Eikev: 40 Days and 40 Nights

Moses spends most of the book of Deuteronomy/Devarim reminding the Israelites that for 40 years they have been rebelling against God and provoking God to anger. For 40 years Moses has been urging the people to change their ways and urging God not to wipe them out. After Moses dies and the people enter the Promised Land, he warns, he can no longer intercede for them.

In the middle of another harangue in this week’s Torah portion, Eikev (“on the heels of”), Moses is seized by a visceral memory from 39 years before.

Moses and the Ten Commandments, by James J.J. Tissot, 1896

In Choreiv you provoked God, and God became furious enough to exterminate you. When I went up to the mountain to take the stone tablets of the covenant that God had cut with you, and I stayed on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights—bread I did not eat and water I did not drink. Then God gave me the two stone tablets written by the finger of God, and on them were all the words that God had spoken with you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. And it happened at the end of 40 days and 40 nights, God gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. (Deuteronomy/Devarim 9:8-11)

Choreiv = dryness, drought; an alternate name for Sinai.

Moses does not mention the reams of information God gave him during those 40 days, according to the book of Exodus/Shemot: hundreds of laws, and instructions for making a portable sanctuary. What sticks in his memory—so much that he says it twice—is receiving the stone tablets after spending 40 days and 40 nights on the mountaintop with God.

The Torah often uses “40 days” or “40 years” to mean “a long time”. But the phrase “40 days and 40 nights” appears in only four stories: Noah and the flood in Genesis; Moses’ two long stints on Mount Sinai in Exodus; Moses’ recollection of that time in this week’s Torah portion in Deuteronomy; and the prophet Elijah’s stay in a cave on Mount Choreiv in Kings I.

In all of these passages, if something happens for 40 days and 40 nights, it is removed from the ordinary world.

Moses’ first 40 days and nights on the mountain

On the last night of Moses’ first 40 days and nights on the mountaintop, God gives him the tablets. Then God tells him to hurry back down, because the Israelites have made themselves a cast-metal idol, a golden calf. In both the book of Exodus and Moses’ recollection 40 years later, God offers to wipe out those no-good Israelites and choose Moses’ descendants instead.

And God said to me: “I have seen this people, and look, it is a stiff-necked people. Leave me alone, and I will exterminate them and wipe out their name from under the heavens and make you into a greater and mightier nation than they.” (Deuteronomy 9:13-14)

In the Exodus account, Moses picks up on God’s hint and does not leave God alone. Instead, he argues that it would give God a bad reputation if God now killed the people God had personally brought out of Egypt. Only after God relents does Moses go down the mountain.

But 40 years later, Moses does not remember arguing with God. He merely says:

And I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. (Deuteronomy 9:15)

His sensory impressions—the fire on the mountain, the stone tablets in his hands—come back to Moses so vividly that he misses an opportunity to remind the Israelites that he intervened for them again. He only remembers and patches it into his story later.

As Moses tells the story in this week’s Torah portion, he saw the people carousing in front of the golden calf, smashed the stone tablets, then went back up the mountain for another 40-day fast in order to appease God.

I grasped the two tablets and threw them from my two hands and shattered them before your eyes. Then I fell down before God, like the first time, 40 days and 40 nights—bread I did not eat and water I did not drink—because of all your offense that you committed, doing what was bad in God’s eyes, angering God. (Deuteronomy 9:17-18)

Moses backtracks briefly, remembering that he ground the calf into gold dust. But he does not mention all the other things he did in Exodus before climbing the mountain again, including ordering the Levites to kill about 3,000 men who worshiped the golden calf, and asking God to either bear with the offending Israelites or erase Moses from God’s book.

Moses’ second 40 days and nights on the mountain

What matters most to Moses is that he spent another 40 days and 40 nights with God on the mountaintop.

According to Exodus, during that that time Moses saw God’s back, hear God describe Itself, bargained some more, and received more laws. Then God told him to write the words of the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets, which Moses did.

In Deuteronomy, Moses does not mention any of this, not even seeing God’s back! But he repeats three times that he stayed before God on the mountain a second time for 40 days and 40 nights. And in Moses’ memory, he made an ark for the tablets, but God carved the words into the stone.

And God wrote on the tablets, like the first inscription, the Ten Commandments that God spoke to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly, and God gave them to me. Then I turned and came down from the mountain, and I put the tablets in the ark that I had made, and they were there, as God had commanded me. (Deuteronomy 10:4-5)

Moses brings up the second 40 days and 40 nights before he returns to preaching.

And I, I stood on the mountain, as on the first days, 40 days and 40 nights, and God listened to me this time as well, and God did not want to exterminate you. God said to me: Get up, go on the journey in front of the people… (Deuteronomy 10:10-11)

Moses’ overriding memories of “40 days and 40 nights” and “two stone tablets“ could be considered a distraction from his point that the Israelites rebelled against God even at Mount Sinai/Choreiv, and Moses kept on interceding for them. Maybe now that he is 120 years old, Moses’ mind is wandering.

Or maybe these are the two most important things in the story after all:

1) The basic rules for human behavior are written in stone. Even if you shatter them, they will return.

2) When you spend 40 days and 40 nights above the world, like Noah in his ark or Moses on the mountain, you may be so high you forget to eat and drink. But God will bring you back down to deal with life on the ground, life with other people.

Haftarat Devarim—Isaiah: Ignoring the Divine

Every weekly Torah portion is paired with a haftarah (“what emerges”), a passage from Prophets/Neviim. For nearly 2,000 years, in traditional Saturday Torah services, the chanting of the haftarah follows the chanting of the Torah portion. This week, Jews read the first Torah portion in the book of Deuteronomy/Devarim, which is also called Devarim (“Words”). The haftarah this week is Isaiah 1:1-27. Both the Torah portion and the haftarah contain the word eykhah, which means “how” as in “Oh, how could this happen?” This is also the opening word of the book of Lamentations, which we read on Tisha Be-Av, the fast day shortly after this Shabbat. (See my post: Devarim, Isaiah, & Lamentations: Desperation.)

All three readings accuse the Israelites of rebellion against God. But Isaiah offers the most hope for change. The Shabbat before Tisha Be-Av is called Shabbat Chazon (Sabbath of Vision) because the book of Isaiah begins with the word chazon (vision or revelation).

The vision of Yeshayahu, son of Amotz, who had vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem … (Isaiah 1:1)

The Hebrew for Isaiah is Yeshayahu, which means “Rescue of God”. Again and again, even as Isaiah points out how despicably the children of Israel are behaving, he promises that eventually God will rescue them.

After the opening sentence, which also dates Isaiah’s prophecies by listing the names of the kings of Judah during his time, Isaiah’s first poem begins:

Listen, heavens, and use [your] ears, earth;

Because God has spoken:

I brought up children, and I made them high,

And they? They rebel against me.

An ox knows his koneh,

And a donkey the feeding-trough of his ba-al.

Israel does not know;

My people do not hitbonan. (Isaiah 1:2-4)

koneh = owner, buyer; creator.

ba-al = master, ruler; local god.

hitbonan = consider. (From the same root as binah = understanding, analysis.)

In these verses, the ox is the most knowledgeable because it recognizes its owner. Next comes the donkey, which recognizes the place where its owner provides nourishment. Last come the Israelites, who do not even recognize that someone is giving them nourishment.

The reverse order applies to the role of God. God, who creates all creatures, is only the creator (an earlier meaning of koneh) as far as the ox is concerned. God is the ba-al, the local god, of the donkey. But when it comes to the children of Israel, God is also like a parent, bringing them up, making them high (superior), and considering them “My people”.

Does this mean that the more God does for someone, the less that creature recognizes God? Not necessarily. The tragedy in these opening verses is that God elevates human beings in general by endowing us with both the intelligence to consider, analyze, and understand, and the desire to distinguish between good and bad. The Israelites, like any people, have the God-given ability to figure out that God is their creator, sustainer, and parent. They also have the ability to feel gratitude, and to choose good behavior. Yet they do not take the trouble to stop and consider any of this.

