Parashat Toledot – What do we learn from Isaac?

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“Isaac dug anew the wells that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and that the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death; and he gave them the same names that his father had given them. But when Isaac’s servants, digging in the wadi, found there a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarrelled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” He named that well Esek, because they contended with him. And when they dug another well, they disputed over that one also; so he named it Sitnah. He moved from there and dug yet another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he called it Rehovot, saying, “Now at last GOD has granted us ample space to increase in the land.” From there he went up to Beer-sheba.

וַיָּשׇׁב יִצְחָק וַיַּחְפֹּר  אֶת־בְּאֵרֹת הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר חָפְרוּ בִּימֵי אַבְרָהָם אָבִיו וַיְסַתְּמוּם פְּלִשְׁתִּים אַחֲרֵי מוֹת אַבְרָהָם וַיִּקְרָא לָהֶן שֵׁמוֹת כַּשֵּׁמֹת אֲשֶׁר־קָרָא לָהֶן אָבִיו׃

וַיַּחְפְּרוּ עַבְדֵי־יִצְחָק בַּנָּחַל וַיִּמְצְאוּ־שָׁם בְּאֵר מַיִם חַיִּים׃

וַיָּרִיבוּ רֹעֵי גְרָר עִם־רֹעֵי יִצְחָק לֵאמֹר לָנוּ הַמָּיִם וַיִּקְרָא שֵׁם־הַבְּאֵר עֵשֶׂק כִּי הִתְעַשְּׂקוּ עִמּוֹ׃

וַיַּחְפְּרוּ בְּאֵר אַחֶרֶת וַיָּרִיבוּ גַּם־עָלֶיהָ וַיִּקְרָא שְׁמָהּ שִׂטְנָה׃

וַיַּעְתֵּק מִשָּׁם וַיַּחְפֹּר בְּאֵר אַחֶרֶת וְלֹא רָבוּ עָלֶיהָ וַיִּקְרָא שְׁמָהּ רְחֹבוֹת וַיֹּאמֶר כִּי־עַתָּה הִרְחִיב יְהֹוָה לָנוּ וּפָרִינוּ בָאָרֶץ׃

וַיַּעַל מִשָּׁם בְּאֵר שָׁבַע׃

On the first reading of this text, we notice how Isaac is doggedly following in his father’s footsteps – renewing the wells that had been dug by his father, and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death.  Isaac gives them the same names that his father had given them. As soon as he is successful in getting the water, he is challenged by the herdsmen from Gerar that the water is not his, but theirs. Meekly moving on to the next place – albeit after having given another name to each well to describe the dispute and contention found there, he eventually comes to a place where there is no quarrel over the ownership, and he calls the place “Rehovot” – wide spaces.   It seems that Isaac is trying to launch himself as  heir to Abraham’s legacy, but despite his wealth and status, he struggles to establish the claim.

A closer look gives us more questions – given the huge importance of accessible fresh water in the desert, why did the Philistine stop up the wells of Abraham in the first place, choking them with dirt? Rashi comes to our aid “סתמום פלשתים THE PHILISTINES STOPPED THEM, saying, “They may become a source of danger to us because of marauding troops that may invade us” (i.e.,they may invade our country to obtain possession of the wells, or if they invade us for any other reason they will be able to find a supply of water). (Tosafot Sotah 10.)

The wells of Abraham were evidently left without an owner to care for and protect them – leaving them available to potentially hostile strangers keen to access the precious water, or worse – they could become an asset to an invading army.

The explanation makes some sense of a strange event, but surely the best approach would have been for the Philistines to annex these “ownerless” wells and keep them in good repair.

The 16th-century Italian rabbi and commentator Sforno gives us another potential reason for the Philistines’ actions – jealousy. He writes that since the king had forbidden them to harm Isaac’s person, they would harm him by attacking the source of his wealth. Yet Isaac made his own wealth from sowing grain in the fields of Gerar!

Another question that arises from this text – what were the names given by Abraham to these wells? The bible never tells us, yet it stresses that Isaac gives the wells the names his father had given them, before then changing their names to reflect the hostility of the Philistines to his settling there.

It seems that the text considers it of great importance to tell us that Isaac was following Abraham’s actions and renovating Abraham’s wells, not digging new wells for himself. But why? 

The text seems keen for us to understand that Isaac is the true heir to Abraham – for we know that Abraham had many sons.  In The Legends of the Jews, Ginzburg writes “Isaac departed from Gerar, and began to dig again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, and which the Philistines had stopped. His reverence for his father was so great that he even restored the names by which Abraham had called the wells. To reward him for his filial respect, God left the name of Isaac unchanged, while his father and his son had to submit to new names.”

Filial respect as well as claiming rightful inheritance – the midrash wants us to understand that this is not the act of a greedy man, or one who wants to pile up further wealth at the expense of others – he is merely claiming what is his by right, and fulfilling the wishes of his father by honouring his father’s naming of the wells.

I particularly like the idea that God rewards Isaac for his act of filial respect when in the physical world he is repeatedly humiliated and made to leave. The reward – that he gets to keep the name he is born with – is an interesting one. Both Abraham and Jacob (and of course Sarah) have their names altered to encompass their particular encounters with God, and one can argue that God is placed within their names (the added letter “heh” for Abraham, the “el” in Yisrael for Jacob, though poor Sarah loses her “yod” giving half of it’s value to her husband….)   Isaac on the other hand is named for an event before his birth – the laughter that Sarah speaks of at the idea that such elderly parents would produce a son – it is hard to see the reward in keeping a name that echoes the expectation of mockery.

We know that Abraham named places in response to his encounters with God in these places,  – is Isaac trying to repeat history? Is he hoping for his own encounters with God by using the names his father gave? Is he simply underlining that Abraham had had such encounters, and by renewing these wells he is reminding everyone of the history which the Philistines, by stopping them up, was trying to erase?

Isaac, more than either his father Abraham, and his son Jacob, is the embodiment of dogged resilience in the face of great trauma. He is the personification of the notion of “keeping on keeping on”.  His father Abraham tried to sacrifice him to prove his blind loyalty to God and his son Jacob took advantage of his near blindness in his old age, lying  to him in order to receive the blessing that Isaac had meant to give to Esau. Even his brother Ishmael was perceived as a risk to him and sent away after Sarah saw his actions towards the young Isaac as threatening:

וַתֵּרֶא שָׂרָה אֶת־בֶּן־הָגָר הַמִּצְרִית אֲשֶׁר־יָלְדָה לְאַבְרָהָם מְצַחֵק׃

Isaac tries so hard to live up to what is expected from him. He repeats much of his father’s history – the famine that causes him to go to Abimelech, the wife/sister stratagem that could so nearly lead to disaster, yet which surprisingly provides the possibility to gain great wealth; the disputes between herdsmen – Isaac’s with the men of Gerar, Abraham’s with those of his nephew Lot….

It is the verse after Isaac has finished digging wells, after he has found his place in Rehovot that gives us a clue to the man whose persistence and dogged determination ensure not only his survival but also his own encounter with God :

“From there he went up to Beer-sheba. That night GOD appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Fear not, for I am with you, and I will bless you and increase your offspring for the sake of My servant Abraham.” So he built an altar there and invoked GOD by name. Isaac pitched his tent there and his servants started digging a well.  And Abimelech came to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his councilor and Phicol chief of his troops. Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, seeing that you have been hostile to me and have driven me away from you?” And they said, “We now see plainly that GOD has been with you, and we thought: Let there be a sworn treaty between our two parties, between you and us. Let us make a pact with you that you will not do us harm, just as we have not molested you but have always dealt kindly with you and sent you away in peace. From now on, be you blessed of GOD!” Then he made for them a feast, and they ate and drank.

Early in the morning, they exchanged oaths. Isaac then bade them farewell, and they departed from him in peace. That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water!” He named it Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba to this day. (Gen 26:24-33)

The city of Beersheva is named twice, once by Abraham and once by Isaac. Note the difference

In Genesis 21 we read

“At that time Abimelech and Phicol, chief of his troops, said to Abraham, “God is with you in everything that you do. Therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my kith and kin, but will deal with me and with the land in which you have sojourned as loyally as I have dealt with you.” And Abraham said, “I swear it.”

Then Abraham reproached Abimelech for the well of water that the servants of Abimelech had seized. But Abimelech said, “I do not know who did this; you did not tell me, nor have I heard of it until today.” Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a pact.

