Ki Teitzei: Work Like an Animal

You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.  (Deuteronomy/Devarim 22:10)

You shall not muzzle an ox while it is threshing.  (Deuteronomy/Devarim 25:4)

These two lines from this week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei (“When you go forth”), are often cited as examples of  biblical injunctions to minimize the suffering of animals.  If two animals of unequal strength are yoked together, the weaker animal is likely to stumble or strain itself to exhaustion.  If an ox is muzzled while it is trampling grain to thresh it, the ox is tormented by the sight of food it cannot eat.

The Talmud (in Bava Metzia 90b) explains that both prohibitions also apply more generally.  Two different kinds of animals must not be made to work together at any task, whether they are yoked or not, even if they are merely driven by a shout.  Similarly, an ox must not be restrained even by a shout from eating as much grain as it wants while it works.

Ki Teitzei is also the Torah portion that insists an employer may not delay paying an employee’s wages.

You shall not oppress a poor or destitute hired laborer, from among your brothers or from among your stranger who is in your land, within your gates.  Each day you shall give him his hire and the sun shall not set on him, because he is poor and it is supporting his life …  (Deuteronomy/Devarim 24:14-15)

Thus the general principle of acting with consideration toward the animals who work for you also applies to the human beings who work for you.  We should be considerate toward human laborers by paying them promptly.

I believe we should also treat them at least as well as our laboring animals.

That means we should not ask two people with different strengths to do the same job, any more than we should ask an ox and a donkey to do the same job.  And we should not make people slave away without any breaks to refresh their spirits, any more than we should make an ox trample grain without taking any grain for its own refreshment.

And, following the Talmud, we should not shout at anyone who works for us: employees, students, or family members.  Nor should we insult them.

 

In an even larger sense, the laboring animal and the human master are two parts of a person’s psyche.  Sometimes I browbeat myself into finishing a project even when my body is sore or my brain is tired.  This is cruelty to my animal aspect.

After studying this week’s Torah portion, I have three new rules for myself.  I shall not expect to do the same job as someone else, or even the same job that I did on another day.  I shall not put my nose to the grindstone, but instead snatch what spiritual nourishment I can from every job.  And I shall reward myself at regular intervals for my own hard work.

These are not easy rules for a conscientious perfectionist to follow.  But I need my inner ox.  I must not muzzle it!

Eikev: With Heart and Throat

What does God want from us?  Moses asks and answers that question, as old as human history, in this week’s Torah portion, Eikev (“following on the heels of”).  And the answer still means something, even for those of us who define God as a state of being rather than as the omnipotent ruler of the universe.

And now, Israel, what does God, your god, request from you?  Nothing but to be in awe of God, your god; to walk in all God’s paths; and to love God; and to serve God, your god, with all your levav and all your nefesh; to observe the commands and decrees of God that I am commanding you today for your own good.  (Deuteronomy/Devarim 10:12-13)

levav = heart; seat of thoughts and feelings and understanding; inner self, consciousness

nefesh = throat; appetite; the soul that animates the body; life force

Long-time readers of this blog are already acquainted with the Hebrew words levav and nefesh.  Both words refer to parts of human anatomy that are metaphors for aspects of being human.  But why does God require service with all our “heart” AND all our “throat”—both in last week’s Torah portion (check out Deuteronomy 6:5), and again this week?

In modern terms, we might translate the phrase as “with all your mind and all your body”.  So the two verses translated above mean we must direct all our conscious feelings toward both awe and love of God, and make all our conscious decisions so they follow God’s paths.  Furthermore, our conscious feelings and decisions must become so habitual that our bodies instinctively react that way.  And it takes both our minds and our bodies to keep on observing (paying attention to, guarding) the rules Moses laid out for going God’s way.

If you define God as the omnipotent ruler of the universe, obviously doing all this is “for your own good”.  We get more rewards and fewer punishments when we go along with human authorities, so it seems reasonable that the same would be true for going along with a divine authority.  When we provide what the boss wants from us, we get more of what we want from the boss.

Do you define God as the omnipotent ruler of the universe?  That definition is certainly implied in the book of Deuteronomy.  And the Talmud, commenting on the passage above, claims that God rules everything except our own feelings.  “Everything is in the hands of Heaven, except the awe/fear of Heaven.”  (Talmud, Berakhot 33b)

Jewish liturgy applies this definition of God in its repeated use of the phrase “melech ha-olam”, literally “king of the world/universe/eternity”, in formal blessings and prayers.  And many people today, in several different religions, view God as the omnipotent ruler of the universe.

I do not.  Maybe it’s because I grew up in a family of athiests, but the only rulers I know of are human decision-makers.  I don’t even view “nature” as the ruler of the universe, since “nature” doesn’t make decisions; it just is.

