12.25.2008
Miketz and Christmas
First, here is another great American Jewish World Service d'var Torah, this time on Parshat Miketz. I wish it recommended reputable organizations that are doing just what the d'var Torah suggests--preventing hunger and famine, rather than responding to it after the fact. Anyone know of any good places to donate towards this cause?
Secondly, I was in Bethlehem last week, including on St. Nicholas Day, and saw a great Santa Claus decoration. There is no reason at all why Santa Claus should be pasty white--St. Nicholas was from what is now Turkey.
I don't know if I am in a place right now to write extensively about Bethlehem. It was a different world from my world in Jerusalem (West Jerusalem, that is), and many aspects of the trip were quite difficult for me. I was happy to read this recent New York Times article ("Palestinians Work to Jolt West Bank Back to Life," December 23, 2008) about increased tourism in Bethlehem and other West Bank cities, since that seems like it would improve life for everyone in the region.
Happy holidays to all who are celebrating something at the moment!
Labels: Israel, links, parsha, Torah (broadly defined), travel
11.18.2008
Rashi supports women's empowerment!
I do wonder what the role of Rivkah's mother is in all of this. She is mentioned, after all, in Genesis 24:
| כח ותרץ, הנערה, ותגד, לבית אימה--כדברים, האלה | 28 And the damsel ran, and told her mother's house according to these words. |
| נה ויאמר אחיה ואימה, תשב הנערה איתנו ימים או עשור; אחר, תלך | 55 And her brother and her mother said: 'Let the damsel abide with us a few days, at the least ten; after that she shall go.' |
Labels: gender, parsha, Torah (broadly defined)
12.20.2006
Parshat Vayeishev - Dvar Torah From General Anna
12.06.2006
"Because you have struggled with God and with people and prevailed": Thoughts on Parshat VaYishlach
As a compromise, I am going to write about something very personal, but in such general terms that it could be about almost anything or anyone. We'll see if it works or is irritatingly unsatisfying. (You can let me know in the comments if you feel so moved.)
One reason that I persist in writing, despite receiving no remuneration and precious little feedback, is because once in awhile, someone sees their own life or issues reflected in mine and reports having learned something about themselves from what I've learned about myself, and that is one of the best feelings in the world. So I'm hoping that by writing in general terms, that effect isn't lost.
In this week's parsha (Torah portion), Jacob prepares to encounter his arch-enemy for the first time in over two decades. His arch-enemy happens to be his brother Esau, from whom he stole both the birthright and his father's blessing. In preparing to meet Esau, Jacob was so afraid for his safety and that of his family that he did what my grandfather, ztz"l, used to do while flying: he divided his family into two so that if one should perish, at least the other would survive. He then beseeches God with a very simple, direct prayer. (I like it because Jacob tells it like it is.) The heart of his prayer is:
You can imagine that he does not sleep very well that night. In fact, in the same verse that reports that "Jacob was left alone," we find out that "a man struggled with him until sunrise." The story is sufficiently succinct and beautiful that I feel it's worthwhile to include it here in its full glory.
But what I do know is that I derive great comfort and strength from this story, particular from this one line, pronounced by the man after he changes Jacob's name to Yisrael (Israel): "כי-שרית עם-אלהים ועם-אנשים, ותוכל"--"Because you have struggled with God and with people and prevailed." (Each verse could spawn at least one meaty post, but I'm focusing on verse 29 today. )
Each and everyone one of us struggles with something in our lives. Nobody is born and goes through life all "lah-di-dah" with no problems.1 Sometimes it appears that people go through life that way, but it's an illusion. People struggle with God and with people, with physical illness, poverty, fear-of-poverty, social difficulties, overwhelming isolation, disability, mental illness, infertility, difficult children, difficult parents, violent neighborhoods, domestic abuse, difficult bosses, difficult subordinates, exhaustion, sexual harassment, sexual assault, verbal abuse, war, famine, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, blizzards...Shall I continue? The poor struggle. The rich struggle. The young struggle.2 The old struggle. The secular struggle. The religious struggle. Democrats struggle. Republicans struggle. Ordinary people struggle. Extraordinary people struggle.
In Judaism, we have this great story to along with the struggle: When you struggle, and prevail, you become a new person with a new name, even though you might limp forever because of your struggle.
