Another trip, Another blog

Shalom y'all!

When I went to Alaska, I ended up writing an inspiring Shavuot Shlomo's Drash .
I got more than a few pieces out of the Galapagos Islands.
In 1995, when studying abroad in Rome, my final exam was a journal of my experiences.
In 1996 when I went back to Rome as a graduation present, I did the journal thing again.

It's 2008, or 5768 depending on how you look at it.

Shlomo's starts his first trip to Israel this week.

But instead of slowing good Ol' Shlomo down in his writing I'm planning to to write even more.
It's part travel log, part lesson in Jewish studies, part photo journal and maybe even a little bit of art. It's my personal journey too with my impressions and opinions of all this.

It's Shlomo's Israel, my blog of my first trip to Israel. I didn't want it interrupting the flow of Shlomo's Drash So I decided to do something different.

If you want to adventure along. I'll be over at http://shlomosisrael.blogspot.com

Passover 5768: The Quest for the Hillel Sandwich

During the Passover Seder, the Hillel sandwich is one of the last rituals before dinner begins. Even when I was very young, when my family celebrated Passover at my grandparents or at home, this was always the good part. This was when you got to eat the haroset for the first time. In our family, it is our tradition to make the Hillel sandwich out of haroset and matzah. But as I began to really explore the Haggadah, I found something out - its not matzah and haroset, but matzah and maror, which my family did as the step before when we eat the maror open-faced. The maror you were supposed to dip into the haroset, which really bothered me: how do you dip ground horseradish into the ground haroset? During the Passover seder, the second son asks, "what is this service to you?" In modernity, it often could be reworded "why are you doing these antiquated customs?" As the story of the Hillel sandwich will show they aren't static or antiquated, but show how dynamic Judaism really is.

In the early part of the first century CE, there lived a great Rabbi named Hillel. His most famous story is about the jokester who went to both Hillel and his rival Shammai and asked to be taught all Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai beat him with a T-square, and Hillel taught him the golden rule. The judgments, discussions, and stories of these two, their contemporaries and their students, were eventually written down and became the Mishnah, the foundation of the Talmud. But not all of what they did was written down in the Mishnah either. Some was orally transmitted for hundreds of years from student to teacher in what is known as a Baraita.

One finds a Baraita in the second part of the Talmud, the Gemara. The Gemara is again the discussions, judgments and stories of the later generations of rabbis, based on what was said in the Mishnah. These Rabbis lived after the destruction of the second temple. On page115a of the Talmud tractate Pesachim, the Hillel sandwich gets discussed, opening in a surprising way: "Said Hillel in the name of a tradition: A person should not wrap matzah and maror and eat." Hillel is saying not to eat a Hillel sandwich? What is going on? It turns out we have two different Hillels here, the Hillel speaking is Hillel II, a fourth century CE rabbi. His reasoning for no Hillel sandwich is that by his time, there's a missing ingredient. The Torah states in Exodus 12:8 "and they shall eat meat in that night, roast with fire, and Matzah; and with maror they shall eat it." In Numbers 9:11, we read "they shall keep it, and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs." with the destruction of the temple, there are no more sacrifices, and thus no usable meat. This creates a second dilemma. Outside of this sacrificial use, which we cannot do, maror becomes a rabbinical precept, not one from the Torah. All we read about maror and bitterness in our Haggadah is actually written in the Mishnah. And if a rabbinic precept and Torah precept are together, Hillel II maintains the Rabbinical nullifies the Torah's precept. So by eating them together, you kill the Torah based mitzvot of eating matzah, which is obviously a bad thing. Hillel II points Hillel the elder did put them together substantiated by Numbers 9:11. Hillel believed "it" is in the singular, so therefore the foods must be put together in one package. But, Hillel's companions disagree; it must be eaten with the Passover sacrifice separately, once with Matzah and once with maror.

Another Rabbi, Hillel II contemporary R. Ashi objected, that the real issues, isn't annulment of one mitzvah or another, but eating one sandwich may not fulfill all obligations for matzah and maror, nor may eating them separately, given the sacrifice situation. So he comes up with a compromise by changing from sacrifice to blessing. Now the obligation comes from the blessings and not the Passover sacrifice. The way to set up this procedure is to first bless the matzah and eat that, then bless the maror, and eat that. Each then has separate obligation. Finally take lettuce, wrap the matzah in it and without a blessing eat that, to remember Hillel, the temple and our missing third ingredient. This is why on many seder plates there are a space for both maror and lettuce.

So it would seem that R. Ashi has solved the problem. Today's Haggadah does use R. Ashi's procedure. First we eat matzah, then maror with haroset together, and finally matzah and maror. But this brings me back to my original question: why does my family use a different sequence: Matzah, Maror on matzah, and Haroset on matzah. I think a lot of it has to do with what we use for maror. Maror today can be one of three things: Lettuce, endive, or horseradish. We always use grated horseradish, as do many people. But the other two type of maror, lettuce and endive, are not eaten that way, but as whole leaves. In the agriculturally rich areas of the Mediterranean, it was probably rather easy to get these by spring. If that were so, then dipping endive into haroset or wrapping a piece of lettuce around a piece of matzah makes sense.

I'm guessing here, but in the Ukraine and Russia, fresh endive or lettuce in late March to early April were probably near impossible to get, or very expensive. The only viable alternative for the poor Jewish household was horseradish, and that was grated so a small piece went a long way. So traditions in eastern Europe arose once again on a people's best way to handle the current situation. When my great-grandfather came to this country, he probably had one tradition from the old country*, grated horseradish, which could only be dispensed easily on matzah. Similarly, to make sure the haroset was eaten, Hillel sandwiches were made with haroset and matzah. These traditions were passed down to my grandfather and my father. Of course, even if the books say otherwise, my Hillel sandwiches will be made with haroset too.

What excites me about this journey, is that we have a desire to perform a mitzvah, and when we cannot, we find a way regardless, even if we have to tweak a rule. We no longer have a Temple, so sacrifices are difficult to come by, but we change the rules so a matter of Torah, eating matzah and maror, can be performed. When living in a place where those rules cannot be followed, because no one can afford the maror necessary to do the mitzvah, those rules once again change.

At Passover we celebrate freedom, that there is no Pharaoh over us, no theocracy, no king. There is only God. Our tradition tells us that God gave us every rule at Sinai, and while the framework was written down as Torah, much of it then, and still today, we are unable to understand until the need is there- and its up to us to find it once the need arises. Even though the words never change, the Torah is not a Pharaoh, and ideas can change and adapt as we need to. We are not stuck doing exactly what they did in Egypt that first Passover, or at Sinai, or in the time of Solomon, because it's impossible for us to do so. Judaism is never antiquated as long as we are willing to take the time to adapt past Halakah to new situations. As I eat my Haroset and matzah this Passover, while remembering the temple in the name of Hillel, I will remember our beautiful dynamism as well.

(*) There is also a possible theory that the grated horseradish tradition actually creeped into my family in this country, via the Gold's horseradish company and bottled grated horseradish. If that is so, it probably started in my Grandfathers generation. However, how the traditions adapted still hold.

Shabbat Ha Gadol:The World History of Haroset

The Passover Seder is full of tradition and mitzvot. According to the NJPS 2001 demographic survey, it is one of the most observed holidays out of all of the Jewish calendar, with two thirds of all Jews attending a Seder. Only lighting Hanukkah candles comes close. Sociologists believe that much of this has to do with home traditions. Home traditions have a deep link to history, especially family history and tradition, often remembered in the kitchen.

One of the most beloved parts of most Passover Seders is eating haroset, the sweet combination of fruits, wine nuts and spices. Everyone has their own recipe, handed down through generations. Many people come for the Seder just to have this sweet condiment. Most know about the symbolism of haroset as the clay of the bricks, which the Israelite slaves made for the Egyptian building projects. But what is the real history of this part of the Passover Seder? Where did it come from and why is it really there? It is a commandment or something else? And why are there so many different recipes and customs about how to eat this?

There are no references to haroset in all the biblical text. The Torah never mentions eating it. Its first mention is in the Mishnah, the early part of the Talmud, where it instructs dipping the maror into it, but the rabbis argue whether it is a mitzvah or not:

Mishnah. They then set [the Passover foods] before him. He dips the lettuce before yet he has reached the aftercourse of the bread. They set before him matzah, lettuce [bitter herbs], and haroset and two dishes, though the haroset is not a mitzvah. R. Eleazar son of R. Zadok said: it is a mitzvah. [Pes. 114a]

In the later Gemara, the rabbis puzzle over this debate. If it isn't a religious requirement why do it? One answer by R. Ammi is to remove something else known as kappa. There are ways to remove kappa, which the rabbis list:

R. Assi said: The kappa of lettuce [is counteracted by] radishes; the kappa of radishes, [by] leeks; the kappa of leeks, [by] hot water; the kappa of all these, [by] hot water. And in the meanwhile let him say thus: ‘Kappa kappa, I remember you and your seven daughters and your eight daughters-in-law.’[Pes. 116a]

The Talmudic rabbis don't tell us what Kappa is, but the 12th century commentator Rashi tells us that it is Aris. This is a loan word from the Greek word which is also is the root of our contemporary word Virus. Aris is something that makes you sick. One of the ways The Rabbis state one way to get rid of kappa is to recite an incantation. Incantations in the Babylonia of Talmudic times were a common method for dealing with demons, and several such incantations can be found in the Talmud. There is a tradition among to name demons in the opposite of is function so as to avoid invoking the demon. Kappa in Aramaic means to congeal, which does describe the process of making bricks. However, its opposite would therefore be to make liquid. If this were true then kappa could have been a case of diarrhea. As the Rabbis do mention sour liquids and in association with haroset, it may be bacteria which die under Hot water or under acidic conditions. There is one, Clostridium perfringens that would fit this bill, commonly found in vegetables grown close to the ground. The Haroset's original function was to fulfill the mitzvah of eating maror without getting ill.

