Bialik news watch

(Modified from a post at Iyov.)

Another mention of Bialik – this time in the context of dumbed-down “translation” of the Bible into Modern Hebrew.  It has attracted criticism from teachers in Israel, one of whom indicts the Israeli educational system, and puts in context by mentioning Bialik (from Haaretz): 

But beyond that, the furor over the Bible Lite text highlights the fact that Israeli schoolchildren cannot cope with biblical Hebrew. “This is a colossal failure of our education system that defies description,” says Professor Amit. “How come children used to be able to read the Bible? How come they used to be able to learn sections by heart? It was hard for them then too, but they dealt with it because they were told it was important. Religious schools wouldn't dream of simplifying the Bible,” she says, adding that if you cannot handle the Bible’s language, you will not be able to understand Bialik and Tchernechovsky's poetry.

But in the end, Israel’s Education Ministry has decided to ban dumbed-down Bibles in Israel.  From Haaretz:  “The idea of translating the Bible into simple contemporary language is ‘scandalous,’ Drora Halevy, the ministry's National Supervisor for Bible Studies, told Haaretz. The booklets present the text in ‘skimpy slang’ that cheapens the Bible,” she added.

Here is the entire Haaretz story  (HT:  Michael Pitkowsky):

Education Ministry to ban 'Bible Lite' study booklet

By Tamar Rotem, Haaretz Correspondent

The Education Ministry is to ban Bible aid booklets that help elementary and junior high school students by “translating” the text into simple Hebrew. Private publishers defend the booklets by arguing that biblical Hebrew is a foreign tongue to young Israelis.

Teaching experts lambast the booklets, warning that children will skip reading the Bible and opt for the simplified version. This will not only deteriorate Bible studies but also impact the Hebrew language, which is based on the Bible, they say.

The idea of translating the Bible into simple contemporary language is “scandalous,” Drora Halevy, the ministry's National Supervisor for Bible Studies, told Haaretz. The booklets present the text in “skimpy slang” that cheapens the Bible, she added.

“It’s a purely marketing initiative intended for the below-average; it's a disaster,” says Professor Yaira Amit, a Bible instruction expert.

Booklet publishers Rafi Moses and Reches Publications say the Bible is a foreign language to Israeli children, who need to read it in simple language to understand it.

Halevy and other Bible and Hebrew language experts fear that children will simply not bother to read the Bible, but use the simple language version instead.

“The Bible is the Hebrew language’s dictionary. It's the foundation of everything, says linguist Zvia Valdan. “If you read it without the original expressions and rhythms, it will lose its impact and power.”

It is no secret that parents and children are confused when it comes to studying the Bible. Parents have difficulty explaining biblical texts to their children and might be tempted to buy the simply-worded, NIS 20 booklets. They are easy to read, with the original text on one side of the page and the simplified version opposite it.

But beyond that, the furor over the Bible Lite text highlights the fact that Israeli schoolchildren cannot cope with biblical Hebrew. “This is a colossal failure of our education system that defies description,” says Professor Amit. “How come children used to be able to read the Bible? How come they used to be able to learn sections by heart? It was hard for them then too, but they dealt with it because they were told it was important. Religious schools wouldn't dream of simplifying the Bible,” she says, adding that if you cannot handle the Bible’s language, you will not be able to understand Bialik and Tchernechovsky's poetry.

Amit, who admits to feeling like the last guardian of the seal, is outraged that shallow instant culture has now dared to “simplify” the Bible. “We give precedence to shallowness and shortcuts in many areas of modern life. It’s OK in e-mails in which the message is the main thing. But where is the boundary? You cannot do away with cultural values.”

She believes that students should study the Bible for more hours and be required to quote from memory.

Reading the Bible Lite version shows that while it may not be slang, it is problematic. There is something discordant in the simplified version of the familiar, seminal Genesis text. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” is translated to “in the beginning God created the world.”

“Why change the expression ‘the heaven and the earth?’ ” asks Amit.

The expression “chaos” has been replaced by “the earth was empty and deserted.”

Surprisingly, the man behind the Bible Lite version is a former Bible teacher and headmaster. “When they first suggested [making the booklets] I was astonished. Why should we rewrite the Bible in a simple tongue?’ says Avraham Ahuvia, 87, of kibbutz Netzer Sereni. “But on second thought I was convinced that we teachers already translate the Bible orally in class for students who don't understand its sublime language.”