Abraham then set seven ewes of the flock by themselves, and Abimelech said to Abraham, “What mean these seven ewes that you have set apart?” He replied, “You are to accept these seven ewes from me as proof that I dug this well.” Hence that place was called Beer-sheba, *Beer-sheba I.e., “well of seven” or “well of oath.” for there the two of them swore an oath. When they had concluded the pact at Beer-sheba, Abimelech and Phicol, chief of his troops, departed and returned to the land of the Philistines.

Abimelech affirms that God is with him in everything he does, but then demands a treaty. Abraham confronts him with the seizure by Abimelech’s men of the well of Beersheva– and negotiates that the treaty will affirm Abraham’s right to the water there. In thetreaty it is Abraham who provides the sheep and oxen to Abimelech in order to conclude the deal. Abimelech offers nothing.

But the story of Isaac reads a little differently

“That night GOD appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Fear not, for I am with you, and I will bless you and increase your offspring for the sake of My servant Abraham.”  So he built an altar there and invoked GOD by name. Isaac pitched his tent there and his servants started digging a well.  And Abimelech came to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his councilor and Phicol chief of his troops.

Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, seeing that you have been hostile to me and have driven me away from you?”  And they said, “We now see plainly that GOD has been with you, and we thought: Let there be a sworn treaty between our two parties, between you and us. Let us make a pact with you  that you will not do us harm, just as we have not molested you but have always dealt kindly with you and sent you away in peace. From now on, be you blessed of GOD!”

Then he made for them a feast, and they ate and drank. Early in the morning, they exchanged oaths. Isaac then bade them farewell, and they departed from him in peace.

That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water!” He named it Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba to this day. (Genesis 26:24-33)

Unlike his father, here we meet an Isaac who has the confidence that God really is with him.  He built an altar and called upon God before beginning to look for water.   When Abimelech came with a similar affirmation to that given to Abraham,  that he can see God is with Isaac, Isaac does not behave as his father did, but instead confronts the hostility he has received at the hands of the men of Gerar. The pact is made between equals, only then is the well of Beersheva discovered, there is no doubt as to its ownership.

What are the lessons we can draw from the life of Isaac, often described as the son of a great man and the father of a great man but not himself a great man?

We can see a man for whom history matters, a man who gives respect to others, who works to ensure the past is not erased despite the efforts of those who would like to see it so. We see a man who persists, a man who despite very real trauma and betrayal of trust by both his father and his son, still loves his mother, his wife, his children.  We see a man of great – albeit quiet – resilience. Even before birth he is the object of mockery, but he keeps on going, and he achieves on his own terms. We see a man who reconciles with his brother, whom family lore may well have described as a danger to him.

All our biblical heroes are flawed human beings – Isaac no less than others. But Isaac’s flaws are not the dramatic personality traits that are damaging to others – his flaws seem to stem from his early trauma and damage only himself.

In the biblical narrative of larger than life heroes who claim our attention and our interest, this sidra is reminding us – it is ok, indeed it is more than ok, for us to be more like Isaac.

Chayei Sarah – The complex life of a matriarch

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The sidra Chayei Sarah, which begins with the death of Sarah, focuses initially – and in great detail, on Abraham’s purchase of a burial place for her in Hebron. Abraham then sends his servant on the quest to find a wife for Isaac, and we are introduced to Rebecca, who fulfils Eliezer’s requirement for God to show him a sign that he has met the right woman for his master’ son by offering water not only to him but to his camels. She marries Isaac, comforts him for the loss of his mother, takes on the role of the matriarch

And then “Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Jokshan begot Sheba and Dedan. The descendants of Dedan were the Asshurim, the Letushim, and the Leummim. The descendants of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Enoch, Abida, and Eldaah. All these were descendants of Keturah. Abraham willed all that he owned to Isaac; but to Abraham’s sons by concubines Abraham gave gifts while he was still living, and he sent them away from his son Isaac eastward, to the land of the East.” (Genesis 25:1-6)

Next we are told of the death of Abraham at the great age of 175,his burial by Isaac and Ishmael in the family tomb in Hebron where Sarah is already interred, and then the text rather dispassionately tidies up the family history by listing the descendants of his son by Hagar, Ishmael:

“This is the line of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s slave, bore to Abraham. These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, in the order of their birth: Nebaioth, the first-born of Ishmael, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedmah. These are the sons of Ishmael and these are their names by their villages and by their encampments: twelve chieftains of as many tribes.— These were the years of the life of Ishmael: one hundred and thirty-seven years; then he breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his kin.— They dwelt from Havilah, by Shur, which is close to Egypt, all the way to Asshur; they camped alongside all their kin. (Gen 25:12-18)

At least three family deaths are recorded in this sidra, as well as the births of many more sons of Abraham by other women, and even some of Abraham’s grandchildren from these sons. Bible records their names and the fact that Abraham gives them gifts and sends them off eastward to live in places well away from where Isaac was living in the Negev.  Isaac is clearly  marked out as the sole heir to Abraham and the covenant.  Isaac marries Rebecca, the daughter of Abraham’s nephew Betuel, and the stage is set for the next chapter.

I described the final verses of genealogy and geography as “tidying up” the family tree before moving on to focus on the central characters going forward. It is important to acknowledge Hagar and Keturah, the wife/concubines of Abraham who between them provide him with seven sons and twenty two grandchildren at the time of recording. It is important to note that all the children of Abraham have value and their names recorded. The listing provides a genealogical base for the future – perhaps the most famous being the Midianite tribes and the those of Ashur.

But something else happens as a result of the recording of the names of these descendants –  we are left in no doubt that Isaac is different. He alone is to receive the covenant God had promised long before his birth. The text is making very clear that being a son of Abraham was insufficient qualification for this covenant.  It was a necessary one, but what was also necessary was that the covenant was to be continued through a son of Sarah.

Keturah is a mysterious figure. Unlike the narrative that immediately precedes her marriage to Abraham – the marriage negotiated between Rebecca and Isaac – we know nothing about Keturah  – not where she comes from, not who her family might be, not how Abraham chose her to be his wife. She does not speak. We don’t know her age, or whether she predeceases Abraham or lives on after his death. We don’t know where she is buried.  Some traditions suggest she is Hagar, married to Abraham after the death of Sarah. Rashi, quoting Midrash Bereishit Rabbah (61) says “This is Hagar. She was named Keturah because her deeds were as beautiful (sweet) as incense (Ketoret)”. Targum Jonathan also says “And Abraham added and took a wife, and her name was Keturah; she is Hagar, who had been bound to him from the beginning.”. Whereas Ibn Ezra says “Keturah is not to be identified with Hagar because Scripture explicitly states, But unto the sons of the concubines (pilagshim), that Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts (v. 6)” whereas Keturah is described as “isha” – a wife. (However in the first book of Chronicles  (1:32 – 33), Keturah is described as a פִּילֶגֶשׁ אַבְרָהָם – Abraham’s concubine.

The life that Keturah and Abraham have together is glossed over, only the sons seem to matter. And while the text is silent about Keturah, we may not notice immediately that it is silent also about Abraham – apart from the work he does to ensure that all his other sons have an inheritance and are sent out into the world away from Isaac.  Abraham lives almost forty years after the death of Sarah – yet we learn nothing of his life in that time, there are no more encounters with God, no relationship with any of his sons, no travelling or meeting others….

Our patriarchal tradition usually names people according to their father’s name, and ignores that of their mother.  Whether it be the Hebrew name for the purposes of ritual, or the secular tradition of taking one’s father’s surname as the default, the primacy of the male line is underscored in so many ways. Yet here the bible is reminding us of the deep importance of the mother.

There is a mystical tradition in Judaism that the essence of a person’s soul is shaped by the mother.  The spiritual identity of the mother directly influences her child’s soul from the time of conception and beyond the birth. This tradition is one of the reasons sometimes given for the matrilineal principle of Jewish status being conferred by the mother.  And this tradition bases itself on the importance of it being Sarah’s child – not Hagar’s, not Keturah’s – who is the one to take up and inherit the covenant promise.

There is a lot to be said about the women’s who bear the children of Abraham – Sarah, Hagar and Keturah. None of them have an easy life, each hopes to protect her sons from a father whose focus on God’s promise of descendants and homeland must have made him a somewhat difficult life partner.   Each of them seems to be a lonely and isolated figure – Sarah who has left Ur Chasdim with Abraham, leaving her family behind; Hagar the Egyptian concubine who will later find a wife for Ishmael from her own people; Keturah whose homeland and family is not mentioned at all. But that is for another day. 

