Summary of the first year

This is a summary of the schedule for the first year, to give a sense of the general flow:

• August 25 - November 21: midrashim on the events in the Torah (i.e. the first five books)
• November 22 - January 4: "Nakh" (the other biblical books)
• January 5 - February 6: the Second Temple period
• February 7 - April 5: the tannaitic (Mishnah) period
• April 6 - June 3: the amoraic (Gemara) period
• June 4 - July 31: Israel (the people and the land)
  

Buying copies of Sefer ha-Aggadah

If you are reading this blog, you probably are interested in picking up your own copy of Bialik and Ravnitzky’s Sefer ha-Aggadah.

The English copy is easy enough to find, Booksamillion has it for $47.97 for members (be sure to scour the web for coupons) and Amazon currently has it for $50.37.  But go ahead and search your favorite book source for it – the ISBN is 0805241132.  (If I may digress for a moment, for those of you who use the Firefox browser, I can only say good things about the Book Burro add-on, and I also am a huge fan of the bookfinder web site.)

The Hebrew edition is a bit tougher to find, but one reliable source I’ve found is BooksInn.net, which sells it for $51 plus $22 for airmail delivery.  My copy of the book arrived fast, and in perfect condition.

I like both the Hebrew and English editions – both contain extensive annotations (the Hebrew version is printed in two volumes and contains more annotations and additional materials).  Both volumes are approximately 8.5” by 11” (although the English edition is about a quarter-inch taller and wider.)  The Hebrew edition is over 700 pages long and the English edition is over 900 pages long (including the prefatory material).

(This is a actually a test post for me, to see if my blogging client and photo posting works happily with bloggadah.blogspot.com.  I’ve previously commented about these editions here and here.)

Commentary on the schedule

This is some background information on the schedule for the first year of Sefer Ha-Aggadah.

Sefer Ha-Aggadah is organized in a four-level hierarchy:
a) The work is divided into six parts (without names). Parts I and II are arranged chronologically. Part I covers the biblical period and beyond, through the destruction of the Second Temple, and Part II covers the rabbinic period. Parts III-VI are arranged thematically. Part III deals with Israel and Torah, Part IV with God and theology, Part V with people and society, and Part VI with the natural world and miscellaneous topics.
b) Each part is divided into chapters, which have names and numbers.
c) Each chapter is divided into sections, which have names (this is what is listed in the rightmost column of the spreadsheet), and in the Hebrew version only, also have numbers.
d) Each section is divided into individual aggadot (atomic units of aggadah/legend). These are numbered from the beginning of the chapter (the numbers don't start over in each section). These are of drastically varying length, ranging from a single line to multiple pages.

Thus, for example, Part I (biblical period and beyond) has 10 chapters. Chapter 5 deals with Israel's time in the desert, and has 27 sections. Section 11 (no number in the English edition) deals with Korach's rebellion, and contains 7 aggadot (numbered 93 to 99).

When we did a straw poll a while back, the most popular choice was to split Sefer Ha-Aggadah evenly over two years. So the first year will cover all of Parts I and II, and the first 6 chapters of Part III. This calendar begins on the Monday a week after the end of Institute 2008 (figuring that it will take a week for people to get back into the normal rhythm of life) and ends on the Friday before Institute 2009. Each week, Saturday and Sunday are treated as a single day, and major Jewish holidays (using a maximalist definition of which days are considered holidays) are similarly combined with the day before or after them, to accommodate different rhythms of reading and blogging/commenting.

We tried to harmonize two seemingly conflicting ideals that were expressed: 1) keeping the pace as even as possible, 2) splitting up the text based on logical divisions rather than typographical ones (e.g. a page a day). So the reading for each day is split up mostly along section divisions (which has the added bonus of being consistent between the Hebrew and English versions, which have different page numbering), though due to the large variation in section lengths, it was often necessary to split a single section among multiple days, or combine multiple sections onto a single day. In no circumstances is a single aggadah split up. Some of these aggadot (e.g. Moses's death) are particularly long, and rather than split them up, we assigned shorter sections to nearby days, to make it easy to read ahead or catch up if needed. (The also lengthy story of the Ten Martyrs has internal divisions in the Hebrew version but not the English version, but we can address that when we get there.)

