Sefer Ha-Bloggadah

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

1:2:19:101-106 (Kayin and Hevel)

So I'll admit I feel a bit of sympathy for Kayin. Who here hasn't wanted to smack their bratty kid sibling around a little bit? Maybe you were tired of being followed around, or asked annoying, incessant questions. Maybe you were fighting for parental attention, or over a parental inheritance. Maybe you just knew it would be so much easier to break them, bruise them, bloody them -- but you didn't. Most of us get into fights with family. But most of us also know the consequences of physical violence, and are therefore unwilling to use it.

It struck me how innocent (if petulant and petty...sorta like a kid can be) Kayin comes across in some of this section of agadot about him and his unfortunate brother Hevel.

"Kayin said [to God]: Ruler of the World! I've never seen or known of death in my whole life! How was I to know that if I hit [Hevel] with a rock, he would die?"

"How did [Kayin] kill [Hevel]? He grabbed a rock and would not stop injuring and wounding him with it. He broke his arms and his legs, not knowing the exit through which life leaves the body, until he reached [Hevel's] neck and he died."

I remember being struck by Steg of http://boroparkpyro.blogspot.com 's analysis and dramatization of the incident, found here. He points out that if you keep an close eye on the grammar in this section of the Torah, the evidence points to Kayin having been born inside the Garden of Eden. Unlike Hevel, who had been born on the outside from parents who had ingested the knowledge of good, evil, and death ("for on the day you eat of it you will surely die"), it may be that Kayin could not "even understand what death was, until he created it with his own hands".

And Kayin wasn't the only one for whom death was new and bewildering. I remember how lost and confused I felt when I received the phone call that my father (ע"ה) had died, and I live in a universe where thousands of people pass on every second. But I needed know what to do, and had no idea. Thankfully I had an unofficial rabbi and friends to guide me through the subsequent steps and responsibilities. But who did the First Man and First Woman have to teach them?

"Adam and [Chavah] arrived and sat next to [Hevel's] body. They cried and mourned but did not know what to do for Hevel. A raven whose comrade had died said, 'I will teach this Adam what to do.' He took his comrade, dug in the dirt in front of [Adam & Chavah], and buried him. Adam said, 'We will act like this raven.' He immediately took Hevel's body and buried it in the ground."

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

1:2:97

Earlier we read:

"Section 58: When the Holy One created the first man, He took him and led him around all the trees of the Garden of Eden, and said to him: Behold My works, how beautiful, how splendid they are. All that I have created, I created for your sake. Take care that you do not become corrupt and thus destroy My world. For once you become corrupt, there is no one after you to repair it.(Eccles. R. 7:13,-1)"

Today we read:

"Section 97: R. Berekhiah said in the name of R. Samuel bar Nahman: Though all living things [such as white figs] came into being in the fullness of their growth, they shriveled up as soon as Adam sinned and will not return to their perfection until a scion of Perez [the Messiah] comes. [To summarize]: After Adam sinned, the Holy One deprived Adam of six things: splendor of visage, lofty stature, life without death, perfection of the earth's fruit, the Garden of Eden, and brilliance of the luminaries in heaven. In the time-to-come, the Holy One will restore them."

This reads like some of the debates over global warming. Some of us (I suspect a large majority on this blog.) think that it is our responsibility to stop the destruction of the world and there is no one who will fix it. Others have faith and believe that G!d will do it for us. I find it comforting and useful to know that someone in my tradition provided support for my position so long ago. While realizing that the same men (intentional usage) could also provide ammunition to those on the other side.

The question of competing Midrashim is a compelling aspect of studying this book. When we study Halachah today, we are given answers. For example, when Kehati (a well regarded modern commentary on the Mishneh.) comments on a Mishneh, he always includes a statement about what is the established Halachah. Sudying Aggadah takes away that feeling that there is an answer to everything. Perhaps that is why Sefer Ha-Aggadah is a perfect reading for NHC.

Monday, September 8, 2008

1:2:90-93: Many Fruits, One Tree

8 September 2008

Greetings from Jerusalem, where this blogger has now successfully decamped for the foreseeable future! One thing I love about this city of mine/ours is its constant contradictions: the sacred and the profane, the mundane and the revelatory sit side by side without even glancing one at the next. And as I wear my freelance editor's hat for this day’s chunk of midrashim, I’m struck at how the compilers of Midrash Rabbah (as rephrased in 2:91) edit together contradictory takes on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to portray multiple perspectives—all of which bring necessarily fascinating insights to the passage.

2:91: The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: a simplified summary of a midrash compiled in Breishit Rabbah 15:7, this passage tackles the question of what sort of fruit grew on this tree. I love midrashim of this sort, because they take a very practical, literal question and use it to bring out much deeper truths about the themes of the story. To break down the various answers a bit.