Parashat Vayera – from Sarah to Maacah, who are the women behind the famous stories?

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The women in Sidra Vayera cry out to be noticed.   We begin with Sarah, inside the tent while her husband sits in the doorway and looks outwards. One of the travelling angels asks the question ו אַיֵּה שָׂרָה אִשְׁתֶּךָ  “Where is Sarah your wife?”, and when told she is in the tent makes the prophecy of the child who will be born to them. Where is Sarah? Just like her husband was described at the beginning of the sidra she too is now at the opening of the tent “פֶּתַח הָאֹהֶל”.   Abraham looks up and sees, Sarah hides behind the flap of the doorway and hears.

And what is recorded?  The view of Abraham who sees men where there are angels;  and the speech with its promise to Sarah, followed by her laughter at the news.

But then who does God respond to?  To Abraham. With a question about the motivation of Sarah.

God asks Abraham  ““Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘”  I will return to you at the same season next year, and Sarah shall have a son.” –  the child of the promise to Abraham is specifically the son of Sarah.

Sarah evidently hears, because she is frightened, and she lies to cover herself-  “I didn’t laugh!” only to get the direct reply to her from the divine messenger – “No, you laughed!”

Then follows the famous discussion between God and Abraham about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, after which we have an echo of the meeting of the messengers of God with Abraham at the beginning of the Sidra, when now his nephew Lot urges them to take up his hospitality, makes a feast for them gives them a place to rest.

Lot has two unmarried daughters still living in the family home, as well as his wife.  Unlike the story at the beginning  of the sidra, these woman are nowhere to be seen or heard.  When the inhabitants of the city mob the house and demand the foreign guests be given up to them to be raped, Lot does something I have never been able to make sense of. Yes, hospitality and looking after guests’ wellbeing is exceedingly important in the inhospitable environment of the desert regions, but protection of the guests cannot justify Lot’s proposal to the Sodomites.

Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you please; but do not do anything to the others, since they have come under the shelter of my roof.”  (19:8)

Clearly, the divine messengers are also not happy with this solution. They pull Lot into the house and then send out a bright light that blinds the mob outside.  And they tell him:

“Whom else have you here? In-laws, your sons and daughters [themselves]—anyone else that you have in the city—bring them out of the place. For we are about to destroy this place; because the outcry against them before GOD has become so great that GOD has sent us to destroy it.”

Lot goes to the households of his married daughters, but speaks only to the sons-in-law who thought he was playing games with them, or possibly he was drunk. And so, they ignored him. One has to wonder what might have happened had he spoken to his daughters.   And there is no record of him speaking to either his wife or his daughters in his own home.

The angels urge Lot to flee the city, but he prevaricates and delays, to the point where the angels take his hand and also the hands of his wife and daughters, taking them outside the city walls. What must his wife and daughters think? These strange men urging them, with physical force, taking them out of their home and out of the city?

The angels leave Lot and his household outside the city walls and tell Lot he must flee to the distant hills to save his life – the language is in the singular, it is Lot they are talking to, not the group. They tell him not to look back,  not to stop anywhere, lest he be swept away. Lot chooses this moment to negotiate – asking if he can instead flee to a nearby small town because he fears he will not reach the hills before the calamity would overtake him, and the angels graciously agree. He can go to the small town (Zoar) and it will be spared.  The focus in the narrative is entirely on Lot, on saving his life, not that of the family. So it is probably not surprising that Lot’s wife has not heard the instruction not to look back. Sulphurous fire rains down on the cities of the plain, Lot’s wife looks from behind him – an echo of Sarah hidden behind the tent doorway flap behind the messenger – she looks and understands what is happening to the place where she has left her married children and their families – and  וַתַּבֵּט אִשְׁתּוֹ מֵאַחֲרָיו וַתְּהִי נְצִיב מֶלַח  -we usually read this as she looked behind her and was turned into a standing pillar of salt.  But the verb v’tabeit is a hiphil form – she did not merely glance back at the destruction while running.  Instead the verb insists that she paid attention to what she was seeing – she considered carefully what she saw– a process that takes time and intention. And then she was not turned into something, she became something – a netziv melach. A standing object that was salty – could it be her tears as she stood and watched and understood the enormity of the destruction?  Could she have been transfixed in her grief and her horror, unable to move from her place. Whatever happened – she is no longer a character in the narrative.

Lot and his two daughters very quickly leave Zoar, afraid for their lives. After all they are strangers, and we know what can happen to strangers in these terrible cities of the plain.

There follows the only story entirely directed by women – the two daughters, believing themselves to have witnessed the end of the world, decide to get their father drunk, to procreate with him, and so to continue life in the world. One has to wonder about the inhabitants of Zoar, a city which was protected from the great calamity – but maybe Lot ensured that his daughters were not seen while they were there, and in turn they did not see that other people lived.

The decision of Lot’s daughters has far reaching consequences – this is the origin story of the Moabites (Mei-Av, from my father) and the Ammonites (ben Ammi, son of my people), two tribes who will forever be the enemies of Israelite people.

And now, again, we have a version of the wife-sister story – but this time Sarah does not speak at all, though later Abimelech defends himself by saying not only that Abraham has told him that she is his sister, but that Sarah had agreed that Abraham was her brother.   God intervenes in a dream to tell him that she is in fact a married woman and therefore forbidden to him. She is וְהִוא בְּעֻלַת בָּעַל׃ the property of her master, she is אֵשֶׁת־הָאִישׁ   the man’s wife.   Abraham claims that Sarah is indeed his sister, through another mother, and Abimelech seems to accept this when he tells Sarah he will give a thousand pieces of silver to “her brother”. 

And now the focus changes again. Sarah does indeed bear a child, whom Abraham names Isaac – meaning “he will laugh”.  Sarah contextualises the name by saying – “God has brought me laughter; everyone who hears will laugh for me.”

But at his weaning feast Sarah notices the son of Hagar the concubine – Ishmael – מְצַחֵק. It could mean laughing with Isaac, but it could mean making sport of him, toying with him, mocking him…. Whatever Ishmael is doing, Sarah will not allow him near her boy and demands that Abraham send Ishmael and Hagar away. Abraham is distressed, but God reassures him, telling him both that “whatever Sarah tells you, do as she says, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued for you.” And that “As for the son of the slave-woman, I will make a nation of him, too, for he is your seed.”

Hagar and Ishmael are sent away into the desert with food and water, but when the water runs out Hagar put her child under a bush and moved away some distance, unable to bear the sight of her child’s death.  The text tells us that Hagar cries bitterly, but that God hears the voice of the boy. To make the point it repeats it. That God hears the cry of the boy, and then Hagar is told that God hears the cry of the boy.  The voice of Hagar is evidently unheard.  Ishmael and Hagar survive, he grows up to be a skilled hunter, and his mother gets him a wife from Egypt – from her own people.

After another encounter with Abimelech, the sedra ends with the story of the Akedah. Sarah has quite vanished from the narrative, instead we hear that Abraham’s brother Nahor has eight sons from his wife Milcah, one of whom, Betuel, will become the father of Rebecca, and that his concubine Reumah, has borne him three sons and a daughter, whose name is Maacah.

So we end with the birth of a daughter and many sons to Abraham’s brother. Who is Maacah? It is hard to say, the name appears in bible at least nine times, belonging to nine different people. But maybe we should just note that this daughter, the child of a concubine rather than a wife, who is the first bearer of the name, exists. All the more so since the verbal root from which the name is derived means “crushed” or “oppressed”

A fitting end to a sidra where many women are crushed or oppressed, where their voices are rarely heard, and where their bodies are offered by their own male relatives to other men, in order to smooth their path.

Maybe the text is trying to tell us something  – that it notices all these women, that it hears and sees them, and that their attempts to be heard, their feelings and their very existence, will not be lost for those who look for them.

