Bo: To Serve Somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody. (Bob Dylan)

The pharaoh of Egypt is an absolute ruler in the book of Exodus/Shemot. His word is law, and everyone in the country must serve him almost as if he were a god. There is no conflict between serving the pharaoh and serving Egyptian gods. But the God of Israel is a “jealous” god, who requires exclusive service.¹ One cannot serve both God and Pharaoh.

When Moses and Aaron first speak to the pharaoh, they only request a leave of absence for the Israelites so they can make a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer animal sacrifices to God, Y-H-V-H.² The implication is that then they will return to the corvée labor the pharaoh has imposed on them. But the ruler of Egypt refuses, sensing that there is a deeper issue.

And Pharaoh said: “Who is Y-H-V-H that I should listen to his voice [saying] to send out Israel? I do not know Y-H-V-H, and neither will I send out Israel.” (Exodus/Shemot 5:2)

He increases the workload of the Israelites instead. A demonstration miracle turning a staff into a snake does not change his mind.³ Following God’s order, Moses now warns the pharaoh about the first “plague” or miraculous disaster, which will turn the Nile into blood, and tells him that God said:

“Send out my people so yavduni in the wilderness!” (Exodus 6:16)⁴

yavduni (יַבְדֻנִי) = they will serve me. (A form of the root verb avad, עָבַד = work for someone, serve as a slave, employee, or attendant.)

Plague of Frogs, Golden Hagaddah, 1320-1330 CE

The pharaoh does not change his mind. After the second plague, frogs, the pharaoh says he will let the Israelites go, then hardens his heart and refuses as soon as God has ended the disaster. After the fourth plague, mixed vermin, the pharaoh offers to let the Israelites sacrifice to their god inside the land of Egypt, but Moses insists on the three-day journey into the wilderness.⁵ Again, the pharaoh agrees at first, but then refuses as soon as God removes the vermin.

During the seventh plague, hail, the pharaoh actually admits to Moses and Aaron that he is morally inferior to their god, Y-H-W-H:

“I am guilty this time. Y-H-W-H is the righteous one, and I and my people are the wicked ones. Pray to Y-H-W-H and enough from being thunder and hail, and I will send you out, and you will not continue to stand [against me].” (Exodus 9:28)

Moses agrees to do so, though he adds:

“But you and your avadim, I know that you still do not fear Y-H-V-H, God.” (Exodus 9:30)

avadim (עַבָדִים) = servants, courtiers, slaves. (Plural of the noun eved, עֶבֶד, from the root verb avad.)

Moses is right; once the hail and thunder have ceased, the pharaoh hardens his heart again and refuses to let the Israelites go.

This week’s Torah portion, Bo (“Come!”) begins when Moses announces the eighth plague, locusts.

And Moses came, and Aaron, to the pharaoh, and they said to him: “Thus says Y-H-V-H, the god of the Hebrews: How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Send out my people, so yavduni!”

In effect, Moses and Aaron admit that the contest is about who is superior, God or the pharaoh.

And the avadim of the pharaoh said to him: “How long will this be a stumbling block for us? Send out the people and ya-avdu Y-H-V-H, their god! Don’t you know yet that Egypt is destroyed?” (Exodus 10:7)

ya-avdu (יַעַבדוּ) = they will serve. (Another form of the verb avad.)

The pharaoh calls back Moses and Aaron and says:

“Go, ivdu Y-H-V-H, your god! Who and who are going?”

ivdu (עִבְדוּ) = serve! (An imperative of the verb avad.)

Moses says all the people will go, including the children and even the flocks and herds. The pharaoh replies that only the men may go. So the plague proceeds. After every green plant in Egypt has been consumed by the locust swarms, the pharaoh admits his guilt. Yet his heart is unmoved when Moses describes the ninth plague, darkness, in which blindness strikes everyone in Egypt except the Israelites.

After three days of darkness the pharaoh offers to let even the children go, as long as the Israelites leave their livestock behind. Moses refuses, saying they need their flocks and herds to serve God.

“Because we will take from them la-avod Y-H-V-H, our god, and we will not know with what na-avod Y-H-V-H until we arrive there.” (Exodus 10:26)

la-avod (לַעֲבֹד) = to serve.

na-avod (נַעֲבֹד) = we will serve.

Moses knows that God intends to take the Israelites out of Egypt and give them a new land. Is he making up an excuse so that when the people leave for good they can take their animals with them? Does the pharaoh ask them to leave their livestock behind because that it just what he suspects? The pharaoh threatens to kill Moses if he ever sees his face again.

Then Moses gets angry, and tells the pharaoh about the tenth and final plague, the death of the firstborn.⁵ When it comes, the pharaoh and all the Egyptians practically push the Israelites out of the country. But the pharaoh, accustomed to hardening his heart, changes his mind after they have left. He sends an army to capture them.

Plague of the Firstborn, Spanish, 1490 CE

In next week’s Torah portion, Beshalach, the Israelites believe they are trapped between the Egyptian army and the Reed Sea.

And they said to Moses: “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you take us to die in the wilderness? What is this you have done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Isn’t this the thing that we spoke to you [about] in Egypt, saying: Leave us, vena-avdah the Egyptians, because it is better for us avod the Egyptians than dying in the wilderness!” (Exodus 14:11-12)

vena-avdah (וְנַעֲבְדָה) = and we will serve.

avod (עֲבֹד) = serving.

The Israelites would rather serve the reality they know, however grim, than serve the invisible source of the ten miraculous disasters. God is an intangible idea that they are unable to trust.

I do not blame them. Human beings are naturally suspicious of change and skeptical about new ideas. We might experiment in small ways, but laying one’s life on the line is heroic and unusual—unless the boss orders it and everyone else is doing it, as in a war. Given a choice between certain slavery and risking death, many of us would choose slavery and hope that things would improve in the future even if we take no action.

Yet when we read a story like the one in the book of Exodus, most of us root for the Israelites to stop serving the pharaoh and throw in their lot with God. After all, serving God does not usually mean dying. Only once in a while.

You’re gonna have to serve somebody. What if the choice is between going along with an immoral status quo or rebelling against it? What do you choose?

This jealousy appears even in the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20:2-6.
See my post Beshallach & Shemot: Knowing the Name on the sacred four-letter name of God, which I transliterate here as Y-H-V-H.
Exodus 7:8-13.
See my post Va-eira & Shemot: Request for Wilderness.
Exodus 8:21-28.
Exodus chapter 11.

Repost: Va-eira

Moses never says “Let my people go!” in the book of Exodus without adding “to serve God” or “to slaughter offerings for God”. Sometimes he adds more qualifiers. Throughout this week’s Torah portion, which covers the first seven plagues, Moses’ demand is that the pharaoh give the Israelites a short leave of absence from their forced labor so they can travel for three days into the wilderness the midbar (מִּדְבָּר), and serve their god there with animal sacrifices.

Click here: Va-eira & Shemot: Request for Wilderness, to see a rewritten version of my 2013 essay on Moses’ demand.

Back in 2013 it seemed obvious to me that prayer in a midbar is different from prayer in inhabited places. I have done very little wilderness hiking, but even a walk through the woods or on a beach beyond the houses and other people has let me pray more deeply. And midbar means not only wilderness, but also includes any land that is uninhabited or uncultivated.

But this year, writing in our apartment in Split, Croatia, the idea of encountering God in the midbar seems intriguing but out of reach.

Maisel Synagogue in Prague; built 1592, rebuilt 1905

Since we left our home in Oregon four months ago, we have visited old synagogues in five European cities during the past four months, but we only managed to go to one service, at the Maisel Synagogue in Prague. We pick which European spots we visit, whether for a day trip or for a month-long stay, based on their history, art, and architecture. We happily spend our days in cities that were already urban centers centuries ago, and are still packed with people. I sing Jewish prayers inside our lodgings, and sometimes while I walk outside. But my praying is neither communal nor in a midbar.

We are heading for Jerusalem at the end of February. Until then, when we push our aging bodies into taking long walks, we pick routes with old buildings, museums, and an occasional café where we can rest and warm up. In Oregon we had breathtaking midbar of all kinds: seashores, forests, waterfalls, deserts, mountains … Why waste time going to those kinds of places in Europe when we can get the same or better at home?

