The commandment to wear tzitzit, special fringes worn on four-cornered garments, appears at the end of this week’s parashah. Here are two thoughts on this commandment:
1. The Torah makes a linguistic connection between these tzitzit and the scouts who are spoken of in the beginning of the parsha (thank you to Joel Linsider for first pointing this connection out to me). With reference to the scouts, the Torah says, vayaturu, “And they scouted [or toured] (Numbers 13:21)” and with reference to tzitzit, the Torah says that their purpose is lo taturu, so that one should not be led astray by one’s heart and eyes (Numbers 16:39). Rashi, citing Midrash Tanhuma, says that the heart and the eyes are like scouts for the body, looking out for good places to wander and sin. The four corners of the tzitzit also imply a sense of movement, a sense of existing in a world with four directions to turn towards, like a scout touring a land. Perhaps the idea, then, is that the tzitzit serve as a kind of guide as we tour this world, a guide that reminds us that wherever we go, we carry God and His commandments with us.
2. There is a midrash which tells the following mashal (parable) to explain the significance of tzitzit: “It is like a man who is thrown into the sea and the captain of a ship throws him a rope and says to him: ‘Hold on to this rope and don’t let it go, because if you let it go, you will lose your life.’ “ (Bamidbar Rabbah 17.6). Tzitzit are a lifeline, connecting a person to the source of life, God. The image also reminded me of an umbilical cord, with all its associations of attachment and life dependence.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Parashat Beha'alotekha: The Israelites as Whiny Children
The Israelites behave in this week’s parsha like whiny children. Anyone who has (or has had or has been anywhere near) young children knows how irritating whining can be. How does our experience of whining children shed light on the parsha and how does the parsha shed light on our experience?
First, note that in many ways the Israelites are young children. The crossing of the Red Sea has often been compared to the experience of coming through the birth canal, so that here, in Numbers, in their second year after leaving Egypt, the people may be considered toddlers. Experts say that whining peaks from about 2-4 years of age.
Their whining begins here (Numbers 11) after a journey of three days from Mount Sinai. The Rashbam suggests that the people started complaining as a result of the difficulties of travel. Note that a parallel complaining incident takes place immediately after a similar three day journey from Egypt to Sinai (Exodus 15-16). Traveling with young children is indeed trying. Their sleep and eating cycles are disturbed and they become fragile emotionally. “Are we there yet?” and “I want to go home” are common refrains.
In Numbers, though, there may have been an added reason for their troubled emotional state. Children often start to whine after spending a particularly close period of time with their parents. It comes from a feeling of let-down after a good time, and the fear of distance and loneliness after intimacy. The people have just moved away from Mount Sinai, from the closest experience of God they have ever had. No wonder the move away from that place causes some emotional distress.
There are two stories of complaint in Numbers 11; the first is without a specific point of reference and the second complaint concerns food, namely meat. The doubling up of complaints rings true emotionally. Once the whining begins, it often comes in a series before it is over. And it often starts as a generalized feeling of discontent before it settles on some specific unsatisfactory item. As Rashi points out, the complaint about food was an alilah, an excuse. The Torah text in fact follows their complaints about the manna with a description of its look and taste, as if to show that there was no real reason for complaining other than a generalized bad feeling. When your toddler whines “I wanna coooookie,” it’s usually not about the cookie; he feels bad, and he’s expressing it through food.
The emotional tone is indeed quite low here. The “riffraff” may have had a genuine craving for meat, but the people are simply crying all the time. They cry in verse 4 and again, quite pitifully, in verse 10, “Moses heard the people weeping, every clan apart, each person at the entrance of his tent.” That last line, “each person at the entrance of his tent,” makes it seem like part of what they are looking for is individual attention. Note also that the initial complaint was done specifically “in the ears of the Lord” (11:1). The midrash points out that the people were not hiding their complaints but very much wanted to be heard by God. Maybe that was the whole point, divine (parental) attention. That’s why they say, not “We want meat!” but “Mi ya’akhilenu basar” (11:5), “Who’s going to feed his meat?” We feel scared and alone; who’s going to take care of us?
From the parental point of view, we can easily relate to Moshe’s response, too. Whining can really wear you down. He says he feels like a mother; “Did I conceive all this people, did I bear them, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries an infant?’” (11:12). How does a mother (or a father, or any caretaker) feel after an episode (or two) or whining? Like she wants to die; “If You would deal thus with me, kill me rather, I beg You, and let me see no more of my wretchedness!” (11:15).
What about God? What is God’s response? First, anger, like any parent. Note that it is hot anger, the ultimate hot anger, fire. My therapist says that if you’re going to get angry at your kids, it should be hot, not cold, meaning it should be the kind of anger that is warm and present, not cold and calculating and distancing. God may be angry and hurtful, but at least He is not turning away from the people.