Lech Lecha – but should it have been Lechi Lach? Finding Sarah in the text

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“Then Abram journeyed by stages toward the Negev. There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. If the Egyptians see you, and think, ‘She is his wife,’ they will kill me and let you live. Please say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may remain alive thanks to you.” When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw how very beautiful the woman was. Pharaoh’s courtiers saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s palace. And because of her, it went well with Abram; he acquired sheep, oxen, donkeys, male and female slaves, jennies, and camels. But GOD afflicted Pharaoh and his household with mighty plagues on account of Sarai, the wife of Abram. Pharaoh sent for Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me! Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her as my wife? Now, here is your wife; take her and begone!” And Pharaoh put some men in charge of him, and they sent him off with his wife and all that he possessed.”   Genesis 12: 9-20)

Three times in the book of Genesis we have the strange story of the “wife-sister tale”, what the late feminist biblical scholar, Phyllis Trible, called “texts of terror”, where the woman is used as a chattel or commodity in the negotiations between the men.

Here in Egypt where Abram fears that the Pharaoh will take Sarai into his harem and kill Abram if he knows that Sarai is married to him; again a few chapters later when Abraham and Sarah meet Abimelech, the Philistine King of Gerar (Genesis 20), and finally when Isaac and Rebecca meet Abimelech in Gerar (Genesis 26).

In the story here in Parashat Lech Lecha, Abram persuades Sarai to lie both because he is afraid for his life. In the other two stories, at least Abram and Isaac tell the lie themselves rather than expect the woman to lie on their behalf, and commit herself to the unwanted attentions of another powerful man.

Abram is acutely aware of the beauty of his wife, indeed, he refers to it and to the danger it places him in should an Egyptian man see her and desire her. And his fear is borne out – her beauty is such that even the Pharaoh hears of it, and takes Sarai into his harem – but with the twist that Abram is given huge wealth as payment for her.

It seems that Abram is content with this arrangement – as the “brother” of the beautiful foreign woman he gains power and status. It takes God to intervene, and luckily for Sarai, God does.  Pharaoh and his household are afflicted with mighty plagues – a foreshadowing of events in the Book of Exodus. And apparently Pharaoh understands the reason for this great misfortune.

So much is left unsaid in this passage. How does Pharaoh know to ascribe the plagues to God’s displeasure on behalf of Sarai? The Midrash – Bereishit Rabbah – comes to the rescue:

“Rabbi Aḥa said: Even the beams of his palace were afflicted. *[This is the meaning of “The Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his household [beito],” the literal meaning of beito being “his house.” ] And everyone was saying: “It is over the matter of Sarai, Abram’s wife.” Rabbi Berekhya said: All the insolent ones have come in to touch the noblewoman’s shoe. [*This is a saying, referring to insolent behaviour on the part of lowly people who dare to touch the princess’s shoes, and are severely punished. The Midrash applies this saying to the members of Pharaoh’s household who acted disrespectfully toward Sarah.]
Throughout that night Sarah was prostrated on her face and saying: ‘Master of the universe, Abraham departed [from our home country] with a promise, and I departed only on faith. Abraham departed outside the cage, but I am in the cage.’ [*I am here is the cage with all these beasts.] The Holy One blessed be He said to her: ‘Everything I do, I do on your behalf.’ And all of them were saying: “…over the matter of Sarai, Abram’s wife.”
Rabbi Levi said: Throughout that night, an angel was standing with a rod in his hand. He said to her: ‘If you say: Strike, I will strike; if you say: Cease, I will cease.’ [*This is what is meant by “over the matter [al devar] of Sarai.” Al devar Sarai can also mean “by Sarai’s word.” ]
Why [was Pharaoh punished] to such an extent? It is because she kept telling him: ‘I am a married woman,’ but he would not keep away from her. [*“Over the matter of [al devar] Sarai, Abram’s wife” is expounded to mean: “by the words of Sarai, who said that she was Abram’s wife.”] “  Bereishit Rabbah 41)

But it introduces another problem – it looks like Sarai doesn’t tell the lie that she is Abram’s sister. Instead she prays, and her prayer is extraordinary – “Abram began this journey away from our home country with a promise from you, but I didn’t get that promise, I acted only in good faith in You – and where does that lead us? -Abram gets a great life, but I am trapped in this terrible situation”

She is up front with Pharaoh too, repeatedly telling him not to touch her, she is a married woman and not available to him.  Not a chattel to be bargained away, but a strong an courageous person of integrity.

In Parashat Lech Lecha we begin the story of Abram, the man described as Ivri – who crossed a border and became a Hebrew, the man whose covenants with God are foundational to the history of Judaism. And we see from the midrash that the story of this man who is often upheld as the role model for great faith is incomplete without the woman who journeyed with him – that her faith was greater than his, for she did not hide who she was, nor allow herself to be a passive actor in this story. The midrash fills in the missing details. God intervenes because of  Sarai’s prayer, and God’s reassurance to her – “everything I do, I do on your behalf” is a far greater commitment than the promise to Abram of an eventual homeland and myriad descendants. The scene is set for the divine blessing to be bestowed on both Abram and Sarai – it will ultimately be Sarah’s son with Abraham who will continue the covenant, not any of the other sons of Abraham listed in bible.

The pattern of these texts of terror, of male fear and even self-centredness, of women’s strength and faith, and of God’s interventions in history, raise many questions about how bible understood our patriarchs and matriarchs.  So often what bible presents as the male preserve of power is undermined or redirected by the women in the text – think of Sarah and Hagar, of Rebecca ensuring her favourite son gets the blessing from his blind father, of the race to bear sons between Leah and Rachel… But I think the relationship between God and Sarah shows a respect and a tenderness towards her that is particularly worth noticing. And I cannot help noticing that when Abram and Sarai have their names changed in this sidra, for him the addition of the letter “hey”  a letter used to signify the name of God, for her not only the “hey” but she loses the “yud”. The letter yud is used to denote the number 10. The letter hey denotes the number 5. It is as if Sarah has given half of her “ten” to Abraham, to bolster his faith – another hidden nudge to remind us that without the supportive presence of Sarah, Abraham might have been yet another biblical figure who fades into the text without changing it. 

Phyllis Trible wrote of the bible and its patriarchy (ironically quoting the book of Joshua)  “I face a terrible dilemma: Choose ye this day whom you will serve: the God of the fathers or the God of sisterhood. If the God of the fathers, then the Bible supplies models for your slavery. If the God of sisterhood, then you must reject patriarchal religion and go forth without models to claim your freedom.” (Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation Phyllis Trible Journal of the American Academy of Religion Vol. 41, No. 1 (Mar., 1973), pp. 30-48

Indebted as I am to the works of Phyllis Trible, I would venture to say that we can in fact find the models in the biblical text to claim our freedom, and in this parasha it is, quite unequivocally, the matriarch par excellence, our ur-mother Sarah.

Parashat Noach – The Tower of Babel from another perspective

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ירד ה’ לראות

Targum Onkelos – the translation of Onkelos, is a understood to be an authentic translation of the torah text into Babylonian Aramaic, probably composed around 80-120 CE.

In the Talmud (Megilla 3a:7) the rabbis thought it to be from the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and the return to Israel from Babylonian exile – around 450 BCE, showcased in the famous event on Rosh Hashanah when Nehemiah and Ezra read the whole Torah to the returned exiles at the water gate, translating and explaining as they went (Neh 8).

We read:

וְתַרְגּוּם שֶׁל תּוֹרָה, אוּנְקְלוֹס הַגֵּר אֲמָרוֹ? וְהָא אָמַר רַב אִיקָא בַּר אָבִין אָמַר רַב חֲנַנְאֵל אָמַר רַב: מַאי דִּכְתִיב: ״וַיִּקְרְאוּ בְּסֵפֶר תּוֹרַת הָאֱלֹהִים מְפוֹרָשׁ וְשׂוֹם שֶׂכֶל וַיָּבִינוּ בַּמִּקְרָא״. ״וַיִּקְרְאוּ בְּסֵפֶר תּוֹרַת הָאֱלֹהִים״ — זֶה מִקְרָא; ״מְפוֹרָשׁ״ — זֶה תַּרְגּוּם;

The Gemara asks: Was the translation of the Torah really composed by Onkelos the convert? Didn’t Rav Ika bar Avin say that Rav Ḥananel said that Rav said: What is the meaning of that which is written with respect to the days of Ezra: “And they read in the book, the Torah of God, distinctly; and they gave the sense, and they caused them to understand the reading” (Nehemiah 8:8)? The verse should be understood as follows: “And they read in the book, the Torah of God,” this is the scriptural text; “distinctly,” this is the translation, indicating that they immediately translated the text into Aramaic, as was customary during public Torah readings.