Peacock and fallen oranges in a front yard, Split, Croatia

Now my memories of praying alone in the woods seem faded, as if it happened long ago. Yet every day I sing my morning prayers when I get up, and it still reminds me of God, still triggers gratitude for my life. And when I see something that amazes and delights me, natural or man-made, I am moved to murmur another prayer of gratitude in Hebrew.

I daresay both communal prayer and wilderness prayer will both come back to me, maybe in Israel, certainly when we return to the United States. Meanwhile, I savor not only my personal practice, but also continuing to study and write about the Torah.

Repost: Shemot

Entrance to synagogue in Split, Croatia (photo by M.C.)

The people we now call Jews have had many names over the past four millennia. The names they chose for themselves changed as they evolved from a cluster of Canaanite tribes, to an ethnic group with their own religion and country, to the scattered adherents of a religion and ancestry, to the varied people we know as Jews today. So did the names other people called them.

Click on this link: Shemot: Hebrews versus Children of Israel for an improved version of the essay I wrote in 2013 on two ancient names for the people we call “Jews” today: Hebrews and Israelites. In the Ancient Near East, the word corresponding to “Hebrews” (ivrim) meant outsiders, while the words corresponding to “Israelites” (benei Yisraeil) meant the children of an active engagement with God.

Both names appear in the Torah portion Jews are reading all over the world this week, Shemot (“Names”). It is the first portion in the book of Exodus, also called Shemot in Hebrew.

At least Jews who follow the cycle of Torah readings are opening the book of Exodus again. But what about Jews who pay little attention to the religion, yet stand firm in their ethnic identities?

A few of my friends in the United States fit that description. And so do most of the one hundred Jews in Split, Croatia, according to a Jewish man I met in Split’s only surviving synagogue. The survivors of World War II dismissed their parents’ religion.

“We gather mostly to eat dinner together,” said the man who called himself Albert to English speakers like me. His eyes twinkled. “We eat kosher lobster! We get it straight from the fisherman, and he tells us which lobster is kosher.”

The Jewish community also dedicates itself to maintaining the synagogue, which was created in the 16^th century out of the upper floors of two older stone houses inside the wall of Diocletian’s Palace. The interior of the sanctuary was remodeled in 1728, and has been maintained that way.

During the past year, a rabbi has been coming down from Zagreb about once a month to lead a service. The first service he led lasted three hours, Albert said. “We were thinking 45 minutes. People started to get up and leave. Afterward I told him he could come back, but we had to have a shorter service. He asked how long, and I said: 35 minutes. He said he couldn’t lead a service in only 35 minutes. I said okay, you can pray as long as you as you want to, but after 35 minutes we’ll go downstairs and have dinner. He got the idea.”

I converted to Judaism 33 years ago, but I am still aware of the difference between being an ethnic Jew and being a Jew for the religion. I can never have a Yiddish-speaking grandmother. I will never acquire the Ashkenazi taste for herring, either pickled or in sour cream. (I do not know what the traditional Jewish foods were for Croatians. Not lobster!) I will never know what it is like to grow up Jewish; I can only guess based on reports from my Jewish friends and memories of how as a child I was excluded and teased for other reasons.

I cannot be described as a “religious Jew” either, because in some ways I am not very observant, and my beliefs are idiosyncratic. Yet I remain passionately engaged with the religion. The longer I am away from the two Jewish communities I belong to in Oregon, the more I notice that I am a Jew and I can never be comfortable with any other religion.

When we visit old synagogues in Europe, I always take time to decipher the phrases written in Hebrew letters over the ark or on the wall. (For my own Torah study I use the Masoretic text, which includes vowel markings (nikudim). But the words on the walls are always painted or carved without vowels, like the writing in a Torah scroll, and like modern Hebrew in Israel. I hope to get better at reading unvoweled Hebrew when we spend a month in Israel at the end of this winter.)

Each time I pronounce a phrase in Hebrew and then translate it to myself, my heart lifts, and I feel a surge of homecoming.

The Hebrew over the ark on the east wall of the only synagogue in Split is in Aramaic, but I managed to read it.

Du lifney mi atem omdim, “Know before whom you stand.” (Talmud Bavli, Berakhot 28b)

It’s a tall order. But as a Jew, as an adopted member of the children of Israel, I will keep striving to do so.

Masey: Stages of a Journey

The last Torah portion in the book of Numbers/Bemidbar begins:

These are the masey the Israelites when they departed from the land of Egypt in their troops by the power of Moses and Aaron. Moses wrote down their departures for maseyhem at the word of God. And these were the maseyhem for their departures: (Numbers/Bemidbar 33:1-2)

masey (מַסְעֵי) = stages of the journey of. (A form of the noun massa (מַסַּע) = breaking camp, travelling on, journeying, stage of a journey. Derived from the root verb nasa (נָסַע) = pulled out, started out, uprooted.)

maseyhem (מַסְעֵיהֶם) = their stages of travel, their journeys. (Another form of the noun massa.)

The Torah then lists 42 locations, from Ramses, the city where the Israelites assembled to leave Egypt, to the bank of the Jordan River, where the book of Numbers ends. In the list are a few geographical notes to help locate the campsites, and three references to events that occurred on the way.

Which three events?

At Rameses

Vayisu from Ramses on the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month. On the day after Passover the Israelites departed with a high hand, before the eyes of all the Egyptians. The Egyptians were burying those that God had struck down, every firstborn; and against their gods God had done justice. (Numbers 33:3-4)

vayisu (וַיִּסְעוּ) = and they pulled out. (A form of the verb nasa.)

The extra information about the first location, the Egyptian city of Ramses, is that the Israelites left the morning after the night of the tenth and final plague God inflicted on the Egyptians, the death of their firstborn;¹ that the Egyptians no longer tried to stop them; and that their God was stronger than the Gods of the Egyptians. Therefore the Israelites left proudly and openly, confident that God was on their side.

At Refidim

Vayisu from Alush and they camped at Refidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. (Numbers 33:14)

This sentence refers to a story in the book of Exodus/Shemot that begins:

Vayisu, the whole community of Israelites, from the wilderness of Sin for maseyhem at the word of God. And they camped at Refidim and there was no water for the people to drink. And they argued with Moses, and they said: “Give us water so we can drink!” And Moses said to them: “Why do you argue with me? Why do you test God?” (Exodus 17:1-2)

At the end of the story, the Torah reports that the Israelites said:

“Is God among us or not?” (Exodus 17:7)

Eleven times during their travels from Egypt to the Jordan River the Israelites complain about the conditions and reveal their lack of trust in God, Moses, or both.² But this week’s Torah portion picks out only the time at Refidim, when God tells Moses to address the problem by striking a rock with his staff, and water comes out.

Why pick this complaint over any of the other ten times³ the Israelites test the leadership of either God or Moses? Why not include the time when Moses strikes the rock but fails to give God credit for the water?⁴ Or the confrontation at the Reed Sea?⁵ Or the complaint about food that led to God sending daily manna?⁶ Or the demand for the golden calf?⁷ Or the refusal to cross into Canaan at its southern border, which led to another 38 years in the wilderness?⁸

At Hor

Vayisu from Kadeish and they camped at Hor the Mountain, at the edge of the land of Edom. And Aaron the priest went up to Hor the Mountain at the word of God, and he died there in the 40^th year of the exodus of the Israelites from the land of Egypt, on the fifth month, on the first of the month. And Aaron was 123 years old when he died at Hor the Mountain. And the Canaanite, the king of Arad who lived in the Negev in the land of Canaan, heard of the coming of the Israelites. (Numbers 33:37-40)

Both of Moses’ siblings, Miriam and Aaron, die on the journey. Both are leaders of the people, but only Aaron’s death is mentioned in the list. It might be sexism, or it might be because his death establishes the succession of high priests. Aaron’s oldest surviving son, Elazar, climbs the mountain with his father and Moses, and Aaron dies after Moses has removed his vestments and dressed Elazar in them.⁹

But why does the Torah portion Masey also mention the king of Arad? In a brief story earlier in Numbers, this king hears of the approaching Israelites, attacks them, and takes some captives.