***

It's also cool to look at the (entirely random and coincidental) correspondences between this schedule and the Hebrew calendar. The story of the Akedah (binding of Isaac) will be the week before Rosh Hashanah, so we'll be equipped to prepare interesting discussions and divrei torah in our communities. The story of Honi the circlemaker, a perennial Tu Bishvat favorite, will be on... Tu Bishvat! (If you don't know this story, don't worry -- you will!) The Three Weeks leading up to Tisha B'Av include the sections about physical and spiritual exile, transitioning to the messianic redemption.

Some of these correspondences, on the other hand, are exactly the opposite of what one would expect, which may lead us to new perspectives on familiar holidays. During Chanukah, a festival
celebrating the rededication of the Temple, we'll read about the destruction of the First Temple. On and around Purim, a day celebrating a narrow escape from annihilation, we'll read about the
Ten Martyrs, for whom no such escape happened. (Maybe the difference between blessing and curse isn't so clear.) In contrast, the story of Purim itself falls around the Gregorian new year, a time of Purimesque revelry in the secular culture.

Sefer Ha-Bloggadah: the countdown begins!

The Sefer Ha-Aggadah project will kick off in 26 days!!! We'll begin officially on Shabbat afternoon, August 16, Tu Be'Av, at the NHC Summer Institute at Franklin Pierce University, following the formal completion (siyyum) of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. You can still register to come to the Institute for the full week or just for Shabbat.

After a week to readjust to normal life, our study schedule will begin on Monday, August 25. Here is the schedule for the first year. It will conclude on Friday, July 31, 2009, and we'll have a siyyum on the first half of Sefer Ha-Aggadah at the NHC Summer Institute, on Shabbat afternoon, August 8, 2009.

There will be an ongoing discussion of the daily reading right here on the blog. Every day, at least one member of the blogging team will post something about that day's reading, and everyone is invited to discuss in the comments. The substantive discussion will be here on the blog, but all participants are also invited to join the email list, to keep with administrative announcements and discussion.

In addition to the blog, there is talk about starting local Sefer Ha-Aggadah groups to meet occasionally in person. I have heard rumors about groups starting in Jerusalem, the New York area, and Philadelphia. Email the list if you want to start something in your area.

I am very excited to announce the amazing Sefer Ha-Bloggadah blogging lineup. Our team includes bloggers in North America and Israel; grandparents and college students; people with ties to each of the major Jewish denominations; people who teach and study Jewish texts full-time and people with a wide range of other jobs; veteran bloggers and people who have never blogged before. Here's the list:

MONDAY
Marisa Harford
Sara Meirowitz

TUESDAY
Jonah Steinberg
Howard White

WEDNESDAY
chillul Who?
Benjamin "feygele" M., Oy is Yo, Backwards and Jewschool

THURSDAY
Drew Cohen, Jewschool
Iyov
Neil Litt, Daf Am Haaretz

FRIDAY
Rabbi Alana Suskin
David A.M. Wilensky, The Reform Shuckle

SATURDAY/SUNDAY
Bruce, Three Jews, Four Opinions
Diane Klein, Three Jews, Four Opinions
Steve, Three Jews, Four Opinions

PINCH HITTER
BZ, Mah Rabu and Jewschool

In the Museum of Science and Wonders

“…in all the signs and the wonders…and in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror…” (Deuteronomy 34:11-12)

I turned a corner and suddenly came upon a small gang of wild turkeys, milling around on the sidewalk of Longwood Avenue. Presumably (when the capability of rational presumption returned to me) they had wandered up from the ribbon of wooded land that lines the Green Line rail tracks. Anyhow and in the first place, there they were: a quite sufficient instance of ‘Arov, wild beasts where we least expect them, incongruously stirred into the mix of daily life. I can still summon up the sudden feeling of acid shock in my legs, an instinctual, if absurd fight-or-flight reaction. I flew – or, at least, I stood stock still and then gave them a wide berth. (Why did the domesticated chicken cross the road?) Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava, after all, once testified about a tarnegol who was put to death in Jerusalem for pecking a child to death (Mishnah, Eduyot 6:1) . These were fearsome fowl. I had to wonder whether turkeys ever seemed so dragon-like to people who lived on this land when it was not built up with mortar, tar and concrete – whether these dinosaur legs and burnished coats of brown and bourbon banded feathers ever turned the thoughts of hardier New England folk to mythical creatures. Farley Mowatt, some forty years ago, predicted that within two centuries there might be no wild animal left along the eastern seaboard bigger than a breadbox. In a world all too like that prophecy, these birds were something of a miracle.

