Psalm 139 & Nitzavim: Omnipresent

Jonah and the Whale, by Pieter Lastman, 1621

The prophet Yonah (“Jonah” in English) rebels against God’s order to deliver a prophecy in Nineveh, and flees from God by taking a ship all the way to the distant land of Tarshish. He tries to travel from Israel to the ends of the earth in order to avoid the presence of God.

The prophet who wrote the second half of Isaiah, however, prophecies that ships from Tarshish will bring riches to Jerusalem. This prophet exults in the idea that foreigners will travel from the ends of the earth in order to come close to the presence of God. (For both stories, see last week’s post, Hafarat Ki Tavo—2 Isaiah: Tarshish.)

The ends of the earth come up again, even more poetically, in the Torah portion Nitzavim (Deuteronomy/Devarim, 29:9-30:20), the first of this week’s double portion. Moses says that when the Israelites are unfaithful to their God, then God will cause them to be conquered and deported to other lands. But when their minds and hearts return to God—

Then God, your God, will return your captives and take you back in love, and collect you from all the peoples where God, your God, has scattered you. If you are banished to the ends of the heavens, from there God, your God, will collect you, and from there will take you. And God, your God, will bring you to the land that your forefathers possessed, and you will possess it; and [God] will do you good and multiply you more than your forefathers. (Deuteronomy 30:3-5)

Here “the ends of the heavens” is a poetic way of saying “farther than the ends of the earth”—even farther than Tarshish.

Yet God’s dwelling-place is the portable sanctuary the Israelites build in the book of Exodus, then the temple in Jerusalem.¹ How can God find us at the ends of the earth? Psalm 139 teaches that escaping God’s guidance—or God’s demands—is impossible because God knows every mind and is present everywhere.

Omniscient: Psalm 139:1-4

The God character in the book of Genesis hears about events on earth, but sometimes needs a closer look to find out what humans are actually doing and thinking. In the story of the Tower of Babel,

God came down to look at the city and the tower that the humans had built. (Genesis 11:5)

When God is considering destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, God says:

“I will go down and I will see; if they have done according to the outcry that has come to me, annihilation! And if not, I will know.” (Genesis 18: 21)

But in the later psalms, God is less anthropomorphic. The first four verses of Psalm 139 express the concept that God is omniscient, at least when it comes to human minds.

God, you have examined me, and you know me.
You know my sitting down and my standing up.
          You discern my purpose from afar.
You sift through my way of life and my lying down,
          And you are familiar with all my paths.
For there is no word on my tongue—
          Hey, God you know it completely.  (Psalm 139:1-4)

Unlike God, another human being can observe you sitting, standing, lying down, and talking, but cannot discern your thoughts. Someone who knows you well can guess at your thoughts by considering your words, your body language, and your past deeds, but it is only a guess.

For God, it is not guesswork. According to Hirsch, God can reliably predict what we will think: “Even before the thought has actually taken form within me, You [God] can already see it by inference from Your previous knowledge of all my personality and the interaction of all my character traits.”²

Or maybe God is a mind-reader, and knows our thoughts and intentions directly, even before we become conscious of them.³

Continuous: Psalm 139:5-6

Next, the psalm says that only God exists at all times. Humans keep going only as long as God is pushing them through time.

You confine me between achor and kedem,
          And you set your palm upon me.  (Psalm 139:5)

achor (אָחוֹר) = back, behind (in time or space); west; future. (In Hebrew the future is what we cannot see because it is behind our backs.)

kedem (קֶדֶם) = in front (in time or space); east; past. (In Hebrew the past is what we can see right in front of us, because it has already happened.)

A human can remember the past and anticipate the future, but can only live in the present. Hirsch wrote: “Mine is only that infinitely brief span of the ‘present’ which is hardly long enough for me to be able to declare that I ‘am’. … it is only through You that I ‘am’.”⁴

Without God’s palm, a human being could not make it into the next moment.

Incomprehensible knowledge for me!
          Too high! I am not capable of it.  (Psalm 139:6)

After declaring that God knows our innermost thoughts even before we do, and that we continue living only through God’s support, the psalmist brings in the concept of omnipresence.

Omnipresent: Psalm 139:7-12

Where could I go away from ruchekha?
          And where could I flee from paneykha?  (Psalm 139:7)

ruchekha (רוּחֶךָ) ֹ= your wind, your air, your spirit, your disposition.

paneykha (פָּנֶיךָ) = your face, your front, your surface, your presence.

On one hand, God surrounds us like air. On the other hand, as Hirsch wrote, the spirit of God keeps on nudging us and moving us around.⁵

The word paneykha also has a double meaning: God’s presence is everywhere, and God’s “face” sees us everywhere.⁶

If I ascend to the heavens, you are there;
          If I make my bed in Sheol, there too.  (Psalm 139:8)

The Hebrew Bible often speaks of God as living in the sky (the heavens) and manipulating the weather. This verse of Psalm 139 introduces the idea that God is also present in the underworld, where people “sleep” when they die.

I take wing at dawn;
          I come to rest at the end of the sea.
Even there your hand guides me
          And your right hand holds onto me.  (Psalm 139:9-10)

Alter explained: “The speaker imagines taking wind with the dawn as it appears in the east, then soaring with the sun on its westward path to the limits of the imagined world …”⁷

The “end of the sea” describes Tarshish even better than “the end of the earth”. No matter how far we travel, the psalmist says, God either guides us or grabs us.

It is also useless to try to hide in the dark from God.

If I say: “Surely darkness will screen me,
          And night will be light for me,”
Even darkness is not dark for you,
          And night is as light as day;
Darkness and light are the same.  (Psalm 139:11-12)

Inside: Psalm 139:13

The next verse hints at why God is always present for every person.

Because you created khilyotai;
          You wove me together in my mother’s womb. (Psalm 139:13)

khilyoitai (כִלְיֺתָי) = my kidneys; my conscience.⁸

Hiding from God is like hiding from yourself. You can only hide from your own conscience temporarily.

When Psalm 139 ends, the psalmist has decided to embrace God’s intimate knowledge, constant presence, and guidance.

Search me, God, and know my mind;
          Examine me and know my thoughts.
And see if I have a hurtful path;
          And guide me on a path for all time.  (Psalm 139:23-24)

Some religious people and some atheists believe that God is either the irrational and punitive being that we see sometimes in the Hebrew Bible, and/or the author of the policy that “sinners” will burn forever in hell that we see sometimes in Christianity. That version of God strikes me as an immoral villain whom I would not want to be omniscient, omnipresent, or guided by.

Other people believe that God is benevolent, either the fair and merciful being we also see in the Hebrew and Christian bibles, and/or an omnipotent being who makes everything work out for the best in the (not too long) long run. This is a more reassuring version of an omniscient, omnipresent God who guides us (although we run into theological problems if we also claim God is omnipotent).

There are other versions of what God is. Some that say God is not “a being” at all, but rather the ground of being, or the source of creation. Others say that “God” is not even a noun, but rather a verb, an adjective, or an adverb. In Kabbalah, God is ein sof (אֵין סוֹף), “without end”. The Tanya explains: “No thought grasps you [God] at all.”⁹

The impossibility of defining God also appears in Psalm 139:6: “Incomprehensible knowledge for me! Too high! I am not capable of it.”

But even if we can have no general concept of God, we can think about a single aspect of God. What if we experience God as an inner guide who is omniscient and omnipresent? Then “God” is another way of referring to our own consciences. We cannot flee from this God because we cannot flee from our inner selves. But if we only listen, our conscience guides us.