Moreover, there is a certain subtlety and complexity to His response which makes it clear that He understands the issue is not just one of food. Meat is only one of the issues to be dealt with, the presenting symptom. To be sure, He does deal with the meat issue; He deals with it in true Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle fashion, by giving them so much meat that they themselves will get tired of it, “until it comes out of your noses” (11:20). (Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle employs this trick regularly; the kids who won’t go to bed at bedtime are allowed to stay up as late as they want for nights on end until they beg for a bedtime; the kid who won’t pick up toys is allowed to not pick up toys in his room for so long that he ends up unable to move; the point is always to let the child experience for himself the problems which arise from the extreme of whatever behavior he considers desirable. This way they teach themselves the lesson.)
So God does deal with meat, but He also deals with the real underlying problem, the people’s feeling of distance from His Presence, their need for more of His and Moshe’s attention. (What else do children really want from us other than our attention?) He deals with that problem through the establishment of the institution of the 70 elders as Moshe’s assistants. Moshe and God both understand that with toddlers around, there is a great need for parental attention and that one Moshe and one God simply cannot satisfy that need.
The solution is not to simply appoint the elders as Moshe’s helpers. No. The people want a piece of Moshe and a piece of God; they don’t just want babysitters. So what God does is He takes a little piece of the stuff that makes Moshe special, a little of the stuff that really makes Moshe God’s representative, his ruah, his spirit, and He transfers some of it onto the elders. Now the elders can carry the spirit of God and Moshe with them through the camp as they deal with the people. Now maybe the people won’t feel so alone and distant. They will have 71 representatives of God to give them hugs instead of just one.
The Torah itself emphasizes God’s ruah (spirit) as the solution. Indeed, it is this word which joins the two sections of the chapter into one piece. It is the ruah which is transferred from Moshe to the 70 elders, and it is also the ruah (meaning “wind,” 11:31) which brings forth the quail for the people to eat. The whole point of both solutions is to bring God’s ruah back into the camp, so that the people feel loved and cared for. Perhaps that is part of the point of the story of Eldad and Medad as well, two men who prophesied inside the camp while the 70 elders were receiving Moshe’s spirit outside the camp. The point is that God’s ruah is overflowing everywhere. It encircles the camp from the outside through the 70 elders and the quail and it overflows into the camp through Eldad and Medad.
Here’s where our experience of young children helps shed light on the Torah. Chapter 11 is a very complicated chapter. There are really two stories woven together, one about the people’s complaint about meat and the other about the 70 elders. Understanding that the people’s real problem was an emotional one and not just a physical one explains why the solutions also needed to be on both planes, both in terms of the physical wind of the quail and the spiritual wind of God’s presence in the elders.
Note that in the parallel quail story in Exodus (16), the solution offered by God is only physical. The people complain about lack of water and food, and God simply gives them water and food, without anger and without offering any extra helpers to deal with the emotional fallout. Perhaps the difference is that in Exodus the people are still babies. Their crying is the real cry of thirst and hunger; there really is no food or water at the time, and their crying is their only mode of communication, their way of asking for these essentials. By contrast, in Numbers, the people already have manna. Their cry is more complicated, no longer merely a sign of a physical need, but also a sign of an emotional one. God therefore offers them an emotional as well as a physical response.
The other part of the response, of course, is anger and punishment. Whining is not a good way of asking for something (either physical or emotional) and the people need to learn to ask in a nicer way. When they do ask nicely, without crying, as earlier in the parsha (Num 9:1-14) in relation to those who have missed the Passover sacrifice, they get a calmer, more measured response. But learning to ask nicely, when one is upset, takes time. It takes a few years, and most of the book of Numbers. In the mean time, God and Moshe (and we parents of young children) just have to bear with them.
First, note that in many ways the Israelites are young children. The crossing of the Red Sea has often been compared to the experience of coming through the birth canal, so that here, in Numbers, in their second year after leaving Egypt, the people may be considered toddlers. Experts say that whining peaks from about 2-4 years of age.
Their whining begins here (Numbers 11) after a journey of three days from Mount Sinai. The Rashbam suggests that the people started complaining as a result of the difficulties of travel. Note that a parallel complaining incident takes place immediately after a similar three day journey from Egypt to Sinai (Exodus 15-16). Traveling with young children is indeed trying. Their sleep and eating cycles are disturbed and they become fragile emotionally. “Are we there yet?” and “I want to go home” are common refrains.
In Numbers, though, there may have been an added reason for their troubled emotional state. Children often start to whine after spending a particularly close period of time with their parents. It comes from a feeling of let-down after a good time, and the fear of distance and loneliness after intimacy. The people have just moved away from Mount Sinai, from the closest experience of God they have ever had. No wonder the move away from that place causes some emotional distress.
There are two stories of complaint in Numbers 11; the first is without a specific point of reference and the second complaint concerns food, namely meat. The doubling up of complaints rings true emotionally. Once the whining begins, it often comes in a series before it is over. And it often starts as a generalized feeling of discontent before it settles on some specific unsatisfactory item. As Rashi points out, the complaint about food was an alilah, an excuse. The Torah text in fact follows their complaints about the manna with a description of its look and taste, as if to show that there was no real reason for complaining other than a generalized bad feeling. When your toddler whines “I wanna coooookie,” it’s usually not about the cookie; he feels bad, and he’s expressing it through food.