Isaiah views this willful ignorance not as laziness, but as deliberate denial: They rebel against me. Furthermore, in Isaiah’s view, those who turn their backs on God also turn their backs on ethical behavior. He calls them People heavy with crooked deeds. (Isaiah 1:4)

Willful ignorance is not bliss. Isaiah mourns how much the Israelites have suffered at the hands of the Assyrians, whose attack on the two Israelite kingdoms began around 740 B.C.E. The Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom, and besieged but did not capture Jerusalem, the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah. Isaiah, like most of the prophets, assumes that if the Israelites had been upright and ethical, God would not have permitted their enemies to defeat and burn their cities. Isaiah calls God the God of Armies, including Assyrian armies. He uses God’s complete destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to remind his audience that God destroys immoral peoples.

If the God of Armies had not left us a few survivors,

We would be like Sodom,

We would resemble Gomorrah. (Isaiah 1:9)

Nevertheless, the surviving Israelites are not doomed. They still have the ability to change, and God still wants them to turn back from evil. Isaiah reports God saying:

Give up doing evil!

Learn to do good!

Seek out the rule of law.

Step on the oppressor.

Get justice for the orphan.

Defend the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:16-17)

God assures the people that they can, indeed, be redeemed from their immorality, if they pay attention and obey God. Then Isaiah mourns over how far the people of Jerusalem have fallen, beginning with the line: Eykha (Oh, how) has it become a prostitute, [this] faithful city? (Isaiah 1:21)

Nevertheless, at the end of the haftarah, Isaiah says that if the surviving Israelites in Judah (also called Zion) learn to do good, then God will save them.

Zion will be redeemed through lawful justice,

And those who turn back, through righteousness. (Isaiah 1:27)

Isaiah’s poetry calls for the repentance of the people of Judah. But does it address any people today?

Certainly human beings are still endowed with the intelligence to figure out that we did not create ourselves, nor the world that supports us. We might also notice that our elaborate intelligence and our ethical intuitions are extraordinary gifts. Yet like the Israelites of the 8^th century B.C.E., we often do not take the trouble to stop and consider.

Someone who does stop and consider today might conclude that human abilities are merely an accidental result of evolution, and have nothing to do with anything that might be called God. For atheists, Isaiah’s claim that turning away from God means turning away from moral behavior makes no sense. When I was an atheist myself, I still felt gratitude for the world and humanity, and I believed that the human condition came with its own ethical imperatives.

Someone with a traditional Jewish or Christian background who stopped to consider might conclude that God is sufficiently anthropomorphic to prefer some types of human behavior over others. Such a person might analyze the Bible as well as the world, and conclude that God prescribes moral behavior such as honoring parents and protecting orphans, and proscribes immoral behavior such as cheating, adultery, and murder. Someone who believes in a somewhat anthropomorphic God, but takes the Bible with a grain of salt, might conclude that God desires whatever human behavior promotes harmony, cooperation, and mutual respect.

What if someone who is neither an atheist nor a believer in a semi-anthropomorphic God stops to consider? My intellectual analysis deduces that God is the condition of “becoming” implied by the four-letter name of God (sometimes written in Roman letters as YHVH) based on the Hebrew verb for “to be” or “to become”. Another part of my mind concludes that the word “God” covers various mysterious forces in the world. I believe God is evolving along with the universe, and our human attitudes and actions affect God’s evolution. If we become more ethical, the forces of God become more ethical.

Does this mean that eventually God will not let the army of one country devastate another country? Maybe so—if God works through the human psyche.

The lesson I draw from the Isaiah’s opening poem is that if we learn to do good as individuals, the whole world will improve. And the first step toward learning to do good is to stop and consider that our existence depends on forces outside our control; and therefore we owe gratitude to other human beings, to the whole universe, and—yes—to God.

Masey & Pinchas: Daughters and Loyalty

As the book of Numbers/Bemidbar comes to an end, the Israelites are camped on the east bank of the Jordan, ready to begin their conquest of Canaan. Moses knows he will die before they cross the river, so he is handing down rules that will only apply after the people settle the new land and switch to a different economy. Instead of being nomads, most of the Israelites will become farmers or ranchers in Canaan. Wealth will be measured in land rather than herds.

Last week I wrote about God’s directions in the Torah portion Pinchas on how to divide up Canaan into hereditary properties—after the Canaanites have been driven off their land. (See Pinchas: Fairness). First Moses takes a census of men aged 20 and older. Every man counted in that census will get a tract of land in Canaan for his household. His land will be in the district of his clan, and his clan’s district will be in the territory allocated to his tribe.

Women, of course, do not count. Ancient Israelite society was patriarchal, and women were dependents. Apart from their personal effects, women’s possessions were nominal. In a marriage contract, any property that a woman’s father assigned to her was passed directly to her husband. If her husband died or divorced her, “her” possessions became the property of her sons. Women did not inherit, and if they were given land, they did not control it. They belonged to the clan and tribe of whichever man supported them, and only men could be leaders in a clan.

Daughters of Tzelofchad, print after Frederick R. Pickersgill, by Dalziel Brothers, Charles Foster Bible 1897

Yet in the Torah portion Pinchas, five women take a bold and independent action. The daughters of Tzelofchad come to Moses and the assembly of all-male leaders at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. They ask for the property that would have gone to their father, if he had lived long enough to be counted in Moses’ census.

“Why should the name of our father be removed from his family because he had no son? Give us property amidst the brothers of our father.” (Numbers/Bemidbar 27:4)

The women are careful to ask for property not for their own sake, but in order to perpetuate their father’s name. Moses checks with God, who replies:

“Rightly the daughters of Tzelofchad speak; you shall certainly give them possession of a hereditary property amidst the brothers of their father, and you shall make the property of their father pass over to them. And you shall speak to the children of Israel, saying: If a man dies and has no son, then you shall make his property pass over to his daughters.” (Numbers 27:7-8)

God’s answer promotes women from chattels to second-class citizens who can inherit land—but only if their father dies without sons. This solution rescues women who would otherwise be dependent on the goodwill of distant male relatives. The Torah never praises independence, but it does praise compassion for the unfortunate, and a woman without a father, husband, brother, or son to support her is considered unfortunate. A side-effect of the new law was that a daughter who inherited and remained unmarried would have a financial independence no other women possessed. But the Torah assumes that all women marry and try to have sons.

This assumption raises an issue about the daughters of Tzelofchad in this week’s double Torah portion, at the end of Masey (“Journeys”). The heads of other clans in the Gilad branch of the tribe of Menasheh come to Moses and say:

“God commanded my lord to give the land, by lot, as hereditary property for the children of Israel; and my lord was commanded by God to give the property of Tzelofchad, our brother, to his daughters. But if they become wives to any of the sons of the [other] tribes of the children of Israel, then their property will be removed from the property of our fathers, and it will be added onto the property of the tribe that they will belong to; so it will be removed from our allotted property.” (Numbers 36:2-3)

In other words, if a daughter who inherited land married a man from another tribe, then she and her land would automatically become her husband’s property—and therefore the property of her husband’s tribe. These men identify strongly with their own tribe, Menasheh, and with the Gilad branch of the tribe. Any reduction in the amount of land under the control of the Gilad clans of Menasheh seems like a personal loss to them.

Moses approves of their sentiment. He does not stop to check with God this time, but he answers the men in God’s name.

“This is the word that God commanded for the daughters of Tzelofchad, saying: They may become wives to whoever is good in their eyes; yet only within the clan of the tribe of their father they shall become wives. And landed property shall not go around for the children of Israel from tribe to tribe, for each man shall daveik to the landed property of the tribe of his fathers. And every daughter coming into possession of landed property from the tribes of the children of Israel, she shall become a wife to someone from the clan of the tribe of her father, so that each of the children of Israel shall possess the landed property of his fathers.” (Numbers 36:6-7)

daveik = cling to, stick to, be attached to; catch up with

The idea of clinging to your ancestral land is so important that Moses repeats it.

“The property will not go around from one tribe to another tribe, because each man shall daveik to his hereditary property in the tribes of the children of Israel.” (Numbers 36:9)

The Hebrew Bible uses the verb daveik when physical things stick to each other, and when one person pursues and overtakes another. But daveik is also used when one person is devoted to another, and when it sets out the ideal that the Israelites should cling to God with loyal devotion. The only time the Bible uses a form of daveik to indicate a person’s attachment to land is in Numbers 36:7 and 36:9, translated above. But land here is not just real estate; it is the expression of family lineage and tribal loyalty.

