Ki Tissa: Interrupted Wedding

The covenant between the people of Israel and the God of the Torah has often been compared to a wedding, perhaps ever since the prophecy of the 6th century BCE: As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:5) According to the Torah, God and the Israelites make their covenant (a contract like a marriage) at Mount Sinai. The Talmud tractate Kiddushin states that the three elements of a wedding are money (the dowry), a written contract (the ketubah), and intercourse. So far in the book of Exodus/Shemot, God has given the Israelites a dowry: their freedom from Egypt, plus the gold and silver that the Egyptians handed over to the Israelites in response to God’s miraculous plagues. In this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa (“When you lift”), when Moses comes down from a 40-day meeting with God on Mount Sinai, he brings the other two elements of the wedding: a marriage contract engraved on two stone tablets (presumably the Ten Commandments), and instructions for building a sanctuary so God will “dwell among them”.

Alas, while Moses was away, the bride was unfaithful. The Israelites, terrified that Moses would never return, got Aaron to make a golden calf to lead them. Moses returns to find the people cavorting in front of an idol. Clearly, the Israelites do not yet have enough faith and fortitude for this marriage. So Moses quickly smashes the two stone tablets of the contract, and postpones the building of the sanctuary for cohabitation.

Before the wedding can resume, the bride must have a change of heart. So God and Moses arrange for the Israelites to see their separation from God’s presence.

And Moses, he shall take the tent and pitch it for himself outside the camp, far away from the camp, and he shall call it the Tent of Meeting. Then it will be that anyone seeking God must go to the Tent of Meeting, which will be outside the camp. (Exodus/Shemot 33:7)

In the next two books of the Torah, we learn that anyone who contracts the skin disease tzara-at is ritually impure, and must live outside the camp until he or she is cured. Here in the portion Ki Tissa, the whole camp is ritually impure after the golden calf worship, unfit for worshiping God. Therefore the place where God can be encountered must be far away from the camp—until the whole camp is cured. Only then does the Tent of Meeting move from outside the camp to inside the new sanctuary in the heart of the camp.

During the period when God does not dwell in the camp, any individual who wants to communicate with God must go to the Tent of Meeting, which will be outside the camp. The Torah does not say whether Moses acts as an intermediary, or God answers the seekers who walk out to the Tent of Meeting directly. But the Torah does describe the experience of the people who wait in the camp while Moses goes to meet God.

Then it was, that when Moses was going out to the Tent, all the people stood up, and each one stationed himself at the petach of his tent, and they gazed after Moses until he came to the Tent. And it was, that when Moses came to the Tent, the pillar of the cloud descended, and it stood at the petach of the Tent, and It spoke with Moses. And all the people saw the pillar of the cloud standing at the petach of the Tent, and all the people stood, and each one prostrated himself at the petach of his [own] tent. (Exodus 33:8-10)

petach = opening, entrance, doorway

How do the people feel when they gaze after Moses, and see him speaking with the pillar of cloud ? How do they feel, knowing that they have jilted God?

The Talmud offers two different theories. In one, the people resent Moses so much, they accuse him of profiting at their expense. In the other, they admire Moses for his confidence that God will speak to him. Either way, they are painfully aware that Moses’ relationship with God is unbroken, while they are suffering through a separation. I think that their jealousy of Moses contains more longing than resentment, since they stand up respectfully when he leaves for the Tent of Meeting, and they prostrate themselves, bowing to God, when they see the pillar of cloud. These are the Israelites who survived the killings Moses and God carried out after the Golden Calf worship, presumably the ones who did not incite idol worship, but did look the other way. Now, after the death of their neighbors and the separation of God’s presence from the camp, the survivors are humble.

The repetition of the Hebrew word petach indicates to me that this period between the destruction of the golden calf and the building of the sanctuary is is a time of openings and doorways. When Moses speaks with God at the entrance of the tent outside the camp, each Israelite stands alone in the entrance of his (and perhaps her) own tent. Each one longs for God from a distance. I can imagine an Israelite bowing down toward the distant God that he or she betrayed. A person’s tent is his dwelling-place, like his body, or his mind. Bowing to God leaves the doorway open; it makes an opening for change.

I have been feeling distant from God lately. I try to pray, since my prayers of gratitude used to make an opening for joy to enter my own “tent”. But these days, the prayers feel formulaic. I am not aware of doing anything to jilt God, but nevertheless I feel a separation. I wish I could see a Moses going out to the Tent of Meeting. Maybe the sight would inspire me. Or maybe then I’d know where to seek God.

The book of Exodus ends when the people have made everything to build a mishkan, a dwelling-place, for God, and Moses puts all the pieces together. Then God comes into the camp and dwells in their midst. In other words, the wedding resumes, and the covenant is cut or signed between the Israelites and God. Will something similar happen to each of us today, when we yearn for God? Will our longing make an opening? If we work hard to make God’s dwelling-place, will God become manifest to us?

And can we do it individually? Or do we need a whole community, a whole camp, to bring God into our midst?

Terumah: Bread of Faces

Why does God need a dinner table?

In this week’s Torah portion, Terumah (Donations), God orders a Moses to make a table, and tells him how to set it. The table is just one piece of furniture God requests during Moses’s first 40-day stay at the top of Mount Sinai. God also wants the children of Israel to make a lamp, an incense burner, and an ark, and a tent to put them in.

They shall make a mikdash for me, and I will dwell among them. Like everything that I show you, the pattern of the mishkan and the pattern of all its furnishings, that is how you shall make it. (Exodus/Shemot 25:8-9)

mikdash (מִקְדָּשׁ) = sanctuary, holy-place

mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן) = sanctuary, dwelling-place

God calls for the sanctuary to be divided into three zones of holiness. All Israelite men can enter the outer courtyard, which will be unroofed but enclosed by curtains. This is where animal sacrifices will be burned at the altar. Inside this courtyard Moses will erect a tent divided into two rooms. The main room, called the Holy, is reserved for the priests. The innermost room, screened off by a curtain, is the Holy of Holies, a small enclosure for the ark (see my post Terumah: Cherubs Are Not for Valentine’s Day). Only Moses, and the high priest once a year, can enter the Holy of Holies.

But priests will be walking into the room of intermediate holiness every day. God requests three pieces of furniture for this room: a gold incense altar, a gold lampstand or menorah, and a small gold-plated table.

You shall make a table of acacia wood, its length a pair of cubits, its width a cubit, and its height a cubit and a half. And you shall overlay it with pure gold, and you shall make a molding of gold for it, all around. (Exodus/Shemot 25:23-28)

The flames of the lamps and the smoke of the incense are intangible, so they make natural reminders of intangibles such as enlightenment, the soul, God. But the table does not produce anything intangible. After giving more specifications for the design of the table, God orders Moses to lay out a place setting and some bread—as if God were going to sit down and eat.