Quite who Onkelos was is impossible to know. There are those who consider him to be the same person as Aquila of Sinope, a convert and a student of Rabbi Akiva, who translated the Hebrew bible into Greek (possibly before his conversion) , and into Aramaic after converting.

We may never know who he was, but one characteristic stands out – the Targum Onkelos revises and mitigates language that might suggest that God has any kind of corporeality, or any anthropomorphic aspects. 

The other thing that the translation of Onkelos avoids is the sense of a spatial relationship between the heavens as the abode of the divine, and the earth.

So in the story of the Tower of Babel, when the biblical text (Gen 11:4-7) reads:

וַיֹּאמְרוּ הָבָה  נִבְנֶה־לָּנוּ עִיר וּמִגְדָּל וְרֹאשׁוֹ בַשָּׁמַיִם וְנַעֲשֶׂה־לָּנוּ שֵׁם פֶּן־נָפוּץ עַל־פְּנֵי כׇל־הָאָרֶץ׃

וַיֵּרֶד יְהֹוָה לִרְאֹת אֶת־הָעִיר וְאֶת־הַמִּגְדָּל אֲשֶׁר בָּנוּ בְּנֵי הָאָדָם׃  

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה הֵן עַם אֶחָד וְשָׂפָה אַחַת לְכֻלָּם וְזֶה הַחִלָּם לַעֲשׂוֹת וְעַתָּה לֹא־יִבָּצֵר מֵהֶם כֹּל אֲשֶׁר יָזְמוּ לַעֲשׂוֹת׃

הָבָה נֵרְדָה וְנָבְלָה שָׁם שְׂפָתָם אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִשְׁמְעוּ אִישׁ שְׂפַת רֵעֵהוּ׃

And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.”  GOD came down to look at the city and tower that the mortals had built, and GOD said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.”

Onkelos translates it as:

וַאֲמָרוּ הָבוּ נִבְנֵי לָנָא קַרְתָּא וּמַגְדְּלָא וְרֵישֵׁיהּ מָטֵי עַד צֵית שְׁמַיָּא וְנַעְבֵּיד לָנָא שׁוּם דִּילְמָא נִתְבַּדַּר עַל אַפֵּי כָל אַרְעָא:

וְאִתְגְּלִי יְיָ לְאִתְפְּרָעָא עַל עוֹבָדֵי קַרְתָּא וּמַגְדְּלָא דִּי בְנוֹ בְּנֵי אֱנָשָׁא:

וַאֲמַר יְיָ הָא עַמָּא חַד וְלִישָׁן חַד לְכָלְּהוֹן וְדֵין דְּשָׁרִיוּ לְמֶעְבָּד וּכְעַן לָא יִתִּמְנַע מִנְהוֹן כֹּל דִּחַשִּׁיבוּ לְמֶעְבָּד:

הָבוּ נִתְגְּלִי וּנְבַלְבֵּל תַּמָּן לִישָׁנְהוֹן דִּלָא יִשְׁמְעוּן אֱנַשׁ לִישַׁן חַבְרֵיהּ:

Then they said, Come, we will build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach the height of the heavens. Thus we will make ourselves a name, so that we will not be scattered all over the face of the earth. Adonai became revealed in order to punish them because of the building of the city and the tower that the sons of man built. Adonai said, Behold, they are one people, all having one language, and this is their first undertaking. Now will nothing be unattainable for them, [to do] whatever they have a mind to do?  Come, let us be revealed and jumble their language, that they will not understand one another’s language.

Why does Onkelos reject the idea of God descending to earth to see what is happening there?

The phrase “va’yered Adonai”  ירד ה’  appears in Tanach in a very few places – here in the story of the Tower of Babel, and once in potentia in Genesis 18:20 when “GOD said, “The outrage of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave! I will go down to see whether they have acted altogether according to the outcry that has reached Me; if not, I will take note.”

It appears twice in the book of Exodus, once at Sinai when God “descends on Mt Sinai and calls Moses up the mountain” (Ex 19:20) and again when Moses, having shattered the original tablets of stone on which were engraved the ten commandments, is told to come and repeat the process – this time God appears in a cloud next to Moses and declares the attributes of God (Ex 34:5).

The next time God “descends” is in the Book of Numbers, in the strange tale of the prophesying elders. The people are exhausted and frightened and complain against God, angering God and causing a fire to break out against them. They cried out, Moses prayed to God and the fire ends. But the people are hungry and demand meat to eat, remembering the fish, cucumber, melons, leeks, onions and garlic that were so plentiful in Egypt, whereas now all they have is manna to eat. The people complain and weep, distressing Moses and angering God, and Moses says to God “why do I have to carry the burden of these people alone? I would rather die than continue trying to lead them”  God’s response is to tell Moses to collect seventy elders of the people, bring them to the Tent of Meeting, and God will spread the burden of leadership from Moses alone to the seventy elders.  God then tells Moses to say to the people “Purify yourselves for tomorrow and you shall eat meat, for you have kept whining before GOD and saying, ‘If only we had meat to eat! Indeed, we were better off in Egypt!’ GOD will give you meat and you shall eat.” When Moses queries the logistics of feeding so many people the meat God appears to be promising, God asks “is there a limit to My power?” So Moses gathers the elders, and sure enough: “Then, after coming down in a cloud and speaking to him, GOD drew upon the spirit that was on him and put it upon the seventy elders. And when the spirit rested upon them, they spoke in ecstasy, but did not continue.” The end of the story is graphic and gory – an enormous number of quail appear, the people eat and eat and overeat, and God causes a plague among them and many of them die…..

And the final time that God “descends” in the Tanach – in Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron are complaining about Moses and his marriage to the Cushite woman, and that they too have the gift of prophecy and leadership, not only Moses. God calls all three siblings to the Tent of Meeting and descends in a pillar of cloud, calls Miriam and Aaron forward and in no uncertain terms explains the very particular relationship with Moses that they do not share, and follows up by causing Miriam to be struck by a skin disease of pure white scaliness which causes her to be exiled from the camp until she is healed.

It would appear that when God descends it is either to demand more moral behaviour, or to punish those who are complaining about God or even challenging God’s decisions.  But there is also an element in these narratives of God revealing something particular about God-self – the covenant at Sinai, the organiser and provider of the exodus and sojourn in the desert with its concomitant expectations, and most clearly the unique nature of the divine relationship with Moses.

While much of bible has a sort of perpendicular dimension – God is most naturally to be found in the highest heavens, to be met or worshipped at the tops of mountains, a figure who might occasionally descend from there to earth, or send heavenly angels to do this on behalf of the divine, Onkelos rejects the imagery of God descending from one realm to another in favour of God revealing God’s self and purpose with acts of judgement.

The survivors of the great flood, traumatised and determined never to feel so vulnerable again, make a decision to reach into God’s domain by building a tower so high it reaches into the heavens. It is as if they are not only aiming to challenge God, but to venture into the divine domain, even to take on the role and responsibility of God. They are determined now to וְנַעֲשֶׂה־לָּנוּ שֵׁם פֶּן־נָפוּץ עַל־פְּנֵי כׇל־הָאָרֶץ  to make for themselves a name, to prevent them from being scattered across the earth.  The phrase echoes the story of Adam and Eve: the creation of names, the expulsion and scattering from a place where they feel secure and unified, to fend for themselves in a frightening environment.

It is as if the people imagine the way to protect themselves is to infiltrate the heavens and so they build a vertical bridge in order to claim that space.  Onkelos, living and writing a generation or so after the cataclysm of the destruction of the temple (or if some are to be believed living and writing after the Babylonian exile), reads the text with a different lens. What the people desire – a tower so high it reaches into the heavens – will not cause God to “descend” into our world, will not form a bridge or a ladder between domains. Instead, Onkelos sees the reaction of God not to come closer, not to inspect their work or discover something about their activity – Onkelos sees God choosing instead to reveal the very presence of God, to both punish and destabilise them.