Conquering Canaan could, theoretically, be an opportunity for the tribes of Israel to unite and become truly one people (as the thirteen colonies became the United States of America). However, the Torah tells men to cling to the property they inherit from their fathers, and to the territory of their tribe. Why?

My theory is that instead of viewing tribal loyalty as a threat to national loyalty, the way many nations do today, the Torah views tribal loyalty as good practice for for national loyalty. The more you cling to one thing, the more you become able to cling to something else.

Most of all, Moses repeats that everyone must love God. But does practicing passionate attachment to another person, to a tribe, or to a country, make it easier to love God?

I grew up in an atheist household in 20th-century America. I have always valued independence more than loyalty. I love my husband and my son, and give them my passionate allegiance. But I have never been interested in loyalty to my ancestry, or hometown, or school, or state, or country. I grew fond of several of the houses and yards where I have lived, but I still moved and sold the property to strangers. Maybe I have not practiced attachment enough, and that is why I find it hard to become attached to God.

In the Torah, many of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness also find it hard to cling devoutly to God. The first generation of the exodus from Egypt frequently complains about the food and expresses a desire to abandon God and return to Egypt. When Moabites invite the second generation to worship Baal-Peor, most of the men quickly abandon any loyalty to their own god. (See my earlier post, Balak: Carnal Appetites.) No wonder Moses encourages them to practice passionate loyalty, if only to their families and tribes!

If you have not practiced a lot of clinging, is there any other way to develop a love for God? In Chassidic Judaism of the last two centuries, a key aspiration is deveikut, attachment or clinging to God. The Chassidic masters recommended developing deveikut through personal prayer, meditation, and intention (though it also helps to learn from a wise rabbi).

But first a modern, independent person without a religious upbringing must decide whether deveikut is even desirable. And that includes figuring out what it is that we are calling “God”.

I wonder if my life would be easier if I had inherited my religion and my god. On the other hand, a good life is not necessarily easy.

Pinchas: Fairness

Children passionately want life to be fair. For the sake of fairness, they can even be persuaded to share their possessions. And if a young child is the victim of unfairness, prepare for a tantrum.

Adults know that life is not fair. People in power are biased, and bad luck happens. Nevertheless, most of us feel bitter when we do all the right things, and still get the short end of the stick.

When is the distribution of benefits “fair”? Merriam-Webster’s dictionary gives two possible answers: when the distributor is impartial, i.e. free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism; or when everyone is given their due according to established rules.

Unfairness to Canaanites

This week’s Torah portion, Pinchas, looks ahead to how the land of Canaan will be distributed after the Israelites have conquered it by killing or subjugating the Canaanites. The question of fairness to the indigenous Canaanites never comes up in the Torah. Over and over again, from the book of Genesis/Bereishit through the conquest of the land in the book of Joshua, we read that God is giving the land of Canaan to the children of Israel. And what God wants trumps any human notion of fairness. Although later Jewish writings paint the Canaanites as evil perverts, the only objection to Canaanites in the Torah itself is that they worship different gods. But that is enough.

Fairness among Israelites

Numbering of the Israelites, by H.F.E. Philippoteaux,
19th century

In this week’s Torah portion, God prescribes how the land the Israelites are about to conquer should be divided among themselves. The first step is to take a census of men aged 20 and older. The census serves both as a mustering of eligible fighters for the upcoming conquest, and as a count of the households that will own plots of land once Canaan has been conquered.

The census of adult men raises two questions: What about women? And why should the land be divided according to the current population on the banks of the Jordan, rather than the previous generation, or the next generation? The Torah addresses these issues in the story of the daughters of Tzelofchad, which begins in the portion Pinchas and resumes in the portion Masey. I plan to examine that two-part story in next week’s blog post.

Right or wrong, the census clearly defines the in-group for the distribution of land: male heads of households. The next step is to divide the land fairly among the tribes of the in-group.

This is the census of the sons of Israel: 601,730. Then God spoke to Moses, saying: “For these the land shall be divided as a nachal, by the account of names. The abundant [tribe] will have an abundant nachal, and the scanty [tribe] will have a scanty nachal; each one shall be given its nachal according to the bidding of the census. Yet the land shall be divided according to the bidding of a lottery; nachal [will be assigned] to the names of the tribes of their fathers. According to the bidding of the lottery you shall divide [land] among the abundant [tribes] and the scanty [tribes], giving each its nachal.” (Numbers/Bemidbar 25:51-55)

nachal (נָחַל)=a permanent possession to pass on as an inheritance; a hereditary land-holding.

In other words, each tribe will get a territory proportionate to the number of adult men in the tribe, and tribes will be matched with territories through a lottery. This procedure goes out of its way to achieve fairness. The land will be distributed according to population, and an impartial lottery will match each tribe with its territory. (After that, the leaders of each tribe are to use a similar process to allocate land to individual clans and households.)

According to the Talmud Bavli, tractate Bava Batra 121b-122a, every man in the census will end up with his own plot of land, and all the plots will be equal—not in size, but in value. Where the land is more fertile, the plots will be smaller. This seems fair because each male Israelite head of household, i.e. each member of the in-group, will get his due.

The purpose of the lottery is to make sure this distribution is carried out without favoritism. Later in the Hebrew Bible, lotteries express the will of God, but here a lottery might be merely a randomizing mechanism, as it is today. The choice is left up to blind chance rather than a human decision. A lottery seems to meet the dictionary definition of fairness as impartial distribution, free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism.

But there is a catch. Each tribe must get a territory whose total value matches its total count of adult males. And the tribes are different sizes. The tribe with the largest head-count is Yehudah (Judah in English), with a total of 76,500 men. The smallest is Shimon (Simeon in English) with a total of 22,200. In a truly random lottery, the high priest might draw the name Yehudah the same time as the description of a territory that could only support Shimon. Thus the leaders cannot conduct a random lottery and still give each tribe land according to its head-count. Either the land will not be not distributed equally, or the lottery will be rigged.

Fairness versus foreknowledge

The Talmud explained that when the lottery took place, the high priest Elazar already knew which tribe would be matched with which territory, because he was supported by the ruach hakodesh, the holy spirit of God. First he would predict the tribe and its territory. Then he would shake the urn of tribe names and pick one, and shake the urn of land boundaries and pick one. Every time, the two lots matched his prediction (Talmud Bavli, Bava Batra 122a). In other words, the whole lottery was predetermined by God.

Thus God’s orders for land distribution are fair only for the group counted in the census, and only if God is impartial and does not play favorites. The obvious question is: Is God fair?

God wears a human face in the Torah; “He” is an anthropomorphic character who feels emotions such as regret (for creating this world) and rage (every time the Israelites disobey him). Nevertheless, God is the creator of the universe, far greater than any other gods, if they even exist. Sometimes this God character is benevolent. When God tells Moses “His” 13 attributes in Exodus/Shemot 34:6, the list begins with compassion, grace, patience, abundant kindness, and truth. Fairness is not mentioned.

And it is hard to attribute fairness to the god who saves Noah’s family but drowns the rest of the world, including innocent children; or to the god who routinely wipes out thousands of Israelites with plagues that make no distinction between the innocent and the guilty.

Some people still assume that the God character in the Torah is the same being as the theologian’s omnipotent all-benevolent God, and that both are the same as God the Unknowable. After all, the three versions of God all have the same name. It is hard for these people to believe that life is unfair. If God is human enough to care about fairness, and God runs everything in the universe, then why does bad luck strike some people and not others? Surely the unlucky must deserve a worse deal than their luckier neighbors. Otherwise, God would be unfair.

This confusion about God led some Jews to believe that they must have deserved the Holocaust; if only they had been more observant, God would have intervened to prevent it. During the current long recession, some Americans who lose their houses and jobs blame themselves for not working hard enough, or for making the wrong decisions. It is easier for them to believe they are undeserving than to believe that either God or the American system is unfair.

Other people embrace the reality that life is not fair, and campaign to change the system to make it more fair. Still others view the desire for fairness as childish, and focus on moral values they find less simplistic.

Life is not fair. What do you want to do about it?