Then the Israelites vowed a vow to God and said: “If you actually give this people into our hands, then we will dedicate their towns to destruction.” And God listened to the voice of the Israelites and gave [them] the Canaanites … (Numbers 21:2-3)

They were testing God again, but not complaining. In the Torah, dedicating something captured in battle to destruction means dedicating the whole battle to God instead of keeping some booty for personal benefit. Perhaps the Torah mentions the king of Arad here to show that the Israelites are not always rebellious; once in a while they dedicate everything to God.

Not at Mount Sinai

Why does the Torah pick these three events, and no others—not even what happened at Mount Sinai? The Torah portion merely says:

Vayisu from Refidim and they camped in the wilderness of Sinai. Vayisu from the wilderness of Sinai and they camped at Kivrot Hata-avah. (Numbers 33:15-16)

Yet at Mount Sinai the Israelites experience the presence of God in a revelation full of smoke, fire, thunder, and earthquake.¹⁰ God gives them the Ten Commandments, first in a voice only Moses can bear to hear, then engraved on pair of stone tablets, twice.¹¹ At Mount Sinai the Israelites believe Moses will never return from the mountaintop, and worship Golden Calf.¹² At Mount Sinai the Israelites make covenants with God, verbal and sacrificial, and their elders see God’s feet.¹³ At Mount Sinai they craft a portable tent-sanctuary so God will dwell among them.¹⁴

During their year in the wilderness at Mount Sinai, the attitude of the Israelites toward God swings between terror and total devotion, with a side-trip into ecstatic idol-worship.

The three events mentioned in this week’s list, however, focus on the attitude of the Israelites toward God when they are on their journey, not pausing in ecstasy. At Ramses the Israelites who leave with Moses are confident that God can and will protect them. At Refidim they doubt that God is with them. At Hor they accept their high priest’s successor (a sign that they will also accept Moses’ successor), and they rededicate themselves to God.

No Itinerary

Vayisu from the hills of the Avarim and they camped in the deserts of Moab, by the Jordan at Jericho. (Numbers 33:48)

The list ends where the Israelites are waiting to cross the river into Canaan, their “promised land”.

An itinerary is a planned route for a journey, listing locations and transportation between them in the order one has determined. But Moses’ list in Masey covers only the locations the Israelites have already camped at. It follows their route in the past, not the future. The added comments on three events mark their attitudes toward God in the past, but do not predict their attitudes toward God in the future.

When the Israelites travel, they cannot even predict where their next campsite will be. For each stage of their journey, they follow the God’s pillar of cloud and fire to their next stopping place.¹⁵

I am preparing now to go on a journey through Europe to Israel, crossing two seas to get to the same land the Israelites in the Torah reached by crossing the Jordan River. My husband and I have been longing to take this trip since the turn of the century, and now we can finally do it.

We have made an itinerary. We are paying for our reservations for the first three months, and making tentative plans in case we can extend our trip to nine months. But even when you have pre-paid for airfare and lodging, things happen along the way; you do not really know where you will find yourself. The definitive list is the one you make at the end of your travels.

***

What will happen to this blog while we are moving our things into storage, then moving ourselves from country to country?

This is the last new blog post I will have time to write for months. Knowing that makes me wistful. But every week I plan to look at the posts I have written on that week’s Torah portion over the last eight years, and choose one of my favorites.

Then I will e-mail the link to you, my readers. From time to time I will add my photos of old synagogues and other relevant sites in Europe and Israel. I will keep you posted on the masey of Melissa and Will Carpenter!

—

Exodus 12:1-32. Exodus 12:37 begins: Vayisu, the Israelites, from Ramses …
I am not counting the times in the book of Numbers when only a small subset of Israelites complained: Miriam and Aaron in Numbers 12:1-2, 250 Levites in 16:1-11, two Reuvenites in 16:12-5, and Moses and Aaron in Numbers 20:10-12.
The other ten times are Exodus 14:10, Exodus 15:23-24, Exodus 16:2-3, Exodus 32:1-10, Numbers 11:1-2, Numbers 11:4-20, Numbers 14:1-4, Numbers 17:6-15, Numbers 20:2-5, and Numbers 21:4-7.
Numbers 20:2-13.
Exodus 14:10-12.
Exodus 16:1-4.
Exodus 32:1-10.
Numbers 14:1-4.
Numbers 20:22-29.
Exodus 19:16-20, 20:15-18.
Exodus 20:1-18, 31:18, 32:15-19, 34:1-4, and 34:27-28.
See my post Ki Tissa: Making an Idol Out of Fear.
Exodus 19:1-9, 24:3-13. See my posts Mishpatim & Ki Tissa: A Covenant in Writing, and Mishpatim: After the Vision, Eat Something.
See my post Terumah & Psalm 74: Second Home.
Exodus 13:20-22 and 40:36-38.

Pesach: Changing Four Sons

The wise one, the wicked one, the simple one, and the one who does not know how to ask.

These are the “Four Sons” in the haggadah (הַגָּדָה = The Telling), the guide to the Passover/Pesach seder. Even haggadot that leave out many traditional sections still include the Four Sons (or in modern versions, Four Children) and label them that way. If you go to a Pesach seder this Friday evening, you will encounter them.

pesach (פֶּסַח) = the animal sacrifice for Passover, the festival of Passover. Plural: pesachim (פְּסָחִים).

Neither the four types of children, nor what we should tell them, come from the story of the exodus from Egypt in the Torah–even though telling that story is what Pesach is all about.

The Torah does prescribe what a father should say to a son on Pesach four times. Three of these instructions are preceded by a hypothetical question from a child. But the answers in the Haggadah are different from the answers in the Torah. By about 200 CE the Jewish community in Babylon had labeled the sons in the four passages and changed the answers to be given by their fathers.

“The Four Sons” Pesach tradition is first reported in the Mekhilta di Rabbi Yishmael.¹ Who knows, maybe even Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha was the one who invented this section in the second century CE, and it became popular after his students recorded it. The passage begins:

There are four sons: a wise son, a wicked son, a simple son, and one who does not know how to ask. (Mekhilta di Rabbi Yishmael, 13:14)²

A parental answer follows for each type of son.

Is it possible to combine the four explanations to children in the Torah with the Four Sons found in the Mekhilta and all traditional haggadot? Here is my attempt.

The “Wise” One

The question of the first child comes from the book of Deuteronomy/Devarim:

If your son asks you in the future, saying: “What are the terms and the decrees and the regulations that God, our God, has commanded you?” Then you shall say to your son: “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and God brought us out from Egypt with a strong hand … And then God commanded us to do all these decrees, to be in awe of God, our God, for our own good always, to keep us alive as on this day.” (Deuteronomy 6:20-21, 6:24)

For about 1,800 years the haggadah has applied the child’s question to the rules of the Pesach seder:

What does the wise son say? “What are the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments that God, our God, commanded us?” You, likewise, open to him with the Pesach rule: “Nothing should be eaten after the Pesach afikoman.”²

Later haggadot say the parent should tell the child all the rules of Pesach, including the one that nothing must be eaten after the afikoman. Although in the Torah this child says “commanded you”, the Mekhilta rewrites his question as “commanded us” in order to make the boy look better.

Answering the child’s question in the context of Deuteronomy 6:20-25 would be a bootless enterprise. If you responded with every rule in the Torah and how it is applied, both you and the child would fall asleep long before you could finish the task. You could limit your list to the rules of the Pesach seder, including the afikoman; but why not bring up each rule when you actually apply it during the evening?

I recommend saying: “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and God brought us out from Egypt with a strong hand. So if we are wise we obey God’s rules, in awe and gratitude, and for our own good. Because here we are, alive today!” (Deuteronomy 6:21-24)

The “Wicked” One

The question of the second child comes from the book of Exodus/Shemot:

Take for yourselves an animal from the flock for your families and slaughter the pasach. And you shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and daub it on the lintel and the two doorposts … And God will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and God will pasach over the entrance … And when your children say to you: “What is this service to you?” Then you shall say: “It is a pasach slaughter for God, who pasach the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when [God] struck the Egyptians, but preserved our households.” (Exodus/Shemot 12:21-23, 12:26-27)

pasach (פָּסַח) = (verb) limped, skipped; (noun) an alternate spelling of pesach (פֶּסַח).

