Fascinating take on a difficult parasha

Two Kinds of Holy Light: Tazria

By Rabbi Phyllis Berman *

As we read from different passages of Torah -- especially from the book of Leviticus -- we confront some of the most difficult concepts in Torah: tahor and tamei.

In many English translations, those words have been translated as "pure" and "impure," or "clean" and "unclean," signifying that one is all good and one is all bad. Understood that way, the Torah has seemed to be condemning menstrual blood, semen, the birthing process - as impure. For many years I felt horrified, offended, every single time I came across the words.

The Tazria portion teaches me a new way to understand the words.

The first eight verses (Lev. 12: 1-8) deal with what happens to a woman who has given birth to a male or a female child -- how much time in each case she is to be separated from the community as tamei, before she rejoins the community as tahor.

Out of my experience as a mother, I remember very clearly that indeed there is a period of time right after you've given birth that you want and need to be separated from the community. Your community narrows down to the baby right in your arms and at your breast and there isn't, for some period of time, another world except for that child.

Then I began to think about other moments in our lives when that kind of close focused attention happens as well: when we're lucky enough to fall in love; when we're taken over by the ruah ha'kodesh (holy spirit); when we're utterly captivated by a creative process.

So I began to think that indeed there are two different kinds of holiness. There is the holiness of such complete concentration and narrow focus - like a laser beam of light - that we can't look out into the larger world, and there is the holiness where we are so at balance that we can see a much broader reality, handle multiple worlds simultaneously.

Then I began to understand a little bit more about these words, tahor and tamei. I began to think that tahor refers to those holy times in our lives when the focus is broad, when we can see the whole picture, and tamei is about that holy time when the focus is narrow and we can see only the immediate concern that's right at hand for us. ...

Blessings and Curses

AJWS Commentary:

Within the narrative of blessings and curses in Parshat Ki Tavo, God sets out clear expectations for how we should behave, making it clear that this is not a covenant of faith, but one of deeds. Contemporary Jewish philosopher David Hartman contends that the blessings and curses are not literally inflicted upon humans in response to their observance or nonobservance of commandments. Hartman argues, instead, that our Torah enumerates these curses and blessings in order to emphasize the grave importance of acting with holiness and thereby actualizing God's presence in our midst. The blessings and curses are provided as a symbolic reminder of our covenantal obligations, reinforcing our commitment to a covenant rooted in action.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel also invokes our covenant with God when he asserts that the blessings and curses are meant to impart a sense of our partnership with the divine as we struggle to cope with good and evil. Simply observing the Torah's written laws is not enough to continually bring sanctity into our lives. The Torah not only narrowly stipulates that certain acts are prohibited, but also broadly demands that we accept our responsibility to realize a sustainable and just society. Heschel understands the significance of our deeds both as signs of our covenantal relationship and as active agents of change in our surroundings:

It is in the deeds that human beings become aware of what life really is, of their power to harm and to hurt, to wreck and to ruin; of their ability to derive joy and bestow it upon others...The deed is the test, the trial, and the risk. What we perform may seem slight, but the aftermath is immense."

Understood this way, mitzvot ben adam l'chavero - those commandments that guide human relationships - really actualize our covenant with God. The majority of the mitzvot detailed in this parshah focus on supporting just and compassionate relationships with other human beings - in effect, offering guidelines for the creation of just communities. Prohibitions against subverting the rights of the stranger, secretly harming a neighbor, and accepting bribes support the universal human rights we seek to uphold in our social justice work. The Torah champions human integrity and dignity, and our literary tradition further elevates this with the assertion that the highest form of tzedakah is to help someone become self-sufficient.

JTS Weekly Torah Commentary

-R. Marc Wolf - JTS Weekly Torah Commentary:

The sixteenth-century Italian commentator Moshe Hefetz writes on this verse in his commentary on Ki Tavo, 'You witnessed all those great wonders but only appreciated their full significance just now, at this time, after they had receded from view, as if you had to this point lacked sight and hearing' (Milekhet Mahshevet, Warsaw Ed., 315). Hefetz is observing that the people of Israel did not understand the miracles because they needed distance from them. It was their time in the desert, wandering, gaining perspective, and experience and growing as a people that allowed them to appreciate the full significance of the miracles. ...

The true significance of the Exodus was not in the signs and wonders, but in the time it took for the people to become Israelites. Their experience in the desert served as the vehicle for transformation from a wandering mass to a People ready to live as a Nation in the Land of Israel. Moses' statement, then, cannot be viewed as a critique, but as a compliment. B'nai Israel had made it through the desert and had matured into the people with "the mind to understand, the eyes to see and the ears to hear."

