Author Archive

This week we read two portions. This happens sometimes, due to certain vagaries in the Jewish lunar calendar. These two parshas really do make up one unit: The summary of all that was built for and installed in the Tabernacle. Moshe instructs the people to gather and bring all the material needed for the construction, they respond generously, and the work is completed. The parshas include a long list of all the construction materials and details of the Tabernacle itself, the vessels, and the priestly garments. One of the vessels described is the ‘Kiyor’, the sink, or basin, to be used by the priests to wash their hands and feet in the course of their work in the Tabernacle. The Bible presents us with a somewhat cryptic description of its construction: “And he made the sink of bronze, and its pedestal of bronze, with the mirrors of the women who congregate, who congregated at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting”. Who are these women? Where and why are they congregating? Why were their mirrors used to construct the basin?

Rashi brings the following fascinating answer from the Midrash: “The women of Israel were in possession of mirrors, which they used when they beautified themselves, and even these they did not withhold from donating to the Tabernacle. And Moshe rejected them, for they are made to serve the evil inclination. God said to him: ‘Accept them, for these are dearer to me than all the rest, for it is with them that the women raised many congregations [this is the meaning of 'the women who congregate' in the verse] in Egypt. When their husbands were tired from their labors, the women would go and bring them food and drink and feed them, and bring the mirrors with them, and each one would look at herself and her husband in the mirror and tempt him, and say ‘I am prettier than you’, and thereby arouse their husbands’ desire for them, and they would be together, and the women conceived, and gave birth …’. And the sink was made of them, for its function is to make peace between husband and wife, by giving water from it to the woman suspected by her jealous husband of having been unfaithful [during a ritual known as the 'Sotah' ceremony].”

Moshe’s argument with God is interesting. Moshe objects to using the mirrors in the Tabernacle because he sees them as serving the evil inclination; women use them in order to put on their make up, to make themselves beautiful. God does not contradict Moshe; that is, basically, what the mirrors were for. However, he points out that the evil inclination is also the mechanism which creates, ultimately, human beings, and specifically, against all odds, a Jewish people. The husbands, enslaved in Egypt, were crushed, beaten, and therefore unable and unwilling to reach out to another human being, and certainly unable to imagine a future for people as yet unborn. The wives, using the engine of the evil inclination, manage to do both - reach out to and interact with their husbands, and, thereby, create a future for the seemingly defeated Jewish people.

To better understand the difference of opinion between Moshe and God, I think we should look at the specifics of what Moshe saw in these mirrors, and what God saw in them. Moshe objected to them as being unfit for inclusion in the Tabernacle. What he saw, according to Rashi, was mirrors in which women looked at themselves when applying their makeup, an essentially narcissistic behavior. God, on the other hand, was focusing on a different mirror, a mirror in which there were two people, a wife and a husband, playfully celebrating each other’s beauty. The “I am more beautiful than you” line which the wives used in this story, takes the inherent narcissism and self-absorption of a woman at her vanity table applying makeup, and cleverly turns it into a way to communicate, to reach out to another person. God is of the opinion that the mirrors, the token of that interaction, are precisely, more than anything else ["these are dearer to me than all the rest"], what belongs in the Temple.

Just as the food and drink which the women brought to their husbands represent a communication, an offering, and, therefore, a sanctification of sorts of the physical - something which is uniquely appropriate to the Temple - so, too, the way the mirrors are used in the story in Egypt represent a sanctification of the sexual. They represent an intimacy which brings strength, joy, and comfort to one’s partner. An intimacy in which one reaches out to another individual, and beyond, to unborn generations. The question, “what do you see when you look in the mirror?” is a question about how we understand our physical selves. Moshe’s answer is not wrong; when all I see when I look in the mirror is a physicality (and therefore a sexuality) that is essentially about oneself and one’s own pleasure - as symbolized by a person looking at herself and only herself in the mirror - that is ‘the evil inclination’, and should be rejected. God, on the other hand, sees the women who, when they looked in the mirror, saw not only themselves but, rather, saw themselves in relationship to another. God, therefore, wants the Temple to celebrate that; a physicality and a sexuality that is about two people, that is, in fact, about many people - ‘congregations’, the progeny of an intimate relationship between two individuals.