Other rabbis thought differently. Some believed it was a mitzvah, as it was a commemoration of the Exodus, but there was disagreement about what was being commemorated:

R. Levi said: In memory of the fruit-tree; R. Johanan said: In memory of the clay. Abaye observed: Therefore one must make it acrid and thicken it: make it acrid, in memory of the fruit-tree; and thicken it, in memory of the clay. It was taught in accordance with R. Johanan: The spices are in memory of the straw; the haroset is a reminder of the clay. [Pes. 116a]

R. Levi thought it had to do with the memory of a fruit tree, a reference to the Song of Songs 8:5.

5. Who is this that comes up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I awakened you up under the tapuach tree; there your mother was in labor with you; there she who bore you was in labor.

The rabbis tell a story that the Israelite women, to avoid the intercession by Egyptian authorities, would bear their children under fruit trees. (Gen. R. I:12, B. Sotah 11b) R. Johanan believed it had to do with the memory of the clay used for building by the slaves. R. Johanan's idea came from the root word for haroset, heres, which means clay. Much later, Abaye combined the ideas and includes both as ingredients in the finished condiment. Following the lead of R. Johanan's clay idea, it was later taught that the spices used were a reminder of the straw which the Israelites were denied by the Egyptians and had to find themselves in order to makes bricks out of mud.

7. You shall no more give the people straw to make bricks, as till now; let them go and gather straw for themselves. [Exodus 5:7]

But there was one more train of thought as to why we have Haroset on the table. We are commanded by the Mishnah to ask

Why is this night different from all other nights? For on all other nights we dip once, while on this night we dip twice.

In order to beg the question, the rabbis had this curious custom included so that we do dip twice, in the salt water with the karpas, and later the haroset with the bitter herbs. This was one of many tricks to keep the kids involved with the Seder.

By the middle ages there were several interpretations of this debate in the Talmud. Two commentators from two different parts of the word give differing perspective. Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchak, better known as Rashi, lived in late 11^th to early 12^th century France, whose views would parallel the regional view of northern and eastern Europe, what would eventually become the Ashkenazic world. In the Mediterranean, including Spain and much of the Southern Mediterranean, in essence what we know as Sephardic world there was Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon (1135-1204 CE) best known as either Maimonides or the Rambam. The Rambam, born in Spain, traveled throughout most of the Sephardic world, spending the end of his life in Alexandria. Both of these giants of the middle ages, Rambam and Rashi, agree that the Haroset is in accordance with Johanan's idea commemorating clay.

While Rashi and Rambam agree on the symbol, their respective parts of the world didn't agree on the ingredients of haroset. They knew where to get the ingredient list: The Song of Songs, since it was mentioned in the Halakah. R. Levi's ingredients based on the Song of Songs however gets lost in translation. The word for fruit tree is tapuach. Most who know Modern Hebrew will recognize this as apple. This comes from the northern and eastern European translations of this word. Rashi, the French and eastern European Jews used apples, assuming this was a tapuach. On the other hand, the Mediterranean basin, where the Rambam lived, apples are rather uncommon, as they are not a native species. The Tapuach of the Song of Songs some have speculated may have been a Chinese import to the Persian courts: peaches and apricots. In Egypt, Spain and most of the Islamic controlled Mediterranean, apples were near impossible to come by, so Tapuach was interpreted to mean Dates. Sephardic haroset is usually Dates and other dried fruits and nuts.

Throughout the word there are amazing regional differences in the recipes for haroset. The traditional Ashkenazic variety is a variation of apples, chopped almonds, cinnamon, red wine, and matzah meal. Sephardic traditions have ingredients available in ancient Israel: grapes, matzah meal, dates, figs, olives, apricots, pomegranates, and almonds. Yemenite Jews will add julienne Chili peppers to resemble the straw, and also add ginger and sesame seeds. North African Jews will add Eggs pines nuts and ginger to the Sephardic recipe. One Italian recipe even included chestnuts. Iraqi and Indian Jews will make date syrup and add nuts. While the mitzvah of Haroset continues, its implementation is indeed all over the map.

As I look at the myriad of observances and opinions about some little condiment, eaten on a few consecutive days a year, I am in awe. What started as a folk food safety practice for eating certain kinds of vegetables has evolved through two millennia as a point of deep spiritual meaning for many Jews today. What was probably just a sweetened dish of vinegar has inspired hundreds of recipes, and inspired traditions to be handed down for close to two thousand years. But what awes me the most is the dynamic nature of the practice of eating Haroset. While the commandment hasn't changed, the observance and ingredients varied widely. As I went through the Talmud, Maimonides, Rashi, and the Shulchan Aruch about haroset, I am reminded how dynamic, flexible and resilient Judaism can be.

For those looking for a good resource for recipes, check out this website:

http://www.cyber-kitchen.com/rfcj/category.cgi?category=PESACH-haroset

For those interested in the original texts in English translation, and some selected recipes from a variety of sources, check out the handout I wrote for a Haroset workshop at Beth Emet in Evanston IL a few years ago.

http://www.shlomosdrash.com/haroset_class.pdf

Metzora 5768: Social Diseases

This week, in the second half of the double portion, God explains how to clean someone of Tzarat. We then get the explanation of the Tzarat of the house, and its remediation. Finally we have a discussion of the Zab, and the necessary actions for a person so afflicted. We read of Zab:

2. Speak to the people of Israel, and say to them, When any man has a discharge out of his flesh, because of his discharge he is unclean. 3. And this shall be his uncleanness in his discharge; whether his flesh runs with his discharge, or his flesh is stopped from his discharge, it is his uncleanness. [Leviticus 15:2-3]

Since a regular ejaculation is mentioned further down the text, we know is that this is an unnatural discharge. Unlike the problem indentifying Tzarat from last week, this is clearly Gonorrhea. The symptoms also are different for women:

25. And if a woman has a bloody discharge many days not during the time of her menstruation, or if it runs beyond the time of her menstruation; all the days of the discharge of her uncleanness shall be as the days of her menstruation; she shall be unclean.[Leviticus 15:25]

For all cases, ejaculation or a non-normal discharge in men or women, the rules are pretty much the same:

4. Every bed, on which he, who has the discharge, lies, is unclean; and everything, on which he sits, shall be unclean. 5. And whoever touches his bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. 6. And he who sits on any thing on which he, who has the discharge, sat, shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. 7. And he who touches the flesh of him who has the discharge shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. 8. And if he who has the discharge spits upon him who is clean; then he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. 9. And whatever saddle he, who has the discharge, rides upon, shall be unclean. 10. And whoever touches any thing that was under him shall be unclean until the evening; and he who carries any of those things shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. 11. And whoever he, who has the discharge, touches, and has not rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. 12. And the utensil of earth, that he, who has the discharge, touches, shall be broken; and every utensil of wood shall be rinsed in water. [Leviticus 15:4-12]

While there is less quarantine than Tzarat, there is a lot of infection control. Here we see the concept very clearly of contamination and cross contamination. Not only can one be contaminated by direct contact but also contact of surfaces the Zab touches. Interestingly, most of the surfaces mentioned, including the Zab’s hands, often have direct contact with the genitals. To counteract the contamination, one washes the contaminated bed, chair, saddle, utensils. Then one must avoid using them for a full day. Some things, like earthenware containers cannot be cleaned, and thus must be destroyed.

These are of course all good ways of preventing disease transmission where one has an STD or has just handled a dead animal of any kind. Cleaning and preventing contact in the first place from surfaces that might be contaminated is a good way to prevent disease.

But is there spiritual lesson in all this? In order to answer that question I think we first have to remember one of the first lessons from the Perkei Avot:

Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets to the men of the Great Assembly. The latter used to say three things: be patient in [the administration of] justice, rear many disciples and make a fence round the Torah. [Avot 1:1]

This statement is the basis of the Oral Torah. There was law transmitted orally from generation to generation that was not written down in the five books of Moses. Fundamental to the Oral Law is the concept of the preventative measure: the fence or hedge around the Torah. The idea is simple: have a rule that makes sure you don’t break another, written rule. For example, Do not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk has so many preventative measures wrapped around it that one should not eat a cheeseburger, or even a chicken sandwich with soy cheese, just so we don’t break that original rule.

