1:2:32 - Plants and Trees With Attitude!

Genesis 1:11-12 covers the creation of plants. God says make some plants, and the earth makes some plants. The story is three sentences long. One might think this is all pretty simple and straightforward.

Not even close.

Our midrash here picks up on one seemingly minor textual inconsistency, and a comment from Rashi picks up on a different textual inconsistency. Juxtaposing these two gives us some pretty interesting conclusions. Let's start with the Torah text, and then discuss our midrash, Rashi's comment, and what we can make of all this.

Here's the Torah:

And God said: 'Let the earth put forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree bearing fruit after its kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth.' And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after its kind; and God saw that it was good. (Gen 1:11-12)

Our midrash notes one subtle textual discrepancy in this story. God said to produce "herb yielding seed" but the earth actually brought forth "herb yielding seed after its kind". (That is, the seeds from these plants would themselves grow the same kind of plant.) Here's most of our Midrash:

[T]he grasses applied to themselves an a fortiori argument, saying: If God enjoined "after its kind" upon trees, which by nature do not grow up in promiscuous miscellany, how much more does it apply to us! Immediately each grass sprouted forth after its kind . . . . Then the angel of the universe declared, "The glory of the Lords endures forever; the Lord rightly rejoices in His works!"

Grass with attitude. God says do it one way, and the grass thinks it has a better idea and does it differently.

But things gets better. Here's another textual inconsistency. God said to create "fruit-tree bearing fruit" (עֵץ פְּרִי עֹשֶׂה פְּרִי), but the earth instead brought forth "tree bearing fruit" (וְעֵץ עֹשֶׂה-פְּרִי). Our midrash skips this problem, but Rashi picks up on it. "This implies that the taste of the tree should be the same as the taste of the fruit. However, it [the earth] did not do this, but rather: 'The earth sprouted forth... a tree producing a fruit,' but the tree itself was not a fruit."

Now the earth has attitude. God's original plan called for the entire tree --- branches, leaves, bark, everything --- to be edible. It would literally be a "fruit tree" that also bore fruit. But the earth decided it had a better idea and made regular trees instead. Rashi notes the consequences for the earth's disobedience. "Therefore, when Adam was cursed for his sin, it, [the earth] too, was punished for its sin and was [also] cursed."

This is remarkable. God issued a simple command to the earth: make some plants and trees. The grass --- after comparing itself to the trees, carefully thinking through the problem, and applying Talmudic reasoning --- decided to improve on God's plan. And then did! (And did so before it was even created. Talk about an over-achiever.) The earth on the other hand made the opposite move. God wanted super-trees, but the earth just created regular old ordinary trees.

But the most puzzling verse of all is the transition between God's commands and the much modified implementations of these commands: "And it was so." It most certainly was not so. God got very different grass and trees than he had commanded.

So what do we make of all this?

Here's my explanation. The divine plan for creation is not static. It is dynamic, and it includes creation's modifications of the divine plan for creation. We have a very important role in completing and continuing God's creation.

As many people have noted, we see this idea reflected in our shabbos blessings. We bless God for bringing forth bread from the earth. But God does not create bread. He only brings grain from the earth. People improve the grain and make the bread. And then we bless God for creating the fruit of the vine. Well, God may do that, but we are not eating grapes. We are drinking wine. And people improved the grapes to make the wine. Our blessings make no difference between the the products people make (bread, wine) and the raw materials God makes (grain, grapes), and in fact seems to confuse the two categories.

The reason for all of this, as I see it, is that the divine plan includes the potential to modify the divine plan. Grapes includes wine, wine includes grapes, bread includes grain, and grain includes bread. God and people work together, and we get some pretty good stuff.

The Torah notes that we are created in the image of God. And one important idea in Judaism (and other religions; hence the Latin) is imitatio dei: imitating God. God creates and modifies, and so should we.

This process is not limited to the physical world. It applies to halacha as well. God creates law. As I have argued elsewhere, God also modifies law. And so should we. Halacha cannot be a static and unchanging set of legal rules. Instead, it is up to us to create new rules and modify the old ones as changed conditions require changes in the rule. We should not do so out of convenience or laziness, but only to promote the highest ideals of Judaism.

This enterprise, like all such enterprises, must be undertaken with seriousness and careful thought. Note the two endings to our two stories. God rejoiced when the grasses made themselves better, but he punished the earth when it made trees that were worse. We should change things when we need to, but we need to try very hard to get it right.