The emotional tone is indeed quite low here. The “riffraff” may have had a genuine craving for meat, but the people are simply crying all the time. They cry in verse 4 and again, quite pitifully, in verse 10, “Moses heard the people weeping, every clan apart, each person at the entrance of his tent.” That last line, “each person at the entrance of his tent,” makes it seem like part of what they are looking for is individual attention. Note also that the initial complaint was done specifically “in the ears of the Lord” (11:1). The midrash points out that the people were not hiding their complaints but very much wanted to be heard by God. Maybe that was the whole point, divine (parental) attention. That’s why they say, not “We want meat!” but “Mi ya’akhilenu basar” (11:5), “Who’s going to feed his meat?” We feel scared and alone; who’s going to take care of us?
From the parental point of view, we can easily relate to Moshe’s response, too. Whining can really wear you down. He says he feels like a mother; “Did I conceive all this people, did I bear them, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries an infant?’” (11:12). How does a mother (or a father, or any caretaker) feel after an episode (or two) or whining? Like she wants to die; “If You would deal thus with me, kill me rather, I beg You, and let me see no more of my wretchedness!” (11:15).
What about God? What is God’s response? First, anger, like any parent. Note that it is hot anger, the ultimate hot anger, fire. My therapist says that if you’re going to get angry at your kids, it should be hot, not cold, meaning it should be the kind of anger that is warm and present, not cold and calculating and distancing. God may be angry and hurtful, but at least He is not turning away from the people.
Moreover, there is a certain subtlety and complexity to His response which makes it clear that He understands the issue is not just one of food. Meat is only one of the issues to be dealt with, the presenting symptom. To be sure, He does deal with the meat issue; He deals with it in true Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle fashion, by giving them so much meat that they themselves will get tired of it, “until it comes out of your noses” (11:20). (Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle employs this trick regularly; the kids who won’t go to bed at bedtime are allowed to stay up as late as they want for nights on end until they beg for a bedtime; the kid who won’t pick up toys is allowed to not pick up toys in his room for so long that he ends up unable to move; the point is always to let the child experience for himself the problems which arise from the extreme of whatever behavior he considers desirable. This way they teach themselves the lesson.)
So God does deal with meat, but He also deals with the real underlying problem, the people’s feeling of distance from His Presence, their need for more of His and Moshe’s attention. (What else do children really want from us other than our attention?) He deals with that problem through the establishment of the institution of the 70 elders as Moshe’s assistants. Moshe and God both understand that with toddlers around, there is a great need for parental attention and that one Moshe and one God simply cannot satisfy that need.
The solution is not to simply appoint the elders as Moshe’s helpers. No. The people want a piece of Moshe and a piece of God; they don’t just want babysitters. So what God does is He takes a little piece of the stuff that makes Moshe special, a little of the stuff that really makes Moshe God’s representative, his ruah, his spirit, and He transfers some of it onto the elders. Now the elders can carry the spirit of God and Moshe with them through the camp as they deal with the people. Now maybe the people won’t feel so alone and distant. They will have 71 representatives of God to give them hugs instead of just one.
The Torah itself emphasizes God’s ruah (spirit) as the solution. Indeed, it is this word which joins the two sections of the chapter into one piece. It is the ruah which is transferred from Moshe to the 70 elders, and it is also the ruah (meaning “wind,” 11:31) which brings forth the quail for the people to eat. The whole point of both solutions is to bring God’s ruah back into the camp, so that the people feel loved and cared for. Perhaps that is part of the point of the story of Eldad and Medad as well, two men who prophesied inside the camp while the 70 elders were receiving Moshe’s spirit outside the camp. The point is that God’s ruah is overflowing everywhere. It encircles the camp from the outside through the 70 elders and the quail and it overflows into the camp through Eldad and Medad.
Here’s where our experience of young children helps shed light on the Torah. Chapter 11 is a very complicated chapter. There are really two stories woven together, one about the people’s complaint about meat and the other about the 70 elders. Understanding that the people’s real problem was an emotional one and not just a physical one explains why the solutions also needed to be on both planes, both in terms of the physical wind of the quail and the spiritual wind of God’s presence in the elders.
Note that in the parallel quail story in Exodus (16), the solution offered by God is only physical. The people complain about lack of water and food, and God simply gives them water and food, without anger and without offering any extra helpers to deal with the emotional fallout. Perhaps the difference is that in Exodus the people are still babies. Their crying is the real cry of thirst and hunger; there really is no food or water at the time, and their crying is their only mode of communication, their way of asking for these essentials. By contrast, in Numbers, the people already have manna. Their cry is more complicated, no longer merely a sign of a physical need, but also a sign of an emotional one. God therefore offers them an emotional as well as a physical response.
The other part of the response, of course, is anger and punishment. Whining is not a good way of asking for something (either physical or emotional) and the people need to learn to ask in a nicer way. When they do ask nicely, without crying, as earlier in the parsha (Num 9:1-14) in relation to those who have missed the Passover sacrifice, they get a calmer, more measured response. But learning to ask nicely, when one is upset, takes time. It takes a few years, and most of the book of Numbers. In the mean time, God and Moshe (and we parents of young children) just have to bear with them.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Parashat Naso I: The Blessing of Satisfaction
“More! More! I want more!” say the children. More toys, more beautiful dresses, more treats. It is never enough. For them, and sometimes, for us. How does one learn to feel satisfied, to feel the peace of not wanting? Consider the parsha’s perspective.