The question I then ask is: If the Oral Law contains fences around the Written Law, Could the Written Law put a fence around itself? Here we have a case of that exactly happening. While Zaba, the female equivalent, might be a bit more complicated into the cause and may include other diseases beside gonorrhea, it clear that the Zab has an STD and that of course requires sexual transmission. While it possible to have sex while both partners are standing, it’s a lot easier if at least one partner is sitting or lying down. If no one can really touch a Zab or anything a Zab sits or lies on without becoming contaminated, then it become very difficult to have sex with a Zab, and truly transmit the disease. Interestingly, the Talmud notes this in terms of the one loophole in the law: a zab must not dine together with a zabah, lest it lead to sin! [Shabbat 11a, 13b] If both are afflicted, then there is seemingly no danger of transmitting disease, and another fence needs to put into place to prevent otherwise prohibited sex should the two try to seduce each other at the dinner table.

Midrash tells us that the name of our portion Metzora, the word for someone with tzarat can be broken into two words Mozi (bring out, utter) ra (evil) [Leviticus Rabbah XVI: 1, 2] They go on to say that both Tzarat and Zab are punishments for evil speech and other detestable social actions. In English there is a related word play: Intercourse may mean sexual contact or conversation. I believe this is not accidental. Both good conversation and good sex requires the active participation of all involved. On the other hand bad conversation can be as destructive as bad sex. The direct English translation of lashon ha-ra is the bad tongue. While usually involving tale bearing, spreading rumors, lying, and the like, it really covers the whole gamut of bad conversations.

The ancient rabbis, in linking STD’s and lashon hara may have seen this connection And while most, but certainly not all STD’s and usually occur from direct contact, there is the possibility of cross contamination of many organisms from contact with other surfaces, which spread the disease unintentionally to others. So too with Lashon Hara – and ideas can spread to others, and cause harm far beyond two people talking.

Sex and talk also have another commonality: it is a way of creating connection between people, and we have a deep core need for connection. The problem of Lashon hara often occurs when we so want connection that we connect badly. Instead of a deep constructive connection, we take other routes. Instead of building bridges to another through revealing ourselves we connect through destructive statements about some famous person for example. Sometime it is not even about a third party. Anger, crankiness and criticism directed at someone trying to connect with you is all too often the case. Similarly one night stands purely for the sensation and not for any deeper relationship with a person accomplishes nothing and may even spread a disease.

I think there is another verse in the Perkei Avot which describes this well:

R. Hananiah b. Teradion said: When two sit together and there are no words of Torah between them, then this is a session of scorners, as it is said: Nor sat he in the seat of the scornful (Ps. 1:1); But [when] two sit together and there are words of Torah [spoken] between them, the Shechinah abides among them, as it is said: then they that feared the lord spoke one with another(Mal 3:16).[Avot 3:2]

If, however we build a strong constructive relationship, things are very different. In stead of temporary relationships longer lasting bonds are made. For those bonds our need for connections is filled, and we even gain the ability to create instead of destroy. In conversation new ideas can be generated. The conversation itself becomes a holy sacred connection.

Yet more often than not this does not seem to happen. It is one of the paradoxes of the last two parshiot that the disease which might start from a desperate need to connect leads to more isolation. One who gossips, slanders, or hurts people verbally becomes even more isolated for no one is around them. Yet, when we fear Lashon Hara, and put too many fences up against saying the wrong thing once again we isolate ourselves. All of this isolation can become a downward spiral as the person become more desperate, leading to even more destruction both of ourselves and of others. There is one place that the sexuality and conversation parallel does break down however. We should think in terms of universal precautions for STD’s. Prophylactics are definitely a good idea when it some to sexual contact. But in conversation we often take this to ridiculous extremes. We place so many fences around ourselves to prevent such destruction to our selves from the outside. All it does is isolate us even further.

How does one beat this pattern? I wish I knew. I’ve spent a lot of time, energy and money trying to beat it, and deeper connections are rare, close to non-existent. The answers I’ve found never completely, if at all, seem to work. I do not have Tzarat or Tav, yet the social disease of isolation is an unbearable weight, one compounded in the last few months with and even stronger physical isolation than before. I’m sure I’m not the only one, as the rock group Police wrote in their song Message in a bottle:

Walked out this morning, don't believe what I saw,

A hundred billion bottles, washed up on the shore.

Seems I'm not alone at being alone,

A hundred billion castaways, looking for a home.

I thought of a parable this weekend which, writing this and all those bottle washing ashore, I truly wonder if I’m seeing clearly. Last Sunday I heard a lecture by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman on a rather optimistic future of the American synagogue, a topic that was a big part of my graduate studies and what I had hoped my future plans. I sat in my car and cried afterwards. Why? A Parable. To what can this be compared to? To a boy on a schoolyard full of children playing. He sits on the side lines since no one will play with him. When a ball comes by, all he can do is throw it back, for no one wants him to join their game. So too do I feel my life right now. But I’m wrong. There’s no one in the playground, all the kids are on the sidelines waiting for some one to ask them to play, all too afraid to do the asking. The playground, to quote Simon and Garfunkel his time, only has the sounds of silence.

I think the point of Tzaria-Metzora was to avoid this isolation, particularly with the use of the very public sin offerings. Unfortunately, in rabbinic and modern translation, it all too easily ends up causing it.

Parshat Tzaria 5768: What is Tzarat?

Moving from all the death of animals for food and death of offspring in industrial accidents of last week, this week we move into part two of the three part theme on biblical public health. We start with the procedure for a mother after giving birth, then discuss some gynecological problems. We then move into the beginning of a rather long two portion discussion of the issue of what in that text is called tzarat and at a later time would be translated leprosy.

The rabbis were pretty clear on the causes of the disease called tzarat. For them it was a spiritual punishment:

(i) Haughty eyes, (ii) A Iying tongue, and (iii) Hands that shed innocent blood; (iv) A heart that divises wicked thoughts, (v) Feet that are swift in running to evil; (vi) A false witness that breathes out lies, and (vii) He that sows discord among brethren. R. Johanan said: All these are punished by leprosy. [Leviticus Rabbah XVI: 1]

For ten things [i.e. sins] does leprosy come upon the world: (i) idol-worship, (ii) gross unchastity, (iii) bloodshed, (iv) the profanation of the Divine Name, (v) blasphemy of the Divine Name, (vi) robbing the public, (vii) usurping [a dignity] to which one has no right, (viii) overweening pride, (ix) evil speech, and (x) an evil eye. [Leviticus Rabbah XVII: 3]

Certain types of bad behavior, much of it socipopathic, caused tzarat. Also they note it is progressive in nature.

First they come upon [the fabric of] his house. If he repents, it requires the pulling out [of affected stones]; if not, it requires pulling down [the house]. Then they [i.e. the plagues] come upon one's clothes. If he repents, they require washing; if not, they require burning. Then they [i.e. the plagues] come upon his body. If he repents, he undergoes purification; if not, HE SHALL DWELL ALONE (XIII, 46). [Leviticus Rabbah XVII: 3]

The rabbis and the biblical text saw this as s spiritual and social problem. If a person changes and repents, the problem goes away. Part of the biblical text however has remained around for quite a long time:

All the days when the disease shall be in him he shall be unclean; he is unclean; he shall dwell alone; outside the camp shall his habitation be. [Leviticus 13:46]

In English translations, tzarat had been associated with leprosy for quite a long time. Part of tzarat is the quarantine of the individual. Such a commandment had led to the creation of leper colonies, places of isolation, often in the worst of conditions. But was tzarat really leprosy?

Leprosy, in modern nomenclature called Hansen’s disease is caused by a very interesting rod shaped bacteria Mycobacterium leprae. Mycobacteria have a very thick and strong cell wall made up of waxy configurations of fats and sugars, making them rather impervious to the most common ways of indentifying bacteria and some of the methods used to kill them. However, in 1873 Gerhard Hansen did isolate and indentify the causative organism. The disease affects the skin and nervous tissue, leading to a loss of feeling. It is a secondary effect of this loss of feeling that causes people to not notice other conditions and injuries which might cause loss of skin tissue, not the leprosy itself. The U.S. Centers of Disease control has as part of their case definition the following symptoms:

Tuberculoid: one or a few well-demarcated, hypopigmented [i.e. light colored], and anesthetic skin lesions, frequently with active, spreading edges and a clearing center; peripheral nerve swelling or thickening also may occur Lepromatous: a number of erythematous [i.e. reddish] papules and nodules or an infiltration of the face, hands, and feet with lesions in a bilateral and symmetrical distribution that progress to thickening of the skin Indeterminate: early lesions, usually hypopigmented macules, without developed tuberculoid or lepromatous features

In comparison to the CDC definition, Tzarat, unlike anything else in the biblical text has one of the most detailed, if not clinical descriptions:

3. And the priest shall look on the disease in the skin of the flesh; and if the hair in the plague has turned white, and the disease looks deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a disease of leprosy; and the priest shall look on him, and pronounce him unclean. 4. If the bright spot is white in the skin of his flesh, and it looks not deeper than the skin, and the hair on it has not turned white; then the priest shall shut up him who has the disease for seven days; 5. And the priest shall look on him the seventh day; and, behold, if the disease appears to have stayed in place, and the disease has not spread over the skin; then the priest shall shut him up seven days more; 6. And the priest shall look on him again the seventh day; and, behold, if the disease is somewhat dark, and the disease did not spread in the skin, the priest shall pronounce him clean; it is a scab; and he shall wash his clothes, and be clean. 7. But if the scab spreads out in the skin, after that he has been seen by the priest for his cleansing, he shall be seen by the priest again; 8. And if the priest sees that, behold, the scab spreads in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it is a leprosy.