He accepts that children may read only the simplified version, “but if there were no simple version, would they like the Bible better?”

Halevy is convinced that using the simple-language Bible will lead to the loss of Biblical expressions and idioms that are used in contemporary Hebrew. She asserts that the booklet's meager language drives children away from the Bible, rather than bring them closer.

Moses says “this is an important project that fulfills a real need. The booklet’s language is first-rate. Our children deserve to understand the Bible, love it and savor its language without suffering.”

1:2:73: Creation finished?

1:2:73--

"And on the seventh day God finished" (Gen. 2:2). Isn't this statement curious? Geniva explained it by the parable of a king who made a bridal chamber, which he painted and decorated. Now, what did the bridal chamber still lack? The bride to enter it. So, too, what did the world still lack? The Sabbath.

A footnote (in the English version, but I'm not sure if it's in the Hebrew edition) clarifies for us what the confusion is over, saying, "Did not God finish His work of creation in six days? Why then does Scripture say He finished on the seventh day?"

There is indeed something odd about the idea that the world is complete on it's seventh day. Chapter one of Genesis details the six days of creation, while chapter two begins with the first Shabat. The first Shabat goes off without a hitch, but after that, everything goes south.

The snake misbehaves, humans eat of forbidden fruit, we're kicked out of Gan Eden, and, pretty soon, you've got the invention of fratricide all in a pretty short span of text.

So things are fine on the first Shabat, but afterward, the world descends back into a chaotic, unfinished state. And so it goes for us every week.

We try to reach stopping points on each of our own personal projects of creation every Friday afternoon so that we can enjoy a day of wholeness and finished-ness. And then, somwhere around that third star's arrival on Saturday night, everything goes south again and the work of mending, building, constructing, and creating begins again.

And on that note, Shabat Shalom, blogosphites!

--

The Reform Shuckle

1:2:65 Increase the Peace

I once heard a liberal rabbi claim that there was only one joke in the Talmud – and it is one we say every day when we finish davening shacharis:

Rabbi Elazar said in the name of Rabbi Chanina:  Torah scholars increase peace in the world, for it is said:  And all your children shall be learners of the [Torah  of the] Lord, and great will be the peace of banayich (your children).  (Yeshayahu 54:13)  Do no read banayich but bonayich (your builders).  [Brachos 64a, Yevamos 122b, Nazir 66b, Kerisus 28b, Taanis 32b)

“Torah scholars increase peace?” goes the Reform joke.   “Have you you ever seen Torah scholars in action –- in our time, or in the Talmuld?  They are always getting into bitter, nasty machlokes.”

Well, this joke plays a bit flat in a frum crowd, who will explain at length why Talmid Chacham increase peace.  And as the observant and non-observant raise their voices, we see yet another irony of “not bringing peace.”

In fact, I believe that Talmud scholars bring peace in a the conventional way.  But our aggada today gives a spiritual way in which Torah scholars bring peace:  Hashem is creating the world, and the upper and lower earth are keeping count. 

Day 1:  Upper (heaven) and Lower (earth) worlds created (Bereishis 1:1, score 1-1). 

Day 2:  Firmament (from upper world) created (Bereishis 1:6, score 1-2)

Day 3:  Grass (from lower world) created (Bereishis 1:11, score 2-2)

Day 4:  Lights (from upper world) created (Bereishis 1:14, score 2-3)

Day 5:  Swarming waters (from lower world) created (Bereishis 1:20, score 3-3)

Now you see the problem.  The score is tied even, and it is now time to make man.  Is he to be created from the lower world or the upper world?  A compromise is created:  man is mad from the dust of the ground (lower worlds) (Bereishis 2:7) and receives the breath of life (upper worlds).  And we know, we each have a divine spark in us.

This is the materials of Torah Scholars – builders of the world – who keep the peace between heaven and earth.

(It is great fun to immediately read aggada 1:2:66 for some closely related thoughts.) 

Note:  I see that NeilLitt has overlapped me in taking the same aggada and coming up with a very different take on it.  Today, dear Bloggadah readers, you get a particularly stark example of the different writing styles of our merry and diverse little group.  As the season of penance approaches with 21 Elul right around the corner, may we all be on a high spiritual plane as we begin to recite selichos.