When the women congregate at the entrance of the Meeting Tent and offer these same mirrors, they are again attempting to use the physical in order to achieve spiritual goals. The fact that, in the Temple ritual, the sink acts as a mediator between a couple that has lapsed into a mode of jealousy and suspicion (when the waters of the sink are used as part of the ’sotah’ ritual which can reunite the two), makes the choice of the mirrors for its construction particularly appropriate. It is by seeing themselves together in these mirrors, as a couple, as their foremothers and forefathers did in Egypt, and not as separate individuals with separate, narcissistic desires and needs, that the troubled couple may find peace, and be reunited.

This week’s portion is called Tetzaveh, which means ‘you should command’. The word appears in the first verse of the parsha - “And you shall command the children of Israel, and they shall bring to you pure olive oil, beaten, for light, to place as an eternal light.” The Rabbis take notice of the word “command” here (and in a handful of other places in the Torah), and point out that the phrase “speak to” or “tell” the children of Israel is much more common when God tells Moshe to communicate something to the Jewish people. Why is this specific request, to donate olive oil to be used in the menorah in the Temple, prefaced by the phrase “command the children of Israel”, rather than the more usual “tell them”? A number of solutions are offered, and I’d like to focus on one, suggested by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the midrash.

Shimon bar Yochai says that the word “tetzaveh”, which is, by the way, a form of the word mitzva - commandment, is used when the commandment being discussed entails an expense, a loss of money - when it will cost you something to do the particular mitzva being taught; in this case, the price of the olive oil. In such cases, people need to be especially encouraged, motivated, in short, commanded, to perform the act, as reaching into one’s pocket to perform a religious obligation is especially onerous. Unless they are clearly commanded, people will easily ignore these expensive mitzvot, and not do them.

With this explanation, Shimon bar Yochai sets up an interesting tension between the demand to do God’s commandments on the one hand, and concern for one’s financial situation on the other. It would seem that people who would otherwise be perfectly happy to do whatever God tells them to do, and fulfill the mitzvot of the Torah, find it hard to do so when it gets a bit too expensive. When you think about it, this almost borders on the anti-Semitic: the Jewish people can be counted on to do God’s will, as long as it doesn’t cost them anything. When it does - buying olive oil, or animals to sacrifice - they need to be cajoled, threatened, ordered, into obeying.

In The Merchant of Venice, in the climactic courtroom scene, when Shylock realizes that all his money and property are about to be taken from him, he says:

Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that:
You take my house when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live.

Shylock understands that money, especially for a landless Jew in the middle ages, was necessary to sustain and guarantee life. Of course, this attitude is not specifically Jewish - everybody needs to make a living - though one could argue that some Jews, living under the kind of pressure Shylock experienced, got very good at accumulating money. People must work hard to earn money, as money is the way we acquire food, shelter, clothing, the basic necessities of life, and, of course, all kinds of other good things. So, when Shimon Bar Yochai tells us that we need some extra pushing whenever a mitzva costs money, he’s not being cynical about Jews (or people in general) and money. Rather, he is pointing out the very real strain that a religious commitment can put on one’s basic need to earn a living. He is also telling us that the Torah wants us to privilege our religious commitment, and buy that fine olive oil for the Temple, even if it costs more than we think we can afford or would like to pay. This position would clearly seem to argue for a set of values which sees our religious commitments as more important than our material and financial well-being: we are meant, to some degree, to sacrifice one for the other, to reach into our pockets and place our religious and communal responsibilities above our financial bottom line.

I can not help but think about something Rabbi Avi Orlow said to me a while back (this is not an exact quote): being a fully functioning modern Orthodox Jew today - with the relatively large family, school tuition, camp costs, synagogue dues, the demands to give charity, high cost of kosher food, etc. - essentially means that being orthodox equals being wealthy. Now, if this is the case, it would seem that part of the Jewish world (and I think the Orthodox do not have a monopoly on this mind-set at all) has taken the message of Tetzaveh - mitzvot cost money, and you must sometimes make financial sacrifices to do God’s will - very much to heart, but, rather than using it as a reason to develop a less materialistic world view, it has used it as a way to encourage people to become wealthy, to make being wealthy a value, because, after all, it really does cost a lot of money to be a good Jew.