In the garden of Eden, after the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God says (Genesis 3:20ff)

וַיֹּאמֶר  יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה כְּאַחַד מִמֶּנּוּ לָדַעַת טוֹב וָרָע וְעַתָּה  פֶּן־יִשְׁלַח יָדוֹ וְלָקַח גַּם מֵעֵץ הַחַיִּים וְאָכַל וָחַי לְעֹלָם׃ וַיְשַׁלְּחֵהוּ יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים מִגַּן־עֵדֶן לַעֲבֹד אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר לֻקַּח מִשָּׁם׃

וַיְגָרֶשׁ אֶת־הָאָדָם וַיַּשְׁכֵּן מִקֶּדֶם לְגַן־עֵדֶן אֶת־הַכְּרֻבִים וְאֵת לַהַט הַחֶרֶב הַמִּתְהַפֶּכֶת לִשְׁמֹר אֶת־דֶּרֶךְ עֵץ הַחַיִּים׃ {ס}        

And the ETERNAL God said, “Now that humankind has become like any of us, knowing good and bad, what if one should stretch out a hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!” So the ETERNAL God banished them from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken: humankind was driven out; and east of the garden of Eden were stationed the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.

The first humans are sent out from Eden not because they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but because having done so, they might next eat from the tree of eternal life – becoming immortal, a quality that belongs only to the divine.

Now the surviving humans are sent out from the plains of Shinar where they are building their city and tower to challenge the heavens, and their languages multiplied so that they cannot understand each other easily.

In the first story God has created a garden in which both human beings and God can co-exist, in the second people create a tower in which both human beings and God can be together – and both stories end in pain and distress.

I think that Onkelos rejects the whole idea of the creation of “shared space”, or of God in the highest space yet “descending to our world” as being somehow too dangerous to exist. Instead, he chooses an ineffable unknowable God, a God we cannot request or require, a God not in a far-off and separate domain, but one who is present even in our distress, a God who does not need to come and see what we are doing because God is already present, able to observe us at close quarters. In Onkelos’ translation, God chooses to make visible what the people have not understood – God is present and continues to be so, and that our role in this world is to be human beings who trust in God’s presence even when it is hard to see, rather than challenging God or trying on the role of divinity for ourselves.

There is a poem written on the wall of a cellar in Cologne during the second world war, the author is unknown, but I think Onkelos would have approved:

I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining
And I believe in love,
even when there’s no one there.
And I believe in God,
even when He is silent.
I believe through any trial,
there is always a way
But sometimes in this suffering
and hopeless despair
My heart cries for shelter,
to know someone’s there
But a voice rises within me, saying hold on
my child, I’ll give you strength,
I’ll give you hope. Just stay a little while.
I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining
And I believe in love
even when there’s no one there
But I believe in God
even when he is silent
I believe through any trial
there is always a way.
May there someday be sunshine
May there someday be happiness
May there someday be love
May there someday be peace….”

Bereishit – For Reishit God Created: Challah, Bikkurim, Ma’as’rot

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“Rav Huna said in the name of Rav Matana: The world was created for the sake of three things: For the sake of challah, for the sake of tithes, and for the sake of first fruits. What is the source? “In the beginning, [bereishit] *Or, for the sake of reshit. God created,” and reshit is nothing other than challah, as it is stated: “The first of [reshit] your kneading basket” (Numbers 15:20). Reshit is nothing other than tithes, as it says: “The first [reshit] of your grain” (Deuteronomy 18:4). And reshit is nothing other than first fruits, as it is stated: “The choicest of [reshit] the first fruits of your land…” (Exodus 23:19)”  (Genesis Rabbah 1:4)

. רַב הוּנָא בְּשֵׁם רַב מַתְנָה אָמַר, בִּזְכוּת שְׁלשָׁה דְּבָרִים נִבְרָא הָעוֹלָם, בִּזְכוּת חַלָּה, וּבִזְכוּת מַעַשְׂרוֹת, וּבִזְכוּת בִּכּוּרִים, וּמַה טַּעַם, בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, וְאֵין רֵאשִׁית אֶלָא חַלָּה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (במדבר טו, כ): רֵאשִׁית עֲרִסֹתֵיכֶם, אֵין רֵאשִׁית אֶלָּא מַעַשְׂרוֹת, הֵיךְ דְּאַתְּ אָמַר (דברים יח, ד): רֵאשִׁית דְּגָנְךָ, וְאֵין רֵאשִׁית אֶלָּא בִּכּוּרִים, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (שמות כג, יט): רֵאשִׁית בִּכּוּרֵי אַדְמָתְךָ וגו’.

We have other rabbinic statements about the world and three things – for example in Mishnah Pirkei Avot we read  “Shimon the Righteous was from the remnants of the Great Assembly. He would say, “On three things the world stands: on the Torah, on prayer/worship and on acts of lovingkindness.” Pirkei Avot 1:2

And  Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel says, “On three things the world stands: on judgment, on truth and on peace, as it is said (Zachariah 8:16), ‘Judge truth and the justice of peace in your gates.'”  (Pirkei Avot 1:18)

Much of Jewish philosophy is predicated on the relationship between God, Torah, Israel and/or Creation, Revelation, Redemption… but Rav Matana’s statement as reported by Rav Huna speaks of something even more foundational. 

Why did God create the world? This is a question that intrigues theologians of every stripe and in every era. And Rav Matana has an answer – for the sake of the three “reishit” found in the biblical text.  He ties this to the almost untranslatable “b’reishit”, reading it not as “at the first” (or for those who love the KJV version “in the beginning” but “for the first things”.

At first glance we can see that the reference is to three significant concepts in Jewish thought – Challah, Bikkurim (first fruits) and Ma’as’rot (tithes) are all things that the religious Jew living on the Land of Israel are expected to offer up rather than take for themselves, they are all offered to God both to acknowledge that God is the source of these products (and therefore the source of the blessing they bring), and to show gratitude that God has provided them.

All three are foods that we give away at least a part of – they remind us that we are not the owner of our provisions, that we have responsibility to feed and support others, that the world is created for us to share.

And in effect, all three are used in repeated iterations of ritual to remind us that ultimately we are dependent on God for our food and for our continued existence.

 As Moses warns the people in one of his final homilies, and as we take into our own Birkat Hamazon liturgy (Grace after Meals)

וְאָכַלְתָּ וְשָׂבָעְתָּ וּבֵרַכְתָּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ עַל־הָאָרֶץ הַטֹּבָה אֲשֶׁר נָתַן־לָךְ׃ הִשָּׁמֶר לְךָ פֶּן־תִּשְׁכַּח אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ לְבִלְתִּי שְׁמֹר מִצְוֺתָיו וּמִשְׁפָּטָיו וְחֻקֹּתָיו אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם׃

פֶּן־תֹּאכַל וְשָׂבָעְתָּ וּבָתִּים טֹבִים תִּבְנֶה וְיָשָׁבְתָּ׃ וּבְקָרְךָ וְצֹאנְךָ יִרְבְּיֻן וְכֶסֶף וְזָהָב יִרְבֶּה־לָּךְ וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר־לְךָ יִרְבֶּה׃

וְרָם לְבָבֶךָ וְשָׁכַחְתָּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ הַמּוֹצִיאֲךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבֵּית עֲבָדִים׃ הַמּוֹלִיכְךָ בַּמִּדְבָּר  הַגָּדֹל וְהַנּוֹרָא נָחָשׁ  שָׂרָף וְעַקְרָב וְצִמָּאוֹן אֲשֶׁר אֵין־מָיִם הַמּוֹצִיא לְךָ מַיִם מִצּוּר הַחַלָּמִישׁ׃

הַמַּאֲכִלְךָ מָן בַּמִּדְבָּר אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָדְעוּן אֲבֹתֶיךָ לְמַעַן עַנֹּתְךָ וּלְמַעַן נַסֹּתֶךָ לְהֵיטִבְךָ בְּאַחֲרִיתֶךָ׃

וְאָמַרְתָּ בִּלְבָבֶךָ כֹּחִי וְעֹצֶם יָדִי עָשָׂה לִי אֶת־הַחַיִל הַזֶּה׃ וְזָכַרְתָּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ כִּי הוּא הַנֹּתֵן לְךָ כֹּחַ לַעֲשׂוֹת חָיִל לְמַעַן הָקִים אֶת־בְּרִיתוֹ אֲשֶׁר־נִשְׁבַּע לַאֲבֹתֶיךָ כַּיּוֹם הַזֶּה׃ {פ}

וְהָיָה אִם־שָׁכֹחַ תִּשְׁכַּח אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ וְהָלַכְתָּ אַחֲרֵי אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים וַעֲבַדְתָּם וְהִשְׁתַּחֲוִיתָ לָהֶם הַעִדֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם כִּי אָבֹד תֹּאבֵדוּן׃

When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the ETERNAL your God for the good land given to you.  Take care lest you forget the ETERNAL your God and fail to keep the commandments, rules, and laws that I enjoin upon you today.  When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the ETERNAL your God—who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its seraph serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your ancestors had never known, in order to test you by hardships only to benefit you in the end— and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.” Remember that it is the ETERNAL your God who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfilment of the covenant made on oath with your fathers, as is still the case. If you do forget the ETERNAL your God and follow other gods to serve them or bow down to them, I warn you this day that you shall certainly perish; like the nations that GOD will cause to perish before you, so shall you perish—because you did not heed the ETERNAL your God. (Deuteronomy 8:10-20)

As we dismantle our succot, used to remind us of the fragility of our existence and the importance of not only working with and caring for our environment to provide ourselves with enough food but also of recognising the ultimate Source of both environment and food, this midrash is a timely reminder that our physical world should never be taken for granted.