In context, the children are asking about the service of daubing blood on the outside frame of the front door, to commemorate the action in the book of Exodus. (Although pesach animals were slaughtered annually at the temple in Jerusalem until the second temple was destroyed in 70 CE, there is no evidence to date other than this passage in Exodus that the daubing of blood around doors was ever re-enacted.)

But the Mekhilta completely changes the meaning of the children’s question:

What does the wicked son say? “What is this service to you?”—to you, and not to him. Because he disassociated himself from the congregation and denied the foundation, you, likewise, blunt his teeth and tell him: “Because of this [that] God did for me when I went out of Egypt.” For me and not for you. Had you been there, you would not have been redeemed.

The father’s reply here sounds to me as if the questioner is not “the wicked son”, but “the son whose father hates him”.

The father makes the “wicked son” look bad by correctly quoting “What is this service to you?” and leaping to the conclusion that “to you” means the boy is disassociating himself from his parents and from other Jews.

This is a prejudiced assumption. Perhaps the child is merely expressing curiosity about a particular Pesach service and its meaning to an adult. The service in question is what the Israelites did in Egypt the night before they were freed: slaughtering a sheep or goat and daubing its blood on the lintel and doorposts of the front door.

I recommend answering: “Thanks to that service, God “skipped over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when [God] struck the Egyptians, but preserved our houses. (Exodus 12:27) And that is why we call this week Passover; the Hebrew name, Pesach, means skipped over.”

The “Simple” One

The third child’s question appears in Exodus after the instructions to sacrifice every firstborn male animal in the herd and flock to God, in commemoration of the tenth and final plague in Egypt. A firstborn donkey is redeemed with a sheep sacrificed in its place. The firstborn son of each human mother is also dedicated to God.

Death of the Firstborn, haggadah by Judah Pinḥas, Germany, 1747

But every firstborn human among your sons you shall redeem. And when your son asks you in the future, saying: “What is this?” Then you shall say to him: “By strength of hand God brought us out from Egypt, from the house of slavery. And when Pharaoh hardened against sending us out, then God killed every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of humans to the firstborn of livestock. Therefore I am slaughtering for God every male womb-opener, but every firstborn of my sons I must redeem.” (Exodus 13:14-15)

The Mekhilta takes the question out of context and shortens the answer:

What does the simple son say? “What is this?” And you shall tell him: “With a mighty hand did God take us out of Egypt from the house of bondage.”

The best answer depends on what the simple child cannot find the words to describe. If “this” is the Pesach seder, it suffices to answer: “This is the way we tell the story of how God rescued us from slavery in Egypt.”

But what if the child has qualms about God’s tenth plague in Egypt, the death of the firstborn? I recommend reassuring your child (or your inner child) by explaining: “That was a miracle in the story. Moses told our ancestors to commemorate it by sacrificing the firstborn of each cow, sheep, or goat at the altar, but to redeem every firstborn son by giving something different to God instead. (Exodus 13:15) Today we give money in honor of the firstborn.”

The Speechless One

Exodus tells the father what to say to his son about the festival of matzah without including any prompting question.

Seven days you shall eat matzah, and on the seventh day will be a festival for God. Matzah shall be eaten for seven days, and nothing leavened shall be seen with you, and no sourdough shall be seen with you, throughout all your territory. And you shall tell your son on that day, saying: “For the sake of what God did for me in taking me out from Egypt.” (Exodus 13:6-8)

Modern biblical scholars suspect that there was already a festival of matzah in the spring, before the first grain harvest, and the Torah absorbed the pre-existing festival into the Pesach observance.⁴

Nevertheless, the Torah instructs us to explain the presence of matzah and the absence of leavened food during the week of Pesach in terms of the exodus. And you shall tell your son on that day, saying: “For the sake of what God did for me in taking me out from Egypt.” So does the Mekhilta:

And he who does not know how to ask, you open for him, as it is written: “And you shall tell your son on that day, etc.”

Like the answers for the “wicked” child and the “simple” child, the invented “son who does not know how to ask” gets an answer that ignores the point of the corresponding passage in the Torah—in this case instructions for the festival of matzah.

I recommend telling the speechless child: “For seven days we eat matzah, and avoid any baked goods with leavening. Why do we do this? For the sake of what God did for me in taking me out from Egypt. (Exodus 13:6-8) That’s what it says in the Torah, but what do you think it means?” In this way you may encourage your child to ask questions and generate possible answers.

Pesach is when we must tell the story of the exodus from Egypt in a way that engages our children and the “children” inside us. In order to do that, we can combine the traditions with our own creativity. The Babylonian Talmud tractate Pesachim gives examples of spur-of-the moment alternatives to traditional sections.⁵ But if you would like to plan some alternatives in advance, you are welcome to use this blog post as a starting point.

—

The Mekhilta di Rabbi Yishmael collection of commentary on the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy written during the first through fourth centuries CE and by Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, his students, and subsequent commentators and redactors. The rules and customs of Passover in the Mekhilta were probably written in the early third century CE, about the same time as Rabbi Yehudah Ha Nasi collected the mishnah of the Talmud. The fours sons in the Mekhilta are alluded to in the Jerusalem Talmud, but not in the Babylonian Talmud.
This quote and all subsequent quotes from the Mekhilta use the translation in sefaria.org/Mekhilta_d’Rabbi_Yishmael. They are all from 13:14.
The afikomen is the final course or dessert of the Passover meal, consisting of half a piece of matzah separated and hidden early in the ritual.
The only reason given in Exodus for observing the festival of matzah during Pesach is the sentence: “And they baked the dough that they had taken out of Egypt, flat rounds of matzah, because it had not leavened, because they were driven out from Egypt and they could not delay. They did not even make provisions for themselves.” (Exodus 12:39) But the Israelites have two week’s notice, and their only leaven is sourdough starter, which never runs out as long as a little is saved from each batch of bread.
For example, Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 115b: “Abaye was sitting before Rabba when he was still a child. He saw that they were removing the table before him, and he said to those removing it: “We have not yet eaten, and you are taking the table away from us?” Rabba said to him: “You have exempted us from reciting the questions of ‘Why is this night different’, as you have already asked what is special about the seder night.” (Translation from www.sefaria.or/Pesachim 115b.)

Pekudei: Cloud of Glory

Moses assembles all the items the people have made into a new tent-sanctuary for God in this week’s Torah portion, Pekudei (“Inventories”), the last reading in the book of Exodus.

And Moses completed the work. And the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the kavod of God filled the Dwelling Place. And Moses was not able to come into the Tent of Meeting because the cloud dwelled in it, and the kavod of God filled the Dwelling Place. (Exodus/Shemot 40:33-35)

kavod (כָּבוֹד) = impressiveness, magnificence; honor. Often translated as “glory”, which also means both magnificence and honor in English. (From the root verb kaveid, כָּבֵד = be heavy, be honored; weigh down.)

The word kavod appears 24 times in the first five books of the bible. The six times when the word kavod is used in reference to humans, it refers to an impressive display of wealth, political power, or religious rank.¹ The eighteen times when humans behold the kavod of God, they perceive something magnificent and glorious.² What does it look like?

Sometimes the Torah is silent about what the people in the bible see (or visualize). In other places, including the passage at the end of Exodus, the kavod of God looks like cloud or fire.³

The divine cloud only fills the tent-sanctuary initially—as if God were settling into God’s new dwelling place. Then when God is ready to issue further instructions, at the beginning of the next biblical book, Leviticus/Vayikra, God calls to Moses. The divine cloud has moved and now hovers above the sanctuary.⁴Moses enters the tent, and God speaks to him from the empty space above the ark. (See my post Vayikra: A Voice Calling).

The Tabernacle in the Camp, Collectie Nederland

The book of Exodus concludes with the movements of the divine cloud for the next 38 years:

And when the cloud lifted from the Dwelling place, the Israelites pulled out on all their journeys. And if the cloud did not lift, then they did not pull out until the day it did lift. Because the cloud of God was above the Dwelling Place by day, and it became fire by night, in the eyes of the whole house of Israel on all their journeys. (Exodus 40:36-38)

Thus all the people have visible evidence that the kavod of God not only dwells in the portable sanctuary they collectively made, but also continues to lead and guide them through the wilderness.

