IN today's aggadah, the passage on the king's passage is one I found a bit troubling: When Agrippa stands to receive the Torah scroll, he rad the passage " You may not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother," he begins to cry. Agrippa was apparently Jewish only on his mother's side (in other words, by any modern standard he is Jewish!) and Israel comforted him by telling him not to fear because "you are our brother."
In Mishnah Sotah, the passage ends there, with the comforting of Agrippa, but by the tie we reach the era of the gemara, the rabbis have added to this, making Israel's response not an act of grace, but a wicked act of flattery, and say that Israel made themselves liable to extermination for this act of flattery. In the (bavli) gemara the full passage reads:
A Tanna taught in the name of R. Nathan: At that moment the enemies of Israel made themselves liable to extermination, because they flattered Agrippa. Rabbi Simeon ben Halafta said: From the day the fist of flattery prevailed, justice became perverted, conduct deteriorated, and nobody could say to his neighbour, 'My conduct is better than yours'. R. Judah the Palestinian — another version, R. Simeon b. Pazzi — expounded: It is permitted to flatter the wicked in this world, as it is said: The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountifu — consequently it is allowed in this world. R. Simeon b. Lakish said: [It may be derived] from this text: As one seeth the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me. On this point he is at variance with R. Levi; for R. Levi said: A parable of Jacob and Esau: To what is the matter like? To a man who invited his neighbour to a meal, and the latter perceived that he wished to kill him. So he said to him, 'The taste of this dish of which I am partaking is like the dish I tasted in the king's palace'. The other said [to himself]. 'He is acquainted with the king!' So he became afraid and did not kill him. R. Eleazar said: Every man in whom is flattery brings anger upon the world: as it is said: But they that are flatterers at heart lay up anger. Not only that, but their prayer remains unheard; as it continues, They cry not for help when He chasteneth them. (BT Sotah 41b)
As we see, the rabbis take this act and turn it into an argument over whether flattery is evil or not. Now, this is all of a piece with the gemara's general trend towards xenophobia. It is unfortunate that there are more than a few passages in which the commentary by the Bavli adds to earlier commentary which was neutral or even favorable towards non-Jews and turns it into very strong denunciation (a notable example occurs in the first few pages of tractate Avodah Zara, in which the rabbis from the earlier Palestinia n talmud take the part of the non-Jews in objecting to their being punished for not accepting and obeying the Torah, and give voice to the nations saying at least we didn't accept it and the not obey it like Israel - a moment of some real bite, which the babylonian rabbis turn into an anti-Jewish screed)
One of my teachers pointed out that this likely came from a difference of surroundings: the rabbis in the West (Israel) largely lived in an environment in which they did not mix with non-Jews, while the Babylonian rabbis had to deal with non-Jews all the time. I find that an interesting comment only because it is so the reverse of what we find today. Like us,t he Babylonians lived in a place where Jews flourished and mixed with their non-Jewish neighbors quite a bit. Howeer, today, it is those of us who don't mix with our neighbors who are most likely to to talk trash about non-Jews. NO, but let's take another step back: in fact, perhaps it was parallel: for the rabbis were part of a relatively rarified society- the elite amongst the Jews of that era, and there weren't all the many of them, and they spent their time segregated with their studies, as opposed to out an about among non-Jews, whereas the common folk were the ones who mixed more? Well, it's an imperfect metaphor, since in those days the rabbis felt strongly that even scholars ought to work for a living and they did, so they must have had some commerce with locals. Still, overall, it gives one pause for thought.
The tendency for those among us to look around and see only enemies surrounding us, and read everyone who isn't perfect even inside our community as outside should squelched. Instead, let us give honor to the earlier thought: let us say to those among us who drip tears because they wish to be ours, "Fear not, you are our brother." We may well avoid much pain not only to them, but to ourselves.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Accessibility and Service
This section from the mishnah describing the bringing of the first fruits is one of my favorites because the ritual described is so deeply personal and personalizing. The individual farmer marked his first fruits, harvested them, and brought them (in either fresh or dried form) to the Temple to offer them to God while reciting the "Arami oved avi" paragraph from Deuteronomy, which we now associate with the Passover seder. This passage situates the individal in relation to history, people, land, and God-- a powerful "recentering" and giving of credit where credit is due. There was great pomp: decorations, flute players, singing Levites. Even the king carried his own basket, his acknowledgement that the land was not his own, but God's. (By the way, the notes in the Albeck mishnah say this is Agrippas I, 10 BCE - 44 CE, grandson of Herod the Great, which dates the setting of this mishnah to a time when some of the Tannaim, the "writers" of the mishnah, were alive or only one generation removed from the action.)