Grain (hitah): bread, which is made from grain, is associated with wisdom. It thus makes sense that grain/bread would be the fruit eaten by Adam and Eve, the food that made them smarter. The underlying value behind this choice is that eating from the Tree was essentially a positive thing, one that enriched the standing of humanity in the world. This vision of the Tree and its gift is not one we see in many other rabbinic commentaries, to say the least, although it’s certainly more prevalent in our tradition than, say, in Milton’s.

Grapes (‘anavim): this association comes by way of a verse, Deut. 32:32, that links grapes with bitterness. One can see this analogy as directly contradicting the earlier take: not only should we not see the Tree as a source of positive knowledge, but indeed, it was the source for the bitterness of the world.

Etrog: the etrog is known in our tradition as one of the most beautiful and useful fruits, a plant with sweet smell, sweet taste, and evidently even edible wood. This midrash closely reads the verse that describes the Tree as being good to eat, not merely its fruit, and thus associates it with the etrog. In addition to being appealingly literal, this interpretation returns to the earlier positive spin on the act of eating from the Tree: the most beautiful of all fruits is an etrog, a fruit used for ritual purposes even today.

Fig (te’enah): here we have a classic rabbinic parable, replete with princes, illicit sex, and Jews sinning in the presence of God. The midrash takes as its textual anchor the fig leaves that Adam and Eve used for clothing, spinning a yarn associating the figs with sexual disgrace and later acceptance of the sinner. Clearly the values here associated with eating the fruit are pejorative: yet there is also some compassion assigned to the character of the fig, the one tree that will accept the spurned humans after their fall. While the humans may have sinned by eating from the Tree—and it’s a big sin—the accepting nature of the fig tree is praised, especially in contrast to that of the punishing parental God.

And finally, the words of R. Joshua ben Levi: we’ll never know what kind of tree it was, lest we judge the tree harshly forever. While this take surely allies with the Miltonian harsh judgments of the “grapes” and “fig” midrashim, it also carries a delightful note of anthropomorphizing the tree itself, protecting its feelings. It’s not the tree’s fault that it was chosen to play this role, the midrash seems to say. And even as the tree is allowed to live anonymous, unjudged, unburdened by history, so too may humans reinvent themselves after their fall from grace.

What I love about this midrash is the way that it moves seamlessly from questions of plot and language—how can we use the words of the text to learn what kind of fruit the Tree actually gave?—to issues of morality, forgiveness, and future decisions. The answers may contradict each other, and that’s just fine: each interpretation can teach its own bit of wisdom, applicable in its own circumstance. As we dip deeper into the Elul season of soul-searching, cheshbon ha-nefesh, may we be able to learn big pieces of wisdom from our small deeds, perhaps managing all the while to become comfortable—just a bit!—with contradictions.

--Sara Meirowitz

Sunday, September 7, 2008

1:2:87 -- The Marginalization of Eve

R. Simeon ben Yohai, one of R. Akiba's most prominent disciples and according to tradition the author of the Zohar, continues the unattractive sexist slant that my "Sunday group" blog-mate Diane has already mentioned in connection with this series of aggadot. R. Simeon compares Eve to a jealous housewife; Adam, to her authoritarian and (rightfully?) suspicious husband; and the Serpent, to the type of old woman "who drop[s] in to borrow a little vinegar" and stir up a little trouble. (I hasten to add that I am troubled not so much by the antiquated attitudes of hazal -- antiquated attitudes from ancient sages certainly should not come as any surprise -- as I am by the apologists for some of these positions, not to mention those who do not seem to realize there is anything apparently objectionable to justify or defend.)

A summary of the midrash: A husband puts some figs and nuts into a cask, along with a scorpion, and sets the cask in a corner of his home, telling his wife that everything in the house is in her hands, except the cask -- "which you may not touch at all because there is a scorpion in it." An old, busybody neighbor comes calling and asks the wife, "How does your husband treat you?" The wife responds that she is treated wonderfully, having been given authority over all her husband owns, save only the cask. The old woman's retort: "Very likely all his precious jewels are inside it . . . [and] he intends to marry another woman and give them to her." The wife proceeds to open the cask and receives a sting what will apparently prove fatal. Upon returning home and learning of the day's events, her husband -- either unmoved or unsatisfied by the fact that she will soon die -- grows angry and "no longer [thinks] of her as his wife."