This week’s parsha, parashat Naso, includes the classic priestly blessing, “May the Lord bless you and protect you . . .” (Num 6:23-27). This is the same blessing the kohanim (priests) recite in the synagogue on holidays and that many parents use to bless their children on Friday nights.
Concerning this priestly blessing, the midrash (Numbers Rabbah 11.7) tells the following story. A large family sits down to a very meager meal, some small bits of bread. Now the Torah says, “And you shall eat, and you shall be satisfied, and you shall bless [here meaning thank] the Lord your God” (Deut 8:10). This is the biblical source for benching, the saying of grace after meals. What do the members of the midrash’s family do after eating their decidedly unsatisfactory meal? They bench anyway; they thank God despite not being full. According to the midrash, it is this action, this lifting of one’s face toward God in blessing and thanksgiving (brachah) which leads God to lift His face toward us in blessing (brachah), and to bestow upon us the favors of the priestly blessing. It is like we tell our children: “If you say thank you, they’ll invite you back.” The first step in receiving the blessing involves appreciating that we already have been blessed. And thus begins the cycle; our appreciation, our brachah, leads to His further brachah which leads to our brachah of thanks and so on.
Note that the midrash’s family begins the cycle by feeling blessed and save’a, “satisfied,” in the face of small amounts. This sense of satisfaction, of fullness, no matter what the quantity, is the kind of perspective which is the beginning of religious experience; it is a perspective which opens the heart to seeing, really seeing God’s gifts and blessings in all their tiny minutiae – the single moment of a child’s laughter (even amidst a day full of tears), the moment when a group’s voices merge in Shabbat song, or the sweet taste of one small piece of juicy melon. The goal is to look at these small things and to feel full, to be able to say: If that is all the good that comes of today, that is enough.
The Hasidic commentator Sefat Emet suggests that the last part of the priestly blessing, “And He will grant you peace” refers not only to shalom, “peace,” but also to shleymut, “wholeness,” to precisely this feeling of fullness. This perspective is then both the beginning and the end of the cycle. We must begin with a heart that is full and blessed, but it is also such a heart that we pray for; such a heart is also the blessing itself. We ask God to help us become people who do not constantly want more, but feel a sense of wholeness and satisfaction in small things.
This week’s parsha, parashat Naso, includes the classic priestly blessing, “May the Lord bless you and protect you . . .” (Num 6:23-27). This is the same blessing the kohanim (priests) recite in the synagogue on holidays and that many parents use to bless their children on Friday nights.
Concerning this priestly blessing, the midrash (Numbers Rabbah 11.7) tells the following story. A large family sits down to a very meager meal, some small bits of bread. Now the Torah says, “And you shall eat, and you shall be satisfied, and you shall bless [here meaning thank] the Lord your God” (Deut 8:10). This is the biblical source for benching, the saying of grace after meals. What do the members of the midrash’s family do after eating their decidedly unsatisfactory meal? They bench anyway; they thank God despite not being full. According to the midrash, it is this action, this lifting of one’s face toward God in blessing and thanksgiving (brachah) which leads God to lift His face toward us in blessing (brachah), and to bestow upon us the favors of the priestly blessing. It is like we tell our children: “If you say thank you, they’ll invite you back.” The first step in receiving the blessing involves appreciating that we already have been blessed. And thus begins the cycle; our appreciation, our brachah, leads to His further brachah which leads to our brachah of thanks and so on.
Note that the midrash’s family begins the cycle by feeling blessed and save’a, “satisfied,” in the face of small amounts. This sense of satisfaction, of fullness, no matter what the quantity, is the kind of perspective which is the beginning of religious experience; it is a perspective which opens the heart to seeing, really seeing God’s gifts and blessings in all their tiny minutiae – the single moment of a child’s laughter (even amidst a day full of tears), the moment when a group’s voices merge in Shabbat song, or the sweet taste of one small piece of juicy melon. The goal is to look at these small things and to feel full, to be able to say: If that is all the good that comes of today, that is enough.
The Hasidic commentator Sefat Emet suggests that the last part of the priestly blessing, “And He will grant you peace” refers not only to shalom, “peace,” but also to shleymut, “wholeness,” to precisely this feeling of fullness. This perspective is then both the beginning and the end of the cycle. We must begin with a heart that is full and blessed, but it is also such a heart that we pray for; such a heart is also the blessing itself. We ask God to help us become people who do not constantly want more, but feel a sense of wholeness and satisfaction in small things.
Parashat Naso II: The Nazirite: Good or Bad?
This week’s parsha includes the laws of the nazir, the nazirite (Num 6:1-21). The nazir is a person who voluntarily takes upon himself or herself certain life restrictions for a prescribed period of time. There are three such restrictions: 1) no eating or drinking of wine or any grape product (including raisins!); 2) no cutting of one’s hair; and 3) no contact with a dead body.