Yet the two verses I translate above still speak to me, even though in my own “heart” I use the slippery word “God” to name a mystery that my rational mind can describe as a state of being, and my intuitive mind identifies as the source and goal of my yearning.

I encourage and cultivate my yearning for “God” in ways that Jews have cultivated their awe and love of “God” ever since the fall of the second temple, almost 2,000 years ago:  through Torah study, through prayer, and through noticing the wonders of this world (from the bug crawling on a leaf to my husband smiling at me).  All three practices lead to feeling awe, love, and gratitude for … what?  Why not call it “God”, in English or Hebrew?

Okay, so I’m working on two of God’s requests in this week’s Torah portion:  feeling awe and feeling love.  What about walking in all God’s paths, and serving God with all my levav and all my nefesh, and following all the rules passed on by Moses?

I can’t prove it, but I believe all this studying, praying, and noticing I’m doing does lead to making better decisions (in my levav) and creating better habits (in my nefesh), so I walk more often on the right paths, and better serve the spirit of God within me.  I don’t follow exactly the same set of rules Moses gives in the Torah (though I do pay attention to them, and think about them, when I study Torah).  But I work on following, as best I can, an informal set of rules for behavior that my own branch of Judaism agrees upon.  And I like myself more, so perhaps all these practices are indeed for my own good.

What God wants from me is, apparently, the same as what I want from my orientation toward God.

Am I just being self-centered?  I don’t know, but I take comfort in the double name of God that first appears in the book of Deuteronomy.  In the verses above I translate the double name as “God, your god”, but the Hebrew actually uses two different words for “God”.  The first one is the four-letter name of God, spelled with the Hebrew equivalents of Y-H-V-H and related to the verb “to be”.  Jews refer to it as Hashem, “The Name”, and treat it as sacred.

The second word appears sometimes in Deuteronomy as Eloheynu, “our god”, sometimes as Eloheykhem, “your god” (the god of all of you being addressed), and sometimes, including the verses above, as  Eloheykha, “your god” (the god of you, one person in particular).  The implication is that the God of all be-ing is also a god that we, you, and I have a relationship with.

What does God want from you?  Relationship, connection, direction.  You can deduce it from the verses quoted above.  What do you want from God?  Relationship, connection, direction?

Masey: Refuge from Compensation

This week’s Torah portion, Masey (“Journeys”), calls for the new land of Israel to be divided up into territories by tribe, with a special arrangement for Levites, who will not own land.  Forty-eight cities  must be set aside for the Levites, and six of these will be designated “cities of  refuge”.

Speak to the children of Israel, and you shall say to them:  When you cross the Jordan to the land of Canaan, you shall select cities for yourselves.  They will become cities of refuge for you, and a killer who strikes down a living soul inadvertently shall flee there.  The cities shall be for you a refuge from a go-eil, so the killer will not die until he has stood before the community for the legal ruling.  (Numbers/Bemidbar 35:10-12)

go-eil (גֺּאֵל) = a compensator; a redeemer or avenger; a person who is responsible for redressing the situation when a man’s life or land is taken

In the Torah, a go-eil is usually a male relative of a male victim.  When an Israelite man becomes a slave, a go-eil redeems him, freeing him by paying his owner.  When a man dies without heirs, his nearest male relative serves as a go-eil by making the widow pregnant, so her child will inherit the deceased man’s property and his “name” will continue.  When a man is killed, a “go-eil of the blood”  (go-eil hadam)  is responsible for correcting the situation by killing the killer.

Legally, execution by the “go-eil of the blood” is is not revenge, but rather a way to uphold the dignity and importance of the victim.  If no male relative is available to serve as the go-eil of the blood, the judges appoint one.

(What if the victim of enslavement or murder is a woman?  The Torah does give a few examples of redemption and retribution for female victims, but there is no go-eil in these cases.  The Torah reflects the culture of the time and place where it was written down, so it has different laws for men than for women.)

The Torah provides for six cities of refuge where a killer can flee to be safe from an over-eager go-eil until the community where the killing occurred passes sentence on the case.  If the verdict is murder, the go-eil may execute the death penalty, even if he has to enter a city of refuge to do it.  But what if the verdict is accidental manslaughter?

If in an instant, without enmity, he knocked someone down, or threw down upon him any implement, without premeditated malice … then the community shall rescue the killer from the hand of the go-eil of the blood, and the community shall return him to his city of refuge where he had fled.  And he shall stay in it until the death of the high priest … and after the death of the high priest the killer may return to his land-holding. (Numbers 35:22, 25, 28) 

Thus a man who accidentally causes another’s death receives a different sentence. He must leave his own land, and live in a city of refuge, where the go-eil is not allowed to harm him.  The killer must not leave his city of refuge until the high priest of Israel dies.