Sefer Ha-Bloggadah: week 2

Chodesh tov (happy new month), and congratulations to everyone on a great first week! This week we'll continue our extremely close reading of the creation story (Genesis 1), and at the end of the week, we'll move on to the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2-3). (Apologies for the inaccurately androcentric section title for Tuesday and Wednesday; I'm just taking it from the published English translation.) It seems appropriate that we'll be marking Rosh Chodesh with the creation of the moon, and entering the season of repentance with "original sin".

• Monday - 1:2:36-43 (The Moon; The Variety of Creatures)
  
• Tuesday - 1:2:44-53 (Man)
  
• Wednesday - 1:2:54-64 (Man)
  
• Thursday - 1:2:65-69 (The Upper Worlds and the Lower Worlds; Things Created at Twilight on Sabbath Eve; The Order of, and Changes in, the Work of Creation)
  
• Friday - 1:2:70-74 (The Handiwork of the Holy One; In the World's Praise)
  
• Saturday/Sunday - 1:2:75-89 (Eve; The Serpent and Sin)
  

Introduction of Friday blogger: Thing 1

I'm KRG and I'm one of two friday bloggers. I'm a rabbi, writer, and educator, and I've dedicated much of my life to social justice work. I don't fall neatly into the package of movements, but officially I'm Conservative.

MIdrash is the life blood of the halakhic system. I don't think that midrash was made by the sages in order to re-enliven Judaism, I think it was part of the great body of work and was never a separate thing. Today we think of midrash as good post-modernists do, busily locating ourselves here and there in relation to our matrices of self, but the rabbis had no such self-consciousness about that. For the sages, midrash was all of a piece with Torah (in the larger sense of the word). It was true in the finest sense of truth, which is why modern midrash is often so bad - it's written as if it were a novel or a story, when it's really more like a fairy tale, written through archetypes and the power of a lack of details that comes with stories told and retold for generations with plenty of room left for us to fill in ourselves - and to fill ourselves in. Midrash is meant to tell us about values, as opposed to rules. Rules are secondary in the sense that they come afterwards. The rules express the stories told in midrash.
The midrash tells us about our relationship with God, Halakha only tells us the recipe - it's as different as remembering the smell of my mother's wheatbread baking, and baking the bread from the recipe she gave me. One is my bones remembering love, and the other is how to make that love live for my son.

Bruce - Introduction and some thoughts on aggadah and midrash

Hi All. My name is Bruce, and I will be blogging on Sundays. I'm married and have two great kids (who seem to like midrash). I blog (along with my co-bloggers Diane and Steve, who will also be blogging here on Sundays) at Three Jews, Four Opinions. When not blogging, I work as an appellate lawyer.

I am a Conservative Jew. I am somewhere to the left of Orthodoxy and somewhere to the right of secularism and cultural Judaism. I see much of Judaism as a delicate balance between ideas in tension: contemporary thinking and tradition beliefs, individualism and communitarianism, particularism and universalism. Balancing between these opposites --- or wrestling with God --- is what Judaism is about. And aggadah fits nicely in this category.

Arnold Eisen argued that contemporary (non-Orthodox) Judaism is pluralistic and partial. I agree wholeheartedly. Different people strike the balance in different places, and (within some broad and perhaps vague limits) these are all legitimate forms of Judaism. And Judaism is not the only set of ideas and ideals that informs my beliefs and practices. Science, philosophy, and art (broadly defined) all play a role.

I had not thought much about midrash and aggadah until earlier this year when R. Bradley Artson gave a series of lectures at my synagogue on midrash. Until that point, I had thought of midrash as silly stories and simple parables. I'm a lawyer, and I tend to look at texts analytically. But that's exactly the wrong approach to take with midrash and aggadah. R. Artson's approach was to avoid all literal and historical questions. Trees talking? Fine. Joesph's bones having a discussion with Moses? No problem. Edomites employing detailed Talmudic logic in a discussion with God? Great. As soon as we ask "Did this really happen?" we are lost. Because these stories are not meant to convey literal factual information, and as soon as we start down that path, we are going the wrong way. Instead, we need to suspend all disbelief, get into the world of the story, and try to figure out --- in that crazy and bizarre worlds --- what on earth we can learn from the story.

This immediately raises the obvious question: why study such non-serious stuff?