Balak: Carnal Appetites

As the Israelites approach the northeast border of Canaan, after serving their 40 years in the wilderness, they find out that God is on their side. When the king of Cheshbon attacks them, they conquer all of his and his brother’s land.

Bilam Prophecies,
by James Tissot, ca. 1900

Then in the first part of this week’s Torah portion, Balak, God blesses the Israelites through a prophet other than Moses. Balak, king of Moab, hires the prophet Bilam to curse them, but every time Bilam opens his mouth, God makes him speak prophecies of blessing instead. (See my post Balak: Anxiety.)

You might expect the Israelites to rejoice, look forward to their next conquest, and serve God wholeheartedly. But human beings are not always reasonable.

Israel settled among the acacias, and the people began liznot with the daughters of Moab. (Numbers/Bemidbar 25:1)

liznot (לִזְנוֹת)= to engage in illicit sex, infidelity, or cult prostitution.

Traditional commentary assumes it is the men of Israel who are screwing up. Commentators differ over whether they are having sex with non-Israelite women, or because they are participating in what scholars call “cult prostitution”: ritual sex between a man and a Mesopotamian priestess in order to influence a god to make the land fertile.

At any rate, exotic sex is the first attraction offered by the women of Moab. The second attraction is meat.

They invited the people to sacrificial-slaughter-feasts for their gods, and the people ate, and they bowed down to their gods. (Numbers 25:2)

The Israelites already had their own sacrificial-slaughter-feasts, laid out in the book of Leviticus/Vayikra. Why would they be attracted to something they could get at home? Maybe the Moabites provided the sacrificial animals, so the Israelites got meat for free. Maybe it was exciting to make an offering to a different god, following slightly different customs.

The new generation of Israelites appears to be no more mature than the old one. They are still easily distracted, easily seduced by novelty. They fail to learn from the past or prepare for the future. They cannot resist a good party, and all they can pay attention to is free sex and free food, the more exotic the better. The only problem is that partying with the Moabite women means being unfaithful to their own god.

And Israel yoked itself to the ba-al of Pe-or, and God became angry against Israel. (Numbers 25:3)

ba-al (בַּעַל)=a local god; an owner or master.

When God becomes angry (literally, “hot-nosed”) against Israel, a plague usually follows. Moses spends a lot of time in the book of Numbers/Bemidbar doing things to change God’s mood, so God will stop the latest plague. In this scene, the Torah does not tell us when the plague begins, only when it ends. But as soon as God gets angry, God tells Moses what to do.

Impalements in Assyrian relief, Tiglath Pileser II

Then God said to Moses: Take all the leaders of the people and hoka them for God, in front of the sun; and it will turn My anger back from Israel. (Numbers 25:4)

hoka (הוֹקַע) = display a dislocation. (Another form of the verb is yaka, which the Torah uses to describe both what Jacob’s wrestling partner does to his hip, and a disjointed, alienated feeling.) Translations of the verb hoka in this verse include “hang”, “impale”, and “hang up their bodies”.

God’s instruction to Moses is not easy to interpret. Does “all the leaders of the people” mean every chieftain (since the leaders are supposed to stop bad behavior instead of looking the other way)? Or does it mean every ringleader who is encouraging others to worship the god of Pe-or? The Midrash Rabbah, written in Talmudic times, offers both interpretations.

What is Moses supposed to do to these leaders? Rashi (11th-century Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki) wrote that the leaders were to be stoned, the usual punishment for idolaters, and then their corpses hoka, hung up on display. Later commentators speculated that God was requesting an unusual punishment such as impaling. Since the Torah consistently prescribes the death penalty for any Israelite who worships another god, one of these interpretations is probably correct.

Yet I am attracted to the idea that God is asking Moses to expose how dislocated the leaders are from the main body of their community, how alienated they are from the true path.

Here is my interpretive translation of Numbers 25:4:

Then God said to Moses: Take all the leaders of the [unfaithful] people and expose their dislocation and alienation from God, in front of the sun; and that will turn back the plague Israel has brought upon itself.

Traditional commentary is divided over whether Moses ever carried out God’s instructions. The plague stops when Aaron’s grandson Pinchas spears a leader of the tribe of Shimon and a Moabite (or Midianite) princess as they are fornicating in Israel’s sacred Tent of Meeting. (See my blog post Balak: Being Open.) This double impalement is so shocking, that the Israelites wake up to their reality and abandon the god of Pe-or.

As I read the book of Numbers, I often feel exasperated with the Israelite men for being so immature and short-sighted. Why can’t they accept that they have no choice but to continue the journey that began when they left Egypt? Why can’t they be grateful for the food, teaching, and protection that God is giving them (as long as they behave themselves), and work on becoming better and holier people?

I used to feel the same way about “party animals” back when I was in college. I thought I was more mature because I had better things to do with my time. Now, I wonder if I am really any better. I need to lose weight, yet I could not resist eating several bowls of ice cream today. The difference between me and the Israelites who worshiped Ba-al Pe-or is that my ice cream did not violate my religion. It was even kosher! And eating ice cream is much more virtuous than having sex with strangers or bowing down to somebody else’s god. Nevertheless, you could argue that when I ate all those calories, I failed to honor God by failing to honor my body, which is a gift from God.

It is part of human nature to be seduced by things that are unreasonable. May we all be thankful for those moments of shock that wake us up.

Chukkat: Passing Through

Kings are often synonymous with their countries in the Bible. For example, in this week’s Torah portion, Chukat (“Decree”), the king of Edom is simply called “Edom”, and when he refuses to give the Israelite permission to pass through his country, he says: “You shall not pass through me.” (Numbers/Bemidbar 20:18)

We all have rules about other people entering our personal space. Whether our personal space is an inch or an arm’s-length away from our bodies, we only want people we are intimate with to enter that zone. When anyone else, however benign, comes too close, it feels like an invasion.

In the Torah, the king of Edom acts as though his personal space covers his entire country. After all, he is Edom. He gives no reason for refusing permission for the Israelites to pass through him.

Moses sent messengers from Kadeish to the king of Edom: Thus says your brother Israel: “You know all the hardships that have found us. Our forefathers went down to Egypt, and we dwelled in Egypt many years, and the Egyptians were bad to us and to our forefathers. And we cried out for help to God, and God listened to our voice, and sent a messenger and brought us out from Egypt. And hey! We are in Kadeish, a town at the edge of your territory. Please let us pass through your land. We will not pass through a field nor a vineyard, nor will we drink water from a well. On the king’s road we will go; we will not turn aside to the right or the left, until we have passed through beyond your territory.” (Numbers 20:14-17)

Edom = a large Semitic kingdom south of the Dead Sea, including the mountain range of Seir; a variant of the word adom = red.

According to Genesis/Bereishit, Edom was Esau’s nickname, and became the name of the country he founded. Esau was the brother of Jacob, who became known as Israel. When Moses calls Edom and Israel brothers, he reminds the king that the Israelites are not only fellow Semites, but family. Edom should treat Israel like a brother, feeling empathy for its abuse at the hands of Egypt, and recognizing that God is on the Israelites’ side. By sending his message from Kadeish, rather than any other town on the border, Moses might even be hinting that Israel and Edom are both holy.

His request could hardly be more polite and humble. He does not want to disturb Edom; his goal is to get the Israelites into Canaan, the land God promised them.

The first time the Israelites reached the border of Canaan, 38 years before, they refused to cross it, because they did not trust God to help them take the land. (See my blog post Shelach-Lekha: Too Late.) God sentenced them to spend a total of 40 years in the wilderness, while the mistrustful generation died off. In this week’s Torah portion, the people have served their time, and the 120-year-old Moses takes responsibility for getting the next generation to Canaan, even though he knows he will die before they cross over.

This time, God does not tell Moses where the Israelites should cross. Nor does Moses ask God. On his own, Moses decides to avoid the southern border and lead his people around the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, so they can enter Canaan from the northeast, across the Jordan River. The first part of this route crosses the kingdom of Edom, which lies south of the Dead Sea.