While a lot of these symptoms are similar, the CDC definition mentions nothing about hair, not does the Biblical one mention anything about losing feeling in the lesions or the papules (hard raised areas of skin). Indeed Leviticus notes the disease is going down into the flesh, not moving up.

Even more puzzling is that Tzarat does not just affect people, but also non living things, including completely inorganic things. First we have clothing (13:47-49) both of plant and animal materials, then in next week’s portion houses with tzarat growing in the bricks. (14:37) In both of these cases, the text mentions not white but red or green growths. This is not the behavior of bacteria, but something else: fungi.

To understand Tzarat as a mold is found in Leviticus 14. After a home owner reports the possibility of disease to a priest, the house is emptied of all its possessions, and then:

37. And he [i.e. the priest] shall look on the disease, and, behold, if the disease is in the walls of the house with depressions, greenish or reddish, which in look lower than the wall; 38. Then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house, and shut up the house seven days; 39. And the priest shall come again the seventh day, and shall look; and, behold, if the disease has spread over the walls of the house; 40. Then the priest shall command that they take away the stones in which the disease is, and they shall throw them into an unclean place outside the city; 41. And he shall cause the house to be scraped inside around, and they shall pour out the dust that they scraped outside the city into an unclean place; 42. And they shall take other stones, and put them in the place of those stones; and he shall take other mortar, and shall plaster the house. 43. And if the disease comes again, and break out in the house, after he has taken away the stones, and after he has scraped the house, and after it is plastered; 44. Then the priest shall come and look, and, behold, if the disease has spread in the house, it is a malignant leprosy in the house; it is unclean. 45. And he shall break down the house, its stones, and its timber, and all the mortar of the house; and he shall carry them out of the city into an unclean place. [Lev 14 37-45]

This is very close to the same guidelines the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has for the remediation of mold. Fungi can cause types of dermatitis which can be similar to the symptoms mentioned above, some can grow on inorganic substances like rock or plaster, not to mentions infect leather wool and linen equally.

The rabbinic pattern of Tzarat first showing in the house, then clothes then people may not be farfetched. As the rabbis of Midrash Rabbah were people living in the same region as their ancestors, they were exposed to the same building materials, clothes, and climatic conditions as their ancestors. In rainy seasons, the plaster used in building constriction may have gotten wet and wicked the moisture into the area between stone and plaster, where the mold began to grow. Form there other items, including clothing would be affected. At the same time as it was the rainy season, people stayed indoors more often. Transmission of skin contact or through moldy clothes is not outside the range of possibilities for mold which would cause symptoms similar to the ones described, including the loss of pigmentation not only in skin, but in the hair.

Under these circumstances, Isolation and proper disposal of contaminated materials is the proper approach to the problem. In Miriam’s bout with leprosy, God commands Moses to shut out Miriam from the camp seven days (Numbers 12:14), the same procedure for tzarat as mentioned in Leviticus. The isolation was outside the camp not just to prevent contamination of others, but also prevents the person from having further exposure to the original source of the problem. For similar reasons everything inside of the house needs to be removed to prevent re-infection of the house with exposed materials. As Leviticus 14:46-47 notes anyone entering a sick building needs to be considered exposed for the rest of the day, anyone eating or sleeping in a quarantined home needs to be washed down.

I’ve had problems with the health claims for kosher. Yet for tzarat I’m willing to make the health claim. Granted, there is a spiritual component, and as I wrote last year, the kind of psychopathic activities the Rabbis ascribe as Tzarat for a punishment provide us with a reason for isolating such individuals. As someone involved with environmental health, the procedures ands details in the mitzvot of tzarat point to a environmental health concern above all else. Sick building syndrome is a real threat. The slightest water damage can cause immense health damage. In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, we saw this on a horrible scale, not only among residents but among relief workers. After the flood waters receded, mold was everywhere, and the effects of mold were well. The Centers for Disease Control found that 54% of New Orleans police officers and 49% of the city’s Firefighters working at the disaster responding to the poll reported skin rashes for example (MMWR 4/28/06). No study I found has yet looked at long term effects, but based on evidence of earlier smaller flooding situations, they too may be devastating.

While Mycobacterium leprae may very well go extinct as a public heath issue within a decade according to the World Health Organization, molds and their mycotoxins never will. Tzarat will be around for quite a while I believe. Yet the reason for this and next week’s readings to be primarily a public health text in a spiritual text, outside of the rabbi’s insistence on lashon hara as its cause is still a mystery. We’ll look at that more next week when we discuss the other public health problem these texts discuss.

Parshat Shmini 5768: Tolerance

This week, we have three major parts of our portion; we continue the sacrifices started in last week’s portion. On the eighth day of sacrifices, everything goes so well fire from the Lord devours the sacrifices. But things then turn tragic. Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu offer alien fire and are fatally consumed by the fire of the Lord. The rest of the Leviticus 10 then gives the aftermath of this tragedy and a prohibition against priests making sacrifices while intoxicated. We end with the laws of prohibited and permitted animals for eating, the basis of the kosher laws. Those start in chapter 11 with

1. And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them, 2. Speak to the people of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which you shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.

Much of what we’ve read from the book of Leviticus has been mitzvot that has been rather impractical in post temple times. In the next few chapters of Leviticus many mitzvot will deal with public health. This all starts with the backbone of the kosher dietary rules in Leviticus 11. Yet the connection between the sacrifices and what we eat was underlined by the rabbis:

The altar of wood three cubits high . . . . and he said to me, This is the table that is before the Lord(Ezek. 41:22) [Now the verse] opens with ‘altar’ and finishes with ‘table’? R. Johanan and R. Eleazar both explain that as long as the Temple stood, the altar atoned for Israel, but now a man's table atones for him.[Ber. 55a]

When I’m not studying Torah or writing this column, I spend my life as an Environmental Health Professional. Most people would call me a Health Inspector, and I have spent a lot of time walking through many restaurants pointing out all kinds of violations that could make customers sick. Unlike my government colleagues, I’m a private consultant, and people hire me to internally check stuff so the local heath department never finds it wrong. A couple of years ago while working at a large convention center, I was inspecting a glatt kosher food kiosk for a client. The orthodox owner of this kiosk, watched me inspect his neighboring kiosk, a barbecue pork place, and eyed my nervously as I stuck my thermometer into pulled pork. Walking up to him, I referred to my thermometer as a “treif-o-meter” and then asked for his thermometer so I could take the temperature of his hot dogs and make sure they were over 140°F. His initial suspicion of anyone messing with his food relaxed at the quirky comment. We had a wonderful conversation after he noted how much the local kosher certifying agency and I did a lot of the same stuff.

Kashrut and food safety have been interwoven parts of my life for years. In 2006, I gave a presentation at the national meetings of my professional association explaining to a standing room only crowd of Health inspector and public health officials spilling out into the hallway what Kosher is and how to inspect not only a kosher restaurant but also how to deal with many faith-based food issues. It was so popular, and it got recorded at a second presentation two days later, which also brought in a crowd. That video is still on my professional association’s bestseller list as of this writing. I’ve given that talk locally several times and still get calls for it once in a while. Health and Kosher seem to be related.

In his Guide to the Perplexed, Maimonides makes one of the first health claims for kosher. Indeed he claims that everybody knows one shouldn’t eat pork. Even though Maimonides was a royal physician in Islamic Egypt, he may not have been talking as a doctor but as a Jew living in Egypt during the crusades. Eating pork flagged you as a Christian and a possible enemy spy, and that would be unhealthy. I don’t think in terms of health when it comes to Kosher. I’ve always thought what we call today treif is the fourth category of contamination in public health, the other three being biological, chemical and physical. The biblical taamei, changed to Terefa by the Talmudic rabbis was more about our connection to the divine. As such that connection might change and the rules about that connection might change. Islam and Judaism both don’t eat pork, and require a very specific method of slaughter for permitted animals. Yet they differ on the details of the procedure. Kosher requires the process be blessed for an entire day’s work, before the Shochet starts his day of cutting. On the other hand, Halal requires each animal to have a blessing while facing Mecca.