But Judah Loew ben Bezalel, known as the Maharal of Prague (1524-1609) had a different perspective on the items in this midrash.

His world view was ordered and structured – the natural realm of order (seder) and the exceptional or transcendent moments within it (nivdal).  A single unified reality can be layered into different dimensions, and those dimensions relate to each other either actively, or as acted upon. (P’al / Niphal)

And when the different levels or elements of reality interact, they can either stay the same and unique (yesodot) , become a mixture of two or more separate and recognisable units (ta’aravot), or else they become something entirely new (tark’ovot).

For the Maharal, the three things for which the world was created – challah, bikkurim and ma’aserot –reflect these three realities –

The bikkurim – the individual first fruits – are the yesodot.   The bikkurim are taken from the first ripening fruits of the seven species of Israel –  Deuteronomy 8:8 speaks of the Land of Israel as “A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and (date) honey. Any farmer was commanded to notice the first ripened fig or bunch of grapes or pomegranate etc and to mark it, declaring that these are the bikkurim. They would then bring them to the Temple in Jerusalem and offer them to the priests.  The mitzvah is focused on individual fruits, and the actions of the individual farmer, and so exemplify the individual nature of this reality.

The ma’as’rot is different – it refers to the grains of wheat or barley, harvested at different times according to the summer and winter rains. One cannot separate a grain, so the farmer was to aggregate the harvested grains, separate out a tenth, which can then be offered. The scale of the tithe is very different to that of bikkurim – tithing grain is a much larger operation, yet the individuality of each grain remains distinct. It is as if the individual retains their individuality, but is also part of a bigger group – a community, a people. This is ta’aravot

And finally Challah – Challah dough is a mixture of ground grain (flour) and water, with maybe the addition of salt or of oil. But once mixed, none of these components can be unmixed, nor can they be recognised as their individual parts.  A new thing has been brought into being, a fully unified creation (tark’ovot). And this too is offered to God in gratitude and understanding.

The Maharal understands the three – bikkurim, ma’as’rot and challah – as being points on a journey of creation. We begin as self interested individuals, gradually we mix and join with others, forming relationships, propinquity,  community; and finally we create a new thing entirely, where each of us has an important role but where separation becomes unnecessary – we have completed the task we were created for.

And the Maharal  understood too that God created each stage, that each point on the journey is iterated and reiterated until we come to our final days.

So why was the world created for the sake of challah, bikkurim and ma’as’rot? One might say it was created to teach us humility, to teach us the importance of developing mutual relationships, to teach us community and the recognition of the value of each other, and to teach us gratitude.

Not a bad lesson to take with us into the coming year.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְמַן הַזֶּה:

Blessed are You Eternal our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who has kept us alive and established us and brought us to this season.

Sukkot – Trust in God is important, but we also have to take ourselves in hand

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The two mitzvot associated with the festival of Sukkot can be found in the book of Leviticus, chapter 23. In verse 40 we are told “On the first day [of the festival] you shall take the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook…..”. These are the four species that we today know as the etrog, lulav, myrtle and willow. The rabbis taught that we hold the four species together and wave them in all of the directions of the compass, as well as upwards and downwards. In this way, we mobilize the winds that blow from all directions to bring rain for the new season of sowing and harvest.

Then in Leviticus 23: 42-43 we read, “You shall live in booths [Sukkot] seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt…..”.

So what is Sukkot about? Is it a harvest festival of thanks towards the end of the agricultural year, or is it a theological festival of reminder of our history and unrootedness? Is it a about richness and plenty in the land in which we live, or about fragility and vulnerability and a sense of mobility? How do we allow it to be about both – plenty and fragility, rootedness and journeying?

To begin to understand it, we can look to Rabbi Yitz Greenberg who contrasts Sukkot with Pesach. He points out, “Pesach celebrates a single, intense moment of freedom in the life of the Jewish people. At the exodus from Egypt, the divine erupted into human experience. Pesach is therefore a season of miracles. At the exodus the people were required only to take the first step, and God did the rest.

Sukkot, on the other hand, does not celebrate a moment of miracle, a moment when ordinary time ceased. On the contrary, Sukkot calls to mind a protracted period of wandering, of marking time. At Sukkot God is, as it were, hidden in the everyday. Sukkot reminds us of 40 years during which the people Israel had to deal with the basic requirements of everyday existence: water, food, the clothes on their backs, the roof over their heads. “

Greenberg’s insight is that these two festivals, Pesach and Sukkot, are two sides of the same coin. As human beings, we seek moments of “divine rapture”, moments that take us out of time, beyond the everyday. Such moments deepen our spiritual appreciation of life; they give us a sense of God’s grandeur. But our reality is that we spend most of our lives journeying through uncharted territory, facing the everyday demands that life places upon us, and a long distance from any moments of certain and wonderful encounter with God. Our daily life is routine, it is a constant struggle to keep up with what needs to be done, and our prayers are also to some extent routine and regular rather than heightened by awareness of God.

Just as Pesach and Sukkot represent two sides of the same coin of connection with God, so they fall at opposite ends of the Jewish year: Pesach on the 15th day of the first Hebrew month (Nisan), and Sukkot on the 15th day of the seventh month (Tishrei). Our lives revolve around these two poles of the Jewish year, which represent our longing for the miraculous, on the one hand, and our everyday experience of reality, on the other.

The two mitzvot of Sukkot focus on the basic needs of everyday life: water (represented by the waving of the four species) and shelter (represented by the sukkah). At Pesach, when we recall how the natural world was overturned and slaves became free, it is easy to acknowledge the impact of the divine on the life of our people but Sukkot reminds us that even in the absence of such dramatic moments of miracle, God is still at work in our lives and can be encountered in the everyday, the natural world, the regularity of fulfilling basic needs and living each day successfully.

Pesach and Sukkot remind us of the presence of God in our lives in very different ways. In the dramatic and in the ordinary – we can find God both at times of crisis and in the mundane routine of our lives, should we choose to really look.

A connection with the Divine Being is both nourishing of and challenging to our spiritual lives. Each festival has its way of directing our attention to that connection, and to the way the trajectories of our lives are developed. But there is another way to look at the symbols of Sukkot – specifically at the four species.

Rabbi Moni taught about the lulav and etrog using the verse from Psalms “all my limbs shall say, ‘God, who is like You?’ (Ps. 35:10). He said “This verse was only said in reference to the lulav. The spine of the lulav resembles the spine of a person; the hadass (myrtle) resembles the eye; the aravah (willow) resembles the mouth; the etrog resembles the heart. [King] David said: these are the most significant organs of the body, for they encapsulate the entire person. (Vayikra Rabbah 30:14)

It is a Midrash we know well, that in using the bundle of lulav and etrog together in worshipping God and in calling for the rains, we are taking our whole selves into the activity. But extend this idea a little further and you see that when we take hold of the lulav and etrog, we are in effect holding ourselves in our own hands, enjoying a rare chance to look at ourself from the outside. Just five days after Yom Kippur, when we have spent over a month in introspection and thought about ourselves and our lives, we are privileged to take one last external and objective look at ourselves. But more than that, we can see ourselves clearly but we also have ourselves literally in our own hands. We can decide in which direction to point ourselves in the year ahead and actually ‘take our own life in our own hands’ and start the process with a clarity of our own making, with our own decision making and with ownership of our own choices.