I also can not help but think about the recent reverses many Jewish - and non-Jewish - not-for-profits have experienced, and what that will mean for the Jewish and general communities; it does not bode well for the health of our community and it’s institutions. As the parsha understands, money, and lots of it, is absolutely necessary to do all kinds of mitzvot, and money is disappearing at a remarkable rate.

I don’t really have a ‘big finish’ here. The issues of materialism, and the place of wealth in our world, are complicated, and, as I have pointed out above, one could argue that Tetzaveh both encourages and discourages placing a premium on material wealth - we need to have the money that we are willing to give away for a mitzva.

This week we begin the long description of the building of the Tabernacle - a portable Temple - by the Israelites in the desert. The Torah, over the next few parshas, will go into great detail about the materials used and the vessels and furnishings that were fashioned for this movable holy place. In this week’s parsha, Truma, the process begins with a simple commandment: ” And God spoke to Moshe, saying: ’speak to the children of Israel and take for me an offering (in Hebrew a ‘truma’ - hence the name of the parsha) from each individual whose heart moves him to give, take my offering.’” The Torah then briefly describes the essential materials which are to be given for the project by the people of Israel: gold, silver, brass, types of cloth and animal skins, oil, spices, precious stones, all of these must be brought by the people. God concludes this first, organizing commandment by saying “And they shall make for me a Temple, that I may dwell among them.”

I would like to share with you some Rabbinic commentaries on this last verse, and see what we can make of them. One of the most famous comments on this verse, and in fact on the entire project of building the Tabernacle, is rather late; as far as I can tell it is post-Talmudic, and first appears among Kabbalists in the 13th century. There is also a source for it in the Zohar, whose origin is a matter of dispute. This comment is based on the following question: shouldn’t the Torah have said “And they shall make for me a Temple that I may dwell in it” - in Hebrew “b’tocho” - rather than “dwell among them” - “b’tocham”? Isn’t the point of building a Temple for God that He will dwell within its holy confines? The inference drawn from the Torah saying that God will dwell “among them” is that God dwells, through the construction of the Tabernacle, not in the building itself (which, after all, would imply a corporeality on God’s part with which we would not be comfortable), but, rather, that through the act of building a Temple, God actually dwells among the people.

This idea is presented in a variety of ways by a number of sources. Some have Him dwelling in our hearts, others in our bodies, or simply among the people. Whatever the specifics are, this is a powerful idea, and I would like us to keep it in mind as we look at the next two sources, which are Talmudic in origin. In Avot d’Rabbi Natan, the Rabbis look at our verse and point out that the words “And they shall make for me a Temple that I may dwell among them” can be read as implying that it is the act of making the Temple, rather than the finished product, which invites God’s presence. The people of Israel, by the act of making a Temple, will cause God to dwell among them - again, not in the Temple itself, but, perhaps, among those who worked to build it for God - the same “they” who build the Tabernacle are the “them” among whom God will dwell.

From this we learn the importance of work - “Rabbi Tarfon says: great is labor, for even the Holy One Blessed Be He did not cause his presence to dwell in Israel until they did work, as it is written “and they shall make for me a Temple that I may dwell among them.” In a similar vein, the Rabbis, in Tractate Temura, point out that the words “for me” in the phrase “and they shall make for me a Temple” would seem to indicate that the work, once done, belonged to God - the labor done by the Israelites in the making the Temple is owned by Him. How is this so? The same way that any work done by one group of people can come to belong to someone else - because He paid for it; the people who worked on the Tabernacle were entitled to take their pay from the sanctified material in the Temple treasury. They were not asked, or commanded, by God to work for free; he purchased their labor. This Midrash would seem to teach us that all work, even - perhaps especially - the work done to build the Temple, deserves to be, and must be, paid for. The Temple becomes God’s, and God’s presence can then be with the Jewish people, only when He lives up to the very human value of paying for a job well done, and actually purchases it.