With Judaism, we are continually in and out of "the woods." This month of Elul leading up to the High Holidays is time in "the woods." Elul has traditionally been the month for introspection, a month to take our individual heshbon ha'nefesh (accounting of our soul) and examine our relationship with God. It is a period to develop as individuals to emerge like b'nai Israel from the desert with the mind, ears, and eyes we need to approach Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

JTS Torah Commentary: Arnold Eisen on Devarim

...My point is rather the spiritual power stored up in one little word in the first line of this book that has a lot to teach us about the power of words. The book's name after all is Devarim (Words). Moses must use words to unique effect in this address because it is the final speech he will give. Israel must listen to special effect ("shema Yisra'el," he urges more than once; "Hear, Israel!") because Moses cannot accompany them across the river. He cannot refine his words to suit the circumstances they will encounter. He cannot raise his voice or modulate it, speak to the rock or hit it with his staff, summon signs of divine confirmation or offer proof of divine displeasure. All the Israelites can take with them from now on are his words. ...

Never have words mattered more. It cannot be coincidence that the name of the book means not only words, but things: realities, facts on the ground. The words Moses speaks have to be adequate to the realities that Israelites/Jews will face in every generation, beginning with the one he addresses directly. Their actions, the facts they build on the ground, literally and figuratively, in turn have to be worthy of the words that Moses transmitted to them. The davar in each case, on each side of the river, must be true to the davar on the other.

This remains the case in every generation and in every radically new situation; the need to hear well is acute each time that we set out, or send out others, to cross whatever river currently separates us or them from new possibilities. ...

Moses takes pains to fix the current location of the Israelites with precision. It is as if he is saying to them,

Here we are, you and I... After Sinai and the golden calf, devotion and provocation, bickering and nobility of spirit—here is where we are. Now let's get moving. It's time to take God's devarim and make them into yours, to shape realities worthy of the potential stored up in you by God. Hear well for a change, O Israel. Enter the land that is your inheritance. Taste the life of fulfillment that no human being before you has been privileged to know. It starts here, right here, where you are. ...

Now as ever we want our lives aligned to whatever plan God has for us and the world. We hope to use our time well. We want to make God's words real in the world. As Deuteronomy will remind us before Moses concludes his address, these things and words are not beyond reach across the sea or up in heaven, but "Very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do them" (Deuteronomy 30:12). ...

JTS Torah Commentary: Are Words Important?

We are in the midst of the three weeks preceding the Ninth Day of Av, the day on which, tradition tells us, the first and second temples were destroyed. ... For many of us, whose feelings about the sacrificial cult are at best ambiguous, it is not clear that we have lost much, if anything. It is the Musaf service as it is formulated in the Reconstructionist siddur that helps us gain perspective on this loss. It may well be, say the authors of this siddur, that we find the sacrificial system foreign and even repulsive. We must not forget, however, that when our ancestors brought sacrifices they brought the sheep, cattle, wine, oil, and flour that they had so laboriously raised and produced over the course of the year and offered them as gifts to God. To use the contemporary vernacular, they put their money where their mouth was. We, the worshippers in modern synagogues, offer God only words. Of what value are these when compared to the actions of our ancestors? Recalling the sacrifices—a word that is meant here in the broadest sense—brought by them should spur us to turn our words into actions once we leave the synagogue.

And yet, despite the apparent poverty of our words—we pray nonetheless. Why? Let us turn to the opening moments of Yom Kippur. We begin with Kol Nidrei, an Aramaic formula for the annulment of vows made during the past year. Why was this, of all things, chosen to initiate our Yom Kippur prayers? Indeed, for centuries many rabbis tried, unsuccessfully, to remove Kol Nidrei from the liturgy. Why is it there nonetheless?

I would like to suggest a phenomenological explanation. At no time is the absence of the Temple felt more strongly than on Yom Kippur. On this day the sins of the people were mystically—some would say magically—forgiven through the rite of the scapegoat. A red thread would turn white as a sign that the people were forgiven. How can we possibly hope to obtain that kind of atonement without the Temple rite?

The Yom Kippur liturgy responds to this challenge in a number of ways. ...