And you shall make its bowls and its scoops and its jars and its chalices for pouring out [libations]; of pure gold you shall make them. And you shall place upon the table bread of panim, lefanai continually. (Exodus 25:30)

panim (פָּנִים) = faces, face, expression of feelings, surface, front, presence

lefanai (לְפָנַי) = facing me, in front of me, before my presence

Although some translations still call this bread “shewbread”, following the King James Bible, a more accurate translation would be “Bread of Faces”. We learn in the next book of the Torah, Vayikra/Leviticus, that twelve loaves of bread (actually flat rounds of bread, like pita or naan) are stacked on this table at all times. The priests replace them once a week on Shabbat with newly baked loaves.

The Israelites knew that other religious cults in the region set food in front of an idol so that the essence of the god inhabiting the idol could eat the essence of the food in front of it. But the Torah clearly states that when the old loaves are removed once a week in the God of Israel’s sanctuary, the priests eat them (Leviticus 24:9). So why does God need a dinner table?

I believe the point of the table appears in the sentence I would translate as “And you shall place upon the table Bread of Faces, facing Me continually”. In the Torah, bread represents all food, which is a gift from God. Yet since humans need to actively intervene to change grain into bread, I think bread can also symbolize the creative effort humanity puts into the material world. Twelve loaves of bread represent everyone in the twelve tribes of Israel. Symbolically, the Israelites are faces of bread, facing God continually.

No wonder God orders a table set with bread. It is not enough to approach God through the mysterious dazzlement of flames and smoke, the overwhelming feeling of mystical experience. We must also approach God through our everyday, solid, material lives, setting ourselves out on the table and facing God continually.

This is a difficult goal to achieve. How can we face a god we cannot see?

In ancient times the mishkan, and later the temples, provided holy rooms to serve as God’s “dwelling place”, and the place for human priests to enact rituals to orient the people toward God. Today, we build sanctuaries where everyone can come and pray and enact rituals in order to orient themselves toward the divine.

The ritual space, with its furniture, helps. Nevertheless, I am sometimes so distracted during a service in a sanctuary that I forget to try to face God. It is even harder to keep trying to face God during the week, as I deal with all the material things in my life. It is a tall order, but a good one, when the Torah says:

You shall place upon the table bread of faces, facing Me continually.

Mishpatim, Ki Tisa, & 2 Samuel: Soul Recovery

The curious verb nafash shows up only three times in the whole Hebrew Bible. The first occurrence comes in this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (Laws):

Six days you shall make your makings, and on the seventh day you shall shavat, in order that your ox and your donkey will rest in tranquility, veyinafeish, the son of your slave-woman and the resident foreigner. (Exodus 23:12)

shavat (שָׁבַת) = desist, cease, stop an activity. (From the same root as shabbat = day of stopping, not-doing.)

veyinafeish (וְיִּנָּפֵשׁ) = and he can refresh his soul, recovered himself, and reanimate himself. (From the same root as nefesh = soul, the soul that animates the body, inclination, appetite.)

Hebrew has several words for “soul”; nefesh means the soul at the level that animates the body. It also means an individual person, or an inclination or appetite. The corresponding verb nafash implies resting to recover one’s personal energy and self-direction.

Shimi throws stones at David (artist unknown)

This definition certainly applies to the only use of the verb nafash in the Hebrew Bible excluding the book of Exodus. In the second book of Samuel/Shmuel, King David and his men have endured a long march while Shimi, a member of Saul’s clan, walked beside them hurling insults, dirt clods, and stones. Finally they leave Shimi behind, and camp at the Jordan.

The king, and all the people who were with him, arrived exhausted; and he veyinafeish there. (2 Samuel 16:14)

King David and his men are used to marching; they are not exhausted physically, but their souls are exhausted by enduring the abuse. They rest to recover their animation and their inner selves.

The drudgery and daily misfortunes of life can wear down anyone’s soul at the nefesh level. So Mishpatim orders us to share our shabbat with humans less fortunate than we are—including those who work for us, or who are alienated in our society—get one day a week to refresh their energy and recover their individual selves.

detail from The Harvesters, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565

The two elements in this shabbat process are desisting from productive work, and refreshing the spirit. The Hebrew Bible specifically prohibits lighting a fire (Exodus 35:3), gathering food or wood (Exodus 16:23-30, Numbers 16:32-36), carrying burdens outside (Jeremiah 17:21), treading in a winepress (Nehemiah 13:15), and selling or buying food (Nehemiah 13:15-18). Apparently the Israelites needed extra reminders not to do any work related to getting food to the table.

Other activities prohibited on shabbat can be inferred, but are not actually stated in the bible. Later, the Talmud multiplied rules about what a Jew cannot do on shabbat. The 312-page Talmud tractate Shabbat discusses every finicky prohibition the rabbis of the first few centuries C.E. could imagine. Although many orthodox Jews today observe shabbat according to strict and complex rules that evolved from the Talmud, I know that if I tried to imitate them, I would spend the whole day worrying. My anxiety and resentment would make shabbat a day to dread, and I would look forward to the six weekdays when I could relax and refresh my soul!

Fortunately, the Torah itself offers a more attractive and interesting view of Shabbat for unorthodox people like me. Desisting from creative work is connected with recovering the soul in a passage from the upcoming portion of Exodus called Ki Tisa. (It is also part of the Shabbat liturgy.)

The children of Israel shall observe the shabbat, to make the shabbat for their generations a covenant for all time. Between Me and the children of Israel it will be a sign forever, because for six days God made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day (God) shavat vayinafash. (Exodus 31:16-17)

vayinafash וַיִּנָּפַשׁ)) = and he refreshed his soul, recovered himself, reanimated himself. (Also from the same root as nefesh.)

I am awed by this portrayal of a god that changes through time, breathing life into the universe and then stopping to catch its breath and recover the divine soul. That is how I experience life, the universe, and everything—not as a static abstraction, but as the changing rhythmic flow of heartbeats, breaths, lifespans, seasons.

The Torah says that in order to be holy to God, we humans must add another rhythm to our lives: a seven-day cycle of work and rest, creative production and cessation. For six days we may pour out our energy and creativity into productive work, but on the seventh day we desist from creative work to re-center and re-animate our inner selves.

But wait a minute! I used to need a day off from my bookkeeping job to recover my self. But a lot of the creative work I do now—including writing this blog—re-energizes me. When I finish writing an essay or a story, I feel joy, and a sense of purpose, and the re-centering that comes from returning to my own soul. Why should I deprive myself of creative work once a week?

One answer is that I cannot keep creating endlessly without pause. Even God, in the story of creation that opens the book of Genesis/Bereishit, divides the job into six separate days, completes each day of creation before starting the next, and then takes a break at the end. I need to finish a piece of work and then stop to pay attention to where I am and where God is. I can believe that I need not only those moments of stopping every day, but also a whole day of stoppage every week. a whole day to reconnect with myself and the holy.

Alas, I still have not developed a steady practice for spending the day of shabbat in tranquility, restoring my soul. Merely refraining from certain activities doesn’t do it for me. Joining my congregation in prayer is uplifting, and following or leading Shabbat services does remind me of what to focus on. Yet all too often, the long drive and the personal interactions disturb my ability to focus on anything.