There are several strands to the sexist interpretation of Eve (particularly insofar as Eve represents womankind) in the ancient (Jewish and Christian) literature. First, Eve (and not Adam) deals directly with the serpent, and she is therefore seen as being closely connected with the demonic (which the serpent represents) and as having a demonic aspect to her nature. (Diane has blogged on the alleged co-creation of Eve and Satan.) Second, as the first transgressor against God's instructions and the one who gave the fruit to Adam, Eve is a symbol of moral weakness and the yetzer hara (evil inclination), coupled with a female tendency to corrupt man. (On this view, Adam is seen as a relatively blameless victim, although he takes of the fruit for no other reason than Eve gives it to him.) Third, upon eating the fruit, Adam and Eve immediately become aware of their nakedness, and Eve's punishment is centered around sexual desire and procreation, both suggesting a connection between carnal desires on the one hand, and the aforementioned moral weakness and the tendency to corrupt man on the other -- Eve is not simply a corrupting influence, she is a temptress.

The midrash picks up on these sexist themes to varying degrees. There is no suggestion of anything out of the ordinary in the husband's test -- "don't touch the cask with the scorpion in it" without any explanation of what the scorpion is protecting -- or that the husband is blameworthy in any way; but the wife is a terrible transgressor for being curious and disobeying her husband. This reinforces the view of Eve as the temptress and Adam as an innocent victim. Furthermore, the wife is tempted by the not very well-founded speculation of a busybody, whereas Eve was tempted at least in part by much weightier matters: the tree of knowledge of good and bad was not only "good for eating" and "an attraction to the eyes," but also would "bring about understanding" and make Eve in the words of the serpent "like God." (Genesis 3:6-7) The wife of the midrash seems silly compared to Eve. Finally, it is the husband (and the scorpion) who dispense "justice" in the midrash. Again, Adam (the husband) is elevated over Eve (the wife) as the source of moral authority, rather than the (perhaps passive) co-conspirator of the Torah.

This is one of many examples where the ancient rabbinic gloss on Torah seems somewhat at odds with the text itself, in service of another agenda. Another example that comes to mind is the remolding of Esav as an evil symbol of Rome; but that's for another midrash . . . .

1:2:75-89: To what lengths we will go to confirm what we already think?

This set of aggadot contain what seem to me some of the most misogynistic texts in the tradition. Notwithstanding the apologetics of the prior poster (and I appreciate the impulse), some of what's in here is not easy to get comfortable with.
Yet at the same time it's not impossible to read the text against itself.
The text I have in mind is the one that takes this opportunity to use the first appearance of the letter "samech" in the Torah to insult womankind.
The passage reads, in one translation (and anyone more sophisticated about formatting than I am is welcome to re-format for ease of reading):
R. Hanina, son of R. Adda, said, From the beginning of the Book until here, no samech is written, but as soon as she [Eve] was created, Satan was created with her.
The leading English translation notes laconically, in effect, oh by the way, "Satan" is not actually spelled with a samech (usually).
So here would be a timely analogy, about equally well-reasoned:
Osama Bin-Laden is obviously connected to Barack Osama. Oh by the way, his name is actually Barack OBAMA.
In other words, what we have is not only a baseless, pointless slander against womankind (in our original aggadah), and of a rather extreme type (the appearance of femininity coincides with the appearance of evil in the world) -- but it is actually based on a MISTAKE, and what is obviously a sort of deliberate, pointed mistake. (Surely, we are not expected to think the rabbis didn't know how Satan was most typically spelled.)
So we might begin by asking, where is the counter-text (we find them often), which would read something like this,
R. X, son of R. Y, replied, Satan is not spelled with a samech, davka, you're a moron.
But that text is missing. We just flow right on to the next thing.
So if we want to read against the text, without inventing new midrash, here is one way we might do it: The idea that femininity is evil is based on a mistake. Isn't that actually exactly what the text tells us? The idea that the introduction of femininity into the world brought with it or somehow coincided with the arrival of Satan is fundamentally based on a mistake -- here, the silly grammatical/spelling mistake of thinking Satan starts with a samech, but a mistake, nonetheless. Put another way, thinking the introduction of femininity (or, if one wished to read more broadly and in a slightly different direction, the introduction of gender difference) is the source of evil in the world is exactly as stupid and misguided as thinking Satan begins with a samech.

1:2:80 – A real shadchen

Just a brief thought, while we await our “official” commentary for the weekend:

The story of Chava (Eve) is a complex one, and one that is often cited (and even more often mis-cited) by those who do not regard women as men’s equal.

So it is good that the midrash reminds us that Chava’s shadchen (matchmaker) was Hashem (Breishis 2:22):

ו‍יבן השם אלקים את ה‍צלע אשר לקח מן ה‍אדם ל‍אשה ו‍יבא‍ה אל ה‍אדם

The Lord God brought her to the man.

May the One Above grant us insight to see His actions whenever people are brought together, for He is the true shadchen. As we learn in Tractate Sota 2a, before we are born, a heavenly voice emerges and calls out “this woman to this man.”