In the Jewish calendar, we are approaching the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, days dedicated to asking God’s pardon for our individual and collective misdeeds of the past year. Jews are called upon to apologize to other people and make amends for any ways that we have hurt them before Rosh Hashanah. Then during the High Holy Days, we apologize to God, and rededicate ourselves to following God’s guidance—which might be the same as the guidance of our consciences. This year, may we all return to God, or to our inner guide—not just on holy days, but in each present moment.

See my post Haftarat Ki Tavo—Isaiah: A Place for Feet.
19^th-century Rabbi Samson Rasphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Tehillim, translation by Gertrude Hirschler, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2014, p. 1104.
This idea appears in Tehillim: The Book of Psalms with an Interlinear Translation, ed. by Rabbi Menachem Davis, Artscroll Series, Schottenstein Edition, 2001, p. 388; and also in Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Ketuvim, Koren Publishers, 2019, in www.sefaria.org.
Hirsch, p. 1106.
Ibid., p. 1107.
Ibid.
Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2007, p. 480.
See my post Vayikra & Jeremiah: Kidneys
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812), The Tanya, Chapter 4.

Haftarat Nitzavim—Isaiah: Doing the Right Thing

Model of Herod’s Jerusalem with temple, Israel Museum, Jerusalem (photo by M.C.)

The seventh and last “haftarah of consolation” is read the week before Rosh Hashanah. Like last week’s haftarah, this week’s passage from second Isaiah celebrates a glorious future when the world will revolve around the Israelites and their God in Jerusalem.¹

No doubt many Israelites were consoled by the belief that God, who had previously arranged for the Babylonians to conquer and exile them, would soon bless them again. Even today, many individuals who have suffered irreversible losses are consoled by the belief that God works in mysterious ways² and will be good to them from now on.

I am not one of those people. But this year I found a different consolation in the seventh haftarah of consolation: the word tzedakah.

High priest, detail from bible card by Providence Lithograph Co., 1907

This week’s reading uses the word tzedakah five times, starting with:

I certainly rejoice in God!

My soul exults in my God.

For [God] has clothed me in garments of liberation,

Has wrapped me in a royal robe of tzedakah,

As a bridegroom puts on a turban like a priest’s

And as a bride adorns herself with ornaments. (Isaiah 61:10)

tzedakah (צְדָקָה) = right behavior, righteousness. (The root verb, tzadak (צָדַק) = was justified, judged rightly, was not guilty, was righteous, was ethical.)³

Tzedakah can mean ethical behavior in general, or it can refer to a particular arena of right behavior. In the Hebrew bible and in modern Hebrew, it most often means social justice.

In verse 61:10 above, tzedakah is pictured as splendid outer garment provided by God. Perhaps the Israelites who hear that God will rescue them from Babylon find the prophesy as majestic as the robe of a priest or princess, and beautiful as a bride’s adornments.

The next verse elaborates:

For as the earth brings forth her sprouts

And as a garden sprouts growing plants,

Thus will my lord God sow tzedakah

And praise, in front of all the nations. (Isaiah 61:11)

All the nations on earth will witness the transformation of the exiled Israelites. Both tzedakah and praise from other nations will flourish.

What does tzedakah mean in this context? The Jewish Publication Society and some other respected translations use the English word “victory” for all five occurrences of the word tzedakah in this week’s haftarah. Translator Robert Alter explained that the primary meanings of words derived from the root verb tzadak have to do with winning a just case in court. The idea of winning came to include winning in battle⁴ (as long as the winning side is the right side).

The metaphor in Isaiah 60:10 is vague enough so tzedakah can be translated equally well as “victory” or “justice” or “righteousness”. But in Isaiah 60:11, “victory” does not make sense to me. Why is tzedakah paired with praise? People may praise their own kings or gods for being victorious, but outsiders praise victors only when they need to appease them. Nowhere does the Hebrew Bible praise the Babylonians for being victorious!

Furthermore, the metaphor of sprouting plants is a better fit for the growth of good deeds and justice in Jerusalem. People in other nations might well praise the people of Jerusalem for their kindness and justice. After all, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah praise the Persian emperors who replaced the Babylonians because the Persian policies are more ethical and fair to downtrodden populations like the Israelites.

Does God deserve credit for making righteousness sprout in the Israelites? Yes, according to the bible. Second Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel agree that God let the Babylonians conquer Jerusalem for two reasons: its citizens were unethical in their dealings with other humans, and they worshiped idols. When second Isaiah and Ezekiel prophesy the return of the exiled Israelites to Jerusalem, they say that the people will improve and God will forgive them.

Ezekiel even quotes God as saying:

I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put into you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your body, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit into you. And I will act [so that] you follow my decrees and my laws; you will observe and do them. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

In short, God will make the Israelites want to be ethical and follow God’s rules. This is how God sows tzedakah in the Israelites.

The next verse of this week’s haftarah also refers to tzedakah:

For the sake of Zion I will not be silent,

And for the sake of Jerusalem I will not be quiet,

Until her tzedakah emerges like radiance

And her rescue burns like a torch. (Isaiah 62:1)

The “her” in “Until her tzedakah emerges like radiance” refers to Jerusalem and its natives. These Israelites will not be responsible for any victory over the Babylonians; that is up to God (who fulfills the prophecy by arranging for the Persians to take over the Babylonian Empire). Therefore “righteousness” or “justice” is a more reasonable translation than “victory” in verse 62:1.

The focus then shifts to God, Jerusalem’s rescuer, addressed as “you”.

And nations will see your tzedakah

And all kings, your magnificence … (Isaiah 62:2)

What, exactly, will the nations and their kings observe? The Israelites might think of God’s tzedakah as “victory”, since the bible gives God credit for the Persian victory over the Babylonian Empire. But the people and kings of other nations could not be expected to give the God of Israel credit for this victory. If anything, they would attribute it to a/ Persian god; in the Ancient Near East, each god was considered responsible for the fate of its own people.

The most that kings of other nations might notice is that the change of empires allowed the homecoming of the Israelites, who (according to the previous verse) are a manifestly just and righteous people. This much could count as a good deed on the part of the God of Israel.

The fifth time this week’s haftarah uses the word tzedakah is more ambiguous. God is imagined as wearing clothes covered with blood, like a victor in battle:

Gideon and His 300, detail from bible card by Providence Lithograph Co., 1907

Who is this coming from Edom,

In bloody clothes from Bozra?

[Who] is this, splendid in his attire,

Striding in his abundant power?

“I am one who speaks with tzedakah,

Abundant for rescuing.” (Isaiah 63:1)

The blood in this image does identify God as a victor in war. Nevertheless, given all the occurrences throughout the bible of tzedakah as justice or right behavior, God could be “one who speaks with justice” or “one who speaks about ethics”, and provides many rescues to carry out justice—even if some of the rescues are bloody.

The final “haftarah of consolation” is read on the last Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, which begins on Sunday evening this year. During Rosh Hashanah services, Jews pray to be “inscribed in the Book of Life” for the next year, a theme that continues ten days later on Yom Kippur, when we beg God to forgive is for all our ethical shortcomings.

For me, this is another reason to read this week’s haftarah in terms of tzedakah as right behavior, rather than in terms of victory in war.

The idea of tzedakah also comforts and consoles me for my mother’s death. I went out of my way to do everything I could to lovingly help her this past year, despite various difficulties. Whatever other ethical shortcomings I have, I know I am not guilty in that area of life. And I thank God for the strength to do the right thing.

I wish all of my readers a good new year, a shanah tovah of life and tzedakah—whenever the year begins for you!