And, finally, Kol Nidre. In the end, whether it is recollecting the Temple service, reciting the martyrology, or declaring the thirteen attributes of God’s merciful nature, we are still in the realm of words and words only. Is this nothing more than a pale reflection of the world of action and consequence? Hence, Kol Nidre. Before we recite the first word of prayer we are called to remember that words have substance. Kol Nidre reminds us that words bind, and words release bonds. The words that we are about to pray can inspire us or they can be insipid and meaningless. The choice is ours.

Are words important? The answer lies with those who use them; the answer lies with us.

This week's commentary was written by Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, Rabbi Judah A. Nadich Associate Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, JTS.

Open the gates immediately

Haaretz (Editorial)

Many Israelis are watching the television news these days with feelings of powerlessness and shame. They see hundreds of haunted and frightened women and children crowding into the corridor of the Erez crossing and asking to be allowed to flee Gaza through Israel to the West Bank in order to save their lives.

But the defense establishment sees something else: It sees wanted terrorists about to blow themselves up and Iranian agents. The defense establishment apparently has its own vision, which does not let emotional or humanitarian considerations confuse it or cause it to change its rigidly made-up mind. ...

The question of passage for helpless people fleeing for their lives is as old as time. This Sabbath, in the Torah portion Hukkat, we will read of how Moses sent messengers to the king of Edom saying, "Thus says your brother Israel: You know all the hardships that have befallen us ... Now we are in Kadesh, the town on the border of your territory. Allow us, then, to cross your country. We will not pass through fields or vineyards, and we will not drink water from wells. We will follow the king's highway, turning off neither to the right nor to the left until we have crossed your territory" (Numbers 20:14-17). Edom refused to allow those unfortunates to pass and threatened them with the sword.

In a few weeks, we will read the Torah portion of Ki Tetzeh. That will tell us what the Torah's true attitude is to those who shut their gates and their hearts: "No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord; none of their descendants, even in the tenth generation, shall ever be admitted into the congregation of the Lord, because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey after you left Egypt" (Deuteronomy 23:4)....

In the dark days before the Holocaust, it was similarly argued, not without justification, that the German and Austrian refugees fleeing for their lives could include moles seeking to assimilate into the countries through which they passed and sabotage them. ...

[The fear that dangerous Hamas operatives might infiltrate into the West Bank is not baseless. But the Shin Bet security service presumably knows how to properly screen those seeking to pass - if that is what Jerusalem decides to do.]

It is unclear, unreasonable and inhumane that here of all places, right in our backyard, Israel should insist on revealing its closed, ugly face. Let the gates be opened immediately, and Israel will appear as it should be.

In a previous posting, I quoted Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua on "ethical sovereignty and responsibility." What might the application of the Jewish moral tradition to the challenges of ethical sovereignty look like?

One could do worse than this Haaretz editorial, drawing on both the weekly Torah portion and on the Jewish experience of the Holocaust to illuminate a consequential political, security, and moral choice now before the Israeli government.

To say the least, Israel does not invariably get these choices right. For my taste (living in relative safety here in Madison, Wisconsin), it gets far too many of them wrong.

The finely-honed Jewish moral sense has developed over two millennia of relative powerlessness, of identification with (and mostly as) the victim. The restoration of Jewish statecraft (and power over others) is relatively recent, and remains to be adequately tutored by that long-evolving moral sense. (As the relative purity of a victims' morality must also learn from experience with the responsible exercise of power.) Decades as an occupying force have undermined the early Zionist doctrine of "purity of arms" (perhaps always more an ideal than a reality).

All that recognized, I do find it remarkable, and inspiring, that the leading newspaper of an embattled state calls its government to moral account, in the great tradition of the prophets of old, insisting that it learn from the failures of the nations, Biblical and contemporary, and open its gates to those at risk.

The great divide

From Haaretz : By Yair Sheleg

There are some doctoral dissertations that clearly articulate the writer's personal agenda. This is true for Ora Cohen, of the settlement of Elkana in the northern West Bank. As a Jewish feminist and former head of the liberal religious organization Ne'emanei Torah Ve'avoda, Cohen says that many questions that trouble Jewish women like herself never receive answers. 'They tell us: This is what halakha [Jewish law] says, like it or not. So I decided to probe deeper and find out what the halakha really does say, and how these things evolved.'

Cohen thus devoted her master's thesis to the history of Jewish modesty laws and her doctoral dissertation to the halakhic separation of the sexes. Recently, she published the latter in book form as 'Mishney evrey hamekhitza' ('From Both Sides of the Partition'). The book tells the story of growing radicalism over the course of history. In the Bible there is no mention of the sexes being separated. Men and women stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai together. Men heard women singing 'Shirat hayam,' the song led by Miriam in Exodus 15. Jacob kissed Rachel upon meeting her.