These restrictions imply a special level of purity (like that of the priest), and also a certain removal from society with all its attendant pleasures and social contacts (even with the dead). The free growing of one’s hair may be part of this removal from society; the Torah describes the resulting hair as pera, “wild” and unkempt, possibly rendering the wearer unfit for proper social company. Indeed, this separation from society is one of the ways the nazir differed from the priest; the priest kept himself holy in order to serve as a vehicle for the people to access God. The nazir kept himself pure in order to fulfill his own idiosyncratic religious inclinations. (See Jacob Milgrom’s JPS commentary to Numbers, Excursus 11, for more on this idea).
Nehama Leibowitz cites a long history of debate over whether such voluntary asceticism is a good thing. She first points to the Torah itself. On the one hand, the Torah calls this person kadosh, holy. On the other hand, when he is finished with his prescribed period of consecration, he brings a sin-offering, implying that there is something sinful about his actions.
As Professor Leibowitz points out, this biblical ambivalence is played out in the Talmud (Ta’anit 11a) as a debate. Rabbi Eliezer Hakappar says that anyone who, like the nazir, purposefully does not take part in something allowable and pleasurable in this world, is considered a sinner. On the other hand, Rabbi Elazar says that anyone who, like the nazir, takes upon himself any additional restriction in life is considered kadosh, holy.
Finally, Professor Leibowitz points out that the medievals continued the debate. Maimonides, advocating the golden middle road, considers the nazir too extreme. One should not stop drinking altogether; one should simply drink in moderation. Nachmanides, on the other hand, sees the nazir’s actions as essentially laudatory; in fact, he claims that the nazir brings the sin-offering at the conclusion of his prescribed period because it is a sin for him to return to his normal state after his period of holiness.
What do we make of this debate? Elu ve’elu divrei elohim hayim, “These and these are the words of the living God.” Both points of view must have some truth to them. There is value to a person’s intense desire to serve God in an extra rigorous and ascetic fashion, but it is also dangerous and certainly not the way to run a society. Perhaps that is why the Torah suggests that the nazir , as an individual, take on these restrictions for a prescribed period of time. This type of behavior is good, but it is not for everyone and not for all the time; it must be contained in time and person.
A Note on the Haftarah:
The haftarah deals with another nazir, Samson (Judges 13). Samson was not a temporary nazir, but a life-long nazir from the time of his conception. His final downfall comes when a woman he falls in love with, Delilah, reveals to the Philistines that the secret to his physical strength is his uncut hair. It is significant that his downfall comes from a woman. He is portrayed throughout these narratives as being in constant pursuit of women. One wonders whether this sexual appetite is connected in some way to his status as a nazir. Perhaps the nazirite restrictions caused an imbalance in him so that his other appetites grew stronger and less controllable. In some ways, his sexual life seems like his hair, wild and uncontrolled. Perhaps it was not the feeling of restrictiveness that led him in that direction but the feeling of unrestrictiveness with regard to his hair, the lack of adherence to societal norms. Either way, the parsha’s suggestion that such nazirite practices should be restricted to a short period of time seems in some ways to be an attempt to prevent exactly the kind of excessive behavior seen in Samson.
These restrictions imply a special level of purity (like that of the priest), and also a certain removal from society with all its attendant pleasures and social contacts (even with the dead). The free growing of one’s hair may be part of this removal from society; the Torah describes the resulting hair as pera, “wild” and unkempt, possibly rendering the wearer unfit for proper social company. Indeed, this separation from society is one of the ways the nazir differed from the priest; the priest kept himself holy in order to serve as a vehicle for the people to access God. The nazir kept himself pure in order to fulfill his own idiosyncratic religious inclinations. (See Jacob Milgrom’s JPS commentary to Numbers, Excursus 11, for more on this idea).
Nehama Leibowitz cites a long history of debate over whether such voluntary asceticism is a good thing. She first points to the Torah itself. On the one hand, the Torah calls this person kadosh, holy. On the other hand, when he is finished with his prescribed period of consecration, he brings a sin-offering, implying that there is something sinful about his actions.
As Professor Leibowitz points out, this biblical ambivalence is played out in the Talmud (Ta’anit 11a) as a debate. Rabbi Eliezer Hakappar says that anyone who, like the nazir, purposefully does not take part in something allowable and pleasurable in this world, is considered a sinner. On the other hand, Rabbi Elazar says that anyone who, like the nazir, takes upon himself any additional restriction in life is considered kadosh, holy.
Finally, Professor Leibowitz points out that the medievals continued the debate. Maimonides, advocating the golden middle road, considers the nazir too extreme. One should not stop drinking altogether; one should simply drink in moderation. Nachmanides, on the other hand, sees the nazir’s actions as essentially laudatory; in fact, he claims that the nazir brings the sin-offering at the conclusion of his prescribed period because it is a sin for him to return to his normal state after his period of holiness.