For more on this haftarah reading, see my post Haftarat Nitzavim—Isaiah: Power of Names.
See my post Psalm 73: When Good Things Happen.
In the bible, a tzadik (צַדִּיק, also from the root tzadak) is a just or ethical person. In Chassidic writings, a tzadik is a spiritual master, a man who devotes himself to Torah study in order to come close to God. The Chassidic movement within Judaism began in the 17^th century, and emphasizes passionate attachment to the divine.
Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: Volume 2, Prophets, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2019, p. 776, footnote on 45:25.
The founder of the Persian emperor, Cyrus the Great, established policies allowing former exiles to return to their homes, allowing the people in each province to rebuild the shrines and temples of their own religions, and instituting limited self-government in provinces—including the province of Judea.

Haftarat Nitzavim—Isaiah: Power of Names

Prophet Isaiah by Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel

Hey! God has announced

To the ends of the earth:

“Say to the daughter of Zion

Hey! Your rescue is coming!” (Isaiah 62:11)

The second prophet Isaiah is speaking to the people of Judah who were deported to Babylon when the Babylonian army razed Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. The verse appears in the haftarah reading which accompanies this week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim. It is is the seventh and final “haftarah of consolation” after the annual fast of Tisha B’Av, when Jews mourn the destruction of the temple.¹ This week’s haftarah offers more than consolation; Isaiah predicts that God will return the exiles to Jerusalem in triumph.

Then, Isaiah says, instead of denigrating the deportees and their ruined city, everyone in the world will admire the Jews and Jerusalem.

And so my lord, God,

Will make virtue and praise sprout up

In front of all the nations. (Isaiah 61:11)

Then nations will see your virtue,

And every king your glory.

And you will be called by a new sheim

That the mouth of God will pronounce. (Isaiah 62:2)

sheim (שֵׁם) = name, reputation, fame.

In fact, after about 45 years in exile, a group of deportees and their families did return to Jerusalem. The book of Ezra credits God with using Cyrus, the first king of the Persian Empire, as a tool for achieving the liberation of these Jews.²

Cyrus Cylinder, photo by Ferrell Jenkins

King Cyrus of Persia recorded his conquest of Babylon in 539 B.C.E. in a cuneiform record called the Cyrus Cylinder. One ambiguous sentence on the cylinder could be interpreted as a decree that all peoples deported by the Babylonians, including the Jews from Judah, were now free to return to their homes and rebuild their temples.³

Cyrus could be called virtuous and praiseworthy for establishing freedom of movement and religious freedom for the subjects in his empire. But how will God make the Jews who return to Jerusalem virtuous and praiseworthy? How will God give them a new sheim?

The country the Israelites return to is no longer the independent kingdom of Judah (Yehudah, יְהוּדָה), but a Persian province called Judea (Yehud). But this is not the kind of name change second Isaiah means. Instead, the prophet says God will change the way other people describe the Jews and Jerusalem.

Never again will it be said of you: “Forsaken”

And never again will it be said of your land: “Desolation”.

For you will be called: “I Delight in Her”

And your land: “Betrothed”.

Because God delights in you,

And your land is embraced. (Isaiah 62:4)

Once the returning exiles rebuild Jerusalem and its temple, it makes sense that nobody would call the people “forsaken” or the city-state “desolation” any more. Judea would become one thriving province among many.

But the governors of other provinces in the Persian Empire would not describe the people Israel as “I Delight in Her”, since the first person would only apply to God. And the land is “betrothed” to God, not to Cyrus or the provincial governor. “I Delight in Her” and “Betrothed” are the new names that “the mouth of God will pronounce”.

Later in the poem the Israelites and Jerusalem are assigned other positive descriptors.

And they will be called: “The Holy People”,

“Redeemed by God”.

And you [Zion] will be called: “Sought Out”,

“City Not Forsaken”. (Isaiah 62:12)

Who will use those names to refer to the people and the land? The phrase “Redeemed by God” could only be used by the redeemed exiles themselves. They are also the most likely to use the other three names. We learn in the book of Ezra that the Jews who returned from Babylon sought out Jerusalem/Zion instead of leaving the city forsaken because they believed it was their holy mission to rebuild the temple and reestablish their religion there.

In other words, first Isaiah announces the new names of praise that God will speak. Then the people act, living up to those names by returning to their parents’ homeland and rebuilding Jerusalem and its temple. Once they have succeeded, they deserve the names.

Can we use the same technique? For example, what if Americans started referring to the United States with the name “Mother of Exiles” from the 1893 Emma Lazarus poem for the Statue of Liberty? Would we be more inclined to welcome the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” who seek asylum in the United States?

What if we took seriously the final phrase from the American pledge of allegiance (1942), “with liberty and justice for all”? If millions of yard signs said: “America: Liberty and Justice for All”, would more people work to make it true?

And on a personal level, what if we named ourselves according to our good qualities, however nascent? For example, I realized I have been getting through a hard year with fortitude. Calling myself “Fortitude” might help me to stay strong and calm until various health issues are resolved.

I can also call myself “Blessed”, because after all, I have good food to eat, I live in a good apartment with my beloved husband, I have good long-distance conversations with my friends and with my son and daughter-in-law, and I can still write. I say “I am blessed” and I appreciate what I have.

Traditionally, Tisha B’Av (the ninth of the summer month of Av) is a day for mourning the fall of both temples in Jerusalem—the first by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. and the second by the Romans in 70 C.E. Today most Jews who observe Tish B’Av mourn the destruction and suffering without any desire to return to the temple method of worship.
Ezra 1:1-4, 3:7, 4:3-5, and 5:13-6:12.
“[32]I returned the images of the gods, who had resided there [i.e. in Babylon] to their places and I let them dwell in eternal abodes. I gathered all their inhabitants and returned to them their dwellings.” (translation of the Cyrus Cylinder in https://www.livius.org/sources/content/cyrus-cylinder/cyrus-cylinder-translation/). The cylinder specifically mentions the return of the images of two Akkadian gods. The Israelites would have no “images” of their God, and the ark of the covenant is missing from the biblical and historical record after the fall of the first temple in 587 B.C.E.

Nitzavim: From Mouth to Heart

For you must listen to the voice of God, your God, to keep [God’s] commands and decrees, those written in the book of this Torah; because you must return to God, your God, with all your levav and with all your nefesh. (Deuteronomy/Devarim 30:10)

levav (לְבַב) = heart, mind, consciousness.

nefesh (נֶפֶשׁ) = throat; appetite, desire; animating soul.

In this week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim (“Taking a stand”), Moses tells the Israelites who are about to cross the Jordan that they must pay attention to and obey all of God’s orders recorded in “this book of Torah”–probably a reference to the book of Deuteronomy. The reason for observing all these rules is “because you must return to God, your God, with your levav and with all your nefesh.”

Therefore some classic commentators, including Ramban, Albo, and Sforno,¹ wrote that the underlying command is to do teshuvah, i.e. repentance and turning back to God.