Traditional commentary offers three reasons for this restriction.  One is that it preserves the killer’s life by protecting him from being attacked by a vengeful go-eil.  The Talmud takes the idea of protection further by teaching that the refugee is given a place to live in the city of refuge, and he does not have to pay taxes to the Levites.

A  second reason for the restriction is that since taking a life is such an awful deed, even an inadvertent killer should be punished.  So he is exiled from his home, his land, his friends and neighbors.  This makes a “city of refuge” more like a city of imprisonment (though it is a very nice prison, where he can have a normal life within the city limits).

A third reason is that the Levites who run the city, and are presumably spiritually elevated by their career of serving God,  will help the killer to repent and atone for his guilt over any possible negligence.

I would add that it would be hard to process your guilt and horror over causing someone’s death if you stayed in your old job and kept associating with the same people (who would now see you differently).  Moving to a new place would give you breathing room.  Although the residents of the city of refuge would all know why you were there, you would still get a chance to built a new identity, instead of pretending you were the same old person.

Then why does the exile in a city of refuge end when the high priest of all Israel dies?

Whatever reasons they give, traditional commentators agree that the high priest was a beloved figure whom everyone looked up to.  So his death was a national tragedy, touching everyone’s heart and moving everyone to see life differently.

Rambam (12-century commentator Moses ben Maimon, or Maimonides) wrote that when the high priest dies, a go-eil of the blood loses his taste for vengeance, so it becomes safe for his relative’s killer to leave the city of refuge.

Other commentary views the death of the high priest as the final cleansing of the inadvertent killer’s soul, so he becomes sufficiently pure of heart to go back to his former life with the right attitude.

I’ve seen similar psychological transformations in my own congregation, P’nai Or of Portland, when our beloved founding rabbi, Aryeh Hirschfield of blessed memory, passed away unexpectedly.  So many of us felt overwhelmed by grief, we could have fallen apart as a community.  Instead, the shock and grief opened our hearts, so that many of us rose above petty personal issues and took on new challenges to keep the congregation going.  We had even more lay leadership for services, more learning, more support for each other.  And we are still going strong.

Although it is a psychological truth that the death of a beloved leader can transform people, we must not postpone our own transformations until our personal high priests die.  We need to begin changing our lives at once, just as an unintentional killer was required to flee to a city of refuge at once.  And we need to open our hearts so that any tragedy or insight might offer transformation.

Few of us are haunted by the knowledge that we accidentally killed a human being.  But many of us are haunted by other things we did in the past.  Our society rarely provides us with clearly defined refuges from our internal “go-eil of the blood”:  our recurrent guilt, self-accusation, or emotional memories.  We need to find our own cities of refuge, even if they are part-time or internal.

May each of us find a place of refuge from the past deeds that haunt us.  May each of us be able to use that refuge to look more honestly at our past and accept it with compassion toward ourselves.  And then may each of us be blessed with a big shift in perspective, opening up a new phase in our lives.

Matot: From Genocide to Gentleness

The Israelites perpetrate genocide in this week’s Torah portion, Matot (Tribes).

God spoke to Moses, saying:  Take vengeance, the vengeance of the children of Israel, against the Midianites; afterward, you will be gathered to your people.  (Numbers/Bemidbar 31:1-2)

For this last military action before Moses dies, he sends out a detachment of 12,000 men, a thousand men from each non-Levite tribe.  With them he sends his grand-nephew, the new priest Pinchas, who skewered the Israelite man and the Midianite woman in the act of fornicating to worship the god of Peor.  (See my last two blogs, Pinchas: Aromatherapy, and Balak: Wide Open.)  

To further emphasize that the coming battle is a religious one, rather than an ordinary battle for conquest or defense, Moses sends Pinchas with signal trumpets and (unspecified) holy objects.

The Israelite detachment succeeds without losing a single man.  They kill all the Midianite men, and bring back the women, children, livestock, and other booty as spoils of war.

The Women of Midian Led Captive by the Hebrews, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

And Moses became angry with the military orders given by the officers of the thousands and the officers of the hundreds, the ones coming from the armed battle.  And Moses said to them:  You let the females live!   Hey, they were here leading Israel in the matter of Bilam, to choose unfaithfulness to God in the affair of Peor; and the pestilence happened to the community of God!  So now kill every male among the small children, and every woman who has known a man by lying down with a male, kill her!  But all the small children among the women who have not known lying down with a male, keep alive for yourselves.  (Numbers 31:14-18)

Whoa!  Are Moses’ orders as awful as they sound?  It depends on the level of interpretation.  Jewish Torah commentary is often divided into four classifications:  peshat, “spreading out” the literal interpretation; remez, the application of “hints” in the text to related situations; derash, the “investigation” of how mythical elements in the text apply to human psychology and ethics; and sod, the “hidden” level that finds mystical symbolism in the words.