The first time God manifests as cloud and fire is when the Israelites set out from Egypt and head into the wilderness.

And God went in front of them, by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them on the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light for walking by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not cease being in front of the people. (Exodus 13:21-22).

The pillar of cloud and fire leads them all the way to Mt. Sinai. Then cloud, smoke, and fire appear on top of the mountain instead. God speaks from the mountaintop during the revelation of the “Ten Commandments”. Then Moses conducts a ritual for the covenant between God and the Israelites,⁵ takes the elders halfway up the mountain to see God’s feet,⁶ and finally climbs alone to the top, where he spends 40 days and 40 nights.

And Moses went up the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. And the kavod of God dwelled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. Then [God] called to Moses on the seventh day from the midst of the cloud. But the kavod of God appeared as a consuming fire on the head of the mountain in the eyes of the Israelites. (Exodus 24:15-17)

While Moses is walking into the mysterious cloud of God’s glory, the people below think he is walking into the “consuming fire” of God’s glory.

In this week’s Torah portion, the kavod of God appears as cloud and fire hovering above the tent-sanctuary—except when God signals that it is time to travel on. Thus the kavod of God is displayed as cloud and fire: first in a traveling pillar, then on top of Mt. Sinai, and finally above the Tent of Meeting.

The cloudy and fiery kavod of God drops out of the story when the Israelites reach the Jordan River. In the book of Deuteronomy/DevarimMoses mentions it in reference to the revelation at Mt. Sinai,⁷ but God appears in a pillar of cloud on the east bank of the Jordan only once, when Moses takes his successor, Joshua, into the Tent of Meeting.⁸

Then we do not see God’s kavod again until the first book of Kings, after King Solomon has finished building the temple in Jerusalem. At the dedication ceremony,

…when the priests went out from the holy place, the cloud filled the house of God. And the priests were not able to stand up to minister in front of the cloud, because the kavod of God filled the house of God. (I Kings 8:10-11)

This echo of the end of Exodus confirms that God will dwell in the temple as God dwelled in the tent-sanctuary.

Cloud, fire, lightning, hail, any violent storm, expressed the magnificence of Ancient Near East weather-gods long before any of the Hebrew Bible was written down. Terrifying storms were inexplicable except as the work of gods. But the particular images of cloud and fire attached to the kavod of the God of Israel may carry additional meanings. Cloud conceals the divine (as in Exodus 24:16 above). Fire from God is usually described as “devouring” (as in Exodus 24:17 above).⁹ The kavod of God manifests as both mystery and terrible power.

The Israelites in Exodus need to see God’s kavod in order to believe God is still with them. Today most people take religion less literally. I often forget to wonder whether God is with me. Yet once in a while I see beauty that no human hand created, and I am thunderstruck by the mystery and power of the ineffable force I can only call divine.

Jacob’s wealth in Genesis 31:1, Joseph’s political power in Genesis 45:13, the vestments of the new priests in Exodus 28:2 and 28:40, and the wealth promised Bilam in Numbers 24:11. The poetic prophesy in Genesis 49:6 uses the word kavod for Jacob’s honor or reputation.
Exodus 16:7, 16:10, 24:11, 24:16, 29:43, 33:18, 33:22, 40:34. 40:35; Leviticus 9:6, 9:23; Numbers 14:10, 14:21, 14:22,16:19, 17:7, 20:6; Deuteronomy 5:21.
Before God sends manna, the kavod of God appeared in a cloud (Exodus 9:6, 9:23). When the people protest the deaths following Korach’s rebellion, cloud covers the Tent of Meeting and the kavod of God appeared (Numbers 17:7). But when the altar is initiated and the kavod of God appears to all the people, Fire came forth and consumed the offering (Leviticus 9:6, 9:23). When Moses climbs to the top of Mt. Sinai to spend 40 days, he sees a cloud and knows the kavod of God is concealed inside it, but the people below see the kavod of God as a fire (Exodus 24:16-17). The kavod of God also appears as both cloud and fire in Exodus 40:34-35, the conclusion quoted above.
That is my interpretation, but there are others. For instance, Rashbam (12^th-century Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir) wrote that after filling the tent, the cloud diminished and rested on top of the ark, between the poles.
Exodus 24:3-8. (See my post Mishpatim & Ki Tissa: A Covenant in Writing).
Exodus 24:9-11. (See my post Mishpatim: After the Vision, Eat Something).
Deuteronomy1:33, 5:21-22.
Deuteronomy 31:14-15.
Also see Leviticus 9:6, 9:24, and 10:1-2; and Deuteronomy 4:23.

Vayakheil & Psalm 13: Waiting in Contentment

detail of “Moses on Mt. Sinai” by Jean-Leon Gerome, ca. 1900

The Israelites are overcome with anxiety the first time Moses spends 40 days on Mount Sinai. In last week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa:

The people saw that Moses was long delayed in coming down from the mountain, and they assembled against Aaron, and they said to him: “Get up, make for us a god who will go in front of us, since this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him!” (Exodus/Shemot 32:1)

Aaron asks them to donate their gold earrings to melt down. They do, but Aaron does the work of making the golden calf. Even though he says the new idol represents the God of Israel, not another god, it turns out to be a bad solution to the people’s anxiety. Between them, Moses and God destroy thousands of Israelites and chasten the survivors. After a while God forgives them. (See last week’s post, Ki Tisa: Stiff-Necked People.)

Then Moses tells the Israelites what God does want them to make: a portable tent-sanctuary, where God will speak from the empty space above the ark inside the inner chamber. In in this week’s Torah portion, Vayakheil (“And he assembled”), they gladly pitch in.

Every man and woman whose heart prompted them to bring anything for the work that God had commanded to do through Moses, the Israelites brought as a nedavah for God. (Exodus 35:29)

nedavah (נְדָבָה) = spontaneous voluntary offering.

Betzaleil and Oholiav, Anton Koberger, Nuremberg Bible, 1483

Then Moses called on Betzaleil and on Ohaliav and on everyone with a skilled mind, to whom God had given a skilled mind; everyone whose heart lifted at approaching the work to do it. (Exodus 36:2)

Moses appoints the most skilled craftsman, Betzaleil, to make the most holy objects. But everyone with skill in weaving, sewing, metal-smithing, and woodworking gets to make some part of the new Tent of Meeting and its courtyard enclosure. And the people with materials keep on donating them, until Moses has to tell them to stop because the artisans have more than enough.¹

For the rest of the book of Exodus (five chapters), nobody complains and nobody worries. The people are content, fulfilled by using their gifts to make something important, secure in their knowledge that God will be with them.

Yet in the book of Numbers, three days after they set out from Mount Sinai, the Israelites start complaining again—this time about the food.² Even though both the ark and a divine cloud are leading them, even though the Levites are carrying all the pieces of the portable sanctuary, the people are discontented. Perhaps the problem is that they no longer have anything to do but march to the border of Canaan.

The Israelite ex-slaves in the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy are like children, who enjoy doing things on their own but depend on an adult to straighten out anything that goes wrong. When they are hungry or afraid, they complain and wait for God to relieve their suffering.

The book of Psalms includes pleas by suffering individuals as well as pleas for all the Israelites. Psalm 44 is the first of a series of psalms complaining that God is neglecting and hiding from the Israelites as a whole, letting them be defeated in battle and subjugated by enemies. Individuals feel abandoned and ask how long God will make them wait for rescue from diseases or personal enemies in Psalms 6, 10, 13, 22, and 35. Only Psalm 13 hints at a solution to God’s abandonment.

Psalm 13

How long, God, will you endlessly forget me?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I make schemes inside myself,

My heart in torment all day?

How long will my enemy loom over me?

Look! Answer me, God, my God!

Light up my eyes, lest I sleep death!

Lest my enemy say he has prevailed over me,

My adversaries rejoice when I am made to stumble. (Psalm 13:2-5)

The speaker has two problems:

1) God is hiding God’s face; i.e. the speaker is no longer aware of God’s presence, and so feels abandoned.