Moses continues:

For this command that I command you today is not too difficult for you, and it is not too far away. It is not in the heavens, to say: “Who can go up for us to the heavens and take it for us and announce it to us, so we can do it?” And it is not from across the sea, to say: “Who can cross over for us to the other side of the sea today and take it for us and announce it, so we can do it?” Rather, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your levav, to do it.” (Deuteronomy 30:11-14)

Sforno explained: “You also have no need for the wise men of the generation, who are far away, to expound it for you in such a manner that it will be possible for you (to do it) in exile.”²

The command to turn back to God is always possible to obey, even for those of us who are not “wise men”, because God helps us do it. Earlier in the Torah portion Nitzavim, Moses predicts that the Israelites will stray after other gods, and God will punish them by uprooting them from their land and sending them into exile in other lands. Then he says:

It will happen, when all these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse that I placed before you, then you will turn back to your levav among all the nations where God, your God, has banished you. Then [if] you return to God, your God, and you listen for [God’s] voice … you and your children, with all your levav and with all your nefesh … then God, your God, will return to restore you and have compassion on you…” (Deuteronomy 30:1-3)

Furthermore,

Then God, your God, will circumcise your levav and the levav of your descendants to love God, your God, with all your levav and with all your nefesh, in order that you will live.” (Deuteronomy 30:6)

In other words, if you want to return to God with all your mind and all your desire, and you listen for God, then God will meet you halfway and open your heart so that you love God. Loving God makes completing teshuvah (return) a lot easier. (See my blog post Nitzavim & Yom Kippur: Centripetal Force.)

What does the Torah portion mean by: “Rather, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your levav, to do it”?

According to Albo, “The text is certainly alluding to teshuvah. A pointer to this are the words: ‘in thy mouth and in thy heart to do it’. Teshuvah involves confession of the lips and remorse of the heart.”³

Then why does your mouth (or the statement that issues from your mouth) come before your levav? Don’t you have to feel remorse in your heart before you can confess wrongdoing? Don’t you have to feel like turning back to God before you can do it?

No, at least not in my own experience. In a way, making teshuvah with God is like doing the right thing with people I don’t really like. I know I should be compassionate and fair with them, so I make an effort to acknowledge them, say something friendly, listen to them, treat them with respect. After I have done this for a while, I usually find myself caring about them. Good speech leads to good feelings.

On the Eve of Yom Kippur, by Jakub Weinles

Similarly, I often feel distant from God. It is harder for me to relate to God than to human beings, especially since I only have a vague concept of what the word “God” might legitimately mean. I used to take the easy path of atheism, ignoring my undefinable feelings of transcendence so I could deny God and avoid the problem.

But now I take the first step of teshuvah by turning toward God and listening for God’s voice. When I pray or ponder a piece of Torah, the words are in my mouth first. They echo in my consciousness, and sometimes an insight arises, as if from nowhere, as if from God. And I feel moved, as if my heart is opening. The thing that was in my mouth enters my heart.

Teshuvah is on the minds of many Jews at this time of year, as we approach Yom Kippur (“Day of Atonement”). May each of us find a way to let the spoken liturgy enter our hearts, so that as we turn toward God, God returns to us.

Rashi is the acronym for the 11^th-century French rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki. Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra was a 12^th-century Spanish rabbi. Ramban is the acronym for the 13^th-century Spanish rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, also known as Nachmnaides. Yosef Albo was the 15^th-century Spanish rabbi who wrote Sefer Ha-Ikkurim. Ovadiah ben Yaakov Sforno was a 16^th-century Italian rabbi.
Ovdiah Sforno, Commentary on the Torah, translated by Rabbi Raphael Pelcovitz, Artscroll, 1997, p. 981.
From Yosef Albo, Sefer Ha-Ikkurim, translated by Aryeh Newman in Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Devarim, The World Zionist Organization, Jerusalem, 1980, p. 323.

Repost: Nitzavim

Glimpsing how people in other cultures live is one benefit of travel. Before we left New York, Will and I took a tour of Hasidic Brooklyn—actually of the Lubavitcher enclave in Crown Heights.

Our guide, Rabbi Yoni Katz, is an American Jew, like us. But we wore casual clothes that would blend in anywhere in the country, while he wore a 1940-style black hat, an untrimmed beard, and a black suit with white fringes (tzitzit) hanging out from under the bottom of his jacket. We have only one child; he has seven children so far. We enjoy the gender equality of our era; he is comfortable in a community that believes women have different natures, a community where most (though not all) women stay home to raise their many children. We grope to define the mystery called “God”; he speaks as if God were his beloved grandfather, still living in the neighborhood.

It seems natural for him and some other Lubavitcher Hasids we met to take injunctions in the Torah as literal expressions of what God needs from the humans “He” created. For example, the book of Numbers/Bemidbar tells us to wear tzitzit (knotted fringes) on four corners of a garment to remind us of the rules, so Hasidic men wear tzitzit every day for God’s sake. The Torah lists rules for kosher eating and the Talmud expands on them, so the men and women carefully keep kosher for God’s sake.

As for myself, I never accept a religious rule because a human being with authority wrote it down and claimed it came from God. Humans may be inspired by God, but our own brains translate inspiration into words, and a lot can get lost or altered in translation. Therefore if I cannot think of a good reason for a Jewish rule, I ignore it. I do not obey chukim (directives with no rationale).

Nevertheless, Yoni’s introduction to the Lubavitcher philosophy of life spoke to my heart. In short, he said that acting out of egotism will never make life meaningful. What matters is meeting the needs of others—both other humans who need us and God, who created us because “He” needs us.

Every week during our journey toward Jerusalem, I am sending a link to one of the posts on the weekly Torah portion that I have written during the last nine years. This week, after listening to Yoni, I chose Nitzavim: Still Standing

What does it mean to be standing before God? Can anyone do it? What does it mean to stop acting just for your own benefit, as if you were a god? Click on the link above and see what I wrote in 2012.

Today, as I post this, we are sitting in the airport in Rome. Next week I will be posting from Prague. Our journey continues.

(Note: If any of my comments about Lubavitchers is wrong, please let me know.)

Nitzavim: Secret Idolatry

What happens when you make a solemn promise while secretly planning to betray it?

Moses announces in last week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo, that as soon as the Israelites cross the Jordan they must enact a ritual in which they all say “amen” to twelve declarations. Each declaration begins “Cursed be the one who—”, but since the people say “amen” at the end of each one, they are actually making covenantal vows. (See my post Ki Tavo: Cursing Yourself.) Thus the whole community must vow to refrain from secretly worshiping idols, to follow six rules about treating other people ethically, to refrain from sex with beasts, to avoid three kinds of incest, and to uphold the teaching (torah) of God.¹

Moses says in this week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim (“taking a stand”) that the vows cover everyone: men, women, children, strangers who joined the Israelites leaving Egypt, and everyone’s future descendants. Then he reminds the people that they vowed to give up all gods except the one God of Israel.

What if there is among you a man or a woman or a clan or a tribe whose mind is turning this day away from God, our God, to go serve the gods of those nations? What if there is a root bearing the fruit of rosh and la-anah? (Deuteronomy/Devarim 29:17)

rosh (רֺאשׁ) = poison—sometimes from a plant (perhaps poison hemlock, a highly toxic plant different from a hemlock tree), sometimes from snake venom.²

la-anah (לַעֲנָה) = wormwood (Artemisia absinthium): a plant used to add a bitter flavor to drinks. (Excess doses of wormwood cause convulsions.)

People who swear fealty to one God while secretly resolving to serve other gods are compared to roots hidden in the ground that inevitably grow into like rosh and la-anah.³ People living a lie may believe they are safe, but their deeds will result in bitterness and poison, for them and the people around them.

And it might be, when one hears the words of this curse, then one will call oneself blessed in one’s mind, saying: “All will be well with me, even though I go with the stubbornness of my mind”—with regard to sefot the drenched with the dry. (Deuteronomy 29:18)

sefot (סְפוֹת) = sweeping away, destroying; or sweeping together, heaping up. (Either kind of sweeping is a prelude to doom in at least 17 of the 20 times a form of this verb appears in the Hebrew Bible.)