Peshat

On the literal,  peshat level, Moses carries out God’s request for “vengeance” by treating the action against the Midianites in Moab as different from all previous military actions.  This is a religious war against a people who seduced the men of Israel into worshiping a false god.  That’s why the priest Pinchas leads the army, bringing holy objects with him.  The Israelites kill all the Midianite men in combat, without losing one of their own men, because God is on their side.

But then they follow standard wartime procedure by returning with all the women and children as part of their booty. Moses declares that since the Midianite women were the ones who seduced the Israelite men into worshiping the god of Peor, through both sex and animal sacrifices, they are guilty and must then be killed.  It is not clear which Midianite women seduced Israelite men, so Moses orders all the non-virgins killed.

As for the young boys, they must be killed to prevent them from growing up and avenging their fathers.  But the young girls are considered safe, because (according to traditional commentary) they will be converted by their Israelite husbands.

Remez

So on the literal, peshat level, Moses has a rationale for the genocide.  But when I look on the remez level for what the text hints at, I notice the assumption that Israelite men have no willpower to resist seduction.  All the blame lies on the Midianite women, rather than on the men who succumb to their invitations.  And since the Midianite women seduce the Israelite men openly, it is a fair assumption that the Midianite men are complicit. That’s why God orders vengeance against all the Midianites in Moab.

If the Israelite men were held responsible for their own sex acts, the story would be different.  The vengeance or punishment would be left up to God, who has already afflicted both Israelites and Midianites with a pestilence.  And Moses would exhort the men of Israel to leave Moab behind them, rejecting any future seductions from Midianite women.  No war or genocide would be necessary; the Israelites do not intend to conquer Moab, and their men must learn to resist seduction by worshipers of foreign gods.

So in my remez interpretation, the story of genocide becomes a tragic illustration of what happens when women get all the blame for seducing men into bad behavior.

Derash

Moving toward the derash level, modern commentators have noted that Moses himself was married to a Midianite.  Moses’ wife Tzipporah has nothing to do with the seduction in Moab; he married her decades earlier, she belonged to a group of Midianites living far away on the Sinai peninsula, and her father was the Midianite priest Jethro (Yitro), who mentored Moses and worshiped the same god.

Nevertheless, Moses might feel self-conscious about his Midianite wife, and therefore insist on being especially severe with the Midianite women in Moab in order to prove his complete aversion to them and their alien religion.

Going deeper into a derash investigation, I find the basic human conflict between what Freud called the id and the superego.  The id side of a human being wants to indulge in any pleasure that comes along, and avoid the pain of saying no, setting boundaries, refusing to go along with other people.  This is the side that is seduced by Midianites into worshiping the wrong god.  The superego side of a human being wants to do the right thing,  earn self-respect and inner peace, and go for the long-term reward of a good reputation.  This is the side that must utterly reject the Midianites.  And this utter rejection is expressed metaphorically by the extermination of all the Midianites in Moab—except for the young girls.

Sod

What do the young, virgin girls stand for?  Moving into the sod level of interpretation, I think they represent our more innocent impulses toward pleasure and sociability.  Human beings should not be total killjoys.  Instead, we should let our love of physical and social pleasures enrich our moral activities and bring a gentle joy into our lives. Young girls are often romanticized as gentle, happy creatures.

Rebirth of Torah Sparks and Torah Monologues

This is my new site for my blogs on the Torah portion of the week, “Torah Sparks”, and my website for my Torah Monologues and creative midrash workshops.

I’ve been working on this new site for more than a month now, while outside sprouts slowly push out of their seeds or bulbs and up through the dirt, until finally they reach the open air and the sun turns them green.

And my dear and computer-savvy husband, Will, transferred “www.mtorah.com” to this new site just before Passover (Pesach in Hebrew).  How delightfully appropriate!  Not only is Passover a spring holiday, but it celebrates the liberation of the Israelites from their old life of slavery in Egypt, and how they (and everyone else who decided to join them as they left Egypt) began to learn a new way of life on the other side of the Reed Sea.  In their new life, they were all to become priests and priestesses, a holy nation.  And that takes a lot of learning and a lot of practice.

I’ll address what “holy” means in my next regular blog, on the Torah portion named Kedoshim (Holiness).

I hope this new site will make it easier for you to find sparks of inspiration, and easier for me to continue the “holy” work I’ve taken on.

Toledot: Opposing Twins

(This was my first “Torah Sparks” blog post, published on November 17, 2009.  I made a few small additions before reposting it in 2020.)