Nevertheless, I have not given up on establishing a shabbat practice. Any suggestions, readers?

Beshalach: High-Handed

As a child I was a natural victim, the target of any bully who needed to humiliate someone. So I can imagine how the Israelites might feel in the book of Exodus/Shemot when they finally leave Egypt on the morning after God’s tenth and final plague:

Our god beat the pharaoh! We asked our Egyptian neighbors for silver and gold, and they just handed it over to us! Yesterday we were slaves, and today we are free! We can do what we please, and we never need to be afraid of Egypt again!

Pillar of Cloud, by Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, 1731

The Israelites leave the city of Ramses unchallenged at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Beshalach (“When sending out”). They march for three days in military formation, following God’s spectacular pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. For three days, they feel on top of the world.

God leads them to the Reed Sea, rather than by the main road to Canaan, which passes through the land of the Philistines.¹ When the Israelites reach the shore of the Reed Sea, God stages one last showdown with the pharaoh.

God strengthened the heart of the pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and he chased after the children of Israel, while the children of Israel were going out beyad ramah. (Exodus 14:8)

beyad ramah (בְּיָד רָמָה) = with a high hand. Yad (יָד) = hand; power to do something. Ramah (רָמָה) = high, exalted.

What does it mean to march “with a high hand”? When I first read this passage, I pictured the Israelites raising their hands as if they were trying to get the teacher’s attention. But this image is the opposite of the spirit of beyad ramah.

In both Biblical Hebrew and English, the word yad or “hand” is used in many idioms. After all, we accomplish things primarily with our hands. Twice in the Torah portion Beshallach Moses raises his hands in order to channel divine energy. At the Reed Sea, God tells Moses:

And you shall be hareim your staff and stretching out your yad over the sea and splitting it, and the Children of Israel shall come into the middle of the sea on dry land. (Exodus 14:16)

hareim (הָרֵם) = raising, lifting up. (From the same root as the adjective ramah.)

Battle with the Amalekites, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860

Later in this week’s Torah portion the people of Amaleik attack the Israelites, and Moses influences the course of the battle by stationing himself on a hill and raising his hands.

And it happened that Moses yarim his yad, then Israel was mightier, but when he rested his yad, then Amaleik was mightier. (Exodus 17:11)

yarim (יָרִים) = he would raise. (From the same root as ramah.)

The Israelites win the battle because Aaron and Hur help Moses hold up his hands when he gets tired. This confirms that holding up his hands is how Moses channels God’s power; he does not have power of his own.

But the idiom yad ramah refers to acting as if you have power to accomplish things by yourself. It appears only four times in the Torah, and two of these appearances refer to the way the Israelites leave Egypt (in Exodus 14:8 above, and in Numbers/Bamidbar 33:3). The other two appearances help to clarify the idiom’s meaning.

But a person who does it beyad ramah, whether citizen or foreign resident, is reviling God; so that person will be cut off from among the people. (Numbers 15:30)

In this passage, the Torah has just ruled that if someone inadvertently fails to obey one of God’s laws, he can atone by offering a goat as a sacrifice. But if he does it on purpose, acting “with a high hand”, the consequence is more severe: he is banished or dies. When someone transgresses deliberately, beyad ramah, he is acting as if he has more authority than the religious law.

The fourth occurrence of yad ramah in the Torah comes in Moses’ parting poem to the Israelites. In his long final warning, Moses quotes God’s response to their ingratitude and idolatry:

I said: I would have cut them to pieces,

I would have made the memory of them disappear from men,

If I had not feared for the provocation of enemies—

lest their foes would misinterpret,

lest they would say: “Our yad was ramah, and it was not God Who accomplished all this!”

(Deuteronomy/Devarim 32:26-27)

Here, the “high hand” is the arrogance of Israel’s enemies, who will falsely assume that they have the power to destroy Israel on their own, without God’s collaboration.

Similarly, in English “high-handed” persons assume they have all the power, and arrogantly do something without considering the concerns of others.

So why do the newly freed slaves in the portion Beshalach leave Egypt beyad ramah? Dazzled by their new higher status, they may well imitate the arrogance of their former masters. If they had a chance, they might even try to bully or enslave someone less fortunate. But God does not give them a chance.

In this week’s Torah portion, after “the children of Israel were going out beyad ramah“, the pharaoh sends a troop of charioteers after them.

And Pharaoh came closer, and the children of Israel raised their eyes, and hey! Egyptians! Pulling out after them! And they were very frightened, and the Children of Israel cried out to God. And they said to Moses: “Are there no graves in Egypt, that you take us to die in the wilderness? What is this you have done to us, to take us out from Egypt?” (Exodus 14:10-11)

At once the Israelites are struck with fear of their old owners, the bullies who tortured and subjugated them. They cry out to God, but there is no immediate response. Their belief in God’s protection is too new and fragile to withstand their reflexive fear. They cringe and despair. They are caught between the sea and the chariots. At that moment, they think they will always be victims.

Yet when they complain to Moses, they make a sarcastic joke: “Are there no graves in Egypt, that you take us to die in the wilderness?” Thus Jewish humor is born.

Would you rather be an arrogant bully, like the pharaoh in the book of Exodus, treating people with high-handed disregard, too habitually hard-hearted to learn compassion?

Or would you rather be like an Israelite in Egypt, never certain of your status and power—but resilient enough to keep your sense of humor? If so, then be careful about when you act with “a high hand”.

—

Exodus 13:17-18.

Bo: The Dog in the Night

To me, dogs are pets. Most dogs have appealing personalities, and the love between dog and human is real. I rarely cry, but I cried when our dog died.

In the Torah, dogs are bad news. The ancient Israelites did not domesticate dogs until late in the First Temple period, even though their neighbors had long been training dogs for hunting, herding, and guarding. So most of the 24 references to dogs in the Hebrew Bible view them as disgusting feral scavengers. Calling a man a dog (or worse, a dead dog) means that he is the lowest of the low.

The first appearance of the Hebrew word for dog, kelev, is in this week’s Torah portion, Bo (“Come”).

Moses said: Thus said God: In the middle of the night, I Myself will go out in the midst of Egypt. And every firstborn in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne, to the firstborn of the slave-woman who is behind the millstones, and every firstborn beast. Then there will be loud wailing in all the land of Egypt, the like of which has never happened, and the like of which will not happen again. But as for all the children of Israel, not a dog yecheratz its tongue against man or beast; in order that you shall know that God makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. (Exodus/Shemot 11:4-7)

yecheratz = will cut, will sharpen, will use a sharp instrument, will decide

On the night of the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, not a dog will use its tongue as a sharp instrument against the Israelites. In other words, while God is killing Egyptians, not even a dog will snarl or bark to threaten the Israelites.

The verses translated above include two contrasts between the highest and the lowest. First, God says all the firstborn of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne, to the firstborn of the slave-woman who is behind the millstones. The phrase “slave-woman behind the millstones” is a translation of a phrase that an Egyptian document uses to indicate someone of the lowest possible social class. In other words, God will make no exceptions; everyone belonging to Egypt will suffer, regardless of social position, and regardless of guilt or innocence.