Again the Torah uses vivid language to bring the warning to life, though the phrase “with regard to sefot the drenched with the dry” is more ambiguous. One interpretation is that God punishes all the misdeeds of secret idolaters harshly: the inadvertent misdeeds they do out of carelessness, as if they were drunk (drenched) swept together with the deliberate misdeeds they commit because they are thirsty (dry), i.e. craving the forbidden thing.⁴

Another is that the clandestine idolaters (the dry) expect to live well by freeloading on the virtues of others (the drenched); they assume that if the community in general is honest and good, God will not single them out for punishment.⁵

One can also read the verse as a warning that when secret idolaters anger God, God is likely to sweep away everyone, the drenched along with the dry. By any interpretation, all will not be well with the idolater.

God will not be willing to forgive him. For that is when God’s nose will smoke, and [God] will be zealous against that man, and these bad results written in this book will crouch down over him, and [God] will wipe out his name from under the heavens. And [God] will separate him out from all the tribes of Israel for misfortune, according to all the oaths of the covenant in the book of this Torah. (Deuteronomy 29:19-20)

Moses then predicts two misfortunes: an increase in diseases, and devastation of the land belonging to the individual, clan, or tribe that continues worshiping idols despite the covenant with God.

Today we see an increase in devastation of land all over the world, since our air pollution is changing climates and causing bigger storms and floods and forest fires (and this is just the tip of the melting iceberg). But although many countries have laws limiting pollution somewhat, humans are barely beginning to consider a covenant requiring everyone to serve the health of our God-given planet. And there is nothing secret about the thirst for more money and power that leads people with authority to ignore pollution.

But the warning in the portion Nitzavim also applies to millions of individual vows: oaths of office, business contracts, marriage vows and promises to partners, public moral standards for authorities. All too often people deliberately violate these vows, reassuring themselves that no one will find out.

Do these secret sins lead to rosh and la-anah, poison and bitterness?

I believe the answer is yes. Human beings (apart from the rare amoral sociopath) have a built-in desire for integrity. We want family, friends, and leaders we can trust to be honest, trust to be who they appear to be. We want to be trustworthy ourselves.

And we are also thirsty for sensual delights, addictions, luxuries, power, fame, even the thrill of getting away with something.

When we discover someone has fooled us with a false front we feel outraged, then bitter. We can go into denial, but consciously or unconsciously we will abandon or otherwise punish the one who betrayed us.

The secret sinner can also go into denial, saying “All will be well with me” or “It’s not really my fault” or “Just one more time”. But even before anyone uncovers the lie, the liar lives with a nagging guilt, a betrayal of the divine will within, a poison that seeps through the wall of denial.

This week’s Torah portion gives hope to all of us who pretend to be saintly, but secretly serve the “gods” we promised to avoid. Moses says:

And you will turn back to God, your god, and you will listen to [God’s] voice as everything that I commanded you this day, you and your children, with all your mind and with all your soul. Then God, your god, will turn around your condition and have compassion on you… (Deuteronomy 30:2-3)

We can stop and do teshuvah, returning to God, turning back to the right path. One can do teshuvah at any time, but we Jews also dedicate the month before Rosh Hashanah (Elul) and the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to examining our behavior during the past year, apologizing to people we have harmed, correcting what we can, and turning back to God. This is a time to recognize and atone for the vows you have secretly broken. This is a time to repent and make honest vows to the divine within.

May we all face ourselves and the divine voice within. May we all turn around and become whole.

—

Deuteronomy 27:11-26. Joshua 24:1-28 reports that a version of this ceremony was carried out at Shechem, the location of the two hills (Mount Gerezim and Mount Ebal) that Moses specified in Deuteronomy.
Rosh (רֺאשׁ) = poison and rosh (רֺאשׁ) = head are spelled the same way, but the two words are merely homonyms.
The pairing of rosh and la-anah is a Biblical idiom also used in Amos 6:11-12, Jeremiah 9:13-14 and 23:15, and Lamentations 3:19-20. In these instances, God punishes the two Israelite kingdoms for worshiping other gods by letting invading armies conquer them; metaphorically, God is feeding them la-anah and making them drink water of rosh.
Rashi (11^th-century Rabbi Shlomo Yistchaki) cites Onkelos in this interpretation.
“Though God may have no intention of watering him with the bounty of His blessings, he must willy-nilly enjoy them as part of the community which receives them. The phrase ‘I shall have peace’ implies therefore two things: (1) the excluding himself from the community in respect of entering into the covenant and the curses; (2) saving himself from retribution because he is part of the community. (Akedat Yizhak)” (Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Devarim, translated by Aryeh Newman, The World Zionist Organization, Jerusalem, 1980, p. 306)

Haftarat Nitzavim—Isaiah: Dressed Up

Every week of the year has its own Torah portion (a reading from the first five books of the Bible) and its own haftarah (an accompanying reading from the books of the prophets). This week the Torah portion is Nitzavim (Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20) and the haftarah is Isaiah 61:10-63:9).

The final haftarah before Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) is the last of the seven weeks of consolation. The reading from second Isaiah begins:

I truly rejoice in God;

The soul of my body shouts with joy for my God!

For [God] has dressed me in garments of liberation:

[God] wrapped me in a meiyl of tzedakah

Like a bridegroom, priest-like in a glorious turban,

And like a bride adorned with her jewelry. (Isaiah 61:10)

meiyl (מְעִיל) = formal robe worn over other garments, wrapped and tied with a sash. (Plural: meiylim.)

tzedakah (צְדָקָה) = righteousness, right behavior, justice.

This poetic passage is narrated by the prophet, but it implies that God is dressing every Israelite living in exile in Babylon with the same amazing garments.

Second Isaiah rejoiced because after more than 50 years of exile, the Israelites in Babylon were free. The Persian king Cyrus finished conquering the Babylonian Empire and decreed in 535 B.C.E. that all foreign populations were now free to return to their old homelands and rebuild their own temples. According to second Isaiah (45:1), God anointed King Cyrus as God’s agent in order to liberate the Israelites.

The poet expresses this liberation in terms of clothing. God dresses the Israelites in new garments, garments associated with priesthood and weddings.

High Priest

The word meiyl appears 28 times in the Hebrew Bible. The first ten times it refers to a robe worn exclusively by the high priest.

They shall make the garments of Aaron to sanctify him to serve as a priest to Me. And these are the garments they shall make: a breast-piece and an oracular-apron and a meiyl and a checkered tunic and a turban and a sash… (Exodus/Shemot 28:3-4)

The purpose of the unique costumes worn by the priests is to make the men holy so they can serve in the sanctuary. In this case, the clothes do make the man. The high priest, beginning with Aaron, wears additional garments, including a meiyl over his tunic. The high priest’s meiyl is a long rectangle of woven fabric with a nicely finished neck-hole in the middle. It is dyed completely blue, and it has alternating gold bells and embroidered pomegranates around the bottom hem. (For more details, see my posts Tetzavveh: The Sound of Ringing, and Tetzavveh: The Clothes Make the Man.)

Prophet-Judge

In the first five books of the Bible, only the high priest wears a meiyl. After that, a meiyl is the prophet Samuel’s signature garment from childhood to death and beyond. When he is a boy serving as an attendant at the temple in Shiloh,

…his mother made for him a little meiyl, and she brought it up for him every year when she went up with her husband to slaughter the animal sacrifice. (1 Samuel 2:19)

Samuel continues to wear a meiyl as Israel’s chief prophet and judge. After Samuel has died, King Saul asks the witch of En-Dor to summon his ghost.