But even among Jews there are debates and even conflicts about what is the proper procedure. In late 18th century one movement took a lot of fire from traditional jews due to its very stringent the slaughter procedures and inspections for meat. Usually thought to be a reforming movement in Eastern Europe, The Hasidic movement was more strict about kosher meat than other movements of the time. There is evidence that the Baal Shem Tov himself was a Shochet at one part of his life, and we do have his request for a responsa he wrote in the name of the village council. He requested a ruling on the issue if one type of lesion is considered kosher, which the local rabbi had permitted. He demanded the use of only extremely sharp knives, which brought the movement a lot of flack from traditional Jews.

Even in Talmudic times, there were debates about what was and wasn’t kosher. One of the most interesting is the ruling of R. Jose of the Galilee, who believed the prohibition of dairy and poultry was absurd, since the Torah states “in its mother’s milk” and fowl produces no milk. People in the Galilee who were taught by one of the students of R. Jose would therefore mix milk and poultry. As one should follow the custom of the locality it was permitted. [Shabbat 130a]

Modernity had led us into even more confusion and conflict when comes to Kosher. Since the late 18^th century, not only the Hasidim, but many other observant Jews have taken to intense stringencies, and not just for meat. Two examples include the prohibition of broccoli and raspberries, since it is very difficult to remove tiny insects from them. Similarly, some of the very observant in New York City do not use their tap water, since there is microscopic shellfish called copepods in the reservoir feeding the city which gets into the water supply.

This is not only true of orthodoxy. Some in the liberal side of Judaism are also finicky as to the sources of their food, which they have termed Eco-kosher. For some, that means organic. For others, that might mean the food was produced in places with good labor practices, and for others under environmentally friendly conditions. On some occasions, one can have all three of these, In others those three criteria might contradict each other.

What we are left with is confusion. From the non observant Jew who would drop dead before having a glass of milk with his cheeseburger to the strictly observant who would not even walk into a house that does not follow exactly the same rules they do, Kosher observance has hit a point where it has become a completely personal practice. I am just as guilty of this as anyone else. My version of kosher prohibits red meat, allows chicken, and following R. Jose of the Galilee I do allow myself dairy with poultry. I don’t eat any shellfish or fish without scales, only the permitted kosher seafood. I’m not very Eco-kosher. I for one really don’t care where my food is coming from; I’m too cynical and too much a food industry insider to believe anyone’s claim.

Today it is not whether you keep kosher but how you keep kosher. There too many ways to keep kosher. But with Passover approaching, the flip side of that coin is also approaching. While the level of observance of removing and banning Hametz from the house will again be a personal observance, the Passover Seder often is far from a small private event. A lot of people from many different observance levels, and sometimes even differing religions come to the Seder table. The question which has bothered me for quite a time is how does one address the needs of all of them. Since I don’t eat red meat, I have on occasions gone to Orthodox homes, and ate very little, since they were serving meat that meal. On the other hand, my fear of Tuberculosis, E. Coli, Salmonella and a variety of other diseases might keep me from eating at some eco-kosher homes that only drink raw milk.

While I’ve been a Heath inspector for quite a white for the last few months I’ve been more involved with quality control in stuff other than food. And that has gotten me thinking about one of the big issues in quality control: tolerances. Put another way, how stringent or how lenient does one have to be in order to have a successful product? One of the very reputable books I read startled me with a bit of wisdom I hadn’t thought of before: if you have too many defects, one thing to do is broaden your tolerances that a lot of what you are claiming as defects become acceptable product. That sounded rather alarming and a bit seedy at first glance. It definitely went against my Jewish sensibilities of putting fences around Torah, putting as many preventative measures a possible in place to prevent failure. There was more to this story. Much of industry tolerances were set as arbitrary numbers. There was no real reason why those tolerances existed. The product worked fine even at the broader tolerances. The problem is no one knows exactly when the product really did stop working with statistically valid data. Not knowing that they throw away a lot of good product for no reason.

Thinking about that and the stringencies many people put on the rules of Kosher, I’ve done some wondering. Instead of thinking about our personal tolerances, maybe we should think about what tolerances make for valid observance as part of a group, and what is an arbitrary restriction? Maybe another way to frame the question of how to keep kosher as a group is how does the group as a whole experience kosher? What makes this community find sacred in the experience of eating? The rabbis transferred sacrifices to the dining room table. Nowhere is this as apparent as Passover. The question that really needs to be answered before the kosher question is said very early in the Passover Seder – What makes this night different than any other night? What makes our eating into a sacred connection?

I have no real answer here, just a belief as a guy who keeps kosher to some extent. Liberals and conservatives both make my observance frustrating, and I lose the holiness in that frustration. What makes dining room table less sacred is amount of fussing and fighting among people over this. How can we stop the bickering between people over what to eat?

So what does everyone else think?

Tzav/Purim 5768: Treif and Galut

This week covers more procedures for the sacrifice in the Mishkan, and then the record of those first sacrifices. Like many of these chapters about the sacrificial procedure, it is seemingly irrelevant to things today: indeed it was seemingly irrelevant to the world of even the Rabbis who didn’t have a temple either. Where we find things irrelevant, like sacrifices, it is time to look closer at the text for deeper meaning, for some things standing the test of time. This week we read:

19. And the flesh that touches any unclean thing shall not be eaten; it shall be burned with fire; and as for the flesh, all who are clean shall eat of it. 20. But the soul who eats of the meat of the sacrifice of peace offerings, that belongs to the Lord, having his uncleanness upon him, that soul shall be cut off from his people. 21. Moreover the soul who shall touch any unclean thing, as the uncleanness of man, or any unclean beast, or any abominable unclean thing, and eat of the meat of the sacrifice of peace offerings, which belongs to the Lord, that soul shall be cut off from his people. 22. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 23. Speak to the people of Israel, saying, You shall eat no kind of fat, of ox, or of sheep, or of goat. 24. And the fat of the beast that dies of itself, and the fat of that which is torn by beasts, may be used in any other use; but you shall in no wise eat of it. [Leviticus 7:19-24]

The book of Leviticus centers on the issue of tamei and tahor , often translated unclean and clean. Yet, another translation could be Contaminated and pure. Thinking about contamination has been my profession for quite a while. When I’m not writing this commentary, I’ve been an environmental health professional, what many commonly call a health inspector. I’ve been looking for contamination in restaurants and restaurant food. But for the last five, as part of my graduate studies I’ve thought about contamination differently too. As I’ve explored Torah along with my environmental health background, I’ve begun to see some interesting patterns between my public health career and the Levitical code. Over the next few weeks I’ll be discussing some of them. Until we get to Parshat Acharei Mot, tamei situations are thematic for much of this text.

One of these issues of tamei, we refer to as treif. While the context of the passage above applies to the temple service, it was not hard to extend it to all eating, as other passages elsewhere give details of this prohibition. If meat comes into contact with impure things it is not to be eaten. If a person handling food is clean, that they didn’t touch impure things, such as an infection on a human, or a pig, they may eat it. The fat of the animal was not to be eaten. Other forms of unclean included where an animal dies on its own or is torn by another animal the food animal is not clean enough to eat. But one can use that fat for other purposes, say axle grease.

While tamei often parallels contamination from biological, chemical and physical sources, it really is another type of contamination: spiritual contamination. In some way which is not completely explained, certain acts render a people and things contaminated. Like bacteria or chemical residue, such contamination can transfer between a contaminated object and a person or a person and the food they consume. I actually use the translation of tamei as spiritual contamination when talking to public health officials about faith based eating practices and how they conduct food inspections of faith based facilities. While what the actual contaminant is, and why we shouldn’t eat it change by faith, whether I’m dealing with the Islamic Hallal/Haram food codes, Kashrut, Hindu vegetarianism, or certain prohibitions among Christian sects, all can understand someone’s reluctance in terms of a contaminating agent.

But through an evolution of things, and based on our passage, when Jews talk about spiritually impure foods that is not the word we use. Instead we use the term treifa. Treifa actually means torn, and really applies to one case of tamei, that of one animal tearing up another animal. But we can see in that case it means the meat is unclean and prohibited from being eaten. While our passage in Leviticus 7:24 refers to the fat of a treifa animal, Exodus 22:30 mentions the flesh and Leviticus 22:8 prohibits eating any part of the animal. By rabbinic times it referred not only to kosher animals that were torn by beasts, but animals that were torn by anything. As treifa became one of the common standards to determine the suitability of an animal, it began to be used for any animal which was unfit for kosher slaughter, thus prohibiting from slaughter “downer” animals that were too ill to be slaughtered or could not walk. From there, instead of referring to just the status of meat, it began to be used for any other food that was not considered kosher, essentially replacing tamei. In the Yiddish vernacular glatt, which really meant certain organs in a kosher animal had no tumors, eventually meant strictly kosher and its opposite was treif, not kosher.