Does the river have to stink and run with blood, must disease rain from sooty skies, and genetically confused frogs, with the last salentian articulacy of oddly numbered legs, crawl out of their polluted waters and die where we can see them; must we – God forbid – lose our own firstborn before we come to acknowledge the wonder of our world and respect our fellow beings? Will there come a day when the proper function of a kidney seems like the wildest fairytale from a mythic past? Is miracle the altering of nature or the drawing of a shining circle of attention around it?

I want to build a museum of science and wonders – a place from which visitors would come away thunderstruck, slack-jawed at the overwhelming elegance of the staggeringly improbable on scales huge and miniscule, where visitors could see the miraculous at every focal distance of the eye. I want to build a Museum of Science and Wonders, and then I remember – we live in it. Just look.

More on Shemot - Torah and the World to Come

Written in the Wake of the Assasination of Benazir Bhutto

“And Moses said to the evildoer, ‘Why would you strike your fellow?’” (Exodus 2:13)

As we turn from the primordial stories of Genesis to the narrative of our receiving the Law in Exodus, it is worth noting two seemingly contradictory ideas that come to us through tradition concerning the permanence or impermanence of Torah.

Rav Yosef teaches: “Mitzvot will be nullified in the time to come.” (Babylonian Talmud, Niddah 61a) That is, in the World to Come, there will be no commandments. It is true that, in a seeming move of ultimate rabbinic chutzpah, there are those who suggest that certain injunctions of the sages, like Purim and Chanukah, will remain in place even in the World to Come; and, perhaps in a nod to something enduring about human nature, Rabbi Eliezer adds that the prescription of Yom Kippur, too, will never disappear. (Yalkut Shimoni, Ester 944) Otherwise, though, many of our ancient rabbis seem to foresee that Torah as we know it will dissolve in the ideal future.

On the other hand, God says through Jeremiah, “Were it not for my Covenant, day and night, I would not have set the rules of heaven and earth.” (Jeremiah 33:25) Torah is essential to the fabric of the cosmos. According to the first Midrash in Bereshit Rabbah, “God looked into the Torah and created the world” – thus Torah must extend to every thing and there should never be a time or place where Torah cannot be discovered and realized. The Zohar looks at “Were it not for my Covenant day and night,” and says, “Heaven and earth and all their powers stand on this yesod, on this Foundational Covenant.” (Zohar, Va-Yeshev 1:189b)

So unless we imagine the very sky and ground dissolving in the World to Come – and rabbinic sages tend not to imagine this – how can we say that “Commandments will be nullified in the time to come?” What kind of perfected world can this time to come be, if the essence of it is that we can do and say and imbibe every impure and unruly thing? Can we wrong each other with impunity in the World to Come? Should we believe that we are striving through Torah to bedlam, just waiting for the yoke of commandments to be lifted from our necks?

Hasidic tradition attributes an effort to reconcile these contrary ideas – that “commandments will be nullified in the time to come,” on the one hand, and that the cosmos depends on Torah, on the other hand – to the Ba’al Shem Tov. Reportedly, the Ba’al Shem Tov taught that there will be no commandments in the world to come because, in that time, Torah will be intrinsic to humanity – not just ‘second nature’ to us, but, we might say, our first nature. There will be no commandments in the world to come because, in that time, Torah will not be experienced as statutes imposed from outside, against our inclinations. In the world to come, Torah will be the inclination of our hearts.