But even the first halakhic mention of gender separation is very minor in tone. In the Mishna (Tractate Sukkah), it says men and women were separated during the water-drawing ceremony at the Temple - called Simhat Beit Hashoeva - lest modesty be comprised. Is the entire codex of religious rulings on separating men and women based on this annual event?

Cohen: "The ideology of separating the sexes is founded on a comprehensive approach that evolved in the rabbinical community, leading to expressions like 'kol isha erva' ["a women's voice is licentious"] and opposition to women studying Torah. But in practice, separating men and women definitely goes back to Simhat Beit Hashoeva, which is the only explicit mention of such a thing in Jewish sources. ...

Parashat Korach: of authority and dissent

From AJWS Dvar Tzedek:

By contrasting these stories, the Torah seems to be articulating norms about legitimate dissent and authority's reasonable response to it. Korach's rebellion is illegitimate and meets with disaster. The daughters of Zelophehad make a reasonable petition and meet with success - reasonable challenges to reasonable authorities ought to be accepted. Abraham's challenge to God is appropriate and is met with reasoned discussion. Moses' petition to Pharaoh for an Israelite festival is met with tyrannical oppression - illegitimate authority will respond inappropriately and may be challenged more aggressively (to wit, the Plagues).

While the Torah's stories model a healthy give-and-take between authority figures and their dissenters, Jewish history is rife with instances in which individuals are punished for challenging the established beliefs and/or customs of their times. Elisha ben Abuyah, a first century Talmudic scholar, was branded a heretic because of his secular (Hellenistic) studies, and Baruch Spinoza, regarded today as a brilliant ethicist, was excommunicated in the 17th century for his blasphemous ideas. In neither of these examples do the dissenters' actions mirror the extremity of Korach's challenge, yet they are punished for violating the established laws, rules and expectations of the Jewish authorities of the times. We have not always lived up to the Torah's model of engaging with the reasonable dissenters among us.

I'd pick several nits on the descriptions and details, but go with the big themes.
I'd appreciate some serious learning on "The metaphor of kingship in a democratic age"--the metaphor (especially prevalent in Jewish liturgy, as well as in Hasidic tales) doesn't work very well for me (I'm more into immanence than transcendence in my theology), and the Korach story has its place in that discussion.

Bloggers' Code of Conduct: From a Higher Authority

'I may attack a certain point of view which I consider false, but I will never attack a person who preaches it. I have always a high regard for the individual who is honest and moral, even when I am not in agreement with him. Such a relation is in accord with the concept of kavod habriyot, for beloved is man for he is created in the image of God.' —Rav Joseph Soloveitchik

Posted by "Jewish Bloggers for Responsible Speech Online"

Shavuot Reflections

The importance of recognizing the role of our predilections in forming our attitudes toward God and revelation is that they force us to take responsibility for choosing the form of our agnosticism. We can be disengaged agnostics, waiting passively for someone to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that God exists and that the Torah is God’s word. Alternatively, we can become engaged agnostics, taking our not knowing as a symptom of the limitedness of our own understanding and seeking as a consequence to know, understand, and experience more through Torah and mitzvot.

And that is precisely why those of us who doubt God’s existence and/or the historicity of revelation need to celebrate Shavu’ot. We need to allow ourselves to be challenged by the message of Shavu’ot, that there is a God, and God has a will for us individually and collectively. The deep truths of existence lie beyond our individual and collective grasp. We need to return again and again to the study of Torah in an attempt to discover these truths and apply them to our lives.

Perhaps the Torah is literally God’s word... Perhaps it is an imperfect reflection of a supernatural revelatory experience. Perhaps it is the result of a collective effort by the Jewish people to understand God’s will for us here on earth. These are important historical questions that admittedly have theological implications. However, there is a deeply religious question transcending these that faces each of us: how will I respond to the possibility of God and Torah, with indifference or with the humility of human limitedness that leads to encounter? We need your answer by tomorrow.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, JTS

On overdoing it

The Sages said: If a nazirite, who only denied himself wine, is need of expiation, all the more so one who has cut himself off from everything! Therefore, the Sages decreed that one should abstain only from those things banned by the Torah; he should not bind himself with vows and oaths regarding permitted activities. So said the Sages: Is it not enough for you that which the Torah forbade -- you have to enjoin yourself from other things? Those who constantly deny themselves are not on a good path, and the Sages forbade one from tormenting oneself with fasts. Regarding all these and similar things, Solomon decreed: Don't overdo goodness and don't act the wise man to excess, or you may be dumbfounded. (RaMBaM, Hilhot De’ot, 3:1)