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

And [Rebecca’s] days for giving birth filled, and hey!  Twins were in her womb!  And the first one emerged red all over, like a robe of fur; and they called his name Eisav.  After that, his brother emerged, and his hand was holding onto the akeiv of Eisav, so he called his name Ya-akov.  (Genesis/Bereishit 25:24-26)

Eisav (עֵשָׂו) =  (“Esau” in English.)  Doer?  (Probably from the verb asah, עָשַׂה = did, made.  Aso, עֲשׂוֹ = to do.)

akeiv (עָקֵב) = heel.  (From the verb akav, עָקַב = grasp by the heel, cheat.)

Ya-akov (יַעֲקֺב) = (“Jacob” in English.)  He grasps by the heel.

Isaac and Rebecca name the first one Eisav, and he grows up to be a hunter and a man of action.  They name the second one Ya-akov because he was born holding onto his twin brother’s heel .  Clearly this heel-holding is important.  But what does it mean?

The traditional Jewish interpretation is that Jacob is trying to pull Esau back, because even in the womb Jacob knows that he, not Esau, should receive the inheritance and the blessing that belong to the firstborn.  Since he fails to switch places with Esau at birth, the adult Jacob resorts to trickery to get the rights of the firstborn.

But what if Jacob is hanging onto Esau because he cannot bear to be separated from his twin?  Esau has always been with him, since they were conceived.  Rebecca noticed the agitation in her belly as the brothers struggled, or wrestled, or perhaps danced inside her.  Then suddenly Esau was gone.  How could Jacob stand the sudden loss?

The birth process separates the twins, and also separates them into two halves of one person, dividing the traits of a human being between them.  Esau is a physical man, hairy like an animal, focused on eating, taking wives, and killing.  Jacob is an intellectual, a smooth-skinned smooth-talker, focused on cooking up the future and getting words of blessing.

That’s why neither Jacob nor Esau can be whole until he takes on some of his brother’s characteristics.  In next week’s Torah portion, Vayeitzei, Jacob  becomes interested in taking a wife and acquires physical strength when he sees Rachel and rolls the big stone off the well (Genesis 29:10).  And in the following portion, Vayishlach, Esau learns to think well enough to become a leader of a tribe (Genesis 32:7).  But neither twin can be at peace until they finally meet again in old age, and kiss and weep together (Genesis 33:4).

 

Va-eira: Shortness of Ruach

(This blog was first posted on January 10, 2010.)

And Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, from kotzer of ruach and from avodah kashah.  (Exodus/Shemot 6:9)

Moses asks Pharaoh to give the Israelite slaves a leave of absence to spend three days in the wilderness worshiping their god.  Pharaoh responds by accusing the Israelites of laziness and giving them extra work: they must collect their own straw to mix with clay, and still make the same quota of bricks.  The slaves complain to Moses, who then complains to God that now the people are even worse off than before.  This week’s Torah portion,Va-eira (“And I appeared”), opens with God reaffirming the divine plan to rescue the children of Israel from Egypt.

Moses passes on this communication to the Israelite slaves, but they do not listen to him.  Why not?  The brief explanation ending the sentence in Exodus 6:9,  “from kotzer of ruach and from avodah kashah“, can be translated in many ways.  Below are some possibilities; pick one from each list to make your own translation.

kotzer = shortness.  being stunted.  despondency.  impatience.

ruach = wind.  spirit.  breath.  motivation.

avodah = labor.  service.  ritual.  worship.

kashah = difficult.  heavy.  stubborn.  severe.

Some translators choose a physical interpretation, writing that the Israelites did not listen to Moses out of shortness of breath and hard bondage (Robert Alter, following Rashi).  How can you listen to someone promising an unimaginable future when you’re working so hard that you’re panting?  Ramban says physical exhaustion made the people impatient and sapped them of the strength to hope.

Other translators take a psychological approach, writing that the Israelites did not listen to Moses because of a constriction of the spirit (the Zohar) and because of the heathen service which weighed heavily upon them (the Targumim, according to Elie Munk).  Their suffering was so continuous that they were reduced to animals who could only think about their daily physical needs; they did not have enough human spirit to imagine anything else.  Lacking imagination and believing themselves powerless, they paid homage to the Egyptian gods of their slave-masters.  This idol worship also prevented them from listening to any communication from their own god.

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, in The Particulars of Rapture, wrote:  “To hear is to open oneself up to vulnerability, change, contingency.”  Pharoah the hard-hearted cannot consider even the idea of change, so he refuses to hear out Moses.  Pharoah afflicts his Israelite slaves with the same deafness, by making their lives so hard that they cannot stop and listen to any revolutionary ideas.  Thus Egypt, which in Hebrew is called Mitzrayim, “Narrow Places”, is the place of constriction for both master and slave.  It is the place where people are stunted, cut short—“kotzer”—from the freedom of thought that make us human.

