time to. But simply saying “thank you” is a start. If there is a response to be given, then give it, or say you have to take a few days to respond, and then respond in a few days. There’s enough stress in the world, acknowledging another human being ends a lot of it.

Judging people behind their back, slander and lies are all important and critical forms of lashon hara. For all of them we should hold our tongues. Genesis Rabbah writes

“

R. Aha said: Lashon hara is so cruel a thing
that having created it [the tongue] He [God] made a place for it where it may be
hidden.”

Yet there are times holding our tongues, our keyboards or Blackberries is also lashon hara. I will acknowledge in this time of hundreds of e-mails a day it is sometimes overwhelming to even type “thank you”. But we treat people like objects without feelings or a soul if we do not. In the blessings Jacob give to his sons next week, Jacob says of Joseph

The archers fiercely attacked him, and shot at him, and
hated him; (Genesis 49:23)

Which the Midrash has an interesting comment:

[To those] who cast at him words cruel as an arrow:
Sharp arrows of the mighty (Ps. 120, 4). Why does he [Jacob] compare them to an
arrow rather than to any other weapon? All other weapons smite from close
quarters, whereas this smites from the distance. Even so is slander, for it is
spoken in Rome and kills in Syria. Nor is it like any other coals, but like
coals of a broom tree (ibid.). For all other coals are extinguished inside [when
they are extinguished on the outside], but coals of broom are still burning
within when they are extinguished without. So is he who listens to slander: even
if you go and appease him and he lets himself be appeased, yet he is still
burning within. (Genesis Rabbah 98:19)

In a medium which can move a message to anywhere on the planet in mere seconds, these words from almost two thousand years ago still ring true. The hurt of lashon hara whether intentionally or unintentionally can hurt people far away. And the hurt is not one that goes away easily, but pierces the heart like an arrow, to wound internally for a long time. Mere apology is rarely enough; the wound is too deep and often, like a division of archers, effects too many people.

It is in the story of both Judah and Joseph finally refusing to stoop to lashon hara that leads to a happy conclusion of the book of Genesis. Both were very human in this story, and acknowledged this humanity. Judah’s appeal was to Joseph’s humanity, to how one should treat a father’s hope and love. The point of Genesis is not just the creation of the universe and the story of the Patriarchs. Brothers live in peace when they treat each other as human, not when they fling the piercing arrows of sharp words or of sharp silences.

For 2006, for a secular resolution let us all make a holy resolution to prevent at least the lashon hara of not acknowledging each other.

On that note, thank you for reading this.

Welcome to Shlomo's Drash!

Welcome Haver!

I've been posting Shlomos drash for four and a half years now as private e-list. I thought it was time to get this thing a little more accessible for those out there in DrashLand. So here I am!

For those of you on the-list, Welcome back!

For those of you who are new, let me tell you a little about the list and me. I'm a liberal post-denomination Jew whose getting his second masters in Jewish Studies ( my first was in Education). For lack of a better term, I'm a Torah Geek, who every week engages the text looking for meaning in modern life personally and in modern living. Shlomo's Drash is my weekly record of those explorations of Torah Talmud and Midrash. Often I will bring in examples from much of the Jewish History mainstream Jews have never heard of.

My motto "It is a mater of Torah and I need to learn" is from a strange story in the Talmud. Brachot 64b. It it the story of Rabbi Akiva when he was a student hiding in the bathroom of his teacher. He learnt which direction one should sit on the toilet and which direction to wipe afterwards. When he tells this story to his students he is greeted with shock, to which he replies "It is a mater of torah and I need to learn." the point is every activity, even the most mundane has some sacred value and spiritual meaning, and we need to find them. This is the quest I attempt with Shlomos Drash.

So sit back and enjoy. Comments are always welcome.