The next mishnah (the end of our text in Sefer HaAgaddah) demonstrates an early and compelling example of making a ritual more accessible to the community. Originally, those who could recite the Torah passage by heart would, and those who could not would repeat it after the priest. However, this led people to avoid bringing their first fruits because they were embarrassed about having to repeat the passage. The community recognized this as a loss, and thus instituted the practice that everyone, regardless of their education, would repeat the passage after the priest so that no one would be ashamed.
This mishnah shows us that clearly, the issues of accessibility and education that we struggle with in our communities are not new. How many communities are willing to change a ritual so that all community-members can participate and not be ashamed of their lack of knowledge? How many communities are able to pay attention to the needs of those who are so disenfranchised they don't even participate? This is an example of truly hearing the silence of those who are absent. While there are other voices elsewhere in the mishnah that priviledge ritual skill or proficiency, here the highest value is placed upon inclusivity. Part of this may be due to the nature of the ritual; it is positioned as the crucial moment when each individual Israelite reaffirms his connection to the people and its history and land as a whole, so the participation of each person is key. Having each person repeat the whole passage after the priest may have made the ceremony longer and more cumbersome; those who had worked hard to memorize the passage may have resented having to repeat it. However, those disadvantages did not outweigh the importance of the ritual's accessibility. For communities that struggle with how to be more open, this mishnah can be a guide.
President-elect Obama has asked everyone in the country to dedicate today to community service, which I think is a similar kind of act to the bringing of bikkurim (first fruits). Since we don't have a Temple today, our acts of service/ avodah are often acts of community service that promote social justice. This national "day of service" is a way for all of us to reaffirm our ties to our larger community-- the people of the United States-- and our commitments to a shared historical narrative by giving to each other.
The next mishnah (the end of our text in Sefer HaAgaddah) demonstrates an early and compelling example of making a ritual more accessible to the community. Originally, those who could recite the Torah passage by heart would, and those who could not would repeat it after the priest. However, this led people to avoid bringing their first fruits because they were embarrassed about having to repeat the passage. The community recognized this as a loss, and thus instituted the practice that everyone, regardless of their education, would repeat the passage after the priest so that no one would be ashamed.
This mishnah shows us that clearly, the issues of accessibility and education that we struggle with in our communities are not new. How many communities are willing to change a ritual so that all community-members can participate and not be ashamed of their lack of knowledge? How many communities are able to pay attention to the needs of those who are so disenfranchised they don't even participate? This is an example of truly hearing the silence of those who are absent. While there are other voices elsewhere in the mishnah that priviledge ritual skill or proficiency, here the highest value is placed upon inclusivity. Part of this may be due to the nature of the ritual; it is positioned as the crucial moment when each individual Israelite reaffirms his connection to the people and its history and land as a whole, so the participation of each person is key. Having each person repeat the whole passage after the priest may have made the ceremony longer and more cumbersome; those who had worked hard to memorize the passage may have resented having to repeat it. However, those disadvantages did not outweigh the importance of the ritual's accessibility. For communities that struggle with how to be more open, this mishnah can be a guide.
President-elect Obama has asked everyone in the country to dedicate today to community service, which I think is a similar kind of act to the bringing of bikkurim (first fruits). Since we don't have a Temple today, our acts of service/ avodah are often acts of community service that promote social justice. This national "day of service" is a way for all of us to reaffirm our ties to our larger community-- the people of the United States-- and our commitments to a shared historical narrative by giving to each other.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Sefer Ha-Bloggadah: week 21
We continue with the liturgical year in Second Temple times as it passed into national memory. Bonus points to anyone who can draw parallels on Tuesday between the high priest's service on Yom Kippur and the U.S. presidential inauguration.
- Monday - 1:9:72-74 (The Sheaf of the Omer; The Bringing of the Firstfruits)
- Tuesday - 1:9:75 (The Service of Yom Kippur)
- Wednesday - 1:9:76-81 (The Service of Yom Kippur)
- Thursday - 1:9:82-84 (The Lulav Cluster; The Water Libation)
- Friday - 1:9:85-92 (The Rejoicing at the Place of the Water-drawing; The King's Passage in Scripture; The Eighth Day Festival [Shemini Atzeret] and the Night Following the Seventh Day of Sukkot)
- Saturday/Sunday - 1:9:93-97 (Festival Pilgrimage to Jerusalem; Pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the Time of an Adverse Decree)
Population estimates
So let me get this straight. One kidney per lamb, and they got 600,000 pairs of kidneys, so that's 1.2 million lambs total, and each lamb had at least 10 people around it, so the population of Israel was at least 12 million, or greater than the total population of the State of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza today.
?!
?!
Friday, January 16, 2009
The purity of our hands
In the last of the English midrashim for today -#68- the miracles of the Holy Temple have been transformed into how the priests competed -violently- for the privilege of serving. It is notable how what should be a moment of grace in service of God has turned into a shoving match, a competition, and in one case, a murder. And what is the rabbis comment on this murder?