But Edom said to him: You shall not pass through me, lest I go out with the sword to oppose you. (Numbers 20:18)

Then the children of Israel said to him: We will go up on the highway, and if we drink your water, I myself or my livestock, then I will give their price. Only nothing will happen. On foot I will pass through it. (Numbers 20:19)

The change from plural to singular in Moses’s second request implies that he identifies with the children of Israel in the way a king identifies with his country. Moses now gives the king of Edom a financial incentive by offering to pay for water. But Edom still feels as if his personal space is threatened.

And he said: “You shall not pass through! And Edom went out to oppose him, with a serious fighting-people and a strong hand. And Edom refused to let Israel pass through his territory, and Israel turned away from him.” (Numbers 20:20-21)

Moses accepts that the king of Edom does not consider the children of Israel close enough relatives to welcome them into his personal space. Instead of fighting about it, he makes his disgruntled people march over a much longer route. They circle all the way around Edom, going south almost as far as the Gulf of Aqaba, before finally heading north again toward the Jordan River and Canaan.

When do you let someone “pass through” your personal space, coming uncomfortably close before leaving again? When do you insist on passing through someone else’s personal space?

These questions are easy in some settings, such as a medical office, or an elevator in which all the passengers come from the same culture. It can be harder to decide whether to let someone in through your front door. And I often find myself puzzled by the question of whether to hug someone when we say hello or goodbye. I watch my friends and acquaintances to see if they are stepping forward with their hands rising, or keeping their distance. To be polite, I need to match them—and they need to match me.

I feel invaded when I get a greeting-hug from a stranger, or an acquaintance I don’t like. I don’t want to let them pass through my personal space. Unfortunately, a few of the people I want to keep at arm’s length are my relatives, and American culture assumes that relatives are intimate.

I can empathize with the king of Edom refusing passage to Israel, even though the Israelites and Edomites have the same great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. To Edom, these people from Egypt are strangers.

And I admire Moses for respecting the king of Edom, and turning away after the king rejects his second polite request. Civilized life requires good boundaries for everyone.

Yet the Israelites are on their way to Canaan, which they conquer by the sword in the book of Joshua. If the old generation had trusted God and crossed the southern border of Canaan when God told them to, 38 years before, would God have arranged for the Canaanites to surrender without bloodshed? Maybe when the Israelites try again, they have to invade Canaan with battles and sieges because they no longer have God’s full support. Yet they do not give up on the land God promised them, 40 years before. After all, if 601,730 of them are men over 20, the whole population must number at least two million. Two million people need a land. And God promised their parents the land of Canaan.

So in the book of Joshua, the Israelites cross into the personal space of the Canaanite peoples, and insist on staying. Their desperation for a homeland leads to war.

In a just world, every family would have its own home, and every people would have its own country, uncontested. In a just world, every border would be clear, and it would be easy for people to respect each other’s boundaries. But we do not live in a just world. God is not fixing the world for us, so our responsibility is to fix the world for each other. I know I can have only a small effect on the world, but it does make a difference if I treat other humans with respect.

May we all learn to respect boundaries, to compromise without giving up our journey, and to seek peace, like Moses.

Beha-alotkha: Backward Nuns

For thousands of years, scribes have been writing the first five books of the Hebrew Bible onto parchment Torah scrolls, without changing a letter—not even to correct a spelling mistake. Besides carefully preserving ancient errors, scribes reproduce letters that are traditionally written larger or smaller than the surrounding text. And in this week’s Torah portion, Beha-alotkha (“When you bring up”), scribes faithfully recreate two inverted or upside-down nuns.

The symbol on the left above is the Hebrew letter nun. When a nun is part of a word, it sounds like our letter “N”. Before Arabic numerals were invented, Hebrew (like Latin) used letters to stand for numbers, the letter nun stood for 50.

The symbol on the right above is an inverted nun, which is not really a letter at all. An inverted nun (as well as an upside-down nun) is a symbol written next to a piece of text to indicate that the text is out of place. The ancient Greeks used an inverted sigma for the same purpose.

Out of the 22 Hebrew letters, why did the ancient scribes pick a nun to reverse? Nobody knows, but the question opens the way to mystical speculations, which I hope to explore in the future. My question this week is why they picked only one passage in the Torah scroll to mark with inverted nuns. Modern scholars have pointed out many bits of poetry in the Torah that appear be quotes from a longer poem or song. But this week’s Torah portion, Beha-alotkha, is the only one accompanied by inverted nuns. And the only other inverted nuns in the Hebrew Bible appear in Psalm 107, where these symbols follow seven of the verses.

The Babylonian Talmud (in Shabbat 115b-116a) mentions the inverted nuns in Beha-alotkha, and states that the verses between the two inverted nuns were moved from another place in the Torah text. Most commentary after the Talmud also identifies the displaced passage in Beha-alotkha as the two verses in between the inverted nuns. But in Psalm 107, each verse being pointed out is followed by an inverted nun. Does this mean that the first scribe to draw inverted nuns in our Torah portion also intended his symbols to follow the verses being pointed out? I wonder if the original scribe was even pointing out the pair of verses before the first inverted nun, then the pair of verses before the second inverted nun. All four verses seem out of place to me, both because of the language they use and because they are wedged for no obvious reason between a conversation Moses has with an in-law, and a series of complaints by the Israelites.

Here is my translation:

They headed out from the mountain of God for a journey of three days, and the ark of the covenant of God was heading out in front of them for a journey of three days, to scout out a resting-place for them. And the cloud of God was above them by day, when they were heading out from the camp. (Numbers/Bemidbar 10:33-34)

׆

It happened that when the ark headed out, Moses said: Kumah God, and your enemies will scatter, and those who oppose you will flee from your presence. (Numbers 10:35)

And when it came to rest, he said: Shuvah, God, the multitude of thousands of Israel. (Numbers 10:36)

׆

Kumah = Rise up! Stand up! Uphold! (The masculine imperative is kum, and the feminine imperative is kumi. Kumah is a variant that occurs for the first time here.)

Shuvah = Return! Turn back! Turn toward! (The masculine imperative is shuv, and the feminine imperative is shuvi. Shuvah is a variant that occurs for the first time here.)

In the Talmud (Shabbat 116a), Rav Ashi suggests that the two verses between the inverted nuns were moved forward from Numbers 1:52-2:34, the passage describing the marching positions of the tribes of Israel during their wilderness journeys. But when I read that passage, I do not see any obvious place for our two verses. Other ancient commentaries propose that the verses were pulled from a lost prophecy by Eldad and Meidad, who break into prophesy in Numbers 11:26; or that the two verses stand as a separate book of the Torah.

What I notice is that the verses translated above are the only place in the five books of the Torah scroll where the words kumah and shuvah are used instead of the usual imperative verbs kum and shuv. Neither of these variants appears again until the later books in the Hebrew Bible, after the book of Joshua. There the variant kumah appears 14 times. Three of these times, starting with the book of Judges, a man or group of men are being told to get up. The other 11 times, (nine of them in Psalms), someone is asking God to rise up—just as in Numbers 10:35 above.

Similarly, the variant shuvah appears once in Numbers 10:36, then does not show up again until the book of Isaiah. The imperative shuvah occurs three times in books of the prophets, when God is asking Israel to return; and four times in Psalms, when the psalmist is asking God to return—just as in Numbers 10:36. So judging by the language, Numbers 10:35-36 belongs to the literary tradition of Psalms, not to any writing in the first five books of the Bible.

Furthermore, in all other descriptions of the Israelites moving from camp to camp in the wilderness, the ark is carried by Levites in the middle of the marching formation, and the cloud of God leads the way in front. But in Numbers 10:33-34, translated above, the ark leads the way, and the cloud hovers above the Israelites. This makes me suspect that these two verses before the first inverted nun were also moved from a later piece of writing.

In the book of Joshua, priests carry the ark in front of the Israelites, leading them across the Jordan. Then they carry the ark around the walls of Jericho, leading the troops. In both books of Samuel, the ark is carried into battle, and except for one occasion when it was captured by Philistines, God’s presence defeated Israel’s enemies. No cloud is mentioned in Joshua, Samuel I, or Samuel II. The entreaty in Numbers 10:35, “Rise up, God, and Your enemies will scatter!” would fit right into this period between the start of the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan and Solomon’s erection of the temple in Jerusalem.