I think Sara hit the nail on the head in the last paragraph of her post:

As a literary sort, I have my own answer as to why Aggadah is valuable: the narrative structure of a parable can compel analysis and inquiry in a way entirely different from a straight-up midrash halakhah or talmudic discussion. Humans express deep truths through narrative art, and whether or not a story really happened has very little bearing on whether it is affective or honest. The traditional project of aggadah is a way to engage in the most deeply human of projects, to insert rabbinic meaning into the canonical text and thus re-enliven it. And by our rereading of these aggadot, inventing and reenvisioning our own interpretations, may we come to engage in all these facets of the aggadic process.

The only thing I would add is that Jewish midrash and aggadah tend to be multilayered and quite complex. There's often not a single well-defined obvious lesson we take from the midrash. The Three Little Pigs would never have made it through the editing process. And so we different interpretations, multiple meanings, tension between these, and some deeper benefits from wrestling with all this.

Ben also asked if we think of midrash and halacha as inhabiting separate spheres. I don't, and here is at least one area of intersection. I see halacha --- like any legal or rule-based system --- as evolving as we obtain new information and as social conditions change. the change is not merely applying old rules to new situations (that certainly occurs) but we also modify the old rules in light of new situations and knowledge. The danger of this approach is that we simply turn Judaism into a Jewish flavor of contemporary mores and ideas. That trivialize Judaism as a religion in general and more specifically as a counter-cultural force, a "people who dwell apart" (Num 23:9).

R. Jacob Agus provided at least one way out of this problem. He argued that Jewish law is grounded on both traditional halachic rules and our understanding of deeper Jewish principals. Midrash helps inform the latter. As a result, modifications to halacha are not untethered from Jewish tradition, but instead are made in light of, and sometimes because of, traditional beliefs and practices. That's at least one area where midrash and halacha intersect.

Finally, midrash is simply fun. The stories are colorful and often humorous. My kids giggle at oven of Achnai midrash, imagining trees flying, water flowing backwards, walls bending, and a deep serious voice (frequently voiced by a 4-year-old) saying "Rabbi Eliezer is right!"

So lets have some fun, learn a little, and become better people.

1:2:13-14 “Heaven and Earth” or “Earth and Heaven”

1:2:14 R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon observed:  Why does Scripture at times put earth before heaven, and at other times put heaven before earth?  To teach that the two are of equal value.

This aggada is taken from Breishis Rabba I:15.  According to that midrash (which is quoted at length in Aggada 1:2:13, Beis Shammai hold that heaven was created first, while Beis Hillel hold that the earth was created first.  Beis Shammai bring as a prooftext Yeshayahu 66:1

The heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool

and analogize to a king who first made his throne and then is footstool.

Beis Hillel bring as a prooftext Breishis 2:4

When the Lord God made earth and heaven

and analogize to a king who builds a palace, first building the first floor and then the higher floors on top of it.

R. Judah b. R. Ilai brings Tehillim 102:26 as a prooftext supporting Beis Hillel:

Of old You established the earth; the heavens are the work of Your hands

R. Hanin says that Breishis 1:1-2, which one might think support Beis Shammai,

When God began to create heaven and earth

actually supports Beis Hillel, translating the היתה as the pluperfect (“having been”)

the earth having been unformed and void

R. Yohanan quotes the Tannaim claiming that heaven was created first but earth was completed first.  R. Tanhuma brings as prooftexts Breishis 1:1 and 2:4:

When God began to create heaven and earth . . . . When the Lord God made earth and heaven

R. Simeon expresses amazement over the controversy, claiming they were simultaneously created like a pot and its lid, bringing as a prooftext Yeshayahu 48:13:

My own hand founded the earth, My right hand spread out the skies. I call unto them, let them stand up

As quoted in our aggada, R. Simeon’s son R. Eleazar argues that they are equal (in a passage that some interpret as supporting his father’s opinion and others as contradicting his father’s opinion.)

Equality of heaven and earth is further justified as the midrash notes that in Scripture

• the order is usually Abraham-Isaac-Jacob but in Vayikra 26:42 Jacob-Isaac-Abraham;
• that the order is usually Moses-Aaron, but in Shemos 6:26 Aaron-Moses;
• that the order is usually Joshua-Caleb, but in Bamidbar 32:12 Caleb-Joshua
• that the order is usually father-mother, but in Vayikra 19:3 mother-father

It is interesting to note that while the prooftexts appear to discuss the equality of heaven and earth from the perspective of God, one gets a very interesting observation when one re-reads this aggada from the perspective of humans.  That re-reading suggests that we must give equal importance to actions performed for the sake of the world as we give to actions performed for the sake of heaven – that our obligation to our fellow is just as important as actions done for the sake of heaven.  Perhaps, one might suggest, that a mitzva is most glorified when it is done both for the sake of heaven and the sake of our fellow.