The note the father of the young priest who is murdered comes out and says that his son is not yet dead, so the knife has not been made tamei. The rabbis say, "The cleanliness of their utensils,it seems, was of greater concern to them than the shedding of blood."
Somehow, at this time of war, I am reminded of our response as American Jews to the Gaza offensive. Whatever we believe about Hamas - and I don't think they're nice guys- the Jewish community's response - and especially the American Jewish community's response - has been a constant refrain of "Look how clean our knife is!"
IN fact, that has been a constant refrain of our community about the entire situation with the Palestinians. Instead of acknowledging what we have done, what actions of ours has been culpable, we constantly speak of the situation as if it's only and all about Public Relations, and if we could only present ourselves more television ready, then we would be washed white and clean of our share of the responsibility. Unfortunately, by doing this we are not only missing the point, we are putting ourselves in a worse position - because then, not only are we blinding ourselves from the ways in which we could move forward, but we also are abandoning in the one thing that makes us worthy of Israel - our moral relationship with God.
The Torah tells us over and over that Israel is not ours stam, but from two things - the merit of our ancestors (Something which we have to live up to) and that if we do not keep mitzvot we will be vomited out of the land. And keeping mitzvot is not simply a matter of shabbat and kashrut (that too, but not only), but also ethical behavior. Those knives are not tahor.
The note the father of the young priest who is murdered comes out and says that his son is not yet dead, so the knife has not been made tamei. The rabbis say, "The cleanliness of their utensils,it seems, was of greater concern to them than the shedding of blood."
Somehow, at this time of war, I am reminded of our response as American Jews to the Gaza offensive. Whatever we believe about Hamas - and I don't think they're nice guys- the Jewish community's response - and especially the American Jewish community's response - has been a constant refrain of "Look how clean our knife is!"
IN fact, that has been a constant refrain of our community about the entire situation with the Palestinians. Instead of acknowledging what we have done, what actions of ours has been culpable, we constantly speak of the situation as if it's only and all about Public Relations, and if we could only present ourselves more television ready, then we would be washed white and clean of our share of the responsibility. Unfortunately, by doing this we are not only missing the point, we are putting ourselves in a worse position - because then, not only are we blinding ourselves from the ways in which we could move forward, but we also are abandoning in the one thing that makes us worthy of Israel - our moral relationship with God.
The Torah tells us over and over that Israel is not ours stam, but from two things - the merit of our ancestors (Something which we have to live up to) and that if we do not keep mitzvot we will be vomited out of the land. And keeping mitzvot is not simply a matter of shabbat and kashrut (that too, but not only), but also ethical behavior. Those knives are not tahor.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Leadership: Good and Bad
While the materials collected in today's readings and that of the last few days come from different places, they teach an interesting lesson. First we learn how great the Hasmoneans were and then we learn how terrible the Hasmoneans were.
Those who win the battles are not always those who do the best job of ruling. What started as a religious battle becomes a battle against that same religion.
It shows how lucky we were that those that led the American Revolution, while far from perfect, did not take power as an end in itself. Those rulers established a country that allowed us as Jews to practice our religion in our own varied ways. Would those that established the State of Israel had been able to do the same.
Those who win the battles are not always those who do the best job of ruling. What started as a religious battle becomes a battle against that same religion.
It shows how lucky we were that those that led the American Revolution, while far from perfect, did not take power as an end in itself. Those rulers established a country that allowed us as Jews to practice our religion in our own varied ways. Would those that established the State of Israel had been able to do the same.
Monday, January 12, 2009
1:9:40: The Mother of Children Is Happy?
12 January 2009
When I began to read today’s long aggadah on Miriam and her seven sons, my first thought was: haven’t I seen this somewhere before? Indeed, the long narrative reproduced here from TB Gittin/Eichah Rabbah/Yalkut Eichah seems to follow essentially the same plot and moral as the Chanukah story of Hannah and her seven sons, familiar to us from the apocryphal Book of Maccabees. This parallelism raises for me a series of editor’s questions about how these twin stories came to be found in their various homes and why Bialik and Ravnitzky reproduce this version here. (I assume that the Book of Maccabees is neither sufficiently biblical to be referenced by the rabbinic midrashim, nor is it sufficiently rabbinic to be used as a source for this volume’s aggadot.) But lacking as I do the expertise in biblical criticism and history, I’ll bracket all these questions and take the midrash of Miriam and her sons as it’s presented here.