In Kabbalistic terms, the children of Israel are stunted in the ruach level of soul.  Like animals, they exist from day to day with only the nefesh, the level of soul that animates the body.  They have neither time nor energy to access their ruach and neshamah levels of soul.  (The neshamah is the soul level where one can hear one’s calling and receive inspiration.  The ruach is the level where one is seized by the drive and motivation to seek that calling, to do something new.)

In the story of creation at the beginning of Genesis, the ruach—wind or spirit—of God hovers over the face of the waters.  Throughout the Torah, certain humans are seized by the irresistible power of the ruach of God, which turns them into prophets or madmen, or perhaps both.  A human being’s own ruach may not be as enormous as God’s ruach, but it is still a motivating force that can be ignored only by rigorous denial.

Pharaoh is the king of denial.  He does not listen to the word of God because his ruach is stunted; he refuses to believe that change is unavoidable.  The children of Israel do not listen to the word of God because their ruach is imprisoned by continuous suffering; they refuse to believe that change can happen to them.

I’ve been in that constricted place, too.  I’ve cried over more than one unbearable situation in my life, unable to believe that I could do anything about it or that it would ever change.  But each situation did change.  Sometimes I heard a different inner voice, and I found a way out.  Other times the change happened without an action on my part, by the grace of God, and all I had to do was to respond, to gird my loins and go with it.

But what about when you’re still trapped in the suffering?  How do you find the voice you haven’t been hearing?  Does it take a temporary break—a deep breath, a real Shabbat, three days in the wilderness—to hear the voice of freedom?  Or do you need someone, or something, to lead you out of your Egypt whether you’re ready or not?

Vayiggash: Reuben the Jerk

(This blog was first posted on December 20, 2009.)

These are the names of the sons of Israel, the one coming to Egypt, Jacob and his children: Jacob’s bechor, Reuben.  (Genesi/Bereishit 46:8)

bechor (בְּכֺר) = firstborn.

Throughout the book of Genesis, the firstborn son, who is supposed to be the future leader of the clan, is portrayed in a bad light.  Avraham’s firstborn son, Ishmael, is exiled for inappropriate “playing with his younger brother Isaac.  Esau, Isaac’s firstborn son, is portrayed and easily duped, stupid, and impulsive compared to his brother Jacob.  Jacob’s firstborn, Reuben, comes across as a shmendrick,  an ineffectual jerk.

Right after his father Jacob’s second and favorite wife, Rachel, dies in childbirth, Reuben lies with Bilhah, who is Rachel’s servant and Jacob’s concubine.  (Genesis 35:22)  Jacob is not at all happy about this, and brings it up years later on his deathbed.  (Genesis 49:4).  Is Reuben overcome with passion, and unable to see the obvious consequences?  Or is he making a foolish attempt to become the family’s leader through the ancient custom by which the new ruler assumed his office by having sex with the old ruler’s concubines?

The next time we see Reuben, he is arguing with his brothers about what to do with Joseph, Rachel’s firstborn and their father’s favorite son.  Joseph’s older brothers hate him, and now that he is approaching them in a place far from home, far from Jacob’s protection, the brothers conspire to kill him and throw him into a pit.

But Reuben says, “Let’s not strike down his life.  Don’t shed blood!  Throw him into this pit in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.”  (Genesis 37:21-22)  The Torah adds that Reuben says this “in order to rescue him from their hand, to return him to his father”.

If we take Reuben’s words at face value, he does not mind if Joseph dies in the pit—which Rashi (11th-century rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki) said was filled with scorpions.  He just does not want to be responsible for breaking the taboo against shedding a brother’s blood.

On the other hand, if we believe the explanation the Torah adds, Reuben does want to save Joseph’s life; he just doesn’t have the guts to directly contradict his brothers.  He is the bechor, and therefore the eldest, but he is afraid to stand up to the brothers he should be leading.

It gets worse.  Reuben goes away for some unspecified reason.  In his absence, the brothers, led by Judah, sell Joseph to a passing caravan as a slave.  The early rabbis invented reasons for Reuben’s absence; Rashi said either it was his day to go home and wait on his father, or he was fasting in penitence for lying with Bilhah.  But neither explanation exonerates him from a charge of criminal neglect.

Reuben returns to the pit, sees that his Joseph is gone, and asks his brothers, “And I, where will I go?”  (Genesis 37:30)  Reuben does not ask what happened to Joseph; he is only concerned about what will happen to himself, once his father finds out Joseph is missing.

The brothers trick their father Jacob into believing that Joseph was killed by a wild animal.  While Jacob mourns, Reuben does not say a thing to alleviate his father’s pain or expose the truth.