2) The enemy seems to be winning, despite the schemes the speaker devises. In this life-and-death struggle, only God’s intervention can turn the tables. But the speaker has already been waiting an unbearably long time for God to manifest and act. Where is the responsible adult in charge?³

Unlike the Israelites who wait 40 days for Moses to return, only to give up and demand an idol, the speaker in Psalm 13 finds a better response.

by James Tissot

Yet I will trust in your loyal-kindness.

My heart will rejoice in your rescue.

I will sing to God,

Because [God] gamal me. (Psalm 13:6)

gamal (גָמַל) = ripened, weaned, rewarded, made mature.

Even if God seems to have abandoned the speaker, the speaker decides not to abandon God. A more mature approach is to sing to God while waiting for God to act.

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayakheil, God makes a request, and the Israelites create beautiful items for God’s sanctuary. As long as they are doing that work, they are content to wait for God to rejoin them.

In Psalm 13, God neither makes a request nor acts to rescue the speaker. After waiting a long time, the speaker takes initiative and creates a song for God. They are still waiting for God to rescue them, but at least they are mature enough to sing, which leads to a hopeful frame of mind.

I think there is a third possibility, not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. If you are miserable and God does not tell you what to do, then act on your own initiative. Even when you cannot figure out a scheme for improving your situation, you can make something beautiful for God. Sing, write, paint. Smile and speak humbly to a fellow human being. Whenever you do something beautiful, God is inside you.

Exodus 36:4-7.
Numbers 10:33, 11:1-6.
Breuggemann’s interpretation goes farther: “The speaker does not for a moment entertain the thought that the trouble comes from guilt or failure. It is because of Yahweh’s irresponsible absence, which is regarded as not only unfortunate, but unfaithful to covenant.” (Walter Breuggemann, The Message of the Psalms, Augsburg Publishing House, 1984, p. 59)

Ki Tisa: Stiff-Necked People

Pharaoh has a hard heart in the book of Exodus; the Israelites have hard necks.

Pharaoh stubbornly refuses to let the Israelites go, ignoring both a series of miraculous disasters and the advice of his own counselors. Every time he is tempted to change his heart (i.e. mind), it hardens again.

The Israelites escape from Egypt and slavery, but whenever something makes them anxious they turn their backs on the God who rescued them, and revert to the mentality of slaves in Egypt. (For some examples, see my posts Ki Tissa: Making an Idol Out of Fear, Beha-alotkha & Beshallach: Stomach vs. Soul, and Shelach-Lekha: Mutual Distrust.)

During the revelation at Mount Sinai God makes it clear that idols will not be tolerated. The “Ten Commandments” include:

Do not make yourself a carved idol or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or of what is in the land below, or of what is in the water beneath the land. Do not bow down to them and do not serve them. (Exodus/Shemot 20:4-5)

And God’s next set of laws repeats:

With me, you shall not make gods of silver or gods of gold; you shall not make them! (Exodus 20:20)

Before Moses leaves to spend 40 days at the top of Mount Sinai, the Israelites swear twice that they will obey everything God said.¹

But they panic in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa (“When you bring up”), when 40 days have passed since Moses walked into the cloud and fire on the mountaintop. As Moses is hiking down with the two stone tablets, God tells him what the Israelites are doing:

“They turned aside quickly from the path that I commanded them; they made for themselves a calf of cast metal, and they bowed down to it, and they slaughtered sacrifices for it, and they said: ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!’” And God said to Moses: “I see this people, and hey! Am-keshei-oref!”. (Exodus 32:8-9)

am-keshei-oref = a hard-necked people, a stiff-necked people.

am (עַם) = a people: the humans of a particular ethnic group, community, or location.

keshei (קְשֵׁה) = construct form of kasheh (קָשֶׁה) = hard, stiff, heavy, severe, difficult. (From the root verb kashah (קָשָׁה) = be hard, harden. Pharaoh’s heart is hardened (הִקְשָׁה) in Exodus 7:3 and 13:15.)

oref (עֺרֶף) = back of the neck, nape, neck.

In the bible turning one’s oref, the back of one’s neck, on somebody can mean fleeing, like the English idiom “turning tail”.² But it can also mean rejection, like the English idiom “turning one’s back on”.³ According to the commentary of Rashi and Ibn Ezra on Exodus 32:9, stiff-necked people turn their backs on God and refuse to turn around.⁴ (See my post Eikev: Covered Heart, Stiff Neck.)

After telling Moses about the golden calf, God says:

“And now, leave me alone and my rage will increase against them and I will consume them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” (Exodus 32:10)

Moses Breaking the Tablets, by Rembrandt

But Moses does not leave God alone. He persuades God to refrain from exterminating the Israelites. Then he goes down and sees the calf worship with his own eyes. Moses shatters the two stone tablets God gave him, and orders a massacre of the worst offenders. God sends a plague to kill the rest of the guilty. After God and Moses have both simmered down, God declares that the surviving Israelites should still go to Canaan.

“And I will send an angel in front of you, and I will drive out the Canaanites … But I will not go up in your midst, lest I consume you on the way; because you are an am-keshei-oref.” (Exodus 33:2-3)

The people go into mourning. They want God right there travelling along with them; the idea of an impersonal angel does not satisfy their need for security. But the God-character predicts that accompanying these stiff-necked people would be so infuriating that God would erupt again in murderous rage.

And God said to Moses: “Say to the Israelites: ‘You are an am-keshei-oref! [If] for one instant I went up in your midst, I would put an end to you. So now, strip off the ornaments you are wearing, and I will figure out what I will do to you.’” (Exodus 33:5)

A stiff-necked deity?

At this point God has rejected the Israelites and called them an am-keshei-oref three times. Yet the God-character’s metaphorical neck does not remain hard. God backs off from the original threat to exterminate all the Israelites and tells Moses only the guilty will die. Then God softens a little more and promises to drive the natives out of Canaan and to send an angel to lead the Israelites—but not to go in their midst.

Moses then pitches the Tent of Meeting outside the camp so God will not have to speak with him in the midst of the people. When Moses walks over to the tent and goes inside, the divine pillar of cloud appears at the entrance. Then all the people watching from the camp rise and bow down to the ground. This probably makes a good impression on God.⁵

After a while Moses asks God for a personal favor.

“And now, please, if I have found favor in your eyes, please let me know your ways. Then I will know you, so that I will continue to find favor in your eyes. And see that this nation is your am.” (Exodus 33:13)

God promises to reveal part of the divine nature (“my back”)⁶ and also to inscribe two replacement tablets. So Moses climbs up Mount Sinai again. God appears in a cloud and passes in front of him, announcing that God is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, full of kindness and good faith, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, and forgiving transgressions (although the guilt of parents continues to have an effect for three or four generations).⁷

These may be aspirational traits that the God-character has decided to adopt—especially “slow to anger”. After hearing God’s glowing self-portrait, Moses bows to the ground.

And he said: “If, please, I have found approval in your eyes, my lord, will my lord go, please, in our midst? Even though it is an am-keshei-oref? And will you pardon our wrongdoing and our errors, and accept us as yours?” (Exodus 34:9)

And the gentler, kinder God-character agrees—on the condition that the Israelites avoid making any treaties with the natives of Canaan, destroy all the natives’ religious items, avoid intermarriage, and never make another cast-metal idol of their own.⁸

Thus the God-character turns out to be flexible, able to reconsider and turn the divine “face” back toward the people he had rejected.

A stiff-necked people

The Israelites remain stiff-necked. Even when they can see Canaan across the Jordan River, they still revert to their old ways and join the native Moabites in worshiping a local god.⁹

Nevertheless, these same Israelites wander in the wilderness for 40 years as they wait for their God to let them into Canaan. Occasionally they stray, but most of those four decades they are remarkably patient. Although it is hard for them to abandon their need for a physical representation of God, it is also hard for them to abandon their God altogether. They are stubborn that way.

“They are so stubborn that, if only You will pardon them until they are immersed in Your faith, they will cling as stubbornly to that as they did to the previous one, and You will own them forever.”¹⁰

My own neck is literally stiff, due to an old injury, and I have to work daily to loosen the hard muscles. I also have to work to loosen my stubborn preconceptions. Sometimes (thank God) I realize that I’ve been unconsciously reacting to an old emotional injury. Then I know it’s time to turn my head and consider a different path.