Sometimes I fear that my particular struggles in life mark me as defective or deformed in some way. Like Jacob/Israel, I find myself walking with a pronounced limp at times. I recently decided, though, that prevailing after a struggle has defined who I am only in good ways. I do not consider myself to be "damaged goods" because of my struggles, despite my limp. My struggles are one part of my experience of life, just as everything about me is part of my experience of life--my childhood, my parents, my schooling, my friends, my relationships, and my jobs. The fact that I have struggled--as Jacob and so many others did--does not reflect negatively on me, any more than the fact that I have three siblings and went to a particular day camp do. They are just additional facts about my life, part of the complicated stew that went into making me who I am today.
Although I would never voluntarily undergo the struggles that I underwent, I can't imagine turning out this well (modest I ain't!) without the struggles over which I have prevailed. The depth with which I feel my pain and others' pain, the joy I have upon arising every morning, the overwhelming gratitude I sometimes feel for the sun, the moon, even the ducks in Central Park, and the deep and persistent desire I have to form a family and be a parent one day are all inseparable from my former struggles. Maybe I would have achieved those things or more without struggling, but something tells me not.3
I love the phrase "כי-שרית עם-אלהים ועם-אנשים, ותוכל" because it is said from a position of strength after a difficult time. That is how I finally feel about myself. I had a stand-off with a an enemy when I was all alone in the middle of the night, and I won. That doesn't mean I won't ever struggle again. It would be stupid to hope for that because there are no promises like that in life.4 All it means to me is that I will win again. I will win again because of the person I've become as a result of having prevailed in the past is a person who knows how to prevail. Because of my ancestor Israel (he who struggled with God [and man and prevailed]) and because I call myself a child of Israel, by definition I am one who prevails.
There is no silver lining, no lesson to be learned from the death of one so young, except, perhaps, that none of us knows how long we have here, so you'd better make every moment count. It's hard to remember that when you're actually busy living your life, though. Things like laundry, grocery shopping, commuting to work, and scrubbing down the bathroom tile all get in the way.
I did learn a few things over the past few days, though. The first is that the human spirit is incredibly resilient. The idea that a parent could lose a child and still go on living a productive life is nothing short of miraculous. I don't know how my aunt and uncle go on. Yet, somehow, they do. Not, of course, as they were before the tragic loss. But, still, going on itself seems like a miracle after the loss of a child.
The second thing I learned, which I sort of already knew (but it was good to be reminded), is that family is an amazing thing. These people, some distantly related, will come and be there with and for you when you need people to be there the most. The caring, compassion, and warmth exhibited by all of my relatives over the past few days was incredible. Just the act of showing up--of being another warm body on a cold day at the cemetery, staring at the gravestone that marks a tragically short life--is sort of incredible. I feel so lucky to have these people in my universe, these first cousins twice removed and second cousins once removed.
Go on! Tell the people you love how glad you are that they're alive. Tell them that you'll be there for them whether they need you or not. And be aware of their struggles, big and small.
[For some beautiful thoughts on suffering, healing, and the scars that remain forever, read this post by DoctorMama. Read the comments, too. They touch on a lot of what I wrote about here.]
Categories: Torah, parsha, life
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1. "You won't have to struggle" is not something God ever promises us either individually or as a nation. In fact, he sort of promises the opposite in Deuteronomy 15:11, where it says that there will always be poor people and therefore there will always be a need to give to them. There will always be people who struggle and suffer in this world and thus we will always be compelled to help them in their struggles and alleviate their suffering to the best of our ability. In doing so, we emulate and honor both God and humankind. See Proverbs 14:31 for a nice succinct statement to that effect:
| לא עֹשֵׁק דָּל, חֵרֵף עֹשֵׂהוּ; וּמְכַבְּדוֹ, חֹנֵן אֶבְיוֹן. | 31 He that oppresseth the poor blasphemeth his Maker; but he that is gracious unto the needy honoureth Him. |
Also, possibly my favorite line in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah is from Sefer HaMada, Hilchot De'ot 1:11:
I read it at my high school graduation, and it resonates as much for me today as it did almost ten years ago.
One final parenthetical note: This story tells us that struggling is, in some ways, the core of our existence as Am Yisrael, the Nation of Israel. Anyone who won't accept the status quo of the universe is bound to struggle, and one thing about Jews is that they don't accept the status quo, or they ought not accept the status quo.
2. If you look at a third-grader and see someone who has never struggled, you clearly don't remember the myriad frustrations of being an eight-year-old. All the things you couldn't do, all the rules and regulations that dictated what you had to do! All that face-washing and teeth-brushing. I shudder just to think of it. (Oh, don't worry, I cheerfully do those things now. They just seemed entirely unnecessary when I was eight.)
3. I actually think that there would not have been any way to avoid these struggles or really any struggles in life, so it's sort of a moot point. Another observation: People who contort themselves to avoid one struggle most often find themselves smack dab in the middle of another. So my feeling is that you might as well face the challenges you were dealt in life.