The next time Reuben shows up in the story, the ten oldest of Jacob’s twelve sons have gone to Egypt to buy grain during a famine.  The governor of Egypt (whom the brothers do not recognize as their long-lost little brother Joseph) accuses the ten men of being spies.  He imprisons Simon, then orders the rest of the men to go home and bring back their youngest brother, Benjamin.  The brothers decide this must be divine punishment for selling Joseph into slavery.  And Reuben says, “Didn’t I speak to you, saying— Don’t sin against the boy— but you didn’t listen.”  (Genesis 42:22)  As if Reuben were innocent!  As if it did any good now to say “I told you so”!

It gets worse.  When the brothers go home and explain the situation to Jacob, he refuses to part with Benjamin, his favorite son since Joseph disappeared.  Reuben tries to persuade Jacob by saying, “You can kill my two sons if I don’t bring him (Benjamin) back to you.  Put him in my hands, and I myself will return him to you.”  (Genesis 42:37)

In this one sentence, Reuben shows that he is both callous about his own sons, and stupid about human relationships.  He is callous because he cannot be sure of Benjamin’s safe return, no matter how carefully he guards him, yet he is willing to risk the lives of his own sons anyway.  And he is stupid because he assumes Jacob would consider killing two of his own grandsons a satisfactory revenge!

That is the last time Reuben speaks in the Torah.  But his name comes up again in this week’s Torah portion, Vayiggash (And he stepped forward), in a genealogy.  (Genesis 46:8).  Like the genealogy right after Reuben lies with Bilhah in 35:23, the Torah specifically refers to Reuben as the firstborn, though none of the oldest sons in subsequent generations are listed that way.  In fact, many other genealogies in the Torah don’t use the word bechor, firstborn, at all.

This may be a clue to the reason why Reuben is a jerk.  He is Jacob’s firstborn; he is supposed to inherit the mantle of authority, to be the leader of his generation, to serve as the family’s religious leader after Jacob is gone.  But he just does not have the personality traits of a leader.  When Prince Shechem offers to marry Dinah (see my blog on Vayishlach), Simon and Levi speak for their brothers and lead the action.  When Benjamin is in danger, Judah speaks for the brothers and becomes their leader.  Reuben knows he should act like the firstborn son, but he cannot; he is either too afraid of his younger brothers, or too self-centered to care about the lives of others, or too stupid to see the big picture and the consequences of his actions.

What happens today, when someone is given a leadership role but does not have what it takes to succeed?  Some people can rise to the occasion and grow into leaders.  But some cannot, no matter how good their intentions are.  I know people who are too self-centered to be fair parents or bosses, perhaps because they suffered childhood trauma beyond their control.  I know people who simply were not born with the mental ability to make complicated long-term decisions.  I know that in the past I myself have failed other people because I was too afraid to stand up for them.

The world is full of Reubens.  Once again, the Torah shows us that no human being is perfectly good, and no human being is completely evil.  We are all shmendricks sometimes.

Bo: Serving God with Possessions

(This blog was first posted on January 17, 2010.)

And also mikanu will go with us—not a hoof will remain—because we will take from them to serve Y*h, our god; and we ourselves will not know with what we will serve Y*h  until we come there.  (Exodus/Shemot 10:26)

miknanu=our possessions, our property—usually livestock

Moses does not ask Pharaoh to let the children of Israel go free.  He only asks Pharaoh to let them go out into the wilderness for a three-day holiday to serve their god.  The implication is that then the slaves will all return to their jobs in Egypt.

Yet God has told Moshe that in the end, after the tenth and final plague, Pharaoh will drive the Israelites out of Egypt altogether.  Then God will lead them to the promised land.

In this week’s Torah portion, Bo (Come), Pharoah reacts to plague number nine, darkness, by telling Moshe that all the Israelites can go to serve God in the wilderness, even the children—but they must leave their livestock behind.  Moshe refuses with the explanation—or rationalization—that “from them we will take to serve Y*h, our god, and we ourselves will not know with what we will serve Y*h  until we come there”.

The Israelite slaves do not possess much except for the descendants of the cows, sheep, and goats their ancestors brought down from Canaan.  But Moshe insists they must take all their possessions with them for the three-day holiday.  Pharaoh rightly suspects his slaves are planning to escape, instead of return.  He also seems to suspect that worshiping their god with sacrifices is merely a pretext for leaving.

In that, I believe, he is mistaken.  Moshe makes sure that the exodus focuses on religious service, not for three days but for forty years.  And the Israelites do worship God with sacrifices.  As well as sacrificing livestock, they sacrifice their security.  Even a bad situation seems secure if it goes unchanged long enough.  Now the Israelites exchange their familiar Egyptian masters for a new and unpredictable master, a god who can create terrifying plagues, a god who might ask anything of them.

Today, many of us serve God by following ethical rules, praying at the right times, and observing other rituals.  This kind of service can be a conscious effort, even a sacrifice.  Or it can be lip service, not service of the heart.  What do we do when our inner world changes and we need to hear and follow the call of the divine, but we don’t know how anymore?