We see it foreshadowed in the story of Moses and the two Israelites he sees fighting with one another. Moses asks the abuser, “Why would you do this to your friend?” That is, even before Sinai, Moses feels in his heart exactly what Hillel will later articulate as the essence of Torah: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” Moses’ question is not, “Why would you disobey a rule set upon you?” but “Why would it be in your heart to act in so destructive a way, a way that points in the opposite direction from redemption?” Moses intuits in his heart what is right, and from his lips springs the Torah of the moment. Heaven and earth stand on such a foundation – or, as the proverb has it, “Tzadik yesod olam” – “The righteous person is a foundation throughout all time and space.” (Proverbs 10:25)

Perhaps a world is coming in which the impulses of our hearts and a world-sustaining Torah will coincide. Meanwhile, the word of God is, for us, as the haftarah of Shemot says, “Tzav la-tzav, tzav la-tzav, kav la-kav, kav la-kav, ze’eir sham, ze’eir sham” “Law by law, law by law, line by line, line by line, a little here, a little there” (Isaiah 28:10) – things we tell ourselves we should do, and only sometimes listen.

Al Gore said in his Nobel Peace Prize speech, “The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking?” or “Why didn't you act? " Meanwhile, we go on acting in a way about which Moses might well ask, “Why would you do this to your friend?” “So today,” Gore said, “we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount.” We do similar things in other realms of action, too, dumping toxic deeds into our environment as though the world were an endlessly resilient buffer capable of absorbing every wrong, or as though a perfect world-to-be might come, in any case, and lift the burden of conscience from our necks. It isn’t coming – not that way.

Perhaps a time will come when the Torah of our hearts and the governance of our hands will coincide for good. Meanwhile, the word of God is, for us, as Jeremiah says, “Tzav la-tzav, tzav la-tzav, kav la-kav, kav la-kav, ze’eir sham, ze’eir sham” “Law by law, law by law, line by line, line by line, a little here, a little there” (Isaiah 28:13) – a Torah we hear outside ourselves, and only sometimes one that impels us from within.

May truth grow from the earth; may an expansive Torah flourish from our hearts; and may it be our will and God’s that 2008 – and what is left of 5768 – be for us and all the world an end to the narrowness of our minds and the destructiveness of our actions, and may it be the inception of a world that is coming.

"And These are the Names...." A Cup for Serach Daughter of Asher

(from a piece to appear in print before Passover, heaven willing)


“And to Asher he said, ‘Blessed above sons be Asher....’” (Deuteronomy 33:24)

What is the extra measure of blessing, entailed in the line of Asher, that surpasses even sons?

“And these are the names of the children of Israel who came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons…” (Genesis 46:8) “And the sons of Asher, Yimnah and Yishvah and Yishvi and Beri’ah, and Serach their sister.” (Genesis 46:17)

And when Moses counts the children of Israel in the wilderness, we read: “…and the name of the daughter of Asher was Serach.” (Numbers 26:46)

On this basis, our rabbis teach that Serach the daughter of Asher both went down into Egypt with Jacob and came up out of Egypt with Moses, hundreds of years later, and remained alive in the wilderness. (e.g. Mekhilta Beshalach; Shemot Rabbah 5:13)

And not only this, but also: “Then a wise woman called out from the city....” (2Samuel 20:16) In the days of King David, when Sheva ben Bichri cursed the king and fled to the hills country of Efrayim, to the town of Avel Bet Ma’achah, and Yo’av, David’s general set out after him with an army, and besieged the city, and threatened to destroy it on account of Sheva ben Bichri, and a wise woman called out from the city – this, too, say our rabbis, was Serach, the daughter of Asher. (cf. Kohelet Rabbah 9:18) who was still living and protecting the children of Israel in the time of King David.

And she said to Yo’av “Anochi shelumei emunei Yisra’el” (2Samuel 20:19, often translated, “I am of the peaceable faithful of Israel”) and our sages interpret: “Ani hi she-hishlamti minyanan shel Yisra’el be-Mitzrayim” “I am she who completed the minyan, the number, of the children of Israel in Egypt” – as it is said, “All the souls of the house of of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy” (Genesis 46:27) – “Ani hi she-hishlamti ne’eman Yosef le-ne’eman Moshe” “I am she who connected the faithful Joseph with the faithful Moses.” (Kohelet Rabbah 9:18) How so?