Nobody knows why the verses accompanied by inverted nuns were moved to this week’s Torah portion. The Talmud tractate Shabbat cites Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel’s explanation that the displaced passage provides a break between two transgressions of the Israelites, but I find this unconvincing. Elsewhere the Torah either stacks up series of transgressions without compunction, or finds other ways to insert a more cheerful passage.

However, I have noticed that when the people remember events from the distant past—their own pasts, or stories they heard or read a long time ago—they often make factual errors by transplanting something recent into the earlier time. For example, we might remember a teenager in the 1970’s saying a fellow teenager was “hot”, even though that particular word did not become slang for “sexy” until much later. Similarly, Numbers 10:35-36 uses the words kumah and shuvah even though they did not become alternatives to kum and shuv until later in the Bible.

Besides mis-remembering minor facts, we also re-interpret our pasts to fit the paradigms of our present lives.

For the Israelites in the wilderness, God’s pillar of cloud was critically important. It led them out of Egypt and all the way to Mount Sinai. But for the Israelites living in Canaan and fighting with their neighbors, the pillar of cloud was history. They no longer needed God to guide them through the wilderness; what they needed was for God to be on their side in battle. The best symbol they had of God’s presence was the ark; until Solomon built a permanent temple, they carried the ark with them into battle. These later Israelites might well re-interpret their past to fit their current paradigm, and imagine Moses sending the ark ahead of the people, and calling on God for help by saying: Rise up, God, and Your enemies will scatter, and those who oppose You will flee from Your presence.

I keep re-interpreting my own past too. As a teenager I thought in terms of escape—from my parents’ house and from nearly all social situations. I believed I was a misfit and I did not hope to change myself, only to escape to a better environment—preferably a “promised land” where I would not be expected to date or marry or have children. To my surprise, I ended up doing all three. For the next 30 years, my life revolved around marriage and motherhood, and I lived in a state of perpetual responsibility. I was drawn to Judaism partly because of its emphasis on ethical behavior, which now seemed vitally important to me. I judged my own past in terms of my current moral standards, and I felt guilty about each time I had left my sister or a friend in the lurch because I was running away from a situation I could not handle. Eventually I realized I was projecting my current concerns onto my past. Perhaps I was thinking like the ancient Israelite editor who imagined Moses sending the ark ahead and calling “Kumah!“.

Since I turned 50—the age represented by a regular, non-inverted nun—I have been working through another stage of life, redefining what is important to me, becoming a leader in a Jewish congregation, and learning several new kinds of courage. I am still a misfit in general society, but what matters is who I am in my own circle. Now I focus on revealing more of myself, and doing my own work. Now when I remember my adult life before age 50, I regret that I had neither the personality nor the prescience to take time for religious education. And when I remember my adolescence now, I think of the moments when I touched the divine—at least according to my present interpretation of those moments. These days, I pray for God to guide me, and nobody answers; there is no pillar of cloud. Yet I know I am guided. Life seems more mysterious to me now, and my whole past before age 50 seems distant and amazing. I know I am transplanting my present sense of mystery into my memories of the past. If I wrote an autobiography from my current point of view, I would have to put inverted nuns all over the manuscript.

How wonderful it is to change and re-evaluate life and re-interpret our memories! May we all recognize our revisions of the past, and learn from each new stage in our lives.

Omer: Kabbalah of the Defective

In the cycle of Torah readings, this week we study the first Torah portion of the book of Numbers/Bemidbar. For my thoughts on that portion, read my earlier posts at: Three Posts on Bemidbar.

In the cycle of counting the 49 days of the omer, we begin the seventh and final week on Tuesday night. This is also the final week of my series of posts on the omer service, the prayers before and after the count. Next week, I’ll return to the Torah again, with a new post on the Torah portion Naso (“Lift”).

עמר

omer

The closing prayer of the omer service starts out:

Master of the universe, You commanded us through your servant Moses to count the counting of the omer, in order to purify us from our klipot and from our impurities …

klipot = outer coverings (including shells, rinds, tree barks)

The word klipot in the first sentence of this prayer plunges us into Lurianic Kabbalah. In the 1570’s Rabbi Isaac Luria taught what became a core myth of Kabbalah: the mystical account of the Shevirat HaKelim (Shattering of the Vessels). The first part of the myth comes from Luria’s teacher, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero:

Before time, before space, there is nothing but the Ein Sof (“Without End”, or God). The Ein Sof is continually making a tzimtzum (contraction) to make space for the physical universe. In order to create the universe in this space, the Ein Sof emanates the ten sefirot. (Sefirot is the plural of the noun sefirah, which comes from the same root as sofeir = counting and sefer=book. The ten sefirot in Kabbalah are categories of God’s creative power, or forces ruling the universe and the human soul.) The sefirot channel the overpowering shefa (flow of divine energy) and step down the power to levels that the created universe can tolerate.

Luria continued the story this way:

Each of the ten sefirot was channeled through its own kli (vessel) which contained its divine “light” (a metaphor for the divine flow of energy). The three upper sefirot (keter=crown, chokhma=wisdom, and binah=insight) were able to contain the divine “light”. The next six sefirot shattered into klipot, shells, shards of the original vessels. The bottom sefirah, malkhut (kingship and God’s presence in our world) cracked and became a leaky container for its divine ‘light’.

Some of the ‘light’ that was in the broken vessels stuck to the klipot and brought them to life. Everything in our world (according to Luria) contains both klipot and divine “light”. The klipot are the source of evil, because they conceal the divine “sparks” inside them. But God created the universe with the Shattering of the Vessels on purpose. Human beings can redeem the whole universe by releasing the “sparks”, so all the divine “light” will again be one. We can release the sparks and contribute to the reunification of God by performing mitzvot: God’s commandments, both those written in the Torah and those discerned later by holy rabbis.

One way to raise the sparks is to do the mitzvot that help our fellow human beings. But for Lurianic Kabbalists, it is just as important to carry out instructions in the Torah that appear to have lost their practical application–such as counting the omer. These acts also help to redeem the universe, according to Luria, especially if they are done with that intention. Lurianic prayers have been added to many parts of Jewish liturgy, but the omer service is entirely based on Kabbalah (except for quoting the original instruction from Leviticus/Vayikra). The seven weeks of the omer count are linked with the seven lower sefirot, the divine forces that need to be repaired. The service opens with that statement that we count the omer “for the sake of the unification of the Holy One” (see my first post on the omer service, Counting 49 ). And it closes with the prayer that begins: Master of the universe, You commanded us through Your servant Moses to count the counting of the omer, in order to purify us from our klipot and from our impurities …

The prayer continues …as You have written in Your Torah, and then quotes Leviticus/Vayikra 23:15-16, which merely mandates the 49-day count, and has nothing to do with purifying anybody. After that, the prayer returns to a Lurianic point of view:

So that they will be purified, the nafshot of Your people Israel, from their contamination. Therefore may it be the will of Your presence, God, our god and god of our fathers, that from the merit of the counting of the omer that I have counted today, whatever defect I have caused in the sefirah _______ of _______ be straightened out. And may I be purified and may I be made holy with the holiness of Above, and through this, may there flow an abundant flow [of divine energy] in all the worlds. And may it straighten out our nafshot, our ruchot, and our nishmot, from every sediment and defect, to purify us and to make us holy with Your holiness, the Most High. Amen, Selah.

nafshot = plural of nefesh, the level of soul that animates the body and its actions (according to Kabbalah)

ruchot = plural of ruach, the level of soul that is seized by emotion or moved by the spirit of God (according to Kabbalah)

nishmot = plural of neshama, the level of soul with the most divine “light” that is still uniquely individual (according to Kabbalah)

The two blanks in that prayer are filled in with a different pair of sefirot on each of the 49 days of the count. First comes the sefirah of the day, then the sefirah of the week. For example, Monday night began the seventh day of the sixth week. Out of the seven lower sefirot, the seventh is Malkhut and the sixth is Yesod, so the count was Malkhut of Yesod. Only the seven lower sefirot are used, because they are the ones damaged by the Shattering of the Vessels.