Next, the Torah says that everyone belonging to Israel will be safe from all threats: from the highest power possible–God Itself–to the lowest danger–dogs. In the middle of the night, while God is killing the Egyptian firstborn, and the Israelites are eating their Passover lamb, roaming dogs will not bite any Israelite humans or beasts. They will not even bark.

This reminds me of the dog that did not bark in the night in “Silver Blaze”, a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle. Inspector Gregory asks Holmes, “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident.”

Sherlock Holmes has deduced that the guard-dog was silent in the middle of the night because the intruder was not a stranger, but the dog’s owner.

The passage in Exodus/Shemot contrasts the loud wailing of the Egyptians with the silence of the dogs. Dogs get agitated when their owners start screaming and wailing, and they respond by whimpering and barking. The dogs who will not growl or bark during the night of the death of the firstborn clearly do not have Egyptian owners. The Israelites who wrote down the Torah thought of dogs as ownerless wanderers, so the silent dogs do not belong to the children of Israel, either. Whose dogs are they?

And it was at midnight when God struck every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on this throne, to the firstborn of the captive in the dungeon, and every firstborn beast. (Exodus 12:29)

God goes from house to house in Egypt that night, skipping over only the houses of the Israelites. But the dogs roaming in the streets are silent, like the dog in “Silver Blaze”–because they recognize their owner.

I want to be like a dog. I don’t want to be the lowest of the low. But I do want to recognize my owner.

I have often wondered why the scout in the book of Numbers/Bamidbar who argues that the Israelites should go ahead and enter Canaan, and trust God to give them the land, is named Caleb, Kaleiv in Hebrew. His name comes from the same root as kelev, “dog”. Yet Caleb’s actions are all virtuous, not base and low, the way most dogs in the Torah behave. Perhaps Caleb is named after the dogs in Egypt—because he, too, recognized God.

Shemot: Holy Ground

Mount Sinai/Chorev, by Elijah Walton, 19th cent.

This week we open a new book in the cycle of Torah readings, the book of Exodus/Shemot (“Names”). The Israelites, who were welcome guests in Egypt at the end of Genesis/Bereishit, are now slaves under a genocidal pharoah. This week’s Torah portion, also called Shemot, tells the story of Moses from his birth to Hebrew slaves until his return to Egypt as God’s prophet.

His life story does not mention God until after Moses is settled in the land of Midian with a wife and child. He knows that he was born a Hebrew, and that his people have their own god, but he does not know the god’s name. Moses learns about Egyptian gods while he is growing up as the adopted son of the pharaoh’s daughter. He also learns about the gods of Midian, since he lives with the Midianite priest Yitro and marries one of his daughters.

In Midian, Moses leads a introspective life as a shepherd, deliberately taking his flock to remote places where he will be alone.

Moses was shepherding the flock of Yitro, his father-in-law, priest of Midian, and he guided the flock achar the midbar, and he came to the mountain of God, to chorev. (Exodus/Shemot 3:1)

achar (אַחַר) = behind, after, in the back, in the future

midbar (מִדְבָּר) = the wilderness. (A homonym is midbeir, מְדַבֵּר = speaking, speaker.)

chorev (חֺרֵב) = dry desolation; “Horeb” (in English), the name of a mountain and a region also identified as Sinai.

A simple translation is that Moses “guided the flock beyond the wilderness, and he came to the mountain of God, to (Mount) Chorev”.

Alternatively, maybe Moses “guided the flock to the future of the speaker, and he came to the mountain of God, to dry desolation”. The second translation is non-standard, but it does describe Moses’ psychological journey. He takes what he was given by his father-in-law the priest (literally sheep, but perhaps also theology), and goes beyond his accustomed life into his own future. He is about to become a prophet, a speaker for God. He is also about to feel dry and desolate, because he does not want the mission God thrusts upon him.

Meanwhile, God has noticed the groaning of the enslaved Israelites, and is about to recruit Moses as the instrument for liberating and leading the Israelites. But God does not suddenly speak to Moses, or appear in a dream, as God did with Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, and Jacob in the book of Genesis. Instead, God arranges a small miracle off to one side of Moses’ route.

Moses at the Burning Bush, by Rembrandt van Rijn

Then a messenger of God appeared to him in a flame of fire from the middle of the seneh; and he saw it; and hey! the seneh was burning in the fire, but the seneh was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2)

seneh (סְנֶה) = a particular type of bush

In the entire Hebrew bible, the word seneh appears only in this scene (five times), and once in Deuteronomy/Devarim. It is probably related to the Arabic word sina = thornbush, and the Latin senna = a family of woody flowering perennials with straggling branches, about knee-high. The seneh may or may not come from the same Hebrew root as Sinai (סִינַי), the other name for the mountain where Moses repeatedly meets God. But as Martin Buber pointed out, repeating the word seneh three times in one sentence certainly evokes the name “Sinai”.

Later in the book of Exodus, God manifests at Mount Sinai in volcanic fire and thunder. But here, God’s fire appears in a small plant, and burns quietly without consuming it. Why does God choose this manifestation?

The symbolic meaning of the burning bush according to Shemot Rabbah is that Moses is afraid Egypt will destroy Israel, just as a fire would normally destroy a bush. Since this burning bush is not consumed, it represents a promise that the Israelites will never be destroyed by their oppressors.¹

I agree with 20th-century scholar Nehama Leibowitz that the fire in the bush is an implausible symbol for the Egyptians; since God’s messenger (angel) speaks from the middle of this fire, the fire would more plausibly represent divine revelation.² According to 19th-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the burning bush means that anyone who opens their heart to God will not be destroyed by the divine power.³

Moses said: “Oh, I must turn aside so I will see this great sight! Why does the bush not burn up?” (Exodus 3:3)

The “messenger” of God is simply the sight of something outside natural law—and therefore numinous. Moses is a person who will notice something unusual and turn aside. Maybe he is curious about the nature of the universe; or maybe he is searching for God. After all, why did he take the flock beyond the grassy wilderness to this dry and desolate mountain, where there is nothing good for sheep to eat? His father-in-law the priest must have told him where to find the “mountain of the gods”. Now Moses is alert for any sign of the divine.

God does not speak to Moses until after he has turned aside to look at the bush. Apparently alert curiosity and a willingness to approach the numinous are essential traits that God requires in his prophet.

And God saw that he had turned aside to see, so God called to him from the middle of the bush, and said: “Moses! Moses!” And he said: “Here I am.” (Exodus 3:4)

That Moses hears God speak from a mere thorn-bush demonstrates that God is everywhere, even in the lowliest places: a scrubby shrub as well as a tall cedar of Lebanon, a small and barren mountain as well as a lofty peak.⁴

I have heard many of my friends say they feel God’s presence the most when they are out hiking and surrounded by tall trees or snow-capped peaks. I confess that I, too, feel touched by something numinous when I see the forest or the ocean here in Oregon. Yet I know that if we want to seek the divine, we need to look at straggly little plants as well as cedars, and pray in pre-fab rooms as well as cathedrals.