Simply put, this aggadah breaks my heart. There’s not much to deconstruct about the basic narrative: Miriam’s seven sons have their faith tested by the emperor, and each dies when he is unwilling to worship idols. The final scene of Miriam’s asking to die before her son and of the emperor’s denying her request is particularly devastating. One can only wonder in what sort of world the writers of the midrash lived when they ended such a story with the Psalmic proof text, “the mother of the children is happy.” Rather than attempt to reclaim or brighten up such a painful story, I’ll just point out a few interesting nuances in the very dark story.
As with any folktale starring multiple children, we know from the start that the youngest child is going to be the narrative focus. The emperor’s attempts to persuade the youngest son to worship his idol strike me as fascinatingly poignant, in particular one of his rationales for why the boy should preserve his own life. Your brothers have all tasted pleasure, the emperor says, and you are too young to have experienced the world. Why don’t you just bow down to the idol and allow yourself the opportunity to live fully in this world? The son responds that the kingdom of God is eternal, which doesn’t actually address the emperor’s temptation: this unwillingness to engage with the physical realities of an imperfect world seems reminiscent of many young zealots. This theme recurs frequently in rabbinic mythos of martyrdom, but rarely as plainly as it does here.
The emperor has other fascinating lines in this aggadah. It’s a classic midrashic trick to have the bad guy quote Torah back at the good guys, as when the emperor taunts Miriam by saying that it’s forbidden for him to slaughter a mother and her child in the same day. While his line did make me laugh—for the only time in this midrash—I wonder whether it’s another reflection of the despair felt by the rabbinic writers: they even use our own texts against us! The aggadah’s final section, where Miriam compares herself to Abraham and sees herself as more devoted to God, also stands as a bit of rabbinic provocation and self-commentary. We lionize Abraham for being willing to sacrifice his son, the narrator seems to be saying, but in our time, we’ve actually sacrificed our children, without praise or even recognition for the fact. By praising Miriam’s virtue here, the rabbinic writers comment on their own time’s tragedy in a story that stands just this side of twisted, troubling, filled with deep pain.
-- Sara Meirowitz
When I began to read today’s long aggadah on Miriam and her seven sons, my first thought was: haven’t I seen this somewhere before? Indeed, the long narrative reproduced here from TB Gittin/Eichah Rabbah/Yalkut Eichah seems to follow essentially the same plot and moral as the Chanukah story of Hannah and her seven sons, familiar to us from the apocryphal Book of Maccabees. This parallelism raises for me a series of editor’s questions about how these twin stories came to be found in their various homes and why Bialik and Ravnitzky reproduce this version here. (I assume that the Book of Maccabees is neither sufficiently biblical to be referenced by the rabbinic midrashim, nor is it sufficiently rabbinic to be used as a source for this volume’s aggadot.) But lacking as I do the expertise in biblical criticism and history, I’ll bracket all these questions and take the midrash of Miriam and her sons as it’s presented here.
Simply put, this aggadah breaks my heart. There’s not much to deconstruct about the basic narrative: Miriam’s seven sons have their faith tested by the emperor, and each dies when he is unwilling to worship idols. The final scene of Miriam’s asking to die before her son and of the emperor’s denying her request is particularly devastating. One can only wonder in what sort of world the writers of the midrash lived when they ended such a story with the Psalmic proof text, “the mother of the children is happy.” Rather than attempt to reclaim or brighten up such a painful story, I’ll just point out a few interesting nuances in the very dark story.
As with any folktale starring multiple children, we know from the start that the youngest child is going to be the narrative focus. The emperor’s attempts to persuade the youngest son to worship his idol strike me as fascinatingly poignant, in particular one of his rationales for why the boy should preserve his own life. Your brothers have all tasted pleasure, the emperor says, and you are too young to have experienced the world. Why don’t you just bow down to the idol and allow yourself the opportunity to live fully in this world? The son responds that the kingdom of God is eternal, which doesn’t actually address the emperor’s temptation: this unwillingness to engage with the physical realities of an imperfect world seems reminiscent of many young zealots. This theme recurs frequently in rabbinic mythos of martyrdom, but rarely as plainly as it does here.
The emperor has other fascinating lines in this aggadah. It’s a classic midrashic trick to have the bad guy quote Torah back at the good guys, as when the emperor taunts Miriam by saying that it’s forbidden for him to slaughter a mother and her child in the same day. While his line did make me laugh—for the only time in this midrash—I wonder whether it’s another reflection of the despair felt by the rabbinic writers: they even use our own texts against us! The aggadah’s final section, where Miriam compares herself to Abraham and sees herself as more devoted to God, also stands as a bit of rabbinic provocation and self-commentary. We lionize Abraham for being willing to sacrifice his son, the narrator seems to be saying, but in our time, we’ve actually sacrificed our children, without praise or even recognition for the fact. By praising Miriam’s virtue here, the rabbinic writers comment on their own time’s tragedy in a story that stands just this side of twisted, troubling, filled with deep pain.
-- Sara Meirowitz
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