Stuck in the Middle

So here we are, as Oscar Wilde said, ". . . all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." If we had been formed only from that which is above, the upper worlds would outnumber the lower worlds. And, of course, the reverse would lead to an equally unsatisfactory imbalance. So we are made from dust but given the breath and breadth of life; we are in the likeness of God but with the urge to rut. We are stuck in the middle.

And yet the middle we are stuck in is a paradox where all that God has created is forever: "nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it"-- a theological expression of the first law of thermodynamics that appears to be confounded by a world where Jacob turns day to night and Joshua turns night into day; where Moses turns sea to dry land and Elisha turns dry land into sea, and so on and so forth. But the acts of man are not forever, so the instabilities that man introduces do not endure; whatever we add does not last, whatever we take away is soon enough taken from us.

The best of the deeds of man add to the words of God "so that mortals may fear Him." But would we not do even better to fear ourselves? It is, after all, written that God created balance and then man added to one side or the other and what became of balance? The peace we were promised when our creation took from both the world above and the world below is nowhere to be found. If that peace is shattered by our need to add to the fear of God by our own drive to turn day to night and night to day, we should fear ourselves more than we fear the Source of life. Why fear God? Why not love the day and night for what they are and love the Creator who made them as they are?

We Are Humans

Nothing like starting off the day with an existential crisis! Good thing I'm a stone's throw from the Philosophy department; I might need to shake my head out over there.

"For if a man strikes many coins from one die, they all resemble one another; in fact, they are all exactly alike. But though the King of kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, fashioned every man from the die of the first man, not a single one of them is exactly like his fellow. Hence, each and every person should say, "The world was created for my sake." [54]

Does the idea that each person was made in a unique way, yet somehow also each cast from G!d's original (singular?) mold, concur with the notion that humans were made in G!d's image? How does using the same mold - unlike striking coins from one die - result in unique beings, each of us different?

As unique individuals, we are charged with great burden: if we destroy our world, no one will help us clean it up [54]; if we kill another, it is as if we killed all of humanity (and if we save another it is like we saved all of humanity) [58]. We are the acme of creation [57]! We have big shoes to fill.

Looking at the second half of today's section, the aggados remind us that perhaps humans were not originally created as we now stand. We were originally created as an intersex being [60]. Like animals, we had tails, but G!d later removed them [61]. Our original ancestors, Adam and Eve, were created in their grown forms (as youth or young adults) [62], but subsequent generations had to be born. Going back to the first section that my chevrusah, chillul Who?, and I read last week, I think these developments that G!d made for us easily coincide with the notion of evolution as opposed to clear creationism.

We were each created as individuals, in the image of G!d, unique and with the ability to change and grow. Looking to yesterday's readings, no wonder G!d chastised the angels for thinking humans would be the same, with set characteristics.

Shall we create humanity?

Such Elul-Torah, these midrashim of humankind’s creation – a creature glorious enough to confuse the angels, dubious enough to spark heavenly doubt and dissent. “Now that we have been created,” say the sages in the Babylonian Talmud’s Eiruvin 13b, “let us carefully consider our actions.” In a sense, these creation aggadot are the basis of our Jewish tradition of deliberate, mindful, careful action - which, in the light of these stories, becomes a question of justifying our existence, of vindicating our having been brought into being. In that sense, “Truth will grow from the earth” – one way or the other. The divine gamble has been made, and time will tell whether a glorious or devastated world will result. Have those two alternate possibilities ever been more vividly apparent than they are in our own age?

It often strikes me that, in ancient times, suggesting that human actions might matter on a cosmic scale must have been the height of spiritual chutzpah. The natural world was so clearly mighty and impervious and we were so buffeted by its every fluctuation. Our stories of droughts brought on by sin, or rains by righteous acts were a desperate bid for a feeling of control – “If it can be my fault, perhaps I can make it better.”

Now that it has become clear that our actions as a species do in fact tip the balance of this world, suddenly our tradition of careful, mindful, principle-driven action is extremely relevant. Suddenly a tradition that teaches that our individual and collective actions matter on a grand scale is just what this world needs. Our tales of angelic disputes over the adding of humankind into the world have suddenly become stories that the world well can use. We, as Jews, are heirs to a tradition that should prepare us ideally to meet the cosmic question of our times, of a planet teetering on the brink of cataclysmic shifts brought on by unbridled human action.