4. "Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes."
--Benjamin Franklin
Labels: life, parsha, Torah (broadly defined)
11.22.2006
"Why?" Thoughts on Parshat Toldot
After a period of infertility, Rebecca becomes pregnant with twins and feels them struggling ("ויתרצצו") in her womb. She says, "If so, why am I?" I was struck by the word "למה"--"why," not to mention the end of the question, "זה אנכי" "am I?" Why am I what? Rebecca seems to be asking an existential question. I don't know how it feels to have warring fetuses in your uterus, but I imagine that it is uncomfortable if not painful. Here was this thing she wanted very much, and it's giving her pain! She seems to be asking, "What meaning does my life have if the thing that I wanted so much is causing me such pain?"
Rebecca goes to seek an answer from God. I love the word that is used for "seek"--"לדרש." Perhaps because of its resonance from Psalms where the afraid or troubled Psalmist seeks God with the same words (for example, Psalms 34:5: דרשתי את-יהוה וענני; ומכל-מגורותי הצילני or Psalms 77:3: ביום צרתי, אדני דרשתי:
ידי, לילה נגרה--ולא תפוג; מאנה הנחם נפשי.). To me, the word "drisha" has the quality of both seeking and longing, specifically by one seeking a comforting presence. God tells her that she is destined to become the mother of two nations, and that is why this thing that she wanted is causing her pain. Great things sometimes come only through pain.
In the third (short) aliya of Parshat Toldot, the word "למה" appears again. This time, Esau asks a more rhetorical question, "I am about to die of hunger--why do I need this birthright?" ("הנה אנכי הולך למות; ולמה-זה לי, בכרה") when Jacob asks him for his birthright in exchange for a pot of red lentil soup. It's a different kind of "why," inspired not by the sort of existential angst of having longed for something and it causing one pain, but by the immediate quest for satiety. And Esau doesn't go to be doresh God in seeking an answer. He asks it only of himself and answers it himself by selling the birthright to Jacob. As a result, he does not become the father of a great nation. Rebecca's asking the question "Why?" elicits a response from God that she will be the the progenitor of two nations, and Esau's asking the question "Why?" precipitates his losing the possibility of being the father of the greater of the two nations.
That's all I have for now!
These two instances of "why" being juxtaposed led me to wonder where else "why" appears in the Torah, and I was going to get a concordance and look it up, but I haven't had time and don't expect to before Shabbat. (I do know that Moses uses it in Exodus 32:11-12.) Leaves something to pursue next year...
Categories: Torah, parsha
Labels: parsha, Torah (broadly defined)
7.15.2005
Speech and Transformation
I think that I used to see the story as kind of simple--okay, a talking ass, no big deal. I mean, kind of strange, but lots of stories in the Torah are kind of strange, and I didn't ascribe any particular power or meaning to this one.
The research I did for the paper, which led me to the conclusion that the story is about the power of speech--the power of speech to bless and curse, to subjugate or overpower, to elevate or lower--made the story much more meaningful. I have long felt that words are incredibly powerful, maybe one of the most powerful things known to human beings. Research shows that words can alter brain chemistry. On a macro level, words can cause war and words can bring peace. On a micro level, words can change everything about the way an individual sees the world. I fundamentally believe that words are what make people people, and, more specifically, what makes me me. The words I speak and the words I write make me who I am, for better or for worse. They are at the core of my identity. (Not coincidentally, I also think that books have the power to change my life.)
The power behind this story is that it illustrates, in a very straightforward way, and against Bilaam's wishes, that words come from God. There is a beautiful part of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy (I think, although it may be Yom Kippur), which says that the creation and expression of words are a partnership between people and God. People think them and God arranges them, or the opposite. Something like that. I don't have a machzor here, but if I did, I would find it. This rings true for me, in a way that many other things in the liturgy just don't. I often feel that there are words stuck inside me that "want out," for lack of a better expression, and it seems impossible to stop them. On the other hand, there are times when I want to say something and cannot. I believe that these words that we say and write are created through our free will, but there can be something so powerful and magical about words, and speech, that I find it hard to believe that God isn't involved at all.
And that's why I like that paper. I'm not sure the paper itself says all of this, but that's what it makes me think. All that, from the story of a talking ass. Go figure! And Shabbat shalom.
