This week's double parsha contains a variety of odd incidents.  Two especially interested me:

*The Hebrews suffer yet another plague as punishment for whining- this time, venomous snakes (Num. 21:6).  Moses tells the people to look at a copper serpent and be healed. (21:9).  Even leaving aside the theological questions involving telling people to look at idol-like sculptures of animals, why would snakes be a symbol of healing?  The Women's Commentary explains that snakes "shed their skins only to grow new ones repeatedly in a cycle of destruction and rebirth."  Thus, by focusing on snakes, the Hebrews were able to imagine a physical (and presumably spiritual) rebirth.

*The Hebrews stray into idolatry for the first time since the Golden Calf affair, worshipping Baal-Peor.  Of course, Baal (a Canaanite deity) is mentioned numerous times in the Bible.  But why Baal-Peor? Who or what is Peor? The Women's Commentary explains that Peor is a place* and thus Baal-Peor is the "local manifestation" of Baal.  So the reference to Baal-Peor is a kind of dig at the localism of idol worship, implying under paganism, every city had its own god with local jurisdiction - a world-view which seems absurd to the relatively modern world view of the Torah (and to me, of course!)  

*See, e.g. Numb. 23:28, where Balak "took Balaam to the peak of Peor"

Posted by conservadox at 3:47 PM EDT

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This week's parsha, of course, is about the unsuccessful rebellion of Korach, Dathan and Abiram against the leadership of Moses and Aaron.  There's not too much I can say about this that hasn't already been said elsewhere.  but I do have a couple of points:

*Before Dathan and Abiram get swallowed up by the earth, Moses essentially dictates the terms of their deaths, stating "if Hashem [God] brings about something unheard-of, so that the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, you shall know that these fellows have spurned Hashem" (Num. 16:30).  The Women's Commentary suggests that this show of force "is intended to serve the purpose of quashing potential future challenges to his [Moses's] authority."  In other words, Moses is calling for a show of force in order to prevent further rebellion.  Does repression work?

Yes and no.  On the one hand, "the whole Israelite community railed against Moses and Aaron, saying 'You two have brought death upon Hashem's people.' (17:6).  This passage, reading alone, supports the "force never solves anything" view of politics: that repression only breeds more rebellion.  (A consoling thought, given the Iranian dictators' repression of protestors over the past few days!)

But wait a minute: this story of people power does not end with a reconciliation between Moses and the people.  Instead, a Divinely inspired plague which kills 14.700 people.  So maybe repression does work; enough death and destruction will force people to accept authority (though of course Moses's authority is more just than that of the Khameini gang.)

But then, after the plague, Moses places the staff of Aaron next to the staff of the other tribal chietains, and only Aaron's staff sprouts, producing almonds and blossoms (17:23).  Hashem then states that this staff shall be placed in front of the ark "as a lesson to rebels, so that their mutterings against Me may cease" (17:25).   So the whole matter ends with a peaceful miracle and eventually dies down.

So in dealing with disorder, does force work or is it ultimately true that, as the liberal cliche goes, "violence never solves anything?"  I think the message of this parsha is, yes and yes.  There must be force and deterrence, but there also must be some means of peaceful reconciliation.  Or to put it another way, sometimes leaders have to kill a bunch of people [either domestic or foreign] to preserve order- but unless you're planning to kill everyone, there has to be some means of getting the survivors invested in a new civic order.   Or as Machiavelli would say, a good prince has to be both feared and loved.

*In the "swallowing episode", everyone surrounding Dathan and Abiram gets swallowed up.  One of the essays in the Women's Commentary suggests that this has allegorical significance: Dathan and Abiram, as nonpriests, represent the pre-priestly, clan-based system of leadership.  The repression of the rebellion, by contrast, makes it clear that the priests come first.  The essay suggests: "The deaths of Dathan, Abiram and their wives at the doorway to their tents makes the point painfully clear: after all, the entrance to the tent is a place associated with theophany and judgment in the clan system, and hence also a symbol of authority.  Together, Dathan, Abiram and their wives represent the clan system that must be erased - swallowed whole- in order to establish the authority of the priesthood."  In other words, the "swallowing up" may be as much metaphorical as literal- Moses and Aaron have to "swallow up" competing sources of authority to lead.