What do we make of this debate? Elu ve’elu divrei elohim hayim, “These and these are the words of the living God.” Both points of view must have some truth to them. There is value to a person’s intense desire to serve God in an extra rigorous and ascetic fashion, but it is also dangerous and certainly not the way to run a society. Perhaps that is why the Torah suggests that the nazir , as an individual, take on these restrictions for a prescribed period of time. This type of behavior is good, but it is not for everyone and not for all the time; it must be contained in time and person.
A Note on the Haftarah:
The haftarah deals with another nazir, Samson (Judges 13). Samson was not a temporary nazir, but a life-long nazir from the time of his conception. His final downfall comes when a woman he falls in love with, Delilah, reveals to the Philistines that the secret to his physical strength is his uncut hair. It is significant that his downfall comes from a woman. He is portrayed throughout these narratives as being in constant pursuit of women. One wonders whether this sexual appetite is connected in some way to his status as a nazir. Perhaps the nazirite restrictions caused an imbalance in him so that his other appetites grew stronger and less controllable. In some ways, his sexual life seems like his hair, wild and uncontrolled. Perhaps it was not the feeling of restrictiveness that led him in that direction but the feeling of unrestrictiveness with regard to his hair, the lack of adherence to societal norms. Either way, the parsha’s suggestion that such nazirite practices should be restricted to a short period of time seems in some ways to be an attempt to prevent exactly the kind of excessive behavior seen in Samson.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Shavu'ot I: From Matzah to Bread
So it turns out Shavu’ot is not just the holiday of dairy food, but also the holiday of bread. Bread? Yes, bread. We count 49 days from the holiday of matzah, Passover, to the holiday of bread, Shavu’ot.
On Passover we are forbidden from eating bread or anything else that has risen in some way, but on Shavu’ot, the Torah tells us that the principle offering brought to the Temple is to be the shtay halehem, two loaves of bread, brought in gratitude for the grain harvest.
This movement from matzah to bread cuts at the heart of the spiritual difference between these two holidays. On Pesach, we eat matzah to show that we, like the Israelites when they fled from Egypt, are ready to pick up and run at a moment’s notice. We show that we have a kind of zrizut, alacrity, when it comes to God’s commands. We will not sit and wait for our bread to rise in our comfortable homes, but move quickly when it is time to move.
Shavu’ot teaches a different spiritual message. Yes, in a time of crisis like the time of slavery in Egypt, it is appropriate to run. But one should not always be on the move in relation to God. Part of what is required is the establishment of homes and institutions, the setting up of a daily life dedicated to God. That is precisely what the giving of the Torah aimed to do, to give us a way to put into daily practice our worship of God. The Ten Commandments are not rules to flee by, but rules to live by. They are rules by which to set up a society, a society revolving around belief in God, respect for one’s parents, Sabbath observance, and certain basic rules of human decency. So too the rest of the Torah. The point is not a one-time crisis relationship, but the setting up of everyday lives which live and breathe God’s words within society.
Perhaps that explains the mountain (Sinai) as well. A mountain is physically the opposite of running away; it is stable and permanent, difficult to move. By contrast, the most prominent images of the exodus’ physical spaces are first, the doorposts upon which the Israelites splattered the Passover lamb’s blood, and second, the corridor of water made by the two walls of the Red Sea. These are transitional images, images of movement which form a stark contrast to the sense of stability and institutionalization implied by Mount Sinai.
The name of the holiday, Shavu’ot, meaning “weeks” (referring to the 7 weeks between Passover and Shavu’ot) expresses a similar sense of longevity. This is a holiday which is not so much about the day of the holiday itself as it is about “weeks,” a whole period of time, indeed, an entire way of life. The giving of the Torah is not really a one-time event, like the exodus from Egypt, but a continual event which happens every day we study the Torah and observe its rules. The Torah, like bread, is a daily staple, not an exceptional treat.
This notion of the dailiness of Torah may also explain why we do not have any special actions to perform on this holiday, like the matzah-eating of Passover or the sukkah-dwelling of Sukkot. On Shavu’ot what we celebrate, the Torah, has no symbol and needs no symbol because it is so all-pervasive in our daily lives.
Shavu’ot: The Holiday of the Evil Impulse?
Finally, I want to offer a related but slightly different reading of the difference between Passover’s matzah and Shavu’ot’s bread. The rabbis associate the rising agent in bread dough (se’or shebe’isah) with the yetzer hara, the evil inclination. On Passover we make a special one-time effort to be exceptionally righteous and pious, to completely sublimate our evil inclinations. But such an effort cannot be sustained permanently. Nor should it be. For, as the rabbis also point out, without the evil inclination, the world would not continue to exist; all creative and procreative activities depend on the evil inclination for their impetus. “Were it not for the evil impulse, a man would not build a house, take a wife, or beget children (Genesis Rabbah 9.7).”
On Shavu’ot, what we celebrate is not the negation and sublimation of the evil impulse, but its harnessing for the sake of good. We take the haughtiness of the human spirit’s evil impulse and use it as a leavening agent to make our daily dough rise, to create bread, the staff of life. The Torah does not preach asceticism except as a one-time exceptional enterprise as part of the Passover celebration. Shavu’ot is about the daily life of Torah, a sustainable life that includes and indeed thrives on the evil impulse, but harnesses its creative juices to the good work of Torah in the world.