Stubbornness helps you to keep going when you are following the path that the divine presence within you knows is right. Turning your neck to look at other paths helps you to find the right way to “walk with God” when you get lost.

May we all know when to be stiff-necked, and when to turn our heads.

(An earlier version of this post was published in February 2010.)

—

Exodus 24:3 and 24:7.
Turning one’s oref indicates fleeing from enemies in Exodus 23:27, Joshua 7:8 and 7:12, and Jeremiah 18:17.
Jeremiah 2:27, Jeremiah 32:33, and 2 Chronicles 29:6.
Rashi (11^th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki) wrote “They turned the hardness of the backs of their necks toward those who reproved them, and they refused to listen.” (translation by chabad.org). Abraham Ibn Ezra (12^th-century) wrote “The image is that of a man walking down the road who, if someone calls him, will not turn his head.” (translation by Michael Carasik, The Commentator’s Bible: Exodus, The Jewish Publication Society, 2005, p. 285).
Exodus 33:7-11.
Exodus 33:23.
Exodus 34:6-7, the source of the “Thirteen Attributes” in Jewish liturgy.
Exodus 34:10-17.
Numbers 25:1-3.
14^th-century Rabbi Levi ben Gershon, also known as Ralbag or Gersonides, repeating a teaching by his grandfather, Rabbi Levi ha-Kohein. Translated by Carasik, p. 304.

(I did not approve any ads that might appear here. I hope to pay WordPress soon to remove this feature.)

Tetzaveh: Flower on the Forehead

by Melissa Carpenter, maggidah

Some of the unique items the high priest wears, such as his sky-blue robe, add to his awe-inspiring appearance.¹ Others items described in this week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh (“You shall command”), have an additional purpose; for example, the high priest wears a gem-studded choshen on his breast, and uses it to consult God with yes or no questions.²

Another item that only the high priest wears is a tzitz tied to his forehead.

And you shall make a tzitz of pure gold, and you shall engrave on it with engraving like a chotam: “Holy to God”. You shall put it on a cord of sky-blue. And it shall be on the turban; at the front of the turban it shall be. (Exodus/Shemot 28:36-37)

tzitz (צִיץ) = a flower. (Plural: either tzitz or tzitztim (צִצִּים). From the root verb tzutz (צוּץ) = bloom.³ Another word from the same root is tzitzit (צִיצִּת) = tassel, fringe, or lock of hair.)

chotam (חֺתָם) = cylindrical seal or signet ring, carved to impress a design on damp clay that serves as the wearer’s signature. (From the root verb chatam (חתם) = to affix a seal, to confirm, to close up securely.)

The noun tzitz appears 16 times in the Hebrew Bible. The first three times, tzitz refers to the gold engraved object the high priest wears on his forehead.⁴ The word tzitz next appears when God orders a demonstration to prove who deserves authority over the Israelites. If the leader of each of the twelve tribes leaves his wooden staff inside the tent-sanctuary overnight, God will make the staff of the winner sprout buds. In the morning:

Hey! The staff of Aaron of the house of Levi had budded, and it had brought forth buds, and it had bloomed tzitz, and it had produced almonds. (Numbers/Bamidbar 17:23)

In the rest of the Hebrew Bible, a tzitz is a flower. In King Solomon’s temple, tzitzim are carved into wood panels for ornamentation.⁵ In five places where the word tzitz appears, humans are compared to wildflowers that quickly wilt and die.⁶ When Isaiah rails against rich drunkards, he describes their heads as crowned with wilted flowers.⁷

But the high priest’s head is crowned with a flower made out of gold. The Torah assumes that this object, as well as the high priesthood, will continue indefinitely, passing from one man to the next.

The gold tzitz must have a flat surface where the words “Holy to God” are engraved, as well as two small holes for attaching the blue cord, but otherwise the design is a matter of speculation. Flavius Josephus, describing the sacred items stored in a Roman treasury after the sack of the second temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., wrote that around the high priest’s headdress was:

“… a golden crown polished, of three rows, one above another; out of which arose a cup of gold, which resembled the herb which we call ‘saccharis,’ but those Greeks that are skillful in botany call it ‘hyoscyamus.’ … a flower that may seem to resemble that of the poppy. Of this was a crown made … [it] did not cover the forehead, but it was covered with a ‘golden plate,’ which had inscribed upon it the name of God in sacred characters.”⁸

Several centuries later the rabbis of the Talmud described the tzitz as “a kind of smooth plate of gold, and its width is two fingerbreadths, and it encircles the forehead from ear to ear.” Rabbi Eliezer ben Yosei added: “I saw it in the Caesar’s treasury in the city of Rome and Sacred to God was written on one line.”⁹

Whether the gold object tied to the high priest’s forehead is an engraved band with a gold flower rising up from it, or a flower-shaped gold medallion with engraving in the center, it is more than a symbol. This week’s Torah portion continues:

And it shall be on the forehead of Aaron, and Aaron shall lift off any transgression from the holy things which the Israelites make holy, from all their holy gifts. And it shall be on his forehead perpetually, for their acceptance before God. (Exodus 28:38)

Just by wearing the tzitz on his forehead, the high priest compensates for any accidental ritual impurity in the people’s offerings to God at the altar.

How? The words “Holy to God” are a double reminder. The Israelites seeing it would remember that the whole purpose of their ritual sacrifices is to make themselves holy—i.e., to dedicate themselves to God above all other purposes. This dedication must be their core identity; thus the words are engraved into the gold medallion the way an identity seal is carved.

The words on the tzitz also remind God to treat the people as sacred. “Holy to God”, according to Rabbi Elie Munk, “relays a message of Divine love by proclaiming Israel as a nation consecrated to God. Yet, it is also a reminder of Israel’s permanent duty to strive every closer to the ideal of holiness. The Tzitz expresses both Divine love and Israel’s moral obligations.”¹⁰

The high priest’s tzitz could be viewed narrowly as a magical object designed to ensure conformity to God’s rules about ritual purity. Or it could be viewed as an aesthetic object inspiring a feeling of spiritual elevation.

But Munk points out that love and moral obligations are more important than conformity or spirituality. What good is a religious object if we are not kind and helpful to our fellow human beings?

So the built-in symbolism of the tzitz matters after all. Gold is the most precious metal in the Torah, reserved for the most sacred items in the sanctuary. A flower is one of God’s most beautiful creations, and also one of the most evanescent. Yet after a flower wilts, its fruit becomes the source of seeds for new life.

The word for “God” engraved on the gold flower is the four-letter name of God, a possible permutation of the verb “to be” or “to become”. (See my post Beshellach & Shemot: Knowing the Name.) And the words “Holy to God” are to be carved in relief on the tzitz, like the symbol of identity carved on a chotam, a seal. Thus the identity of God is confirmed and secured.

The flower and God’s name both remind us that our universe is always becoming. Flowers wilt, but the spirit of God goes on creating as seeds fall and new plants bloom.

May we all walk through life as if we wear an invisible tzitz, dedicating ourselves to life despite death, to change rather than stagnation, to growth instead of destruction. And may we all be kind to each another on the path of becoming.

(An earlier version of this post was published in February, 2011.)

Exodus 28:31. The sky-blue dye is techelet; see my post Bemidbar: Covering the Sacred.)
Exodus 28:30. The choshen is a stiff rectangular pocket attached with gold rings and blue cords to the front of the high priest’s tabard (eifod). On the outside front surface, over his chest, the choshen bears twelve precious stones engraved with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. Inside the pocket of the choshen are the urim and tummim, used to divine God’s answers to yes/no questions. (See Judges 20:27-28, 1 Samuel 23:9-12, 1 Samuel 30:7-8.)
Out of nine occurrences of the verb tzutz in the Hebrew Bible, all but one clearly refer to budding or blooming. The questionable reference is in Song of Songs 2:9, in which the woman describes her male beloved as “This one, standing behind our wall, gazing through the windows, meitzitz through the lattices.” Meitzitz ((מֵצִײץ is usually translated as “peering” rather than “blooming”. But this is the poem that says the beloved woman’s teeth are “like a flock of sheep climbing up from the washing pool” and her forehead is “like a slice of pomegranate”. (Songs 4:2-3) Maybe her lover is “blooming” through the lattices, like an eager flowering vine.
Exodus 28:36 and 39:30, Leviticus 8:9.
1 Kings 6:18, 6:29, 6:32, 6:35.
Isaiah 40:6, 40:7, 40:8; Psalm 103:15; Job 14:2.
Isaiah 28:1, 28:4. Tzitz also appears in Jeremiah 48:9.
Flavius Josephus, The Works of Flavius Josephus, translated by William Whiston, Baltimore, 1835, book III, chapter VII, p. 71.
Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 63b, in the William Davidson Talmud, Koren Noe Edition, sefaria.org/Shabbat.63a?lang=bi.
Rabbi Eli Munk (20^th-century), The Call of the Torah: Shemos, translated by E.S. Mazer, Mesorah Publictions, Ltd., Brooklyn, 2001, p. 405.