I translated the names of the seven lower sefirot in my earlier omer post on Psalm 67. This final week of the omer count is the week of Malkhut, and the last day, the day before the festival of Shavuot, will be Malkhut of Malkhut. Malkhut means “kingdom”, and in the Kabbalistic scheme it is the last sefirah to receive the flow of divine “light” or energy or creative power. If God is the king, then God’s kingdom is our world, our universe. Thanks to the sefirah of Malkhut, our world is infused with a non-shattering amount of divinity. We can tolerate the reduced divine energy, and sometimes we can sense the indwelling presence of God, the Shekhinah.

When we finish the omer count with Malkhut of Malkhut, we reach the most physical of the physical, and God is still there. That’s when we are ready to receive the revelation at Sinai, which we celebrate on Shavuot, the 50th day.

It’s a lovely symbolic system. But when I say the words of the opening and closing prayers of the omer service, I can’t throw my whole heart into them. I can see that something is seriously broken in our world, and I can see that every time an individual human does a mitzvah that is good deed, an act of kindness, it helps to repair the breakage. But I do not believe that counting the omer has any effect on the nature of God and reality. At best, the practice might help to turn you into the kind of person who is always thinking about God and about repairing what is broken.

Ah, but I would like to be that kind of person. Maybe that is why I am counting the omer again this year, and saying the traditional Kabbalistic prayers before and after the count.

Omer: Breaking Through

This week in the annual cycle of Torah portions, we study Behar/Bechukotai, the last two portions in the book of Leviticus/Vayikra. For some of my thoughts about Behar, click Three on Behar. You can also read my post on Bechukotai.

This week in the Kabbalistic counting of the omer, the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, we are counting through seven permutations of the sefirah Yesod (“foundation”). In next week’s post I’ll write about the closing prayer in the omer service, with its amazing attitude toward the sefirot (the plural of sefirah). Today, I’ll just repeat that the word sefirah comes from the same root as sofeir = counting, and the ten sefirot in Kabbalah are categories of God’s creative power, or forces ruling the universe and the human soul. The seven weeks of the omer count are linked with the seven lower sefirot, the divine forces we can experience directly.

But before the closing prayer of the traditional omer service, we read or sing a mysterious poem, Ana Bekho-ach.

עמר

omer

In my last few posts about counting the omer, I said that Ana Bekho-ach was written by Rabbi Nechunya ben HaKanah, a Kabbalist who lived in the first century C.E. But as I did more research on the poem, I learned that it was merely attributed to Rabbi Nechunya, just as The Zohar, a major multi-volume work of Kabbalah, was attributed to 2nd-century Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai but actually written by 13th-century Rabbi Moshe de Leon. Until modern times, Kabbalists seemed to feel that texts carried more authority if they were attributed to respected rabbis from Talmudic times and before.

Alas, we still do not know who wrote the poem Ana Bekho-ach, though scholars speculate it was written as liturgy in Palestine in the Middle Ages. Neither do we know whether the anonymous author intended any of the Kabbalistic meanings that have been attached to the poem. Ana Bekho-ach might have been a psalm of supplication, written by a poet who simply enjoyed the challenge of writing in the form of seven lines, each line containing exactly six Hebrew words (making a total of 42 words). But in Lurianic Kabbalah, the number 42 is, if possible, even more exciting than the number 7.

Kabbalah took a new turn in the 16th centery through the disciples of Isaac (Yitzchak ben Shlomo) Luria, who taught in Sfat. Lurianic Kabbalah focuses on repairing the breach between God and creation, raising the divine sparks in our world to join the ultimate divine light. The first prayer in the traditional omer service sets the intention of using this service, both its prayers and its counting, to unify God Itself with the shekhinah, the divine presence in our world. (For more on this, see my post Counting 49.) The closing prayer of the omer service also frames counting the omer in terms of the repair and unification of the divine. How can we help with this transformation, besides praying for it? Luria taught that one path toward unification is meditation on various permutations of the names of God.

The Talmud mentions a secret 42-letter name of God (Kiddushin 71a). So how could a Kabbalist resist reading mystical meanings into the poem Ana Bekho-ach, which has not only seven lines that might reflect the seven lower sefirot, but also a total of 42 words, which might correspond to the 42-letter name of God? The idea that a secret 42-letter name of God is expressed by the initial letters of the 42 words of Ana Bekho-ach is so irresistable, that after we read or sing this poem in the omer service, we whisper the same sentence that we whisper after the Shema prayer, which names God. An English translation of this whispered sentence is: Blessed is the name of the glory of Its kingdom forever and ever.

Most English translations of Ana Bekho-ach go beyond the literal level to bring out a poetic meaning that expresses the insights of the translator. Poetry is notoriously difficult to translate! Here is my attempt at the most literal translation I can manage using English vocabulary and grammar, with no effort to use six words per line or to capture an insight. (I’ll get to the insight later.)

1. Please, with the great strength of Your right [hand], may You break tzerurah.

tzerurah = what is bound, tied up (from the same root as words for bundle, narrow straits, and distress).

2. Accept the singing-out of Your people; protect us, purify us, Nora (Awesome One).

3. Please, Gibor (Strong Champion), guard those who seek union with You, like the pupil of an eye.

4. Bless them, purify them, be compassionate to them; continually gemol then with Your tzedakah.

gemol = wean, reward, ripen. The Hebrew Bible views weaning as a celebration of the child’s new maturity. Perhaps giving a child solid food was seen as a reward.

tzedakah = righteousness, justice that goes beyond the letter of the law.

5. Chasin (Mighty One) , with Your abundant goodness, guide Your congregation.

6. Yachid (Only One) who is gei-eh, turn Your face toward Your people, those who remember Your holiness.

gei-eh = proud, haughty, aware of high status

7. Accept our call for help and listen to our outcry, Yodei-a Ta-alumot (Knower of Secrets).

One peculiarity of this poem is that it uses none of the usual names for God. Instead, it refers to several aspects of the divine: Awesome One, Strong Champion, Mighty One, Only One, and Knower of Secrets.

Whatever mystical meaning it may or may not hold, the poem Ana Beko-ach is certainly a supplication for God to pay attention to us and help us. What kind of help are we pleading for? It depends on the interpretation. Here is mine:

—I think that in line #1, we implore God to break whatever constricts us, so we can go free. Sometimes our constrictions, either external or internal, are too strong for us to break through by our own willpower, so we pray for help. This verse addresses God only as “You”; we will take help from any aspect of God, we are so desperate.

—In line #2, we address God as “Awesome One”. We want to be noticed, transformed, and protected, not by a parental figure, but by the incomprehensible wonder of whatever it is we call God. Or maybe we simply long to be touched by the intangible and ineffable, even if it seems logically impossible.

—In line #3, we beg God to be our bodyguard, and maybe our soul-guard. We pray that God will be our “Champion” and treat us “like the pupil of an eye”. The pupil is an especially precious spot, which anyone would take great care to protect; it is the window of the eye, where light and sight come in. If we are talking about God’s (metaphorical) pupil, we want God to cherish “seeing” us. If we are talking about the pupil of the one who seeks union with God, we long to be enlightened and “see” the divine.

—In line #4, we pray first for gifts that require the grace of God: blessing, and a soul-cleansing purification. Knowing our own faults, we pray for God to view us with compassion. Then the prayer moves up a notch. Although we depend on God for life itself, we do not have to remain infants in every respect. We pray for God to wean us, through thoughtful justice, so we will grow up and find our own sustenance in the world God created. As in line #1, God is addressed simply as “You”, so we are praying for gifts of blessing and maturity from any aspect of God—including God’s creation.

—In line #5, we address God as “Mighty One”, and ask God to use the divine power gently, for goodness and guidance. When we pray fervently to an unknowable god, it is natural to become afraid of the overwhelming power we imagine. Being fallible humans, we long for the things that are good from our perspective, and for guidance in a life full of unknowns.

—In line #6, we beg God to turn toward us, because God seems haughty and aloof. I know I find it hard to maintain a feeling of intimacy with God for more than a moment, since God does not speak to me in audible words, or touch me with tangible hands. God does seem aloof to me, even when I am remembering the divine. The verse also echoes the Hebrew Bible, where God turns Its face toward the people It favors. Do we address God as “Only One” because we only need God’s favor? Or because there is only God in all the universe, and we want to repair the apparent breach between us and the divine? Or because there are no other gods, and we pathetically limited humans are God’s best option for communicating with any being?