But the term treif did not end with just food, but often is now used to talk about anything not kosher. I find it interesting that the term has become a derogatory term used by some observant Jews to talk about other Jews not following the same observances as themselves. Having to bear it often at the Orthodox Hebrew school during my preparation for my bar mitzvah, it has bothered me that a term meant to describe a specific status of a food product is used for lashon hara. In one poetic sense however, I can see their point. Something holy is rendered unholy by the attack of a belligerent third party. The holy Jew, is torn by the secular world, and thus becomes non observant. But the imagery falls apart when we realize that any such attack is non voluntary. The cow does not go out to meet the wolf to be torn. In this understanding, Treif is not derogatory, but tragic -- the treifa animal is a victim, not a volunteer. I doubt anyone would have the chutzpa to call a holocaust survivor treif, but in many ways, they are victims of wild aggression, bearing the tears and scars.

I’ve been having a lot of problems writing this column lately. I’ve been feeling kid of treif my self, but in a variation of treif. I seem unable to get these columns out for both issues of time to prepare and a spiritual drive to write. In the last few weeks, I feel like I’ve been torn. Thinking of two other people in this circumstance came to mind last night.

5. There was a Jewish man in Shushan the capital, and his name was Mordecai, son of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish, a Benjamite; 6. Who had been exiled from Jerusalem among the captives exiled with Jeconiah king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had exiled. 7. And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle’s daughter; for she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was beautiful and of good presence; and, when her father and her mother died, Mordecai adopted her as a daughter.[Esther 2:5-7]

We have in Mordecai and Esther two people completely torn from the world as they knew it. Not only that, they are told by Jeremiah that God decrees they are to stay put for seventy years [Jeremiah 29]. According to the biblical text, these are the first people to go into exile. After centuries of living in the land of Israel, the first set of people are forced to leave the land. Among those are Mordecai and his extended family. Whether Esther was born in exile or in the land is never made clear, but she is the first generation to grow up in a land not her own. She and Mordecai define another type of treif: People torn from their land, or put another way torn from their reality and placed into another’s.

We are all in galut, in exile in some way. Being so, we are also all treif, torn in some way from the connection that makes us live and our lives special. Lately I’ve been brooding about where I wanted my life to go. I’m an incredible public speaker, and it is lecturing and teaching, both to a handful and a room of 500 that gives my life meaning. Whether it is D’vrei Torah or a lecture on a technical issue concerning contamination I’m most alive in front of an audience. I spent five years of my life getting myself into a position to do that for a living through grad school. Then, just as I got ready to graduate, the economy tore my plans to shreds. Deep in my soul, I am very torn right now. What makes me alive in my soul and what is to be my living are not going to be the same things. There will sparse opportunities to do what I truly want, and each are going to be very precious to me.

Yet unlike the treif animal, there is a difference in this spiritual type of treif. Jeremiah in his letter telling the people in exile to stay put tells them also that this is temporary, though it will be a rather long time.

10. For thus says the Lord, That after seventy years are fulfilled at Babylon I will take heed of you, and perform my good word toward you, making you return to this place. 11. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. [Jeremiah 29:10-11]

Unlike animals, we are allowed to heal from our own disconnection, and not be treif forever, to do so involve prayer:

12. Then shall you call upon me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you.13. And you shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart. 14. (K) And I will allow myself to be found by you, says the Lord; and I will restore you from your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places into which I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I caused you to be driven away. [Jer. 29 12-14]

Through our wanting and praying for divine connection, we can become whole again in time. I’m not giving up on public speaking, or on my desire to teach about Jewish thought. I realize a lot of what I wanted won’t happen as fast as I would have liked. I’m in galut myself for a while. Yet I can be like Mordecai and Esther, and live in galut, live as a torn person from my dreams and hopes, yet live the best I can under alien conditions. That is the real story of Esther: even when things are bad, live the strongest and best you can. The power of that can be immense. According to one Midrash to the book of Esther [Esther Rabbah VIII: 3], Esther will literally give birth to the return from exile: King Darius II who will order the Jews back to Israel. It might take time but I’ll be whole again too.

In the hangover from all the groggers (or in my case drum) and Purim spiels it’s nice to reflect on some powerful ideas found in this rather odd book of the Tanach. It’s nice to realize not just for me, but for everyone, there is a way to deal with the times when things don’t seem to go your way.

Vayikra 5768: Parables of Sin

This week we begin Vayikra, otherwise known as Leviticus, starts with the procedures for different types of sacrifices. We learn how we are to essentially deplete barnyards of animals for different types of sacrifices, some for transgressions, and others for thanksgiving. For vegetarians, we learn that only one type of plant material, grain, is burned while all others are not. First fruits are not to be burned according to the text, but part of the meal offering is. Different classes of sins are then enumerated.

During this week’s portion we read a line an entire chapter about classes of sins:

1. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2. Speak to the people of Israel, saying, If a soul shall sin through ignorance against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which ought not to be done, and shall do against any of them; [Leviticus 4:1-2]

Again mentioning the same topic, we read:

27. And if any one of the common people sins through ignorance, when he does something against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which ought not to be done, and is guilty; 28. Or if his sin, which he has sinned, comes to his knowledge; then he shall bring his offering, a kid of the goats, a female without blemish, for his sin which he has sinned.[Leviticus 4:27,28]

The rabbis in Leviticus Rabbah spend a great deal of time asking some fundamental theological questions including “Is it our bodies or our souls that sin?”

While researching what I wanted to do this week, a parable caught my eye. Parables are known throughout rabbinic literature from quite early times. Indeed there is even a formula for a parable. At its most general, the formula would be stated.

A parable. To what can this be compared to? This can be compared to a… so too can …

Variations of this formula omit parts of the above general form. Parables are ways of talking about a very esoteric idea in terms of very common things and concrete stories. One such parable about learning is found in the Perkei Avot:

Elisha b. Abuyah said: He who learns when a child, to what is he [to be] compared? — To ink written on a new writing sheet; and he who learns when an old man, unto what is he like? — To ink written on an erased writing sheet.

To use Elisha b. Abuyah’s parable to explain parables, those with experience in the world have stuff you cannot completely erase. Parables are for those who have those experiences. Parables use those marks left over from erasing to build onto the new learning.

In the one I found this week, the rabbis are expounding on the phrase from Ecclesiastes 6:7 Neither is the soul filled. The rabbis use a parable to explain this:

R. Levi said: It is like unto a townsman who has married a royal princess; even though he feeds her with all the dainties in the world, he does not fully discharge his obligation. Why?-Because she is a royal princess. So, too, however much a man does for his soul, he does not discharge his full obligation. Why?-Because it is from on high. [Leviticus Rabbah IV: 2]

What does fulfilling the soul have to do with sinning? In another well known parable, the rabbis compare the soul and the body to two guards of an orchard. The king who owns the orchard reasons that since one of these guards is blind and one lame, they cannot get at the fruit of his orchard, and thus be trusted to guard the fruit. Yet the fruit is eaten, and the king figures out that the lame man sat of the shoulders of the blind man and together they got the fruit. So too, the Rabbis conclude, does the soul and the body work together to sin. [Leviticus Rabbah IV: 5]

Yet there is a rebuttal also in parable. The body and soul are like two women: a daughter of a priest and a commoner. Both live in the same household and both do the same sin. The master of the house takes the daughter of the priest to task and not the commoner because the daughter of the priest knew better. So too is the body like the commoner and the soul the daughter of the priest, it knows a lot better than the body. [ibid.]

When I first read the parable about the townsman and the royal princess, it seems when it comes to sin, we cannot win. The divine origin of our souls actually makes us less than perfect. We should try our best to not to sin, but inevitably, due to the nature of the body and soul our efforts will fall short. Ironically, to deal with sin is one of the gifts from God.

After reading the other parables mentioned here, and I began to wonder. There is a body soul connection repeatedly mentioned in the other parables. The parable of the princess and the commoner may also fit this pattern. The princess is the soul, and the body the commoner. The story of the orchard guards charges that the body and the soul are both responsible for sin. The story of the two women charges the soul responsible for sin. The commoner and the princess may likewise be emphasizing the responsibility of the body, but with a twist.

In popular culture and in the dominant theological thought pervasive in our culture, we hear of “animal urges.” The physical is the root of all evil in this view. The soul, being of divine origin cannot sin. According to this view the urge to sin is in our physical requirements, one that some in the world of science have tried to confirm. If we deny the body, the soul’s purity will shine through goes the argument.

Yet the princess and the commoner point to something else, a failure to communicate. Commoners and royalty do not talk the same language. The Soul does have desires and demands, ones the body tries to accommodate, yet fails. The body just can’t understand them. The princess wants a five star meal, yet the commoner brings home hamburger, fries and a coke. What the princess really wants is outside the experience of the commoner, and thus he fails. Sin often comes about because the body desires to fulfill the desires of the soul. Yet often, the way the body uses experience and sensation are inadequate to the task, and thus, even with the best of intentions we end up sinning.

The soul yearns for love and relationship, both with our fellow human beings and with God. The body all too often redefines relationship and love into exclusively physical sensation. Sex and touch becomes the body’s response for the soul’s yearning. Often the physical become the only way to fulfill that need for relationship, but as Ecclesiastes 6:7 noted: All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not filled. It is never enough, and more of the same is added. Having five Big Macs instead of one is still not a five star meal. We get more ridiculous in our attempt to satisfy the soul. From wanting relationship and love, we might get into a downward spiral trying to satisfy that with promiscuity, adultery and pornography. It is all too often in the news that some seemingly upright person has a downfall due to such sin, be it sex, drugs or other activity.