And God said: Don’t come closer to here! Take off your sandals from upon your feet, because the place that you are standing upon is holy ground. (Exodus 3:5)

Moses cannot come closer to God right away. No matter how much he wants to understand the divine, he must learn about God during the course of a long relationship.

In my experience, that is also true for God-seekers today. A mystical experience can be a message, but it does not change your life, or even your soul. The next day, your old behaviors come right back (even if your feeling of transformation keeps you from noticing them). One experience cannot change you into someone who walks with God—someone who thoughtfully does the right things and remains aware of a larger view of reality. You have to change yourself over the course of many years, noticing when it is time to turn aside, noticing when you have made another mistake, and remembering over and over again that a divine fire hides in the weedy bushes of life.

At least that’s what I believe. So I take comfort from knowing that even Moses cannot walk right into the divine fire and become one with God. His encounter at the burning bush is only the beginning. But at least God tells him he is standing on holy ground. If only we could realize that we are all standing on holy ground!

Shemot Rabbah 2:1. (Written by rabbis of the first few centuries C.E.)
Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Shemot, translated by Aryeh Newman, The Joint Authority for Jewish Zionist Education, Jerusalem, 1996, p. 55.
Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 31.
Mekhilta of R. Shimon b, Yochai, attributed to R. Eliezer b. Arakh, quoted in Leibowitz, p. 56.

Vayeishev: Prey

On Thursday when my stepfather was released from the hospital, my mother was handed information about hospice care. As soon as she told me this over the phone, I pictured my stepfather’s name being erased from the book of life.

Every year, from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, Jews pray that God will inscribe their names in the book of life. The ancient Jewish tradition says that anyone whose name is omitted from the list will die sometime during the year. Jews greet each other during those holy days by saying: Leshanah tovah tikateivu! (May you be inscribed for a good year!)

In another part of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy, we acknowledge that we do not know when or how a person will die. The liturgy asks “Who by fire and who by water? Who by sword and who by wild beast?” The list of possible ways to die continues, and then broadens into the recognition that we do not even know what will happen to those who live. “Who will rest and who will wander? Who will be undisturbed and who yitareif?”

yitareif = will be like prey torn to pieces by wild animals

Who will die by cancer this year? Who will feel torn to pieces, like my mother?

If you are a subscriber to this blog and you notice that I miss a week or two, you will know I am helping my mother during the next stage of my stepfather’s exit from this world. On other weeks, I hope I will be able to carry on with my own life, including researching, writing, and posting this blog. But I do not know.

As for this week, the Torah portion is Vayeishev (And he settled), the first part of the story of Joseph. This year, I am struck by how quickly Jacob assumes that his favorite son, Joseph, is dead. In fact, his ten older brothers throw him into a pit far from home. They consider murdering him, but they sell him into slavery instead. Now that they have disposed of the brother they hate, what will they tell their father when they return home without him?

They took Joseph’s tunic and they slaughtered a he-goat kid, and they dipped the tunic in the blood. Then they sent the fancy tunic and had it brought it to their father. And they said: We found this. Recognize, please; is it the tunic of your son, or not? And he recognized it, and he said: The tunic of my son! An evil wild beast devoured him! Joseph is definitely toraf! (Genesis/Bereishit 37:31-33)

toraf = prey torn to pieces by a wild animal (a different form of the word yitareif above)

And Jacob ripped his cloak and he put sak around his hips and he put himself into mourning over his son for many, many days. All his sons (and grandsons) and his daughters (and granddaughters) rose up to console him, but he refused to console himself. And he said: For I will do down to my son in mourning, sheolah. And his father wailed for him. (Genesis 37:34-35)

sak = sack-cloth; crude material made of goat hair

sheolah = to Sheol, to the underworld, to the grave; to ask it, to wish for it

Why does Jacob refuse to be consoled for Joseph’s death, and continue wailing and wearing sackcloth for such a long time? We do not expect him to forget the (supposed) death of his favorite son, but the Torah implies that his mourning is excessive. I think Jacob feels responsible for Joseph’s death, and his guilt prevents him from turning back toward life.

Jacob is clearly responsible for the initial jealousy of Joseph’s ten older brothers.

…[Jacob] made him a fancy tunic. And his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, so they hated him, and they were not able to speak to him in peace. (Genesis 37:3-4)

The brothers’ resentment increases when the 17-year-old Joseph tells them his two prophetic dreams, in which his brothers are symbolically bowing down to him. Jacob hears about the dreams, and he knows that his older sons cannot speak to Joseph in peace. Nevertheless, he sends Joseph far away from home to check up on how his brothers are pasturing the flocks, and report back.

Jacob must realize, on some level, that he is sending his favorite son into danger. Subconsciously he must be afraid that he has sent Joseph to his death. When he sees the bloody tunic, he asks no questions, but jumps to the conclusion that Joseph has been killed. When he says, “Joseph is definitely prey torn to pieces by a wild animal!” he might mean it literally. But he might also mean that Joseph is the prey of his brothers, who are like wild, murderous beasts. Jacob has not forgotten how his ten older sons once tricked the entire male population of the city of Shechem and then exterminated them.

Even Jacob’s use of the word Sheol is ambiguous. I do not know why Sheol, the word for the place where dead bodies go, has the same root as the verb “to ask” or “to wish for”. But here, both meanings of the word apply. Jacob is so overwhelmed by guilt, he wishes to die like his son Joseph. If Joseph is dead, Jacob can never make amends, never set things right.

Jacob’s inconsolable mourning demonstrates what happens when you carry a burden of guilt. It is easier, in the short run, to act without thinking about whether your action will hurt someone. It is easier, in the short run, to avoid making amends when you are guilty over a past mistake. But I know that in the long run, guilt catches up with you. And you never know when it will suddenly be too late to set things right.

I believe that if we think ahead, dedicate ourselves to doing no harm, and address our mistakes as soon as we realize them, then we will not suffer like Jacob. We will be able to accept the reality of death, and also rejoice in the reality of living.

But I know this belief of mine will be tested again. We are all tested. Every year, some people are left out of the book of life.

Toledot & Vayeitzei & Vayishlach: Goat Versus Snake

Esau and Jacob are twin brothers, but because of their personality differences they can never build a real partnership—any more than a goat can partner with a snake.

Birth of Esau and Jacob, by Francois Maitre, ca. 1480

The Torah identifies the twins with these two animals when they are born in this week’s Torah portion, Toledot (“Lineages”):

The first emerged red [and] completely like a robe of sei-ar, so they called his name Eisav. And after that his brother emerged, and his hand was holding fast to the heel of Eisav, so he called his name Ya-akov … (Genesis/Bereishit 25:25-26)

sei-ar (שֵׂעָר) = goat hair, bristling hair. (From the same root as sa-ir, שָׂעִיר = he-goat.)

Eisav (עֵשָׂו) = (Esau in English) Doer, Made. (From the root verb asah, עָשָׂה = do, make.)