And he said to her: What do you see? And she said: An old man rising up, and he, he is wrapped in a meiyl. Then Saul knew that he was Samuel… (1 Samuel 28:14)

Rulers and royalty

Although the highest service is to God, the Bible also shows rulers dedicated to serving their nations wearing meiylim: King Saul, King David, the princes of the Phoenician city-states in the book of Ezekiel, and Ezra the Scribe—who was the informal ruler of Jerusalem when the exiles began to rebuild.

The children of rulers might also wear meiylim. King Saul’s son Jonathan removes his meiyl and gives it to David as a pledge of love. Once David is the king, he dresses his daughters in meiylim.

The only people in the Bible who wear meiylim even though they are neither rulers nor prophets nor priests appear in the book of Job. Job tears his meiyl in grief when he hears that all his children are dead, and Job’s three friends tear their meiylim when they first see him sitting in the garbage dump, covered with boils. Here the meiyl seems to be merely a garment indicating the status of prominent citizens.

Metaphor

Four of the meiylim in the Bible are imaginary; the image of a robe reinforces the idea of being wrapped in something. A meiyl is used in a metaphor for being wrapped in tzedakah in Job 29:14, and for being wrapped in shame in Psalm 109:29. God wraps Itself in a meiyl of zeal in Isaiah 59:17. And in this week’s haftarah, God wraps the prophet and every exiled Israelite in “a meiyl of tzedakah”.

Perhaps men wore meiylim to their weddings in Biblical times, but the Bible does not say. Brides and bridegrooms did wear their most beautiful clothes and jewelry, and the haftarah compares the bridegroom’s turban to the turban of a priest. The haftarah goes on to say that the rebuilt Jerusalem will “marry” God, and the returning Israelites will “marry” Jerusalem. It is appropriate, then, for God to dress the new Jerusalemites as if they were priests serving God.

The divine act of wrapping the Israelites in meiylim of tzedakah also explains a statement at the end of last week’s haftarah, in which God tells Jerusalem:

And your people, all of them tzaddikim,

Forever they will possess the land…(Isaiah 60:21)

tzaddikim (צַדִּיקִים) = persons who are innocent, morally in the right, righteous, just. (From the same root as tzedakah.)

How could all of the people be, or become, tzaddikim? The answer in this week’s haftarah is that God is wrapping them in tzedakah by wiping the slate clean and granting everyone a fresh start, in which they are innocent and dedicated to righteous service, dressed by God in the meiyl of a high priest, a king, a bridegroom.

Thus in the seventh and final haftarah of consolation, God is viewed as a being who grants the Israelites total forgiveness for their past misdeeds, and lovingly wraps them in robes that consecrate them and transform them into perfectly good people.

We all drag behind us the memories of our own misdeeds. Some of us strive to become better people, serving the good and staying on the right side of morality and God. What a blessing it would be for a supernatural being to grant us complete absolution and a fresh start as a human with naturally good instincts and desires!

Yet just as the Israelites who returned to Jerusalem soon began committing new misdeeds, we, too, would stray from the right path. Our new meiylim would fade into a memory, and we would once again face the human condition, in which we are constantly given opportunities to choose our own behavior.

But after all, it is greater to choose to do the right thing than to do it unintentionally. And it is greater to do tzedakah because we have consciously developed good habits than to do it because we have no free will.

Then we can say, with second Isaiah:

The soul of my body shouts with joy for my God!

For [God] has dressed me in garments of liberation.

Nitzavim & Yom Kippur: Centripetal Force

by Melissa Carpenter, Maggidah

Moses reminds the Israelites at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim (“taking a stand”), that everyone standing on the bank of the Jordan River made a covenant with God. They will take over the land of Canaan, with God’s help, but eventually they will forsake the covenant, and God will drive them out again

When all these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse that I placed before you, vahasheivta to your heart among all the nations where God, your god, has driven you. (Deuteronomy/Devarim 30:1)

vahasheivta (וַהֲשֵׁבתָ) = then you will return, revert, recall. (Vahasheivta is a form of the verb shuv (שׁוּב) = return, turn around, turn back, restore.)

Assyrian soldier drives prisoners into exile — Assyrian soldier
drives prisoners into exile

Why does Moses make this long-term prediction? Most modern scholars date this section of Deuteronomy to the Babylonian exile, circa 598-520 B.C.E. At that time, Jews had already experienced two exiles from their land. Assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in 740 B.C.E. and deported many Samarians to distant parts of the Assyrian Empire. Then Babylonia conquered both Assyria and the southern kingdom of Israel (Judah), and conducted its own deportations from 605 to 588 B.C.E.

Thus “all these things” includes multiple conquests and deportations of Jews. Jews living (and writing) during the Babylonian exile assumed that their all-powerful god had arranged the curses of subjugation and exile because too many Jews had abandoned their religion. Their own people’s misbehavior had triggered a divine centrifugal force pulling them away from their center.

In this week’s Torah portion, Moses predicts that after 150 years of deportations and exile, a centripetal force would pull them back in to the land of Israel and the presence of God.

Moses lays out five steps to a complete return. In these steps, the people and God take turns moving toward a reunion.

1) The first step, “vahasheivta to your heart among all the nations where God, your god, has driven you,” is returning to your own heart (the seat of consciousness in Biblical Hebrew) while you still live in a foreign land. In the next verse Moses explains:

Veshavta ad God, your god; and you will listen to [God’s] voice, you and your children, just as I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deuteronomy 30:2)

veshavta (וְשַׁבְתָּ) = And you will return (also a form of shuv).

ad (עַד) = up to, as far as.

The people must reject the gods of the nations where they are living, and cultivate awareness of their own God by listening for the divine voice and paying full attention to it. They must go as far toward God as they can under the circumstances of their exile.

Ezra and exiles return (woodcut by Schnorr von Carolsfeld) — Ezra and exiles return to Jerusalem
(woodcut by Schnorr von Carolsfeld)

2) Moses predicts that after they have turned their hearts back to God, God will take the second step and return the people to their former land.

God, your god, veshav your fortune and have compassion on you, veshav and gather you from among all the peoples where God, your god, has scattered you. Even if you strayed to the end of the heavens, from there God, your god, will gather you, and from there [God] will take you back. And God, your god, will bring you to the land that your forefathers possessed, and you will possess it, and [God] will do you good and make you more numerous than your forefathers. (Deuteronomy 30:3-5)

veshav (וְשָׁב) = will then restore, will then return (also a form of shuv).

3) Once God has returned them to the land of Israel, the third step is for the Jews to love God. Loving God is not easy, in this week’s Torah portion; God will have to help humans to do it.

And God, your god, will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your descendants, to love God, your god, with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you will live. (Deuteronomy 30:6)

“So that you will live” means “so that you will thrive”—perhaps materially, or perhaps spiritually.

4) The fourth step, Moses says, is up to the people:

And you, tashuv, and you will listen to the voice of God, and you will do all [God’s] commandments that I commanded you today. (Deuteronomy 30:8)

tashuv (תָשׁוּב) = you will return (also a form of the root verb shuv).

Once God returns the exiled Jews to their land, Moses predicts, they will become able to obey all God’s rules, as well as listening to God’s voice. Presumably, the people could have obeyed God’s ethical rules and family laws wherever they lived. But in order to obey the agricultural laws, and in order to conduct religious worship through the system of sacrifices at the altar, they had to live in and around Jerusalem.