We cannot avoid sin completely, but we can minimize it. The solution in my view is not conventional thinking, but as the parables above intimate, it is very Jewish thinking. The lame man’s and blind man’s real job was to keep other people from eating the King’s fruit. If someone else comes by to steal, the lame man and blind man alone are as powerless to stop them as individuals as they are to steal the fruit themselves. However, the lame man can see thieves, and can tell the blind man who to catch going over the fence into the orchard. If they can work together to steal fruit, so too can they work together to guard the fruit. Both sin and virtue in their case is the same solution: good communication between them.

The princess and the commoner need to communicate. The princess needs to say “I want to go the 5-star restaurant down the street with real waiters and have a candlelit dinner there and a wonderfully prepared five course meal!” The commoner has to actually listen to this, and then say “Where to? I’ll make the reservations”. We need to integrate our bodies and souls. Both have their needs and both need to serve the needs of the other, taking joy in fulfilling those needs. As in any good relationship there is communication, there is give and take.

As any newspaper on any day of the week will tell you in their own parables, denying one or the other often leads to disaster. Sin happens. But sin does not have to control us; we can control sin, making it a minimal part of our lives. Understanding that both the body and soul are responsible and that we keep both our bodies and souls holy and in sync with each other we control sin. To combat sin is not just a matter of doing and not doing. We must always remember the mind-body connection.

Parshat Pekudei 5768: The Art of the Mishkan

For most years, Vayakhel and Pekudei are a double portion. As this is a leap year, they are separate. In last week’s portion Vayakhel we have Moses first giving the instructions for creating the Mishkan he learned on Sinai, employing the people to help in the construction with Betzalel as lead craftsman and architect. The people enthusiastically help out in its construction, so much so Betzalel has to ask for the donations to stop. In this week’s portion, Pekudei, all the pieces are completed, and Moses puts the components together for the first time. The cloud of glory covers the Mishkan to end the book of Exodus.

In this usual double portion I decided to do something similar to the text and make this a two-parter. I ended last week with a question: Should I do art on Shabbat? Using traditional texts, it becomes rather clear that there is a lot of halakic evidence that suggests art should not be done on Shabbat. I ended last week’s portion with a hint on one way of looking at this question differently however. We read this week:

Thus was all the work of the tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting finished; and the people of Israel did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so did they.[Exodus 39:32]

In many ways this is similar to another passage in Torah:

1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. 3. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He had rested from all his work which God created and made. [Genesis 2:1-3]

What is significantly different in these two passages is the word for work. In Genesis 2 the word is malacha (מלאכה), in Exodus 39 it is avodah (עבדה). As I mentioned last week, we started the construction of the Mishkan with the prohibition of work on Shabbat, and the rabbis took the definition of creative work, malacha, as the tasks necessary to complete the Mishkan, just like it was necessary to complete the works of creation in Genesis 2. But our text in Exodus 39 does not end construction with malacha but avodah.

Malacha based on God’s use of the word in Genesis 2, means creative work. It also can mean occupation. Thus as a general rule if we do something that creates, or something that is our career, then we are doing prohibited works on Shabbat. On the other hand avodah fundamentally means service. Avodah usually means a particular type of service, divine service or prayer. In the Perkei Avot, the weight of this is made clear:

Simeon the Righteous was one of the last of the men of the great assembly. He used to say: the world is based upon three things: the Torah, Divine Service, and the practice of kindliness. [Avot 1:2]

The early Rabbis made avodah, in their minds prayer, one of the pillars of the world. Yet a difference in words alone does not give me a complete answer.

Last Shabbat in a D’var Torah I gave on this same subject I asked the question about art and Shabbat. As it was a Reform congregation I got a lot of interesting answers, though many were along some of the avenues I discussed last week. Yet it was a few artists who said something that I had thought of, but its full impact hadn’t hit me. Sunday afternoon, when I attended my painting class, and experienced this comment I knew I was on to something.

What I was doing was painting a picture of a rose, ivy and a spider plant. All of my focus and concentration was on these three plants, and seeing every detail and every shade and color in them. Working on those leaves I realized what the artists in the discussion had said was completely true. When one works on art with focus and intention, you are observing the world differently than you normally do. Witnessing creation in this heightened sense is very different than in any other.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, try a rather startling experiment known in art instruction as blind contour drawing. Take a piece of paper and a pencil, and any object you want to draw, for example a cup of coffee. Put the pencil to the paper and draw the edges of the object without ever looking at the paper, never taking your pencil off the paper. Only concentrate your eye on the differing edges in the object, such as where your object meets the air, or where different parts connect. Just like mine, Your drawing may not look like much when you are done, but if you did the exercise right you have been finding and seeing things in the object you never would have otherwise seen had you merely looked at the object.

What I think happened in the construction of the Mishkan, the artisans, known as the wise of heart took the intention of building very seriously. It started as a job but as they built and created, it was no longer a creation, but a reflection of reality just like the blind contour drawing. Such a reflection was so deep, it was no longer work, but had changed into a prayer. They were not making something new but describing what was there all along. A painter might think of the paint flowing from the object onto the canvas or paper. This is no longer work; it is avodah, a prayer to the creator.

I believe I should paint on Shabbat. As an artist it is my unique and heartfelt prayer to God coming not from my lips but from my brush and hand. Painting is okay, but not completely. I’m going to add a few rules as well to make this as much of a special Shabbat experience as I can. Shabbat is about a very special time, a way a sanctifying time instead of space or object. I think one of the passages most of interest in this respect is one of the strongest statements about not doing anything with a painting:

Our Rabbis taught: The writing under a painting or an image may not be read on the Sabbath. And as for the image itself, one must not look at it even on weekdays, because it is said, Turn ye not unto idols. How is that taught? — Said R. Hanin: [Its interpretation is,] Turn not unto that conceived in your own minds.[Shabbat 149a]

While the whole seems rather harsh I think it points to an important truth, and one which resonates today in many ways. R. Hanin had it right: we should not turn to representations of reality and call them reality. That is the true idolatry. It is easy to look at the coffee cup and draw what you think is there, like I did here. As most good art educators will tell you, most of our drawing abilities never increase beyond third grade because we do exactly that. We put symbols in place of what is really there. In most art, unless we are consciously doing so, we should not turn reality into a symbol, and then add a caption to that symbol to tell people what to believe. In the ancient world that was exactly what they did. Someone might make a picture of something, and in its caption call the picture a god, and thus worthy of worship. Today from the local news to reality TV to even taking dramas all too seriously, it’s easy to fall victim of turning one person’s creative vision into reality in the same way.

Each artist, painter, photographer, or video cameraman, looks at the word differently and shows their own perspective. I could make a quick sketch of the same coffee cup but leave out details or see some more clearly than others for example. To use their vision as our own is to limit our own vision, and start not with the infinite, but the finite view of that artist. I can see the whole word in photographs, and yet not have experienced any of it. I can paint a beautiful model for a reference photograph, but it is nothing like painting a real woman. The photograph took the artistic ability of the model and the photographer and gives me only one flat view of a much greater, dynamic scene. God made the bigger scene; we made the photo in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. God made Maui, some photographer shot a few miniscule pieces of it.

To witness creation we need to witness creation itself, not a representation of it. From that concept comes the new restriction in my Shabbat observance, one that dove tails nicely into my own prohibitions of not watching television, or listening to music on Shabbat, all of which give limited representations of creation. I no longer use reference photos on Shabbat, I work from life only. I witness what is really in front of me, for all its detail and grandeur. Looking in this way brings me more towards a true avodah, where creativity changes into a prayer allowed on Shabbat.

It is a historical irony not lost on me that one of the people who gave a wonderful response at my D’var last week is the daughter of a rabbi I’ve learned from for a while. . Her idea was to focus on the idea of career for the prohibition of malachah, and not creative work. To her, creative work expressing one’s Judaism, like making a talit, was a good thing to do on Shabbat. In one of her father’s books and his prolific e-mails, he inspired me to write my own Shabbat halacha over eleven years ago. That Shabbat halacha changes now, and to close this week’s portion I thought I’d give you the new and revised version, of how I look to Shabbat for a time of joy, of holiness and of rest.

Shlomo’s Shabbos

Live Juicy one day a week. Start it with candles. Read Torah and Talmud and contemplate them. Wear wild Hawaiian shirts. No Internet, iPods, or TV or anything else electronic. Walk when you can, walk for the fun of it. Don’t buy anything but food or medicine. Love. If no one else is around love yourself. Don’t forget to hug! Spend time relating to other people. Have outrageous conversations. Eat a REALLY good meal. Dessert and sweets were created for Shabbos!!! Be sensual. Use all your senses to consciously taste, smell, see, touch, and hear. Sense how wonderful everything is. Paint and draw the beauty in Creation as you see it. Read spiritual books and novels of imagination. Take naps. Pray and Play. It doesn’t matter what or how -just play. Sing for the joy of singing, sing for the joy of God. With instruments, even if you can’t. Don’t do anything that has to do with work-unless someone's life is in danger. Bless God, yourself, everyone, and everything else.