Categories: parsha, Torah
Labels: parsha, Torah (broadly defined)
7.14.2005
A Prophet, A Sorcerer, and a Talking She-Ass: A Biblical Story of Good, Evil, and the Possibility of Transformation
I only wrote a few papers in college that would qualify as Judaic in any way. And only one of them is relevant to this week's parsha, or Torah portion. I wrote a longer version of this for English 199t. Animals that Talk, with Prof. Marc Shell. (I cut out about half of the paper, which I think was mostly filler to make it long enough, and was not directly connected to the main point of the paper.) I'm not claiming to be any kind of authority on midrash, parshanut, or anything else. If I have any actual facts wrong, please let me know. If you think that this paper is full of rampant speculation--well, you're probably right. It was a fun elective. Without further ado...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"A Prophet, A Sorcerer, and a Talking She-Ass: A Biblical Story of Good, Evil, and the Possbility of Transformation"
December 4, 2002
The story of Balaam, his talking ass, and the blessings he bestows upon Israel is recounted in Numbers 22-24. This story is important in both the Jewish and Christian traditions. However, in the Christian tradition, Balaam is mostly characterized, in the words of St. Thomas, as "a prophet of the devil."[1] Balaam is seen as a heathen, prideful, or worse. It takes a talking animal to set him straight. The blessings or prophesies themselves are only interesting in the Christian tradition in that they foretell the celestial setting of the birth of Jesus. The lessons learned from the story of Balaam and his stubborn she-ass are reiterated several times in the New Testament, but otherwise are given relatively little attention.
In the Jewish tradition, the story of Balaam is an important story about the human potential for both good and evil, as well as for transformation from evil into good and good into evil. Balaam is alternately identified with Laban, Jacob's father-in-law who tried to rob Israel of its inheritance, and with Moses, the greatest Jewish prophet to ever live. In the Jewish sources, Balaam is transformed, likewise, from a prophet into a sorcerer and back again, and his curse becomes transformed into a blessing.
In this paper, I will argue that the talking ass is the perfect metaphor or vehicle for this transformation. When God opens the ass's mouth, and thus Balaam's eyes, the mute gains speech, the blind gains vision, and, for a brief moment, the animal and the human switch places. The animal gains mastery over the human through the gift of speech. This foreshadows a later transformation in the story, when God, again, controls speech and Balaam utters a blessing instead of the curse that he intended.
Why the talking she-ass? Talking animals are rather rare in the Bible; the only other one is the talking serpent in the Garden of Eden.[2] The anomaly of the talking animal did not escape Jewish or Christian commentators and scholars. The Jewish analysis of the talking ass phenomenon, in particular, reveals the centrality of transformation to the Balaam episode. Numbers Rabbah, a collection of commentaries that adds a layer of interpretation to the Biblical book of Numbers, is one of the earlier explanations of the talking ass. One such midrash, or explanation, reads:
The Holy One, Blessed Be He, had mercy on the self-respect of his creatures [i.e., Balaam] and knew their needs so he closed the mouth of the creature. For if she had continued speaking, people could not subject her. For this was the stupidest of creatures and this was the wisest sorcerer, and as soon as she spoke he could not stand before her.[3]
This midrash contains many themes that run throughout this story. Although on the surface the midrash explains why God took the power of speech away from the ass, it also explains why God had to give the ass speech in the first place.
The talking animal was able to stop Balaam in a way that an angel of God could not. Even the wisest sorcerer cannot always sense the supernatural, in this case the angel of God that attempted to block his path. The supernatural needed to invade his life in a tangible way to get Balaam to stop and notice it. Furthermore, Balaam was the best in his field, yet the talking animal was able to reduce him to the extent that he could "not stand before her."
This midrash reveals that humans only dominate animals because humans have the capacity of speech, and animals lack it. If animals gained speech, as occurs in this episode in the Bible, then humans would be unable to control or subjugate animals. This is interesting for several reasons. It sheds some additional light on why a talking animal was necessary in this story, which is ultimately about who controls speech, including the speech necessary for cursing or blessing a nation. In most interpretations, Balaam believes that he controls blessing and curse, and this story teaches that God actually controls all speech. The entity that controls speech controls all. Just as God's control of speech enables him to force Balaam to bless the Israelites rather than to curse them, humans' normal control of speech enable them to force animals to do their will. This is the power of speech as exemplified again and again in this story.