—In line #7, we again pray for God to pay attention to us and help us. This time we address God as “Knower of Secrets”, using a word for “secrets” that comes from the same root as the word olam = world, universe, eternity. As the “Knower of Secrets”, God knows all possible worlds, while we only know this world, the world our senses report to us. Yet some sixth sense, perhaps reaching us from the “right brain”, intimates that there are other worlds we do not know. I think it is this sixth sense that leads us to grope for a notion of God. Without it, we would have no religious impulse, no need to pray, no way to ask something beyond ourselves to help us.

The poem Ana Bekoa-ach does not need to contain a mystical 42-letter name of God. It is already all about our longing for union with God. It already implores God to listen to us, and answer us. It already begs God to intervene in our lives, in order to improve our souls, in order to free us so that we can come closer to God.

Omer: Psalm 67 and Lag BeOmer

(If you want my insights on this week’s Torah portion, Emor, click here: Emor posts. If you are counting the omer, or interested in the upcoming holiday of Lag BeOmer, read on.)

עמר

omer

Out of all 150 psalms, why is Psalm 67 the one in the service for counting the omer? The quick answer is that once you remove the first verse (For the conductor, with stringed instruments, a praising song) the song itself has 7 verses and 49 words in Hebrew. And counting the omer is all about the numbers 7 and 49.

We count the omer (a measure of barley) for 49 days between the holy days of Pesach and Shavuot. The Torah established the count to mark when to bring grain offerings to the priests. After the second temple in Jerusalem fell in 70 C.E., the omer count has gradually become a spiritual exercise to prepare for celebrating the revelation at Sinai on Shavuot, and for a future transformation of human consciousness.

I explored the first four steps of the omer service in my last two blog posts. Step #5 is Psalm 67, which was written while the Temple was standing, long before any Kabbalah was recorded. The last three steps of the omer-counting procedure of Kabbalah, which is still used in orthodox prayer-books today, are:

#5. Psalm 67, a 7-verse song with 49 Hebrew words.

#6. Ana Bekhoach, a 7-line poem written by a Kabbalist in the first century C.E.

#7. Closing prayer framing the count in terms of Kabbalah, including the 7 lower sefirot. (Sefirot is the plural of sefirah, a word from the same root as sofeir = counting. Sefirot are categories of creative power, or forces ruling the universe and the human soul.) In the middle of this closing prayer, you fill in the blank with the the sefirah of the day and the sefirah of the week. Over the course of seven days a week for seven weeks, you get 49 different pairings.

According to the Maharshal (16th-century Rabbi Shlomo Luria) the seven verses of Psalm 67 represent the seven lamps of the menorah in the priests’ court of the early sanctuary and the later temple. One tradition in Kabbalah is to write the seven verses of Psalm 67 so they look like the seven branches of the menorah, each branch blossoming into a lamp.

Psalm 67 also corresponds to the seven lower sefirot, which we use in step #7 of the omer-counting service. In my translation below, instead of numbering the verses, I will count them by sefirah. I wish I could also translate Psalm 67 so that it has 49 words in English, but I’ll go for accuracy instead.

Chessed (=love, kindness): May God grace us and bless us; may It brighten Its face with us. —Selah (a musical instruction)

Gevurah (=strength, discipline): To make known on the earth Your path; among all the nations Your power to rescue.

Tiferet (=beauty, harmony): The peoples will thank You, God; the peoples will thank You, all of them.

Netzach (=long-lasting success): People will be glad, and they will sing out for joy; because You judge peoples on the level, and You comfort people on the earth. —Selah.

Hod (=splendor, majesty): The peoples will thank You, God; the peoples will thank You, all of them.

Yesod (=foundation): Earth gives her harvest; God, our god, blesses us.

Malkhut (=kingship): God will continue to bless us, and all the ends of the earth will be in awe of God.

One standard interpretation of Psalm 67 is that it prays for God to bless the Israelites (later known as Jews), so we can then teach other people about God. The psalm anticipates then then the other peoples will convert and receiove our God’s blessing; and finally all people, to the ends of the earth, will be full of grateful and awe for God. This may well have been the intent of the songwriter, but once a work is published, people are free to discover new meanings in it. And how could a Kabbalist counting the omer resist overlaying the framework of the seven lower sefirot on the seven verses of the psalm?

Does the overlay fit the verses? The first verse prays for God to treat us lovingly, and perhaps for us to return love to God; this is indeed a prayer for Chessed. Traditional commentary adds that the verse asks God to enlighten our minds, so we will have the intellectual ability and knowledge to teach others about God’s way or path in the second verse. Understanding and following God’s path certainly requires mental gevurah, the discipline of focus and attention. In my own experience, teaching also requires focus and attention. Thus the second verse calls for gevurah.

The line “The peoples will thank you, God; the peoples will thank you, all of them” appears twice in Psalm 67, first as tiferet, then as hod. Perhaps the first refrain points out the beautiful harmony of all the peoples, all the nations, united in thanking God. The second refrain points out the splendor of the one being thanked, God the creator.

In between, the netzach verse says people will sing with joy because God is both an honest judge and a comforter—an interesting pair of roles. I have noticed that children desperately want fairness, and need consolation when life does not go their way. Adults recognize that the universe cannot be that straightforward; sometimes people are hurt for no apparent reason. Yet we pray that at least we can achieve something important and long-lasting. We pray for fairness and comfort; but knowing the universe is not fair from our limited perspective, we also pray for netzach. Here, I think the sefirah adds an alternative to the verse, instead of restating it.

I think the netzach verse is a fervent plea, a supplication. Yet the hod verse, a refrain of the line about thanking God, expresses gratitude as if God has already granted our plea. Maybe once we experience the splendor and majesty of God, we can be grateful for any justice, comfort, and success we receive personally as the larger divine plan unfolds. The hod verse may also thank God for what all people receive in the following verse, yesod: “Earth gives her harvest; God, our god, blesses us.”

When we notice all the gifts of nature, from the food we gather to the air we breathe, then we realize that God is always blessing us by maintaining the yesod, the foundation of our physical lives. In the final verse, the first phrase, “God will continue to bless us’, reflects the sefirah of malkhut both because it views God as the king of our world, ruling and protecting it, and because Kabbalah associates malkhut with the shekhinah, the feminine presence of God dwelling on earth. When all human beings experience the shekhinah, then, in the final phrase of Psalm 67, “all the ends of the earth will be in awe of God”.

At least these are correspondences I see between the seven lower sefirot and the seven verses of Psalm 67. You may see others. Psalm 67 does not appear to be a perfect fit for the sefirot, but a more advanced Kabbalist may perceive meanings I cannot imagine.

As for me, Psalm 67 speaks to me as a prayer for grace and blessing and knowledge of how to follow a divine path; and as a prediction that someday all human beings will realize they do not run the world, or even their own lives, and all humans will be grateful and awed just to be alive, just for this universe to exist. That is a psalm I can sing or recite with a full heart.

עמר

In one way, the high point of the 49 days of counting the omer is the 50th day, the festival of Shavuot, when we celebrate two gifts from God: our first fruits, and the revelation at Sinai. But among the omer-counting days, the high point is Lag Be-Omer, the day that begins this year at sunset on Sunday, April 28. Lag is not an actual word. The Hebrew letter lamed, pronounced like an “l”, also stands for 30, and the letter gimmel, pronounced like a hard “g”, stands for 3. Add 30+3, and you have the number of the day of Lag Be-Omer, when the sefirot count reaches hod of hod.

The Hebrew Bible uses the word hod when people are dazzled by splendor and magnificence. It refers to God’s hod 12 times, to the hod of a king 7 times, to the hod of a horse twice (horses impressed the Israelites), and once each to the hod of Moses, Daniel, the son in Proverbs, and an exceptional olive tree in Hosea. How can we imagine the hod of hod, the splendor of splendor?

Start by being dazzled—maybe by a flaming, sparking, snapping bonfire on Lag Be-Omer, or maybe by watching water rush over stones as sunlight makes a dazzling pattern of white stars and the water-rock music makes more layers of sound than you can count. Then try to imagine a whole universe of constant change and splendor, all interconnected. This is the universe we are blessed to live in. If only we could remember it more often!

The peoples will thank you, God; the peoples will thank you, all of them.