Shabbat Shalom is available on our website: www.netivot-shalom.org.il

Blogging the Bible: Meet the Bible's only Arab

By David Plotz - Slate Magazine:

Let's pause for a moment to observe the entrance of the Bible's first, and I believe only, 'Arab.' Arabia is referred to a few times in passing in various books, and anonymous 'Arabians' are mentioned, but Geshem is the single named Arab. (Geshem is king of part of the Arabian Peninsula, according to a footnote in my Bible.) In what can be seen as a darkly humorous divine joke, the only Arab in the Bible turns out to be 1) an enemy of the Jews and 2) at odds with them over who should control Jerusalem. Given the poison between Arabs and Jews today, isn't it appropriate that their relationship was born in strife?

Of course, when can return to Isaac and Ishmael for a preview. And the Koran tells the story differently.

The whole scene is almost too depressing—or too funny—to believe. Consider the first and only conversation between a Jew and an Arab. When Geshem and his cronies heard that Nehemiah is rebuilding the wall, they 'mocked and ridiculed' him. Nehemiah responds by saying: 'The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, and we His servants are going to start building; but you have no share or claim or historic right in Jerusalem' (emphasis added). That's right, 2,500 years have passed, and it's the same argument!

What If Ruth the Moabite Came to America Today?

From Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Today in America, more and more of us are poverty-stricken like Ruth, outcasts like Ruth; some of us are prosperous, like Boaz. Boaz affirmed that in a decent society, everyone was entitled to decent work for a decent income. Everyone -- even, or especially, a despised immigrant from a despised nation. Everyone -- not just 94% of the people. Everyone had the right simply to walk onto a field and begin to work, begin to use the means-of-production of that era.

And Boaz could not order his regular workers to be economically "efficient." They could not harvest everything: not what grew in the corners of the field, not what they missed on the first go-round. Social compassion was more important than efficiency. No downsizing allowed.

Although Boaz was generous-hearted, Ruth's right to glean did not depend upon his generosity. It was the law.

Ruth was entitled not only to a job, but to respect. No name-calling, no sexual harassment.

And she, as well as Boaz, was entitled to Shabbat: time off for rest, reflection, celebration, love. She was entitled to "be" -- as well as to "do."

Because Ruth and Boaz, the outcast and the solid citizen, got together, they became the ancestors of King David ? and therefore of Messiah, the transformation that brings peace and justice to the world.

Parashat B'Midbar

The Israelites portrayed in Numbers are not irredeemable, a fact that gives us hope, though they are — again like us — often frightened and perhaps even traumatized: they by slavery, we by Holocaust. Desire often gets the better of them as it does of us. Farce sometimes is succeeded by tragedy. And yet along the way there are occasions of true nobility, signs of genuine holiness, and at the end there are palpable signs of redemption. The children of the people Israel are getting somewhere. Israel will heed “the commandments and regulations that the Lord enjoined upon [them] through Moses” (Numbers 36:13), at least some of the time. Normalcy and covenant will coexist and even strengthen one another, as the Torah had imagined. This is perhaps the best that politics can offer. The beginning, as always, is to raise our heads and be counted.

Shabbat shalom,
Arnold M. Eisen

This week in poverty

Behar-B’hukkotai & Economic Radicalism: By Mordechai Liebling, in JSpot

This week there is a double Torah portion Behar-B’hukkotai beginning with Leviticus 25. It contains the most economically radical practices in the Torah, the shemitah –sabbatical year- and the yovel- the jubilee year. To briefly recap: the shemitah year requires that in the land of Israel every seventh year the farmer is to leave the land fallow for one year and to share whatever produce grows wild with all others. The landowner and the poor have equal rights to the produce (in the book of Deuteronomy the shemitah year is characterized by the forgiving of debt and this is not mentioned in Leviticus).

The jubilee year is powerful warning against the concentration of wealth and a reminder the land does not ultimately belong to us, we are the stewards. The torah recognizes that societies will become unequal in time and that we have to create laws to recreate that equality.... The United States today is experiencing the greatest inequalities of wealth in its history and it is worsening daily. ... The authors of the Torah understood that the concentration of wealth harms a society. We need to remember that wisdom and begin to create mechanisms for wealth redistribution.