Posted by conservadox at 11:50 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 23 June 2009 11:52 AM EDT

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This week's parsha contains two major matters: the "sin of the scouts" (who are sent by Moses to report on the Holy Land, and create a great deal of trouble by telling the Jews they cannot win against the locals) and the mitzvah of tzitzit.*

As to both, the Women's Commentary has interesting historical insights.  The scouts say that the land is full of giants (Num. 13:32).  Given that most people thousands of years ago were pretty short, what's up with this? THe Commentary suggests: "In the case of the Philistines, it may be that their tall headdresses (pictured in Egyptian art) contributed to their giant image." This possibility is a good example of how clothes can be deceptive; externals (such as a tall hat) convey an image, but the image doesn't always fit reality.

The Commentary also suggests that the mitzvah of tsitsit may have historical basis.  It states:

tassels and fringes were common on Canaanite and Mesopotamian clothing, and they held special significance.  For example, prophets from the Babylonian city of Mari (second millenium) legitimated their oracles to the king by sending a fringe from their garment.  Symbolically, the fringe was like a signature.  The imprinting of fringes on clay tablets was also a way of endorsing or verifying a written document.  Like garments and hair, fringes were considered part of the individual's identity; thus, for example, giving one's fringe to another person signified a pledge of loyalty.

So how are our tzitzit different from the idolaters?  First, the requirement of a "cord of blue" (15:38) similar to that hanging from the high priest's headdress, which doesn't really apply today.  Second, the general purpose of the tzitzit: "to call the Israelites to action regarding the fulfillment of the commandments."  In other words, the Torah pours new wine into old bottles, giving a secular/pagan garment a holy purpose.

The historical information about tzitzit also reveals the antiquity of the Torah;  the Torah's reference to a Canaanite garment suggests that the Torah is as old as the Caananites (3000-plus years old as opposed to say, 2500).   Proof of revelation at Sinai?  Not necessarily, but at least evidence that the Torah is almost that old.

*Ritual fringes on garments- sometimes worn above garments (in a robe called a tallit), sometimes worn as an undershirt (in a garment called a tallit katan), sometimes both.

Posted by conservadox at 10:22 AM EDT

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The most interesting points (for me) in this parsha are a couple of stories at the end.

First is the story of the Jews' search for meat.  They complain that all they have to eat is manna (Num. 11:4), stating "If only we had meat to eat!"  Hashem responds by sending quail in great numbers, followed by a plague. 

The Women's Commentary points out that this is another example of the Torah's equivocal attitude towards meat consumption.  Genesis 1:29 seems to advocate vegetarianism; other portions of the Torah allow meat but limit meat consumption to specific animals.  Only in reference to meat consumption does the Torah use the term "crave", indicating that the craving for meat is somehow ingrained.

This uncertain attitude continues today.  Rambam wrote that meat for shabbos is mandatory, based on the assumption that meat is a major source of joy.  Chabad and some haredim still hold this view, but it is a minority view among modern Orthodox Jews, and some noteworthy rabbis (e.g. Chief Rabbi Sacks of the UK) are vegetarians.  On the one hand, there is certainly a legitimate case for vegetarianism- but on the other, the craving for meat may be just undefeatable.

At the end of the parsha, Miriam complains about Moses' "Cushite woman" (12:1) and is then struck with a skin disease.  The Women's Commentary makes one interesting point about this: if cushit means "dark-skinned" (and commentators are divided about this) then Miriam is being punished for racism- and yet her punishment is to turn white.  Yet another example, I suppose, of the Torah's wonderful sense of irony.

Posted by conservadox at 4:21 PM EDT

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The Women's Commentary has interesting points on two issues in this week's parsha.

First, there is an odd contrast at Num. 5:3-6.  When describing ritual impurity, the Torah says "remove male and female alike" (5:3) (in Hebrew, mi-zachar ad nkeach).  The Commentary notes that this term is used throughout the Torah to describe nonhuman animals.

By contrast, in describing sacrifices to be made as atonement for theft, the Torah refers to "man or woman" (5:6) (in Hebrew, ish or ishah).  What's going on here? Why is the Torah describing people as animal-like in the ritual purity context and as fully human in the theft context?

Answer: only humans are capable of even conceiving of theft, because only humans are capable of conceiving of property rights.*  When your pet ferret "steals" your car keys he/she isn't really "stealing", because he/she can't even imagine that he/she is not entitled to those keys because of their presence.