[Note:  This post was made early and post-dated]

1:2:1:1-12 (The Creation of the Universe)

First an introduction..

I'm chillul Who?. I'm just a guy with a fondness for Torah and for stories with lessons. I'm looking forward to wandering through the orchards of Sefer ha-Aggadah with all of you, tossing around whatever thoughts, questions, and insights we are inspired to.

I expect my style in these Wednesday posts of mine to fall within the genre of the moralistic intellectual stoner. I want to know what the speakers and authors of the aggadot under discussion mean to say about right and wrong and about personal responsibility. I want to know how their conceptions of the world and of Divinity are different and the same as my own. I'll be sort of random. I doubt I'll dismiss much off-hand, no matter how dated a passage from rabbinic literature may appear. I'll likely spend more time turning it upside down and poking around inside, holding it up to the light calling out "dude, the colors in here...you gotta check this one out..."

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Now for the creation of the world:

It's somewhat strange to think that beginnings by themselves could be so controversial, and yet selection #4 concludes with Rav Huna presenting a teaching of Bar Kapara:

Were it not written in plain text in the Torah, it would be impossible for us to claim that "In the beginning, God created" all -- for the story starts with the Earth already present, "chaotic and empty" as it may have been.

Big Bang say what? And yet, in today's society the concept of a created universe is so ingrained that an otherwise-imaginative associate of mine found it impossible to conceive of an un-created, eternal universe -- despite knowing the scientific reality that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Everything has to come from somewhere, and everything has to have a beginning. Do you think this awareness came from our Torah? In the Greek cultural surroundings within which Chazal/our sages lives and taught, the predominant view was the opposite one: the world had always existed. There were no beginnings. Bereshit bara was a revolutionary, counter-intuitive proposition.

And talking of the Big Bang, what of the first three and a half selections for today? When members of Chazal discourage seeking knowledge of "what came before" creation and of "what is above or below" the universe or "to its left or right", what do they mean to say? Is the study of cosmology wrong? futile? Do the sages even mean scientific research as we know it? Is "creator" one of the characteristics of God we are not meant to emulate, like "the jealous one" or "the lone judge"? I'd always gotten the message that it was Jewish to go looking for answers and to learn as much as possible, and I've gotta say, I'm pretty fond of that message.

1:2:6 - A faulty proof for God

First of all, yay for my first post of substance here at the Bloggadah.
Second of all, sorry to whoever actually has this day, but I just about flipped my lid when I was reading this and I just had to jump in. I could barely contain myself.

1:2:6 exerts:
"A heretic came to Rabbi Akiva and asked 'Who created the world?' Rabbi Akiva replied, 'The Holy One, blessed be He.' The heretic said, 'Show me clear proof.' [...] Rabbi Akiva asked him, 'What are you wearing?' The heretic replied, 'A garment.' Rabbi Akiva asked, 'Who made it?' The heretic said, 'A weaver.' 'I don't believe you,' said Rabbi Akiva. 'Show me clear proof.'"

Okay. As an agnostic located just north of atheist, I get really upset about this particular proof for God's creation of the world.

Sitting on my desk as I write this is and iPod, a faily intricate and wondrous piece of technology. Do I assume that it is as naturally occuring as the trees I can see outside my window? No, I certainly do not. Why is this? Because I have seen, on the news and elsewhere, stock footage of factories full of workers in Asia and elsewhere creating just such intricate and wondrous pieces of technology.

In short, I have seen such devices being made and I have seen the people who make them.

Now, let us turn our attention to the trees I can see out my window as I sit here typing this. For the trees, there is no stock footage analagous to that which encourages me to believe that my iPod was made by human beings. Certainly, I have seen people plant trees. I have even planted trees myself, but I know that the tree is a sort of self-propelling system. Someday, the trees out my window will drop nuts and they will take root and grow new trees. I have even seen footage of scientists in laboratories, manipulating genomes and creating new types of plants. But even they cannot create the system that gave rise the trees' genetic makeup. No one can invent a way for genetics to work.

But never have I seen anyone, anything, or anygod create anything, including all of those things that we all call naturally-occuring. For the iPod, there is a pattern: I have seen similar things created by humans, thus I can assume that humans create iPods and similar devices.

For the tree (or the mountain, or the sun, or whathaveyou) there is no pattern: I have never seen one created thus i cannot assume that anyone, anything, or anygod created them. I can make no assumptions.