Ya-akov (יַעֲקֹב) = (Jacob in English) Heel-grabber, Sneak. (From the same root as akeiv, עָקֵב = heel, which derives from the verb akav, עָקַב= came from behind.)

The Torah explains why Jacob and Rebekah, the parents of the twins, named the second one Ya-akov: he emerged hanging onto his brother’s heel. But why did they name the first one Eisav? Rashi (11th-century rabbi Shlomoh Yiztchaki) wrote that because he was covered with hair, he looked like an adult, completely “made”.

Toledot

At birth, Esau is hairy like a goat. Goats are also known for being “horny” beasts, which fits Esau’s personality when he grows up. He brings home not one, but two Hittite wives against his parents’ objections.¹

Jacob’s grip on his twin’s heel is a reminder of the snake in the garden of Eden, whom God cursed to crawl on his belly and bite humans on the heel.² The Torah describes the heel-biting snake as arum (עָרוּם) = naked; clever, cunning.³ Jacob is hairless, and therefore naked compared to Esau; and when he grows up he is the clever one. We first see this when Esau comes home famished and Jacob talks him into trading his birthright for a bowl of stew.⁴

In the next scene about Esau and Jacob, their blind father, Isaac, wants to give his firstborn son a blessing. But first he tells Esau to go hunt game and make it into the delicacy he loves. Rebecca, the twins’ mother, overhears. She is certain that Jacob should get the blessing instead. So she orders Jacob:

“Please go to the flock and take for me two good goat kids, and I will make them a delicacy for your father like [those] he loves.” (Genesis 27:9)

Rebecca’s favorite son can bring back goats from the flock faster than Esau can hunt, and she knows how to make them taste like the game Esau often cooks for his father. On another level, Rebecca may be implying that Jacob should overpower his hairy he-goat of a brother.

And why does she need two goats for one old man’s meal? Is she subconsciously sacrificing both of her sons to make sure the right one gets Isaac’s blessing?

Isaac Blessing Jacob, by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, 1642, detail

Jacob protests:

Hey, my brother Esau is a sa-ir man, and I am a smooth man! (Genesis 27:11)

sa-ir (שָׂעִר) = hairy. (Also from the same root as sa-ir, שָׂעִיר = he-goat.)

Physically, Jacob is still as smooth as a snake. So Rebecca fixes it. After dressing Jacob in Esau’s clothes, she covers his hands and neck “with skins of goat kids” (Genesis 27:16). When he brings in the dish of meat, his blind father is not sure which son he is. He speaks like Jacob, so Isaac asks him to come closer, and touches his son’s hands.

And he did not recognize him because his hands were like the hands of his brother, se-irot. And he blessed him. (Genesis 27:23)

se-irot (שְׂעִרֹת) = hairy. (The plural of sa-ir above.)

Isaac gives Jacob the blessing he intended for Esau. Enraged by the “theft” of his blessing, Esau rashly swears he will murder his brother, and Jacob quickly slips away and heads for his uncle Lavan’s house in Aram.

Vayeitzei

In the next Torah portion, Vayeitzei (“And he went”), Jacob marries his uncle Lavan’s daughters, Leah and Rachel, and serves Lavan for fourteen years in lieu of bride-prices for them. When his time is up, his employer/uncle/father-in-law does not want to let him go.

And Lavan said to him: “If, please, I have found favor in your eyes! Nichashti, and God has blessed me on account of you.” And he [Lavan] said: “Designate your wage to me, and I will give it.” (Genesis 30:27-28)

nichashti (נִחַשְׁתִּי) = I received an omen. (From the same root as nachash, נָחָשׁ = snake. Snakes were associated with omens and magic in the ancient Near East.)

Lavan comes close to saying, “I sought a snake, and God has blessed me on account of you.”

The serpentine Jacob makes a clever bargain with Lavan and works for another six years in exchange for far more livestock than his employer expected. Then twenty years after Jacob fled to avoid being murdered by his brother, he finally heads back toward Canaan with his family, servants, and flocks.

Vayishlach

The next Torah portion begins:

And Jacob sent messengers ahead of himself to his brother Esau, to the land of Sei-ir, the country of Edom. (Genesis 32:4)

sei-ir (שֵׂעִר) = hairy goat.

Esau has become the chieftain of “The Land of the Hairy Goat”, also called Edom. Jacob’s messengers return with the news that Esau is already marching to meet him—with 400 men.

Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1624

This time, instead of bargaining with his twin brother, Jacob sends him extravagant gifts of livestock. (See my post Vayishlach: Two Camps.) In the morning, after Jacob has wrestled with a “man” who turns out to be a messenger of God, the estranged brothers meet. They embrace one another and weep out loud. Esau offers to return Jacob’s gifts, and Jacob insists that he keep everything.

“Because I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of God, and you have accepted me.” (Genesis 33:10)

Then Esau offers to travel with Jacob as far as Sei-ir. But Jacob politely says his group has to go more slowly, so Esau and his men should go ahead, and he will catch up later. As soon Esau and his warriors are out of sight, Jacob heads in another direction. The two brothers do not see one another again until their father’s funeral.⁵

Esau and Jacob do better than Cain and Abel; they manage a peaceful reunion, and nobody dies. Yet a goat and a snake cannot become close friends and go home together. They have separate destinies.

May each of us be blessed, like Jacob, to see God’s face in people who are fundamentally different from us. And may we learn to greet them in peace, and part from them in peace.

Genesis 26:34, 27:46.
Genesis 3:15.
Genesis 3:1.
Genesis 29:25-34.
Genesis 35:29.

Toledot: Rebecca Gets It Wrong

Rebecca tries so hard to set up her son Jacob for a good life—and everything she does turns out to be a mistake.

In this week’s Torah portion, Toledot (“Histories”), Rebecca and Isaac have twins who are opposites. Esau, the firstborn, is big and hairy, emotional and impulsive, fixated on food and sex.¹ Jacob, born holding onto Esau’s heel, is smooth-skinned and smooth-tongued, clever and scheming, fixated on becoming a patriarch someday. He makes his first move when Esau comes home hungry after a long day of hunting, and Jacob trades a bowl of stew for his his brother’s birthright as the firstborn.²

Esau expresses his love for his 100-year-old blind father, Isaac, by feeding him meat from his hunts. Esau’s needs are as simple as his intellect, and he takes care of himself. Rebecca does not worry about her firstborn son.

Isaac loved Esau because of the hunted-meat in his mouth, but Rebecca was loving Jacob. (Genesis/Bereishit 25:28)

Rebecca does worry about her son Jacob. Although he has the intelligence and desire to carry on the legacy of his grandfather Abraham, he sticks close to the family’s tents, and at age 40 he remains unmarried. He will never be able to serve Abraham’s god unless he gets out into the world, and he will never continue the line of Abraham’s descent unless he marries a suitable woman.

What Rebecca wants for Jacob is a good wife and Abraham’s blessing from God. But only her husband Isaac can make these things happen. They live in Canaan, where marriages are arranged by men. And although God did answer Rebecca’s question once, when she was pregnant, Isaac has a stronger connection with the divine. After all, when he prayed to God to let her bear children, God responded.