May your Shabbat be one of rest, holiness and delight.

Vayakhel 5768: Art, Halacha and Shabbat

This week we have Moses first giving the instructions for creating the Mishkan he learned on Sinai, employing the people to help in the construction with Betzalel as lead craftsman and architect. The people enthusiastically help out in its construction, so much so Betzalel has to ask for the donations to stop. At the beginning of week’s portion Moses speaks of the mitzvah of Shabbat, and includes in it a specific prohibition.

1. And Moses gathered all the congregation of the people of Israel together, and said to them, These are the words which the Lord has commanded, that you should do them. 2. Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the Lord; whoever does work in it shall be put to death. 3. You shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the Sabbath day. (Ex 35:1-3)

In Torah there are only two real prohibitions, and by consequence of someone’s actions a third. In Exodus 16:22-30 we are told essentially God doesn’t cook on Shabbat and no one is to gather Manna on the seventh day. In this week’s portion we are told not to light fires. Numbers 15:32-36 had a man put to death for collecting sticks on Shabbat. Beyond this we have no Torah injunction of what we are supposed to do and not do on Shabbat.

We have in the later prophets and writings prohibitions on stamping grapes and commerce both with other Jews and with non-Jews. But the actual rules are still sparse. To understand what can happen in this circumstance, let me give a parable. Once on a lonely mountain, a princess and a prince met and fell in love. Yet after that moment the princess was taken away to a castle with walls impossible to get into. Before she was taken away she told the prince to send her messages through a very small hole in the wall. The prince gets to the castle and knows to roll up a small bit of paper and stick it in the hole to the courtyard on the other side. But he wonders what he should put on the paper, if anything at all. He remembers his moment with her and writes of her hair and her eyes, and other bits about that moment in time.

In the same way do we take a mitzvah, like Shabbat and infuse it with a greater structure, in order to turn the mitzvah, the love note to God, into more than a slip of paper, to really say “I love you.” Our writing on that note is known as the halacha, the rules that exist around the mitzvot in order to perform them. They are essentially of human origin, and in a few cases of the original oral law, believed to be transmitted to Moses orally by God. Moses then began a line of oral transmission up to the time of the rabbis. Yet no oral chain is ever exact, and there is the human hand in what we do have. The rabbis, using this and Torah, came up with a set of ways, halacha, adapted from both to fit their circumstances. Halakah undoubtedly has a human hand. They are the words on that love note, words we get from our experience as recorded in Torah.

For Shabbat for example, the rabbis took this the beginning of this week’s passage, which has nothing to do with anything else in the passage, and figured the reason it was there was to imply that it was all of the work necessary to build the Mishkan, which is referred to as malakah. Since God ended from all the malakah that he made [Gen 2:1] it must be human malakah that was prohibited on Shabbat, as defined by the Mishkan building project. On that basis the rabbis came up with thirty-nine primary prohibitions of work on Shabbat. But since they came up with primary prohibitions, it figured that there were secondary prohibitions, subcategories of those thirty nine which provide us with even more prohibitions.

I’ve been thinking lately about one of those possible subcategories of prohibitions, which in a strict sense I may be violating. Indeed I violate many. There’s no question I violate a direct mitzvot by driving an internal combustion engine to synagogue on Saturday mornings. So it’s surprising that there is a small thing that I think a lot about: Painting on Shabbat. It is part of my ritual practice of Erev Shabbat to sit in a restaurant, pull out my watercolor box, paints, and a photo reference and paint. I’m so serious about this I break other halacha just to do this. When last year I was given a choice between going to services and painting, I picked painting. I’m not sure sometimes if it’s a ritual practice or a guilty pleasure.

There are all kinds of issues with painting. Some are not just Shabbat prohibitions either. With my love of figurative painting, there is one that I find particularly interesting:

Our Rabbis taught: The writing under a painting or an image may not be read on the Sabbath. And as for the image itself, one must not look at it even on weekdays, because it is said, Turn ye not unto idols. How is that taught? — Said R. Hanin: [Its interpretation is,] Turn not unto that conceived in your own minds. [Shabbat 149a]

Not only looking at a painting is prohibited, but reading its caption on Shabbat! Yet here the issue is clearly idolatry. Many images with captions are not of a secular nature, and the caption may be prayer to other gods. So the first issue is that painting images of any kind as mentioned in many places are considered idols. More to the point on Shabbat we have this prohibition:

It was taught: He who bores, however little, he who scrapes, however little, he who tans, however little, he who draws a figure on a vessel, however little, [is violating Shabbat]. [Shabbat 103b]

For a painting prohibition, it is based on one of the thirty nine primary prohibitions found in the Mishnah:

He who writes two letters, whether with his right or with his left hand, of the same designation or of two designations or in two pigments, in any language, is culpable. [Shabbat 102b]

The Mishnah in the name of R. Yose, continues by clarifying this. While one mark does not convey meaning, two marks convey meaning. During the building of the Mishkan, that they marked the boards with the two letter abbreviations of the tribes as they worked to match up boards correctly. There is another text, a bit earlier concerning building which might also be significant in terms of its general principle:

If one builds how much must he build to be culpable? He who builds however little, and he who chisels, and he who strikes with a hammer or with an adze, and he who bores [a hole], however little, is culpable. This is the general principle: whoever does work on the Sabbath and his work endures, is culpable. [Shabbat 102b]

The general rule might apply to paintings. Paintings are permanent, and thus endure. It looks like there's not much chance for me to follow a halacha of painting.

I could make a philosophical argument of course, one many in the liberal Jewish community have made at one time or another. Basically it’s based on that definition of Malakah again, this time defining it as occupation. Shabbat is to rest from what you do for a living. If one gets enjoyment from something that does not have to do with your living, then go ahead and do it and enjoy yourself. An extension of this argument is that Shabbat is the witnessing of creation. God spent the six days creating the world, and on that seventh, sanctified day, we are to stop and appreciate it. An artist takes that creation and appreciates it by putting it on paper or canvas.

However, there’s something about creating a halakic argument that exempts painting that makes the act more sacred. Part of that is to follow a part of the tradition that the argument above does not: rabbinic thinking. The rabbis for many reasons found exemptions and ways around problems which restricted too much. For example, our prohibition on kindling a fire. The Karaites, who rejected the rabbinic authority, came up with their own halacha that no fire were to be lit on Shabbat. You spent from sunset to sunset on Shabbat without light and heat. The rabbis were far more lenient. If you lit the fire before sundown, gave it enough fuel to last a while and then didn’t touch it again, it could continue to burn throughout Shabbat. They then took that precedent and applied to several other circumstances where things began before Shabbat but were completed during Shabbat.

One takes from these and other sources and tries to come up with an argument, based on precedent of the classical sources, to create an exemption. Like the case of the fire, that one may not add more fuel, there may be stipulations and restrictions even to the exemptions.

Given the texts mentioning the prohibitions, there are two texts which might help in providing an exemption. The first is the rebuttal to the Shabbat 103 passage above:

R. Simeon said: [He is not culpable] unless he bores right through or scrapes the whole of it [the skin] or tans the whole of it or draws the whole of it! [Shabbat 103b]

The other, mentioned in two places, describes God as an artist, based on the prayer of Hanna:

There is none holy as the Lord, for there is none beside thee (I Sam 2:2). R. Judah b. Menashia said: Read not bilteka, ‘beside thee’], but read lebalotheka [‘to survive thee’]. For the nature of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like that of flesh and blood. It is the nature of flesh and blood to be survived by its works, but God survives His works. Neither is there any rock [zur] like our God(ibid.). There is no artist [zayyar] like our God. A man draws a figure on a wall, but is unable to endow it with breath and spirit, inward parts and intestines. But the Holy One, blessed be He, fashions a form within a form and endows it with breath and spirit, inward parts and intestines. [Megilah 14a, Ber 10a]

Taking these texts, can we come up with a halakic exemption for painting, or art in general? This week, I’m not going to tell you here. Vayakhel is half of a double portion. On non-leap years, it is paired with Pekudei. This year, is a leap year and they are read separately, so in that spirit, I’m going to do the same thing and split this commentary into two parts, using a verse in Pekudei (Exodus 39:32) to help out. But I’ll give you a few hints. The major hint is the questions I ask myself when I get into a situation like this. Think about these this week, the sequence I thought them up, and how I could use the passages above to come up with that answer and next week, I’ll give you my answer:

1. Should I do art on Shabbat?

2. Is Art Work (vftkn)?

3. When is Art Work (vftkn)?

4. Is building the Temple really work?

5. Are there loopholes in that Mishnah?

6. What are the distinctions between my art and building the Temple?

7. Under what circumstances could art be done on Shabbat?

8. What restrictions would I have to have the exemption?