We can look over our possessions, and ask God what needs to be sacrificed.  Are we too attached to our “livestock”, our material goods?  Are we clinging to our present status—high or low?  To the security of our present life?  To something else that keeps us enslaved in a narrow place?

What do we need to sacrifice in order to free ourselves to leave our Egypts and enter a new world?

Mishpatim: After the Vision, Eat Something

In this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, God tells Moses:

“Come up to God, you and Aaron, Nadav, and Avihu, and seventy elders of Israel, and bow down from a distance.” (Exodus/Shemot 24:1)

Aaron is Moses’ brother, and Nadav and Avihu are Aaron’s two oldest sons, who will later be initiated as priests. The seventy elders are judges and the de facto representatives of the Israelites.

And Moses went up, and Aaron, Nadav, Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel.  And they saw the God of Israel, and under [God’s] feet something like brick-work of sapphire, and it was exactly like the heavens latohar.  And [God] did not stretch out {God’s] hand against those singled out from the children of Israel. And they beheld God, and they ate and they drank.  (Exodus/Shemot 24:9-11)

latohar (לָטֺהַר) = for the ritual purity, for being acceptable for sacred purposes.

Brickwork in Ishtar Gate of Babylonia (Staatliche Museum, Berlin)

Seventy-five men see God in a transcendent vision. Then, overwhelmed by this spiritual

experience—they take out their lunches and have a bite to eat?  What’s that supposed to mean?

The commentary on the portion called Mishpatim (“Laws”)  is divided.  

latohar = for the purity; for being acceptable for sacred purposes

First God tells Moses to climb at least partway up Mount Sinai with his brother Aaron, his nephews Nadav and Avihu, and 70 elders.  When they do so, they see God in a transcendent vision, and then, overwhelmed by this spiritual experience—they take out their lunches and have a bite to eat?  What’s that supposed to mean?

The commentary on the portion called Mishpatim (“Laws”)  is divided.  Some modern commentators explain that since the Israelites have just received the Torah, or at least the Ten Commandments and a number of laws, the elders are now engaged in the sort of feast that marks a covenant or treaty.1  They probably shlepped some meat from sacrificed animals up with them for the concluding feast.2

I find this approach disappointing, because it downgrades the vision of God’s feet to merely part of cutting a covenant, the ancient Israelite version of a signing ceremony.

Other commentary claimed that it was not actual, physical food; the elders were feasting upon their contemplation of the divine glory.  In the Talmud, Rav even said that in the “World to Come” humans will be nourished only by their appreciation of God’s glory.3  In other words, none of that nasty physical chewing will be necessary.

According to other commentary, the Torah refers to real food and drink, but the elders on Mount Sinai raise their food to a more spiritual level.  The kabbalist Isaac of Luria wrote that we raise the sparks of holiness in plants and animals by eating them with the proper devotion.  19th-century rabbi Samson R. Hirsch wrote that the sapphire brick in the elders’ vision is a metaphor showing that even a lowly brick acquires a heavenly purity when it serves the divine.4

But what if the elders are not thinking about raising sparks?  What if they really do go from seeing a mystical vision of God to enjoying a nice snack?  One way to explain their flexible outlook is to look at the previous clause, “And He did not stretch out his hand toward them”.  Ovadiah Sforno interpreted that as meaning they are already seeing like prophets; God does not need to put them into an altered state of consciousness, the way God does with Saul, or Ezekiel, or the 70 elders themselves in Numbers 11:25-26.5

Maybe the consciousness of the elders is so integrated, at that moment, that they can find God in everything—in the taste of food as much as in a numinous vision.

I know some people who shun any hint of spirituality or mysticism.  They would explain a vision of God’s feet on sapphire bricks as a mere hallucination due to some bodily malfunction.  I also know people who love mysticism and cultivate spiritual ecstasy.  They seem to view the practical details of life as inferior, and prefer not to pay much attention to what their bodies are doing (except, perhaps, when they’re engaged in ecstatic dance).

I like the middle way.  I think an ideal world is one in which we are all like the 70 elders on Mount Sinai: we calmly accept whatever mysterious vision of God arrives, and we also savor the food, drink, and other physical gifts that God’s world provides.  When we unite body and soul, we become whole.

(This post was first published on February 7, 2010.)

—

  1. E.g. Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, The Jewish Publication Society, 2001, p. 479.
  2. Cf. 12th-century rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, a.k.a. Rashbam, on Exodus 24:11, http://www.sefaria.org.
  3. Talmud Bavli, Berakhot 17a.
  4. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumah: Sefer Shemos, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 533.
  5. 16th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno on Exodus 24:11, http://www.sefaria.org.