Also God gave Isaac the blessing of Abraham. Rebecca knows that he has the power to pass it on to Jacob before he dies. And Isaac’s health is failing. When the twins were born, Isaac was 60. Now he is over 100. He is blind and finds it hard to stand up. One day, Rebecca overhears Isaac tell Esau:

“… go out in the field and hunt meat for me. Then make for me some tasty food that I love, and bring it to me, and I will eat it, so that my nefesh will bless you before I die.” (Genesis 27:3-4)

nefesh (נֶפֶשׁ) = soul, self, animating spirit, appetite.

Rebecca jumps to the conclusion that Isaac is about to give Esau the blessing of Abraham. But God’s blessing would be wasted on Esau; it has to go to Jacob!

Rebecca orders Jacob to bring Isaac the tasty food and secure the blessing before Esau gets back from the field. When Esau and Isaac find out what happened, she will take care of the consequences somehow. The charade spins out from there. Rebecca fastens goat-skins around Jacob’s hands and neck to imitate Esau’s hairiness. Isaac, after some uncertainty, gives Jacob the blessing he intended for Esau: a prayer for a life of material abundance and power, with no reference to God or Abraham.

I can imagine Rebecca listening in and discovering her mistake. Isaac merely wanted to bond with Esau the only way he could, through food, and then leave him with a father’s blessing–the blessing of his personal self, or even the blessing of his appetite. Isaac was saving the blessing of Abraham for Jacob after all. Now what can she do?

Of course the subterfuge is discovered as soon as Esau returns from his hunt. Esau weeps and begs his father for another blessing, and Isaac does the best he can. But Rebecca finds out that Esau is so enraged, he wants to kill Jacob as soon as their father dies.

Rebecca does not try to talk him down. Instead, she sees another opportunity to promote Yaakov’s welfare. She tells Yaakov he must flee to her brother in Charan in order to escape Esau’s murderous rage. Then she reminds Isaac of how much they dislike Esau’s Hittite wives, and hints that he must send Yaakov away to get a wife.

Rebecca said to Isaac: “I am disgusted with my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from the Hittite women like these, why should I go on living?” (Genesis 27.46)

So Isaac summoned Jacob and he blessed him and commanded him, and he said to him: “You must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Get up, go to Padan of Aram, to the house of Betu-el, your mother’s father, and take yourself a wife from there, from the daughters of Lavan, your mother’s brother.” (Genesis 28:1-2)

Then Isaac, who never loses his temper, gives Jacob the blessing of Abraham.

“May God give you the blessing of Abraham for yourself, and for your offspring as well, so as to possess the land from your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham.” (Genesis 28:4)

Most commentary says that Rebecca’s motivation is to save Yaakov’s life, and her marriage scheme is an excuse. I think it is the other way around. As modern commentator Tikva Frymer-Kensky writes, Jacob would be just as safe if Isaac sent him to his ally, King Avimlelkh, or to his half-brother Ishmael, both of whom live nearby. Rivkah is smart enough to think of a pretext for sending Jacob to either man. Instead, she deliberately brings up the subject of Jacob’s marriage, knowing that Isaac’s first thought will be to get Jacob a wife from the relatives in Aram, just as Abraham did for him.

Why does Rebecca want Jacob to marry one of her brother Lavan’s daughters? The Torah does not say, but her desire is similar to Abraham’s; both want to keep the intermarriage among the descendants of Terach going. At least Lavan worships the same god as Abraham, even if he is not exclusive about it.

Rebecca also knows that her brother thinks in terms of material wealth. In last week’s Torah portion, we read that Lavan was willing to marry off his sister once he saw the jewelry Abraham’s steward had given her, and the ten camels carrying packs. Lavan would not accept a husband for any of the women in his household without receiving a hefty bride-price.

Yet in next week’s Torah portion, Vayeitzei (And he went), Jacob leaves home on foot, carrying nothing but a staff (and a few personal supplies, such as the oil he pours on the stone where he has his famous dream of the ladder of angels). Surely neither Isaac nor Rebecca would send their son off to Lavan to take a wife without giving him a mount, some servants, and a generous bride-price!

In my blog post Vayeitzei: Guilty Conscience, I speculated that Jacob’s guilt drives him to leave home before his parents have time to give him anything, and then to sentence himself to seven years of servitude to Lavan as the price for a wife. Now I think Jacob’s hasty departure might be due to fear as well as guilt. And Rebecca is to blame for this fear, since she tells Jacob Esau is determined to kill him, and urges him to flee.

Poor Rebecca. What she wants for Jacob is God’s blessing and the right wife. But everything she does to help Jacob has the opposite effect. Isaac planned all along to give God’s blessing to Jacob. By making Jacob masquerade as Esau, Rebecca only makes Jacob guilty and Esau enraged. Then Rebecca tries to get Jacob the right wife by telling him to flee to his uncle Lavan before Esau tries to murder him. The combination of fear and guilt make Jacob leave too soon, without a bride-price, and stay with Lavan for 20 years.

Jacob does, eventually, get what his mother wants for him: God’s blessing, both from Isaac’s lips and from God in a vision; and both of Lavan’s daughters as his wives. Yet Rebecca dies without ever seeing her favorite son again, or his children.

Could she do better? What if, as soon as she overheard her husband promising to give Esau the blessing of his nefesh, she went straight to Isaac and asked him what he intended? Or what if she spoke to Jacob directly about why he should marry one of Lavan’s daughters? Could Rebecca achieve her goals by being honest?

I know from my own experience that being honest and direct works well with someone who can listen to me, and ask for clarification when necessary. It does not work well with someone who becomes emotionally overwhelmed because a childhood complex is triggered, or with someone who simply cannot focus on what I am saying.

Isaac is passive and traumatized because his father nearly sacrificed him as a burnt offering, lifting the knife off his throat only at the last moment. Everything relating to fathers and sons might be emotionally overwhelming for him. And he is 100 years old, infirm, and blind. When the Torah says his eyes have dimmed, it may mean his mind has also dimmed, and he cannot focus long enough to hear Rebecca out.

And Jacob? He would be shocked by the consequences of obeying his mother and stealing Esau’s blessing, and expect a rejection from his father or an attack by his brother at any moment. In the middle of this crisis, how could he listen to someone talk about marriage?

Perhaps there are times when we are all like Rebecca, longing for the best outcome, but knowing there is no use in going for it directly and honestly. Yet if we try to manipulate the situation, we may discover that we have misread another person’s heart, and done everything wrong. We are only human. Yet sometimes, even if it comes too late for us, the best outcome arrives after all.

Esau is hairy from birth (Genesis 24:25), becomes a hunter (Genesis 25:27), is more interested in eating than in preserving his future (Genesis 25:29-34), and violates custom by bringing home two local Hittite women as wives without his parents’ permission (Genesis 26:34-35).
Genesis 25:29-34.

Chayyei Sarah: Consenting Bride

Biblical Hebrew has no separate verb for “marry”. Instead, a man “takes a wife”, or someone else takes a wife for him. In a culture dominated by men, a woman never “takes” a husband for herself.