Sukkot, that most universal of festivals, rich with symbolism of our own vulnerability and dependence on God – yet at the same time with the powerful symbolism of our trust in our continued existence, is a time when we begin our journey anew, when we take ourselves in hand and make something of the year to come. Trust in God is all very well, the symbolism reminds us, but we have to rely also on our selves and not wait for some divine intervention to bring about the purpose of our lives, or to save us.

The twenty ninth day of Elul

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Finding our way to forgiveness – to look for it or to offer it – is a process of mind, body and soul. It begins with a decision – or maybe better – a choice.
It is the decision to let go what has hurt us, to choose to leave vengeance to God, as the bible says. It is the decision not to look for revenge or for payback, to choose to stop letting the one/s who hurt us continue to live rent free in our heads. We can choose to quarantine our negativity, to free ourselves from our anger or resentments.
It is not an easy choice to make, and it is probably not a one-time decision – it is an ongoing “choosing” – a determination not to be governed by bad feelings and – however legitimate – antipathies.
It is the choice that will promote our healing and our inner peace. Will stabilise and ground us, helping us back into life
The “prepare and enrich” workbook for couples says of forgiveness:
“It is also important to be clear about what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not forgetting, condoning, or perpetuating injustice. Since it is sometimes unsafe or impossible, forgiveness does not always involve reconciliation. Forgiveness is not always quick; it is a process that can take time to unfold.”

Making the choice towards seeking or granting forgiveness can change the year ahead for each of us. Taking the time to review what we need to do this, to look for forgiveness and to ask for it, or else to offer it where we can – this can change us and it can change our world.

The rabbis tell us that God watches us and how we treat others. And God’s decisions are partly based on our own behaviour. If we treat others with compassion and forgiveness, how will God not be able to treat us with that same warm compassion and forgiveness?

the twenty eighth day of Elul

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What do we do when we remember?
The Hebrew root זָכַר appears about 240 times in Tanakh – meaning to call to mind, mentioning, or bringing to active awareness. The verb extends beyond cognitive recall; and includes the expectation of acting on what is remembered.
It is not surprising that the command to remember is so powerful in Judaism and Jewish texts – with no remembering there is no story to be passed down the generations, there is no long term identity, there is no more past, present and future.
And remembering is one of the first stages of teshuvah – of our journey back towards God, our journey to become our best selves, to return to who we would ideally be.
But remembering can also be problematic. Sometimes it is a mitzvah to forget, to let go of emotions that hold us back from the journey of teshuvah.
And sometimes the problem is that remembering is an active behaviour, and as we remember we already change what was. Years ago as an undergraduate I was taught that memory had been thought to be fixed, that one could take it out and examine it and return it without change, but that that understanding of memory was painfully wrong. Each time we examine a memory, consider it, relive it, or simply recall it – we change it and we return it changed.
As Marcel Proust famously wrote ““Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”
Sometimes memory plays us false by providing us with the bittersweet feelings of nostalgia, as we yearn for something we may never truly have had, but certainly can not recreate exactly in our present. Sometimes memory damages us by the different lenses time has evolved, so that what happened in the past may be seen quite differently then than we see it in the present. As LP Hartley wrote in The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”
Memory can be a false friend, but we cannot disentangle ourselves from the need to remember. It is important to remember and review, to repent and to mitigate, to let go and to move forward towards living the life of our best selves. But as you think back, remember that memory is created by us, changed by our interaction with it, not always what it seems
Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani (Berachot 55b) wrote “A person is shown in a dream only what is suggested by their own thoughts…”
We remember through the lens of history, of experiences, of emotion.
Judaism commands us to remember – the sabbath day, the covenant at Sinai, the exodus from Egypt – to remember and to tell the story so others remember too.
Going forward, what do you want to remember? And what do you need to forget?
What do you want others to remember? And what do you hope they will forget?
Memories can be created in every moment we live – and they can be overlaid and enriched by how we continue to explore them. Life is for building on memories and for making memories. Until our last breath, making memories is the gift we have been given.

The twenty seventh day of Elul

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After my death mourn me this way:
‘There was a man-and see: he is no more;
before his time this man died
and his life’s song in mid-bar stopped;
and oh, it is sad! One more song he had
and now the song is gone for good,
gone for good!

And it is very sad!-a harp too he had
a living being and murmurous
and the poet in his words in it
all of his heart’s secret revealed,
and all the strings his hand gave breath
but one secret his heart kept hid,
round and round his fingers played,
and one string stayed mute,
mute to this day!

And it is sad, very sad!
All of her days this string moved,
mute she moved, mute she shook,
for her song, her beloved redeemer
she yearned, thirsted, grieved and longed
as a heart pines for its intended:
and though he hesitated each day she waited
and in a secret moan begged for him to come,
and he hesitated and never came,
never came!

And great, great is the pain!
There was a man-and see: he is no more,
and his life’s song in mid-bar stopped,
one more song he had to go,
and now the song is gone for good,
gone for good! (Hayim Nachman Bialik)

אחרי מותי
אַחֲרֵי מוֹתִי סִפְדוּ כָּכָה לִי:
“הָיָה אִישׁ – וּרְאוּ: אֵינֶנּוּ עוֹד;
קֹדֶם זְמַנּוֹ מֵת הָאִישׁ הַזֶּה,
וְשִׁירַת חַיָּיו בְּאֶמְצַע נִפְסְקָה;
וְצַר! עוֹד מִזְמוֹר אֶחָד הָיָה-לּוֹ –
וְהִנֵּה אָבַד הַמִּזְמוֹר לָעַד,
אָבַד לָעַד!

וְצַר מְאֹד! הֵן כִּנּוֹר הָיָה-לּוֹ –
נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה וּמְמַלְּלָה,
וְהַמְשׁוֹרֵר מִדֵּי דַבְּרוֹ בוֹ
אֶת-כָּל-רָזֵי לִבּוֹ הִגִּיד לוֹ,
וְכָל-הַנִּימִין יָדוֹ דוֹבְבָה,
אַךְ רָז אֶחָד בְּקִרְבּוֹ הִכְחִיד,
סְחוֹר סְחוֹר לוֹ אֶצְבְּעוֹתָיו פִּזְּזוּ,
נִימָה אַחַת אִלְּמָה נִשְׁאֲרָה,
אִלְּמָה נִשְׁאֲרָה עַד-הַיּוֹם!

וְצַר מְאֹד, מְאֹד!
כָּל-יָמֶיהָ זָעָה נִימָה זוֹ,
דּוּמָם זָעָה, דּוּמָם רָעֲדָה,
אֶל-מִזְמוֹרָהּ, דּוֹדָהּ גּוֹאֲלָהּ,
כָּמְהָה, צָמְאָה, עָגְמָה, נִכְסְפָה,
כַּאֲשֶׁר יֶעְגַּם לֵב לַמְזֻמָּן לוֹ;
וְאִם-הִתְמַהְמַהּ – בְּכָל-יוֹם חִכְּתָה-לּוֹ
וּבִנְהִימָה טְמִירָה שִׁוְּעָה-לּוֹ –
וְהוּא הִתְמַהְמַהּ אַף לֹא-בָא,
אַף לֹא-בָא!

וְגָדוֹל מְאֹד, מְאֹד הַכְּאֵב!
הָיָה אִישׁ – וּרְאוּ: אֵינֶנּוּ עוֹד,
וְשִׁירַת חַיָּיו בְּאֶמְצַע נִפְסְקָה;
עוֹד שִׁיר מִזְמוֹר אֶחָד הָיָה-לּוֹ,
וְהִנֵּה אָבַד הַמִּזְמוֹר לָעַד,
אָבַד לָעַד!”

Elul is a time for remembering and reviewing our lives so as to go forward refreshed and with new intent and hope, prepared to do better than before. Rosh Hashanah is also known as Yom HaDin – Judgment day. We are not only going to face our own internal voice, but will do so under the watchful eye and ear of the Eternal One.
This poem by Bialik, who, though he died before the State of Israel came into being, effectively became its national poet, is a good reminder that time is not unlimited, that at some point we need to stop excusing or dissembling and really face what is important to us, do what is important to us, become what is important to us.
There is a tradition in Judaism to write not only a material will, but an ethical will too – to offer to those who come after us the hard won knowledge an wisdom we want to accompany them on their journeys. It is a good exercise to revisit such a will each Elul, to sing our life’s songs, to try to ensure their continuation. We continue to live as long as we are remembered.
The days leading up to Yom haDin are fewer and fewer. It is time to get serious. What is the song you need to sing? What would you put in your ethical will?