5) The fifth step of return is up to God again:

And God, your god, will add to all the deeds of your hand: in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your soil, for good, because God yashuv to rejoice over you for good as [God] rejoiced over your forefathers—because you will listen to the voice of God, your god, to observe [God’s] commandments and decrees, the ones written in the book of this teaching—because tashuv to God, your god, with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deuteronomy 30:9)

yashuv (יָשׁוּב) = he/it will return.

Just as in the first step of return the exiled Jews, called “you”, will bring their hearts back to God, in the final step God will bring Its heart back to the people. The result of God’s rejoicing over the people will be abundant life for the humans, their animals, and their crops.

After this fifth step, both the Jews and God would have made a complete return to one another, in both attitude and practical action. It sounds like the complete restoration of a marriage after the couple has been estranged and separated.

What if “you” in this week’s Torah portion meant anyone seeking a return from exile, a return to the center, a centripetal path? The center you return to need not be a particular spot on the globe; it could be a spiritual place.

In the annual cycle of Torah readings, the portion Nitzavim falls either one or two weeks before Yom Kippur, the day Jews dedicate to repentance, forgiveness, teshuvah, and atonement.

teshuvah (תְּשׁוּבָה) = reply, return. (Yes, it also comes from the root shuv.)

In the Torah and in the time of the first and second temples in Jerusalem, the method used to atone and reach teshuvah with God involved animal sacrifices and sprinkling blood in the Holy of Holies. (See my post Metzora & Acharey Mot: Doubles.) For the last two millennia, the teshuvah of Jews on Yom Kippur has been a matter of prayer, fasting, inner examination, and listening for God with all our heart and all our soul.

Although Yom Kippur is the official day of teshuvah for Jews, anyone might return, any day, to the inner divine spark—and open the way for the divine spark to return to us.

May all people who seek forgiveness, atonement, and reunion find a centripetal path to the holy center.

*

I wish all of my Jewish readers Shanah Tovah—a good new year—beginning this Sunday evening. I will be on my own centripetal path from Rosh Hashanah (the beginning of the year) through Yom Kippur (the day of atonement), Sukkot, and Simchat Torah, the night when Jews gather to roll the Torah scroll back to the beginning and read the opening of the book of Genesis/Bereishit. After Simchat Torah (October 5 in 2105) I will dive into the book of Genesis again myself, even as my husband and I move to a new town. How could I resist writing another post on the beginning of creation?

Shemot: Choosing Life

by Melissa Carpenter, maggidah

At the end of his life, Moses says:

…life and death I place before you, blessing and curse; and you must choose life, so that you will live, you and your offspring: le-ahavah God, your god; lishmoa [God’s] voice; and ledavkah [God] … (Deuteronomy/Devarim 30:19-20)

le-ahavah (לְאַהַוָה) = to love, by loving.

lishmoa (לִשְׁמֹעַ) = to listen, by listening.

ledavkah (לְדָוְחָה) = to be attached to, to stick with, to be faithful to; by sticking with, etc.

At the beginning of his life, in the first Torah portion of the book of Exodus/Shemot, Moses survives only because the women in the story choose life—by loving, listening, and being attached.

The character who wants to restrict life is Pharaoh, a xenophobe. He is frightened by the large number of Israelites living in Egypt (called “Hebrews” or ivrit in this Torah portion, from the Egyptian word habiru). This unnamed king of Egypt says:

…it may be if a war happens, then they will even be added to our enemies and wage war against us, and go up from the land. (Exodus/Shemot 1:10)

Goshen and the new cities of Ramses and Pitom — Nile delta circa 1250 B.C.E., with the capital, Tanis, and the new cities of Ramses and Pitom

Pharaoh fears that the Hebrews will either stay in Egypt and fight against the Egyptians, or leave Egypt and deprive the land of workers. His solution to this double anxiety is to reduce the population of Hebrews gradually. First he drafts large numbers of them into forced labor building the new cities of Pitom and Ramses (which were actually built in the Nile delta, in the Goshen region, during the reign of Rameses II). But so many Hebrew men survive and have relations with their wives, the population of Hebrews continues to increase.

Pharaoh’s next ploy is to order the midwives of the Hebrews to kill all the boys as they are born, but let the girls live. At that time, more than 3,000 years ago, only men would go to battle, and only men would lead their families to another country. Women would do whatever their masters or husbands ordered them to do. Pharaoh is thinking ahead, assuming that a future surplus of Hebrew women is no threat, since they would all become slaves or wives of native Egyptians. All he wants to do is reduce or even eliminate the future population of Hebrew men.

But the midwives feared God, and they did not do as the king of Egypt spoke to them, and they kept the boys alive. Then the midwives said to Pharaoh: “Because the Hebrews are not like Egyptian women, for [they are] lively animals; hey!—before the midwife comes to them, they have given birth.” (Exodus 1:17-18)

In biblical Hebrew, to “fear God” is an idiom meaning to act righteously or ethically. The Hebrew midwives save lives, instead of following orders, because it us the right thing to do. They are listening—not to Pharaoh, but to the God of good deeds.

Then Pharaoh commanded his entire people, saying: “Every son that is born, you shall throw him into the Nile. But every daughter you shall keep alive.” (Exodus 1:22)

The Torah does not say how many baby boys are drowned, but we can tell that this command is also ineffective at reducing the number of Hebrew men; many years later, after that Pharaoh (probably Rameses II) has died and been replaced by a new Pharaoh (probably his son Merneptah), the new Pharaoh says: Hey, the people are numerous now in the land! (Exodus 5:5)

During the period when the previous Pharaoh was encouraging Egyptians to drown Hebrew male infants, a man and woman from the tribe of Levi have a son. (Later in the Torah, their names are given as Amram and Yokheved.)

And the woman conceived, and she gave birth to a son. And she saw him, ki tov hu, and she hid him for three months. (Exodus 2:2)

ki tov hu (כִּי־טוֹב הוּא) = that he was good.

Commentators have puzzled over whether the mother saw that her baby was exceptionally healthy, or beautiful, or placid and quiet, or good in some other sense. Both the Talmud (in Sotah 12a) and the Midrash Rabbah (in Shemot Rabbah 1:20) report the opinion of the Sages (i.e. authoritative rabbinic commentators from about 200 B.C.E. to 500 C.E.) that when Moses was born, the whole house was flooded with light. Their proof text is in the first chapter of Genesis/Bereishit, where God creates light.

And God said: Light will be! And light was. And God saw the light, ki tov. (Genesis/Bereishit 1:3-4)

Since both texts use the phrase ki tov, they must be talking about the same thing: light.

I find this interpretation a stretch. But I can imagine that when the mother sees her new baby, her heart is flooded with (metaphorical) light. Just as God creates light, and sees that it is good, a human experiences creation as good. When I “create” a story, it feels as if I only shaping a story that comes to me from some unknown place, and when I have finished writing it down, I feel elated, knowing that something good has happened. Similarly, when I was pregnant, I felt as if I were a container for a mysterious process, and when my son was born, I felt elated, knowing that something good had happened.

Moses’ mother hides him to preserve his life because she sees the goodness of creation; in other words, she appreciates God the Creator. She loves her son, and she loves God. As a mother, she attaches herself to her son until she can no longer protect him.

Then she was not able to hide him anymore, so she took for him an ark of papyrus, and asphalted it with asphalt and pitch, and she place the child in it, and she placed it in the reeds at the bank of the Nile. And his sister stationed herself meirachok, to know what would be done to him. (Exodus 2:3-4)

meirachok (מֵרָחֹק) = at a distance, long ago, mysteriously.

In context, Moses’ older sister Miriam obviously stands at a distance from the riverbank. But the Torah’s choice of words hints that Miriam has a connection with mysteries. When we see her as an adult, the Torah calls her a prophet.