The book of Genesis/Bereishit uses the verb “take” 138 times, and fully 40 of those times refer to taking a wife or concubine. Some individual men take wives for themselves: Lamekh, Abraham, Nachor, Pharaoh, Avimelekh, Esau, and Judah. But Sarah “takes” her slave-woman Hagar and gives her to Abraham as a second wife. Hagar takes a wife for her son Ishmael from the land of Egypt (Genesis 21:21). Lavan takes his daughter Leah to be a wife for Jacob. Both of Jacob’s wives, Leah and Rachel, take their slave-women and give them to Jacob as wives. Judah takes a wife for his son Eir. And in this week’s Torah portion, Chayyei Sarah (Life of Sarah), Abraham’s steward takes a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac.

Abraham does not even tell Isaac he is arranging a marriage for him. (They may not be on speaking terms, since Abraham put a knife to his son’s throat in last week’s Torah portion.) Instead, Abraham has his steward (possibly Eliezer, who was his steward before Yitzchak was born) arrange the marriage, and he makes the man swear, in a formal ceremony, that he will not take a Canaanite wife for Isaac. (See my earlier blog posting, “Chayyei Sarah: A Peculiar Oath“.) The steward, who is called Abraham’s “senior servant”, must go to his master’s relatives back in Aram to find the wife.

The servant said to him: “Perhaps the woman will not consent to go after me to this land; then, surely, won’t I bring your son back to the land which you left?” (Genesis/Bereishit 24:5)

This is the only marriage arrangement in the Torah in which the woman’s consent is mentioned. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that her consent is not necessary for the marriage, only for moving to the land where her bridegroom lives. If the bride refuses to move, then Isaac could only fulfill his duties as a husband by moving to the bride’s city.

But Abraham tells his steward that he must not bring Isaac to the land of Aram under any circumstances. If the wife he finds in Aram refuses to follow him to Canaan, then the marriage is off, and the steward is absolved of his oath. As many commentators have pointed out, Abraham seems to fear that if Isaac ever leaves Canaan, he will never return. He knows Isaac is a peacemaker who lacks initiative. But God has promised the land of Canaan to Abraham’s descendants through Isaac. So he insists that Isaac must stay in Canaan.

Why does he also insist that Isaac must not marry a Canaanite, and send his steward off to take a wife for Isaac from his relatives in Aram? For one theory on why Abraham’s family does so much intermarriage, see my post Book of Genesis: Inbreeding. Traditional commentary also points out that Isaac’s ideal wife must resemble Abraham; Abraham stipulates that she must come from the same family, and she, too, must be willing to to to a strange land, while Abraham’s steward stipulates that she must be as generously hospitable as Abraham.

Rebecca et Eliezer, by Alexandre Cabanel, 1883

When the steward reaches the city of Nachor in Aram, the first teenage girl he encounters is Rebecca, who proves to be extraordinarily generous, watering all ten of his camels and offering his whole caravan food and lodging for the night. She is also a close relative: the granddaughter of Nachor (Abraham’s brother) and Milkah (Abraham’s niece by another brother). The only requirement left is that she will agree to go to Canaan.

But first Rebecca’s parents must agree to the marriage. The steward has loaded the ten camels with gifts, and before he even asks her about her lineage, he gives Rebecca a gold nose ring and two gold bracelets. The Torah does not describe her reaction to this gift, but she would recognize it as first installment of the bride-price for a marriage arrangement.

The teenage girl ran, and she told her mother’s household about these events. (Genesis 24:28)

Why does the male-oriented Torah refer to her mother’s household, when both her father Betu-el and her brother Lavan are living there? Perhaps when Rebecca’s parents married, her father Betu-el went to live with his wife’s family–just as later in the book of Genesis, Jacob lives with his father-in-law and uncle, Lavan. Rabbi Elyse Goldstein has suggested that it was the custom in Rebecca’s family of origin for the groom to join the bride’s household, rather than the groom’s household.

The stories about Abraham’s family are probably set sometime between 1800 and 1500 BCE, when Aram was a region of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, and would have followed the Babylonian customs during the reign of Hammurabi. The Code of Hammurabi includes both a law relating to when a young married couple is living with the groom’s parents, and a law relating to when they are living with the bride’s parents. So it is plausible that an Aramean family might have a tradition that the groom always moves in with bride’s family.

Presumably both Abraham and his steward know about this family tradition, and therefore know that the bride’s willingness to leave her mother’s house and travel to Canaan will be critical.

Rebecca’s father, mother, and brother agree to the proposed marriage on the same day the steward arrives in their house–perhaps because of the large bride-price, or perhaps because the steward’s story proves that the marriage is the will of the god that they, as well as Abraham, worship. But accepting the bride-price is only the first step in an arranged marriage.

Ancient Mesopotamian texts match the sequence in this week’s Torah portion:

1) The prospective husband, or his representative, gives the prospective bride’s parents the bride-price (her purchase price) as a “gift”. The parents (but not the bride) decide whether to accept the bride-price.

2) The two families draw up a marriage contract, which lists the bride-price and any stipulations. Now the bride and groom are betrothed, but the bride remains in her parents’ house.

3) The bride’s family gives the bride all or most of the bride-price, and adds some of their own wealth as a dowry for their daughter. This combined wealth will be controlled by the husband until he dies or divorces his wife; then the property (land, slaves, furniture, jewelry, gold, or silver) reverts to the wife.

4) The bride and groom themselves join hands (sometimes meeting for the first time) and the groom utters a wedding formula in front of a qualified witness.

5) The marriage is consummated in private.

Abraham’s steward gives Rebecca’s family a handsome bride-price, and they accept it. Presumably they write a marriage contract. The next morning, the steward asks permission to return to his master.

Her brother said, and her mother: “The (teenage) girl will stay with us, yamim or ten; afterward, she will go.” (Genesis 24:55)

yamim = days (literally); some while, about a year (figuratively)

And he said to them: “Don’t hold back on me, when God made my journey successful; send me, and I will go to my lord.” And they said: “We will call the girl, and we will ask her [for a decision from] her mouth.” And they called to Rebecca and they said to her: “Will you go with this man? And she said: I will go.” (Genesis 24:56-58)

Rebecca has a choice. She could insist on staying with her family in Aram, betrothed but not yet married, until Isaac himself shows up. Instead, she decides to go with the steward she met only the day before, and live with her new husband in Canaan. She willingly commits herself not only to a man she has never met, but also to a land she has never seen.

I admire Rebecca’s courage–all the more so because she must have grown up expecting that her parents would marry her to a man who would come and live with them. Her husband would be new, but the rest of her household would remain the same. And she would have no say in the arrangement.

With the arrival of Abraham’s steward, Rebecca suddenly gets a choice. And she makes her choice instantly and decisively, just as she decides to water all ten camels despite the great effort required.

I am fortunate enough to live in a society in which women can make many choices about their lives. But if someday I am given a totally unexpected choice, I pray that I may see the opportunity, and choose as boldly as Rebecca.