Terumah: Wood Inside

From everyone whose heart urges him on, you shall take my donation. And this is the donation that you shall take from them … (Exodus/Shemot 25:2-3)

All the materials to make the portable sanctuary for God, and all its furnishings, must be given voluntarily. The necessary materials are then listed in this week’s Torah portion, Terumah (“Donation”):

gold, silver, and copper (or bronze). (See my post Terumah: Heavy Metals.)
sky-blue, red-violet, and crimson dyes. (See my post Bemidbar: Covering the Sacred.)
linen thread and goat’s hair, for weaving tent-fabric and curtains. (See my post Terumah: Under Cover.)
reddened ram hides and tachash skins (waterproof, from an unknown animal).
shittim.
olive oil for the menorah and spices for anointing oil and incense.
precious stones for the high priest’s vestments. (See my post Tetzavveh: The Clothes Make the Man.)

shittim (שִׁטִּים) = trees tentatively identified as one of the taller species of acacia, acacia nilotica (also called a gum Arabic tree or a thorn mimosa). Native to India, the Middle East, and Africa, they thrive in arid conditions. The trunks are a source of hardwood, the bark exudes medicinal gum, and the seed pods are used for livestock feed. These acacias can reach a height of 30 meters (98 feet), though short trees are more common.

Why use acacia wood?

All the wood used to make the pieces of the portable sanctuary is shittim. The word shittim shows up in one other context in the Torah, as the place-name for where the Israelites camp on the east bank of the Jordan, before they finally cross into Canaan to conquer their “promised land”.¹

And Israel was staying at the Shittim, and the people began to be unfaithful with Moabite women. (Numbers/Bemidbar 25:1)

What do the Israelite men do with the Moabite women on the acacia-covered plain? They worship the local god, Ba-al Pe-or. (See my post Balak & Pinchas: How to Stop a Plague, Part 1.) The God of Israel punishes them for this act of infidelity with a plague that kills 24,000 people.²

Since acacias were plentiful throughout the ancient Near East, it could be a coincidence that the place where Israelites first worship another god bears the same name as the wood in God’s sanctuary. But it is hard not to read more meaning into the name Shittim.

Rabbi Bachya ben Asher wrote circa 1300 CE that the shittim wood of the portable sanctuary atones for the people’s sin at Shittim because “G’d arranges for the cure before the onset of the disease”.³

Perhaps this wood can be viewed two different ways.

What did they make from the wood?

And they shall make an ark of shittim wood, a pair and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide and a cubit and a half high. And you shall plate it with pure gold, inside and outside … (Exodus 25:10-11)

The divine instructions for the sanctuary also call for shittim wood to make the carrying-poles attached to the ark, the bread table and its poles, and the incense altar and its poles. All three items will be gold-plated so the wood is hidden. Out of all the furnishings inside the tent, the only items that are not gold-covered wood are solid gold: the lid of the ark (with keruvim),⁴ the solid gold lampstand/menorah,⁵ and the solid gold utensils for the bread table and the menorah.⁶

This week’s Torah portion also describes the fabrics and leathers that will be hung to make the walls, curtains, and roof of the tent. The rigid framework to hold these in place will be made of planks, bars, and pillars of shittim, all of them covered with gold, their tenons inserted into silver sockets.⁷

The altar for animal offerings, to be placed in front of the tent, will be made of shittim covered with copper (or bronze).⁸ The curtain-wall defining the courtyard around the tent will be supported by wooden posts, probably also of acacia, though the Torah does not specify the wood. Instead of being completely overlaid with metal, these posts are merely bound with silver bands.⁹

Why is the wood in the tent sanctuary covered with gold?

Acacia wood is naturally water-resistant, and in the desert it would not need another covering to protect it from rain.

But appearances matter. The Israelites probably found gold more impressive and more likely to elevate the soul than mere wood, which could be seen anywhere an acacia tree cracked or was cut into firewood. The God of Israel deserved a sanctuary in which every exposed surface is either brilliantly colored fabric or gleaming with gold. Gold was the most precious of the precious metals, and it shines like the sun. When the Israelites make an idol to represent their God, they make a calf out of gold.¹⁰

Yet the strength of wood is necessary to hold up the structures that soft gold could not support. The ark lid with its keruvim and the menorah could be made of solid gold because they were relatively small. According to this week’s Torah portion, the ark lid was only one meter (just over 3 feet) by 2/3 meter (just over 2 feet), and the extra weight of the gold keruvim on the two ends would be supported by the gold-plated boards underneath.

The height of the menorah is not given in the Torah, but the Talmud (Menachot 28b) says it was 18 handbreadths: about 1½ meters (just over 5 feet). Pure gold cannot hold its shape, or support any additional weight, if it is taller than two meters.

According to the portion Terumah, God would speak from the empty space between the keruvim and above the lid of the ark.¹¹ Thus the lid and its keruvim are made entirely from gold, the metal associated with God.

But the ark itself, like the bread table and the incense altar, only looks ethereal and golden from the outside. The ark can support the weight of the keruvim, the table can support the weight of the gold bowls, jars, and jugs, and the incense altar can support the weight of the coals only because they are all constructed out of strong wood.

Similarly, the uprights and crossbars of the tent itself may shine like sunbeams, but inside the gold covering are planks of wood strong enough to support the weight of the roof-coverings and curtain walls.

In this week’s Torah portion, God says that after the people have donated all the materials,

Then they shall make for me a holy place, and I shall dwell among them. (Exodus 25:8)

It is not enough for “everyone whose heart urges him on” to donate the materials. The people with generous hearts, hearts open to God, must also donate their labor. And even when every part of the sanctuary is assembled and completed, the work is not over. God is not something that just happens to the people; they must actively serve God by bringing all the prescribed offerings to the altar, by purifying themselves before they enter the courtyard of the sanctuary, and by feeding the priests and Levites who conduct the rituals. They must come to God with their own bodies and hearts.

Perhaps the acacia wood in the sanctuary represents this ongoing human effort. Human beings are like trees, growing and aging, surviving accidents and eventually dying. We are not shiny or immutable like gold, but we are strong. Our relationship with God will not hold up unless we apply our inner strength and persistence, unless we keep reminding ourselves to pay attention and bring the divine into our daily lives. Reserving God for ecstatic, golden experiences does not make a place for God to dwell among us.

On the other hand, if human effort is all bare wood without a glimpse of gold, it may become deadwood. We may forget our purpose in life when we are camped at Shittim on the bank of the Jordan River. Then we end up imitating whoever appears in front of us—perhaps thoughtless neighbors, or famous people in the media. We forget the inner gold standard of our own ethics.

Like the sanctuary, we need both wood and gold.

—

Shittim refers to the same camping site in Numbers 33:49. It appears as a place-name for an unknown location in Joel 4:18.
Numbers 25:9.
Bachya ben Asher ibn Halawa, Shemot 26:15, following Midrash Tanchuma. Translation by Eliyahu Munk, 1998, in Sefaria, sefaria.org.
Exodus 25:17-22. See my post Terumah: Cherubs Are Not for Valentine’s Day.
Exodus 25:31-40. See my post Terumah: Tree of Light.
Exodus 25:9-30, 25:38.
Exodus 25:15-37.
Exodus 27:1-2.
Exodus 27:17.
Exodus 32:1-6.
Exodus 25:22.