I hold in my hand at this moment – I kid you not – one of the latest Jewish innovations in our ongoing effort to justify our having been brought into existence. It is a “Shabbos Toothbrush.” I don’t use it, I have kept it in the bright, endorsement-filled packaging for show-and-tell. We can now avoid the acts of ‘spreading’ toothpaste, of ‘squeezing’ liquids from bristles, of ‘cutting’ gums. This, apparently, is what is so desperately needed to vindicate the trust that the divine has put in us as a species that a factory has been built, in China, to produce these “Kosher Innovations” brushes, designed, somewhat to my shame, in my home and native land of Canada.

To my shame? Don’t get me wrong. More power to our impulse to take care, to weigh our every action carefully as though the world depended on it, to obey our best understanding of our obligations in this world to the letter – even to brush our teeth with sacred duty and consequence in mind, in such a way as to justify our existence. But the world is burning, and I wish we were teaching our children that such a crisis is precisely what we have been training for as a people for millennia. I wish we were offering the world “Kosher Innovations” fit to the urgent tasks at hand (alongside kosher toothbrushes if you like). “Shall we make humankind?” “What shall be its actions?” If our tradition of Torah, aggadah and halakha, cannot teach us to do better, cannot fill our hands with better tools for the moment, then, in our matriarch Rebekah's words, "Lamah zeh anochi?" - "Why should I exist at all?"

The four elements and creepy-crawlies

Chodesh tov (a happy new month) to everyone! It is the second days of Rosh Chodesh for the month of Elul, and we have a happy confluence of the Sefer Ha-Bloggadah schedule with the date today. The petichta (opening verse) of aggadah #39 comes from Psalm 104, Barchi Nafshi, (Bless God, my soul) which is also the psalm recited on Rosh Chodesh. Psalm 104 is a beautiful psalm that has many thematic connections to our aggadot for today and especially to aggadah #39. Both these aggadot and the psalm express sheer wonder and joy at creation and specifically at creation’s diversity. Aggadah #39 and psalm 104 each mention the four elements according to ancient conceptions-- earth (aretz / yabasha), water (mayim / yam), air (ruach / avir), and light or fire (or)—and use the four elements to emphasize the variety and range of creation. The psalmist and aggadist aggrandize creation in order to exalt its author. The close connections between this aggadah and the source text remind us of two things to take into account during our readings this year—1. that the author of the aggadah probably had the source text memorized and when making reference to that text meant to conjure up for the reader a whole set of associations that would relate to the context of the verse referenced, not just to the short piece cited and 2. that the structure and themes of the aggadah often mirror the structure and themes of the source text. So read these aggadot and psalm 104, then go outside and enjoy nature.

You’re back? Bloggers don’t go outside, you say? Well, here’s a question that I hope will spark some debate. As our editors have arranged things, aggadah #42 seems to be used as a proof text for #41. #41 asserts that no part of creation is useless; in #42 Elijah relates a story in which he gives his theory as to why creepy-crawlies were created. At the outset of this story, I was hopeful that Elijah’s answer would claim that all life has inherent value, even lizards and bugs and such—that animals do not have to have some utility for people in order to be valuable. (I happen to think that bugs are pretty cool.) I was disappointed to find that Elijah’s answer seemed to assert that God only created creeping things because God anticipated that human beings would one day be totally unredeemable and idolatrous and that the creepies would remind God that even if we failed totally in the moral dimension, we at least would be as worthy as the reptiles and bugs. It later occurred to me that this aggadah might also be making the claim that it is moral capacity (or decision-making ability—the inclination to worship and to chose who or what to worship) that differentiates human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom. Does Elijah’s argument really only justify the existence of bugs based on God needing to remind God’s self not to annihilate human beings? Is there a way to read it as validating the inherent worth of all life?

And a more technical query: The person who asks Elijah the question in aggadah #42 is a “chaver” in Hebrew, a colleague or associate. Why did Bialik chose to translate this as a “Parsee priest”? Is this historically accurate based on the context of this aggadah? Is it a polemic against Pharisees? And why is this “chaver” working on the draft board?