A second issue: the sotah ritual, a kind of trial by ordeal for a women who is suspected of adultery.  This ritual doesn't apply to all adultery suspects; where there are multiple witnesses, the woman is subjected to a normal trial (which may end in executed).  But if the main "evidence" is a suspicious husband, there is a kind of half-trial.  The woman is forced to drink bitter water and swear to her innocence, and the only possible punishment is that if she is guilty, her "belly shall distend and her thigh shall sag" (5:27) whatever THAT means.

Sharon Keller of the Jewish Theological Seminary has an interesting explanation of this.  She notes that if the wife is exonerated, she shall be "able to retain seed" (5:28).  Maybe, Prof. Keller points out, this means that the ritual only applies to pregnant women, and the punishment for lying is a miscarriage.  This explanation makes sense to me because where a woman is pregnant, it is a lot more important to find out whether she is committing adultery, in other to establish paternity.    By contrast, if the suspected women is not pregnant and paternity is not at stake, the Torah is happy to abide by its customary rule that in the absence of witnesses there is no adjudication of guilt.  In other words, the Torah may have three separate rules:

Suspicious husband plus witnesses = death penalty (yikes!)

Suspicious husband plus pregnancy = sotah.  If baby born, law presumes no adultery and that husband is father.

Suspicious husband alone = no legal liability for woman.

What's the advantage of these distinctions?  It does deter single motherhood arising out of legal liability for adultery**; either the woman is executed (in which case the husband is stuck with custody of the kids, which he may not like) or the woman has a miscarriage (in which case the kid isn't born), or the woman gets off.

*I am not enough of a zoologists to know whether there are exceptions to this rule among the higher animals.  I am speaking merely of a general principle, one derived from observing my own pets and those of my friends.

**Though of course divorce is always a possibility.  But divorce is less stigmatizing, since the child is not a mamzer (a child born of an illicit relationship, who is subject to all sorts of disabilities ... but that's another Torah portion!)   

Posted by conservadox at 3:27 PM EDT

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This week's portion gives some lessons on the instability of hierarchies and of alliances. 

The tribes of Israel are ordered to march in groups of three; the first group mentioned is to camp on the east (2:3), which is apparently the prestige direction since (as the Women's Commentary notes) it is "opposite the Tabernacle entrance where Moses, Aaron and Aaron's offspring dwell." 

Since Judah later becomes the most prestigious tribe (holding the kingship- indeed, later sources suggest that the Messiah will be from this tribe) it is only natural that Judah would be in the east. 

And when you think of Judah, what tribe do you think of next?  I think of Benjamin (because Judah and Benjamin were allied in the Southern Kingdom in the 10th-6th centuries BCE, and also because they are probably the two surviving non-Levite tribes)*  Or maybe Ephraim, because Judah and Ephraim are sometimes spoken of as rivals by prophets (Ephraim symbolizing the Northern Kingdom).  But here, the Torah tells Judah to camp with Issachar and Zebulun, two low-profile tribes that wound up in the Northern Kingdom when the Jewish nation split up after King Solomon's death.  Today's allies aren't always tomorrow's, and vice versa. 

And the Torah explicitly mentions another change of hierarchy, telling Moses  "Take the Levites in place of all the male first-born among the Israelite people, and the cattle of the Levites in place of their cattle" (3:44).  Here, as in numerous other parts of the Torah, the first-born is displaced. But what's more interesting is that before the Exodus, the Levites were not a particularly prestigious tribe.  Genesis describes Levi as kind of a nasty guy (see Gen. 34) and Jacob curses his anger (49:7).  Again, today's follower is tomorrow's leader. 

All of this should remind us that if we're on top, we won't always be- as the saying goes, be nice to the tribes (or more broadly, people) you meet on the way up because you may meet them on the way down.  And if you're on the bottom, there's still hope.  

 And given the impermanence of hierarchy, maybe this portion undermines its own sexism.  The portion is dominated by a census that counts only males** The Women's Commentary notes that one midrash asks "Why only male, without mentioning every female ... Because the glory of the blessed Holy One is derived from the males."  Maybe this mentality was how life had to be 1800 years ago- but even this hierarchy may not be permanent.

And today's allies may be tomorrow's enemies, so try not to burn your bridges to the people you don't like.   A few months ago, I heard a sermon saying that because of our sins, we were being attacked by the "lowliest of all peoples", as the rabbi termed the Arabs.  But maybe in a few hundred years, we may need the Arabs as allies- so this kind of racism is never particularly prudent. 