How did Moses know where Joseph’s bones were buried? Our rabbis teach, Serach the daughter of Asher remained alive from that first generation, and she told Moses, ‘Joseph is hidden in the river Nile. The Egyptians made him a sarcophagus of metal and sank it in the river.’ Moses went and stood by the Nile, took a twig and threw it into the water and said, ‘Joseph, Joseph, the time has come for the oath to be fulfilled that the Holy Blessed One swore to Abraham our father, that He would redeem his children. Give honor to the God of Israel, and do not delay our redemption, for we are waiting on your account!’ Immediately Joseph’s sarcophagus rose to the surface, and Moses took it out of Egypt. (Mekhilta Beshalach)

And not only this, but also, “I have surely remembered you” “Pakod-pakad’ti etchem” (Exodus 3:17) How did Israel know to believe in Moses? When Moses first came before the elders of Israel, and performed his signs, the elders went to Serach, the daughter of Asher, and they said, “A certain man has come, and he has performed signs in our sight, thus and so.” She answered, “There is no substance in his signs.” Then they said to her, “But he has also said, in God’s name, “Pakod pakad’ti – I have surely remembered!” Then Serach said to them, “Then this is the man who is destined to redeem Israel from Egypt, for thus I have heard it from my father.” Immediately, the elders of Israel trusted Serach daughter of Asher and accepted Moses. (Pirkei Rabbi Eliezer 48).

For the first human being received the Secret of Redemption (sod ha-ge’ulah) from the Holy Blessed One. Our rabbis say that Abraham received the secret in turn and passed it on to his son Jacob, and Jacob passed it on to his son Asher, and Asher passed the Secret of Redemption to his daughter Serach, who waited through Israel’s captivity until she heard the promised words from Moses. (Shemot Rabbah 5:13)

Moreover, there are those who say that certain souls entered from this life into the Garden of Eden, without tasting the taste of death – Elijah the Prophet, and Enoch son of Yared, and rare others, some say seven, some say ten; and some say that Serach the Daughter of Asher completes this number, this minyan as well. How did she merit this reward?

Serach was a prophetess, and she knew that Joseph was not dead when his brothers betrayed him into Egypt, and to soothe her grandfather Jacob’s spirit, she hinted to him in a song, as she played the harp before him, that Joseph still lived, so that Jacob’s soul would not fly out his body with shock when he later heard the news. Jacob blessed her and said, “This mouth that has told me that Joseph still lives will never taste the taste of death.” (Alpha Beta de-Ben Sira, in Otzar ha-Midrashim)

And the holy Zohar says, “In another heavenly chamber are Serach the daughter of Asher and all the righteous women,” suggesting that Serach watches over the souls of righteous women beyond this life, just as she has watched over our people from Egypt until this time, linking generation to generation, ensuring continuity, safeguarding the Secret of Redemption.

And this is why it is fitting, at our Passover Seders, to place an extra cup of wine on the table, for Serach the daughter of Asher. For, like Elijah (and unlike even the great Miriam, who may dance with us when the dead are revived), Serach the daughter of Asher never tasted the taste of death, so that she is still present to complete our number, to connect us one to another in times of need, to visit our tables and to bless us with the Secret of Redemption.

And these are the names of the children of Israel who came into Egypt… and the name of the daughter of Asher was Serach.


Postscript:

Another thing. Where was Joshua the son of Nun finally buried, at the end of the one hundred and ten years of his life? “They buried him in the border of his inheritance, in Timnat Serach, which was in the hill country of Efrayim.” (Joshua 24:30) Where else would Joshua have chosen to retire, in his old age? With whom else would he have wanted to keep company and look back over the years? He alone, with Kalev, survived from the generation of the wilderness to enter into the Land. Only those two? No, there was another – someone else with whom Joshua could look back, toward the end of his life, who could remember with him the long journey they both had experienced with Israel, from Egypt to the Land, and all the signs and the wonders. That one was Serach, the daughter of Asher. So it was, when Joshua sent the people to their homes, after his triumphs, "every man to his inheritance," (Joshua 24:28) that Joshua himself went to the hill country of Efraim, to the town of Serach the daughter of Asher – although I do not know of any rabbis elder than us who have observed this.

Note: The name “Serach” is spelled in most of the biblical passages in which it appears with the letter sin and in rabbinic literature with the letter samech.