On Passover we are forbidden from eating bread or anything else that has risen in some way, but on Shavu’ot, the Torah tells us that the principle offering brought to the Temple is to be the shtay halehem, two loaves of bread, brought in gratitude for the grain harvest.
This movement from matzah to bread cuts at the heart of the spiritual difference between these two holidays. On Pesach, we eat matzah to show that we, like the Israelites when they fled from Egypt, are ready to pick up and run at a moment’s notice. We show that we have a kind of zrizut, alacrity, when it comes to God’s commands. We will not sit and wait for our bread to rise in our comfortable homes, but move quickly when it is time to move.
Shavu’ot teaches a different spiritual message. Yes, in a time of crisis like the time of slavery in Egypt, it is appropriate to run. But one should not always be on the move in relation to God. Part of what is required is the establishment of homes and institutions, the setting up of a daily life dedicated to God. That is precisely what the giving of the Torah aimed to do, to give us a way to put into daily practice our worship of God. The Ten Commandments are not rules to flee by, but rules to live by. They are rules by which to set up a society, a society revolving around belief in God, respect for one’s parents, Sabbath observance, and certain basic rules of human decency. So too the rest of the Torah. The point is not a one-time crisis relationship, but the setting up of everyday lives which live and breathe God’s words within society.
Perhaps that explains the mountain (Sinai) as well. A mountain is physically the opposite of running away; it is stable and permanent, difficult to move. By contrast, the most prominent images of the exodus’ physical spaces are first, the doorposts upon which the Israelites splattered the Passover lamb’s blood, and second, the corridor of water made by the two walls of the Red Sea. These are transitional images, images of movement which form a stark contrast to the sense of stability and institutionalization implied by Mount Sinai.
The name of the holiday, Shavu’ot, meaning “weeks” (referring to the 7 weeks between Passover and Shavu’ot) expresses a similar sense of longevity. This is a holiday which is not so much about the day of the holiday itself as it is about “weeks,” a whole period of time, indeed, an entire way of life. The giving of the Torah is not really a one-time event, like the exodus from Egypt, but a continual event which happens every day we study the Torah and observe its rules. The Torah, like bread, is a daily staple, not an exceptional treat.
This notion of the dailiness of Torah may also explain why we do not have any special actions to perform on this holiday, like the matzah-eating of Passover or the sukkah-dwelling of Sukkot. On Shavu’ot what we celebrate, the Torah, has no symbol and needs no symbol because it is so all-pervasive in our daily lives.
Shavu’ot: The Holiday of the Evil Impulse?
Finally, I want to offer a related but slightly different reading of the difference between Passover’s matzah and Shavu’ot’s bread. The rabbis associate the rising agent in bread dough (se’or shebe’isah) with the yetzer hara, the evil inclination. On Passover we make a special one-time effort to be exceptionally righteous and pious, to completely sublimate our evil inclinations. But such an effort cannot be sustained permanently. Nor should it be. For, as the rabbis also point out, without the evil inclination, the world would not continue to exist; all creative and procreative activities depend on the evil inclination for their impetus. “Were it not for the evil impulse, a man would not build a house, take a wife, or beget children (Genesis Rabbah 9.7).”
On Shavu’ot, what we celebrate is not the negation and sublimation of the evil impulse, but its harnessing for the sake of good. We take the haughtiness of the human spirit’s evil impulse and use it as a leavening agent to make our daily dough rise, to create bread, the staff of life. The Torah does not preach asceticism except as a one-time exceptional enterprise as part of the Passover celebration. Shavu’ot is about the daily life of Torah, a sustainable life that includes and indeed thrives on the evil impulse, but harnesses its creative juices to the good work of Torah in the world.
Shavu'ot II: The True Holiday of Freedom?
It is not only the holiday of Passover which celebrates freedom, but also the holiday of Shavu’ot. Shavu’ot celebrates the giving of the Torah, and according to the following famous mishnah, it is the Torah which provides true freedom in life.
Mishnah Avot 6.2:
The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, incised [harut] upon the tablets (Ex 32:16). Do not read harut [“incised”], but rather heirut [“freedom”], for no one is as free as the person who occupies himself with the study of Torah.
What does this famous saying mean? How does the Torah make you free? Here is one thought on the issue. Please offer your own ideas by clicking on “comments” below.
People are by their nature slaves. If we do not take upon ourselves the yoke of God’s Torah and become “slaves” to God, then we will inevitably enslave ourselves to some other person or force, to someone with more power than ourselves, to work or money, to the pursuit of physical pleasure or health, or even, sometimes, to our children. The Torah lifts us above these enslavements by teaching that we actually belong to God, so that no person or thing can own us, even ourselves. The Torah frees us by setting limits on all these other human forces and obligations, by reminding us that we also carry inside ourselves a piece of God, and that ultimately, we are only answerable to Him.