Miriam stands by, ready to intervene and make whatever happens to her baby brother the best possible outcome. This is a different kind of attachment than a mother’s attachment to her baby. Miriam the prophet is faithful to a vision of the future that she wants to help realize.

Meritamun, one of Rameses II's daughters — Meritamun, one of Rameses II’s daughters

Then the daughter of Pharaoh went down to wash in the river, and her serving-women walked on the riverbank; and she saw the ark among the reeds, and she sent her slave-woman, and she took it. And she opened it, and she saw the child, and hey!—the boy was sobbing. And she felt compassion over him, and she said: This is one of the children of the Hebrews! (Exodus 2:5-6)

Pharaoh’s daughter decides to disobey her father’s command and save the life of the baby because she listens to him sobbing, and her heart is moved by compassion. This is another kind of love, the instinctive and generous love for a living being who needs help. It leads to another attachment, as she decides to protect the child by adopting him as her own.

Miriam emerges and offers to find a woman to nurse the infant. If Pharaoh’s daughter can see that the baby in the ark is a Hebrew, she can certainly see that Miriam is also a Hebrew, and she may suspect that the girl is offering to fetch the baby’s own birth mother. A jealous woman would not agree to this, but Pharaoh’s daughter has so much compassion that it includes the baby’s family. When Miriam returns with her mother, Pharaoh’s daughter says:

“Carry away this child and nurse him for me, and I myself will give [you] your wages.” (Exodus 2:9)

Pharaoh’s daughter not only gives the baby to his natural mother until he is weaned, but even pays her, so the whole family will thrive. Then Moses’ mother proves to be as righteous as the midwives at the beginning of the story, because when her son is old enough, she duly returns him to his adoptive mother.

Thus Moses grows up as a prince of Egypt, and launches on a long life that results in the liberation of thousands of slaves. They leave Egypt (as Pharaoh feared) and walk into a new life.

All the women in this story—the midwives, Moses’ first mother, his sister, and Pharaoh’s daughter—choose life by disobeying the fearful Pharaoh, and keeping a child alive. They are motivated by all three ways of choosing life that Moses describes near the end of his own life, 120 years later: loving, listening, and faithful attachment.

May we all be blessed with open hearts so that we can do the same.

Nitzavim: Concealed and Revealed

Hanistarot is for God, our god; and haniglot is for us and for our children forever to do all the words of this Torah. (Deuteronomy/Devarim 29:18)

hanistarot (הַנִּסְתָּרֹת) = what is hidden, concealed, secret.

haniglot (הַנִּגְלֹת) = what is revealed, uncovered, exposed.

In this week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim (“taking a stand”), the sentence above is wedged in between two predictions. The first is that the Israelites will worship other gods and then God will destroy their land and exile them. The second is that eventually the Israelites will return to God and God will return them to the land.

Does the sentence about what is concealed and revealed have anything to do with Moses’ two predictions? Since the sentence follows Moses’ prediction that the Israelites will commit the “sin” of worshiping other gods, some commentary assumes the hanistarot/haniglot statement is about sins. According to Rashi (11^th-century rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki), it means that if a sin is committed so secretly that nobody could discover it, then God is responsible for punishing the individual offender. But if a sin is committed openly, it is up to the community to punish the offender; “and if we do not execute judgment upon these, then the whole community will be punished” by God.

Other commentators relate the hanistarot/haniglot statement to the sentence that follows it, where Moses predicts that the exiled Israelites will return to God, and then God will gather them back into the land of Canaan. In this case, what is concealed is the length of the exile. The future is always hidden from human beings. What is revealed is what we should do in the meantime: all the words of this Torah. In other words, we and our descendants must strive to obey the 613 rules in the Torah as much as we can. (See last week’s post, Ki Tavo: Writing in Stone.)

A third strand of commentary, starting in the Talmud, interprets “what is secret (hanistarot) is for God” as a warning to individuals against pursuing arcane mystical knowledge. “What is revealed (haniglot)” is the Torah, which is good for us to study.

A pardeis at Shiraz (modeled after a garden of King Cyrus of Persia)

In the Babylonian Talmud (written by rabbis living under Persian rule in the first few centuries C.E.) the tractate Chaggigah mentions rabbis who taught about Ezekiel’s mystical vision of the chariot. Then it points out the dangers of pursuing arcane knowledge by offering a story about four great Torah scholars who entered a pardeis.

Pardeis (פַּרְדֵּס), often translated as “paradise”, is a Persian word for an orchard or an enclosed garden. Chaggigah 14b uses a pardeis as an image of the “upper worlds” of heaven, a realm of spiritual truth divorced from the physical world.

The four famous scholars who enter the pardeis in this story are Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, the “other” (Elisha ben Avuya), and Rabbi Akiva, their senior. Ben Azzai glimpses the divine presence, abandons his body, and dies. Ben Zoma glimpses the divine presence, suffers from a consuming a surfeit of “honey”, and loses his mind. Elisha ben Avuya, the “other”, glimpses the divine presence, but sees a duality: God versus an angel (Metatron) who is sitting and recording the merits of Israel. The Talmud says Elisha “chopped down the shoots” of saplings, i.e. became a heretic who separated God (the root) from the angel (the shoot). Only Rabbi Akiva comes out of the pardeis safely.

When the scholars are entering the pardeis, Akiva warns them that they will see pure marble stones that appear to be water, but they must not say “water, water”. Perhaps Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, and Elisha ben Avuya were unable to distinguish between polished marble and water—that is, between two key points in mystical understanding of the divine—and the result was death, madness, or heresy. Hanistarot, what is secret, belongs to God, and very few can perceive one of God’s secrets and remain whole.

In the 12^th century B.C.E., Rambam (Moses Maimonides) wrote that the hidden secret (hanistarot) in the sentence from this week’s Torah portion is Kabbalah, and the revealed wisdom (haniglot) is the Torah. Those who learn Kabbalah must still take care to observe the rules of the Torah in the world of physical action.

Today I encounter people who are so fascinated by mysticism that they ignore the Rambam’s advice, and spend all their energy pursuing an “oh, wow!” state of mind. Sometimes I get the impression that anything arcane and mysterious attracts these people, as long as it is non-logical and only tenuously related to the world we live in. These ungrounded mystics seem to assume they can transcend the rules in the Torah and rise above their own psychological (soul) issues. They appear to be more concerned with feeling love, than with figuring out what actions might be loving.

I also encounter people who want to “do all the words of this Torah”, but prefer specific rules about physical actions over admonitions to change their heart and soul. If they are Jews, they may be strict about keeping kosher, but not so thorough about loving their fellows as themselves. Examining their own psyches in order to love other people is too much for them.

In between these two types are the people who cautiously mine mystical claims for insight without trying to enter pardeis. They are enthusiastic about how religion can be applied to ethics and personal insight. Figuring out how to love one’s fellow as oneself, for example, is more important to them than either feeling ecstatic or following all the rules.

I want to belong to that third group. I want to investigate my own soul and stay grounded in my life here on earth. I want to borrow an occasional idea from Kabbalah without getting lost in it, and I want to use the Torah’s concrete rules as guidelines for behavior, to be reinterpreted if following the letter of the law gets in the way of following its spirit.

So I can subscribe to first part of the sentence from this week’s Torah portion:

Hanistarot [what is hidden] is for God, our god, and haniglot [what is revealed] is for us and for our children …

But I would like to end the sentence this way:

… to study all the words of this Torah, and apply them thoughtfully to our lives.