Along the same lines, Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno, a sixteenth century Jewish Italian commentary on the Bible, says that God made the ass speak to show Balaam that God actually controls speech. Just as God can give voice to an animal that doesn’t normally speak, so too, can God control what comes out of Balaam’s mouth. That is, even if Balaam intends to curse, God can make him bless. God could make an ass bless Israel if he wished to. Sforno says that this was an attempt to encourage Balaam to repent before he tried to curse the Israelites.[4]
A slight variation on this idea is found in some modern interpretations. They say that the ass, rather than Balaam, sees the angel, and that this occurs to mock the power of the sorcerer: Even the best sorcerer, or seeer, cannot see what the dumbest animal, the ass, can see. The point here is that sight rather than speech is what gives power. Speech seems to be more central to this story than sight, however.[5]
Who is Balaam? Traditional Jewish sources often go to great lengths to prove that various biblical characters are either good or bad. Balaam is unique in that he is identified both with "good" characters, such as Moses, and "bad" characters, such as Laban. Although different sources identify him with each and only a few identify him with both, the inclusion of both identifications in the Jewish canon indicates ambivalence about the character of Balaam. In expressing both Balaam's good (“prophet”) and evil (“sorcerer”) sides and his various transformations, Balaam is complexified as a literary character.
The idea that Balaam was transformed from a prophet to a sorcerer, or from a sorcerer to a prophet, is particularly interesting, as it fits into the theme already expressed in the talking-ass part of the story. When the ass spoke, the animal became human and the human became animal, as he lost the power of free-will to curse as he wished. This idea of transformation, so evident at the moment when God opens the mouth of the ass, is then applied to the rest of Balaam’s life: "In the beginning [Balaam was] a prophet and in the end he was a sorcerer."[6] Others say that Balaam was a sorcerer and then he repented and became worthy of prophesy. They locate the turning point when Balaam tells the angel of the Lord that he has sinned.[7]
There is one source that categorically denies the possibility of change. This source pins Balaam down as bad, through and through. Balaam tried to repent and Phineas, who was generally known as a zealot, wouldn't give him that chance.
When Balaam the Evil saw Phineas pursuing him [to kill him], he started doing magic….Immediately Phineas recalled the great and holy name [of God] and ran after him and grabbed him by the head and pushed him to the ground and unsheathed his sword to kill him. Balaam opened his mouth with words of supplication and said to Phineas: "If you sustain my soul I swear to you, all the day that I live I won't curse your nation." Phineas replied to him, "Behold you are Laban the Aramean who wanted to kill Jacob our father….You cannot remain in this world any longer."[8]
The analysis of the character of Balaam within a story that contains a talking animal leads to a deeper understanding of both elements of the story: the elusive character of Balaam, who is at once a sorcerer and a prophet, and the talking animal, who, because of his power of speech, is somehow both human and animal. His transformation from animal to human and back to animal is what allows Balaam’s own transformation from a sorcerer who sets out to curse Israel, to a prophet who gives the Israelites one of their greatest and most important blessings.
Endnotes:
[1] The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 1, Copyright 1907 by Robert Appleton Company, Online Edition copyright 1999 by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02214b.htm
[2] There is a fascinating article about the intertextuality between the two talking animal stories in the Bible. See G. Savran, “Beastly Speech: Intertextuality, Balaam’s Ass and the Garden of Eden.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. 64.1. December, 1994. 33-55.
[3] Numbers Rabbah, 20:12 as cited in Leibowitz, 301 (translation mine).
[4] This interpretation is heavily based on Numbers Rabbah 20:12.
[5] Leibowitz, 301-302.
[6] Sanhedrin 106b
[7] Numbers Rabbah 20:15
[8] Targum Jonathan, Numbers 31:5
Sources Consulted
Primary
Babylonian Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin
Babylonian Babylonian Talmud, Sotah
Deuteronomy Rabbah
Ethics of the Fathers
Midrash Agadah Numbers
Numbers Rabbah
Otzar Midrashim
Targum Jonathan
Yalkut Shimoni
Zohar, volume 1
Secondary
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 1, Copyright 1907 by Robert Appleton Company, Online Edition copyright 1999 by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02214b.htm
Hasidah, Yiśra’el Yitshak, ed.. Otsar Ishe ha-Tanakh: Demutam U-fo’alam be-fi Hazal (Encyclopedia of Biblical Personalities: As Seen by the Sages of the Babylonian Talmud and Midrash). Mahad. New and Expanded. Jerusalem : Re’uven Mas, 1999.
Leibowitz, Nehama. Studies in Bamidbar (Numbers). Translated and adapted from the Hebrew by Aryeh Newman. Rev. ed. Jerusalem : World Zionist Organization, Dept. for Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora, 1982.
Savran, G. “Beastly Speech: Intertextuality, Balaam’s Ass and the Garden of Eden.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. 64.1. December, 1994. 33-55.
Categories: parsha, Torah
Labels: parsha, Torah (broadly defined)