Last week, I taught a class at Congregation Beth Abraham Jacob (Albany, NY) about the Sefat Emet’s notion of making ourselves hefker, ownerless, like a desert. A member of the audience commented that perhaps the purpose of making ourselves ownerless is to give ourselves permission to study Torah. If not for the command from God to study Torah, we would not take the time to do so, because of the many demands on our time – our spouses, our children, our jobs, our community, and so on. The Torah helps us assert that we are not owned by any of these, but ownerless in this world, and therefore free to worship the One who does own us, and can elevate us above these worldly concerns.
Mishnah Avot 6.2:
The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, incised [harut] upon the tablets (Ex 32:16). Do not read harut [“incised”], but rather heirut [“freedom”], for no one is as free as the person who occupies himself with the study of Torah.
What does this famous saying mean? How does the Torah make you free? Here is one thought on the issue. Please offer your own ideas by clicking on “comments” below.
People are by their nature slaves. If we do not take upon ourselves the yoke of God’s Torah and become “slaves” to God, then we will inevitably enslave ourselves to some other person or force, to someone with more power than ourselves, to work or money, to the pursuit of physical pleasure or health, or even, sometimes, to our children. The Torah lifts us above these enslavements by teaching that we actually belong to God, so that no person or thing can own us, even ourselves. The Torah frees us by setting limits on all these other human forces and obligations, by reminding us that we also carry inside ourselves a piece of God, and that ultimately, we are only answerable to Him.
Last week, I taught a class at Congregation Beth Abraham Jacob (Albany, NY) about the Sefat Emet’s notion of making ourselves hefker, ownerless, like a desert. A member of the audience commented that perhaps the purpose of making ourselves ownerless is to give ourselves permission to study Torah. If not for the command from God to study Torah, we would not take the time to do so, because of the many demands on our time – our spouses, our children, our jobs, our community, and so on. The Torah helps us assert that we are not owned by any of these, but ownerless in this world, and therefore free to worship the One who does own us, and can elevate us above these worldly concerns.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Parashat Bemidbar I: How Can People Be Counted?
This week we begin reading a new book of the Torah, the book of Numbers, so-called because it begins with numbers, with a detailed census of the people. Now the counting of people is generally considered a dangerous affair by the Torah. In Exodus the direct counting of people is shunned in favor of the use of a half-shekel coin representative for each individual (Ex 30:11-16). This method of counting is said to avoid “ a plague,” and indeed, later in history, in the time of David, a plague did come about as a result of a census (see 2 Samuel 24). Today, because of these concerns about counting, there is a tradition of not counting people directly, but through the use of a special verse exactly 10 words long, or by saying “not-1, not-2.”
Why is counting people considered so dangerous? To count people as part of a group endangers their divinely given uniqueness, implies that they are only cogs in a wheel, animals to be branded, coins to be accumulated. The Nazis’ degrading use of numbers on their victims’ arms comes to mind. The Torah is insistent that each person is unique and irreplaceable, for each person carries within her a piece of the divine. As the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5) says: “When a human being makes a number of coins out of one stamp, they are all alike; but the King of all Kings, the Holy One blessed be He stamped every person with the stamp of Adam, and not one is like any other.”
The Numbers census is allowable partly because it seems to have avoided this pitfall. Num 1:2 and 1:18 say the counting happened “listing the names,” and “head by head.” Nachmanides (on 1:45) interprets this phrase to mean that God insisted that they be counted “with honor and greatness for each and every one,” having every single person be brought out by name, rather than simply asking the head of each household for a tally.
But it’s not just that the Numbers census avoided this danger of erasing the individual. It’s also that the census was performed for an appropriate purpose. There is a danger to counting. But there is also a danger to not counting, the danger that the individual remains alone, simply an individual. That is not the Torah’s goal. Part of the purpose of the census in Numbers was to physically arrange the camp, to give each tribe its place within the larger group, these to the north, these to the south, etc. . . They were to camp ish al diglo, each person with his flag, each at his special station, playing his unique role as part of a whole.
Why is counting people considered so dangerous? To count people as part of a group endangers their divinely given uniqueness, implies that they are only cogs in a wheel, animals to be branded, coins to be accumulated. The Nazis’ degrading use of numbers on their victims’ arms comes to mind. The Torah is insistent that each person is unique and irreplaceable, for each person carries within her a piece of the divine. As the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5) says: “When a human being makes a number of coins out of one stamp, they are all alike; but the King of all Kings, the Holy One blessed be He stamped every person with the stamp of Adam, and not one is like any other.”
The Numbers census is allowable partly because it seems to have avoided this pitfall. Num 1:2 and 1:18 say the counting happened “listing the names,” and “head by head.” Nachmanides (on 1:45) interprets this phrase to mean that God insisted that they be counted “with honor and greatness for each and every one,” having every single person be brought out by name, rather than simply asking the head of each household for a tally.
But it’s not just that the Numbers census avoided this danger of erasing the individual. It’s also that the census was performed for an appropriate purpose. There is a danger to counting. But there is also a danger to not counting, the danger that the individual remains alone, simply an individual. That is not the Torah’s goal. Part of the purpose of the census in Numbers was to physically arrange the camp, to give each tribe its place within the larger group, these to the north, these to the south, etc. . . They were to camp ish al diglo, each person with his flag, each at his special station, playing his unique role as part of a whole.
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