*Because when the Assyrians took over the Northern Kingdom, presumably most of its residents were deported to various places (the so-called "Ten Lost Tribes").  On the other hand, some of its residents may have made their way south as refugees, so realistically our DNA is intermingled with theirs. 

**Though for excellent practical reasons- apparently the purpose of the census is to prepare for war. 

Posted by conservadox at 10:29 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 17 May 2009 10:38 AM EDT

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The first half of this double parsha is chock full of legislation.  It begins with the sabbatical (or shmitta) year- the idea that every 7th year the land "shall have a sabbath of complete rest" (Lev. 25:4) in which agricultural labor is prohibited.  A few years ago, I went to an Aish Hatorah seminar at which they argued that this law was evidence of the Divine authorship of the Torah.  They asserted that this law was so absurd no one would follow it unless it came from Hashem.

The Women's Commentary has a different, but also interesting, perspective.   They suggest, quoting the Jewish Publication Society Commentary to Leviticus,  that "letting the land lie fallow was a practical aspect of ancient agriculture, especially where extensive irrigation was utilized ... [shmitta] served to reduce the quantity of alkalines, sodium and calcium deposited in the soil." 

So does shmitta make sense from a secular perspective or not? At first glance, it seems that the Commentary may have the better of the argument.   If modern scholars could reasonably believe that shmitta is practical, maybe Israeli farmers could too.

On the other hand, modern Israeli farmers are constantly trying to avoid shmitta or find halachic loopholes.  How does this square with the Commentary's insistence that shmitta is practical?  I'm not sure.  One possibility might be that today's farmers (a) have other means of avoiding overuse of the soil and (b) need to till the land more because they are using land as a source of cash and not just for food, which means they need a lot more yield than their ancestors, which means they want to be able to use the land all 7 years. 

Behar also contains numerous redistributive laws, such as the jubilee (making land inalienable by ensuring that the law returns to its original owners every fifty years) and related rules- reminding us that the Torah was not written by laissez-faire capitalists.

In particular, the Commentary has an interesting perspective on the prohibition on interest (25:36).  Today, interest-free loans are just a nice gesture.  But the Commentary suggests that they were mandated to avoid a real social problem: "Ancient Mesopotamian documents show interest rates for loans of money, seed or food as high as 60 percent.  Such rates would make repayment impossible and push the debtor deeper into destitution."

Posted by conservadox at 10:39 AM EDT

Updated: Monday, 11 May 2009 10:49 AM EDT

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This week's Torah portion focuses primarily on the obligation of priests (or kohanim) officiating at the Temple and its predecessors.  The Torah bars kohanim from marrying divorcees, let alone "harlots" (to use the phrase that the Women's Commentary translation uses) and even prohibits the high priest from marrying widows, as opposed to never-married virgins (Lev. 21:7, 13-14).  Why? 

The Commentary suggests that because the "priesthood passes down from father to son...the marriage restrictions can assure priests that their sons are of their own line." In other words, if kohen X marries divorcee Y, there is a chance X's children may be from Y's first husband (or maybe from some in-between man's affair with Y).  By contrast, if X marries virgin Z, there will be considerably less uncertainty.  

Of course, Y's child will probably be from X, especially if X makes sure not to marry someone too recently divorced.  (And conversely, Z could be committing adultery- though the punishment for same may be an adequate deterrent here, see Deut. 22:22) Nevertheless, the Torah wants to make extra sure to the extent possible. 

Another interesting topic: the Torah may prohibit kohanim from marrying "harlots" but contains no similar restriction for the rest of Israel, or even for Levites such as myself.  Why not?  

Given the penalties for adultery, the Torah is not talking about a women who is presently a "harlot."  Instead, the Torah is probably discussing a reformed, repentant harlot.  Such a woman is presumably an OK bride for most Isrealites- indeed it is probably a good thing that she be married, to deter her from her prior occupation.  But for kohanim, the considerations mentioned above come first. 

The Torah is certainly not a purely pragmatic document - but that doesn't mean it has no pragmatic side.  Indeed, maybe one of the fascinating things about the Torah is the way that it straddles the pragmatic and the inexplicable.  

Posted by conservadox at 9:16 AM EDT

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