It seems to me that, taken together, these Midrashim are all pulling us in a specific direction. The Temple is seen by these statements as, first and foremost, the product of human activity, and therefore, a repository of human, rather than divine, concerns and values. The big question that is traditionally asked about the Temple is this: how can we imagine that we can build a building, no matter how large, how ornate, how magnificent, which will actually house God? As King Solomon said about the Temple which he built, “Can God truly dwell on the earth? The heavens, and the heavens above the heavens do not contain him, nor will this house which I have built.” These Midrashim answer this question, and, in doing so, turn on its head the very idea of a Temple. Rather than being about God and the impossible notion of a house for Him, the Temple really is about us, and our efforts to include the divine in our lives. And the way in which we accomplish that is by the very activities, and values, which are honored by the Midrashim we saw above - the value of work, and, stemming from that, the importance of paying for work which has been done by others. By telling us that God really dwells among us, and not in the Temple, the Rabbis are telling us that it is to ourselves, and our actions, that we must look if we are to understand what the presence of God really means.

The locus of God’s presence, the place of sanctity, is not the building, the finished product, standing apart from the hours of toil put into it by the people of Israel. It is, rather, those hours of toil, and God’s recognition of them, that is the real Temple, the true place where God chooses to dwell. I cannot help but compare this to the great cathedrals of Europe. The product of the labor of countless generations of nameless individuals, their grandeur seems to somehow render insignificant the vary labor that went into their construction. It is the cathedral itself, in all its magnificence, which is the point, and not the labor, duly paid for and appreciated, of the thousands of faceless individuals who actually brought the cathedral into existence. The Temple, rather than crushing into insignificance the human perspective, rather than subsuming human effort into a divine structure which ultimately surpasses and negates the relevance of the very effort put into the making of that structure, instead emphasizes, and privileges, the human concerns which were involved in the construction of the Temple.

These Rabbinic statements remind us that, rather than belittling human concerns and efforts, the Temple underscores their importance. The Temple doesn’t transcend human values and aspirations, it reaffirms them, and presents them to us as the true location of sanctity. In the every-day activities of working and being paid for your work, the Torah finds the presence of God. This lesson finds its ultimate expression in the tradition which tells us that God, in fact, does not dwell in the Temple, in a place which has a life and importance of its own, divorced from the very people who constructed it. Rather, he dwells, “among them”, in the very warp and woof of human effort and enterprise; He dwells within our efforts to create a place of holiness, and not in some holy place which stands separate from those efforts.

Whenever a conversation takes place about Judaism’s attitude towards democracy, part of a verse from this week’s parsha, Mishpatim (Laws) is usually quoted: “…acharay rabim l’hatot” - “…turn towards the many”, or, simply put, go according to the majority. This phrase is often used to prove that although the classic Jewish state was clearly not a democracy - it was, in fact, a constitutional monarchy with certain democratic features - classical Judaism had within it certain democratic elements; most crucially, the notion that, in certain frameworks at least, the majority rules.

This phrase is used in this way in the section of the Talmud that deals with the story of Tanuro shel Achnai, the oven about whose ritual purity Rabbi Eliezer and the other Sages disagreed. Rabbi Eliezer was a minority of one; well, of two, if you count God. He brought miraculous proofs that his opinion about the oven’s status was correct - a tree was uprooted, a stream ran backwards, the very walls of the bet midrash bent to his will, but his colleagues, unconvinced, voted against both God and him, even after a heavenly voice declared that Rabbi Eliezer was right. The Rabbis claimed the right to do so by citing the verse “Lo bashamayim hi” - it, the Torah, is no longer in heaven, and God, therefore, does not have the final say on its interpretation. They then clinch their argument with this part of the verse from our parsha: “…acharay rabim l’hatot” - go according to the majority. With this, the Sages win their argument against the minority of Rabbi Eliezer and God.

However, when one takes a close look at the entire verse, rather than just atomistically looking at this phrase, one sees immediately that things are actually quite complicated. The verse in full, which is very difficult to parse, can be read as something like this: “Do not go after the many for evil, do not respond to a quarrel to turn, turn towards the many.” As you can see, it’s not simple at all. The vast majority of commentaries place this verse in the context in which, traditionally, Jewish decisions were made, arguments were advanced, votes were counted, and a form of democracy, as we saw above, prevailed: the bet din, the religious court. It is there, in the Sanhedrin, the high court which convened in Jerusalem, which discussed the widest possible range of issues, including the ritual purity of stoves, and which functioned as the legislative as well as judicial branch of government, that the nation of Israel, ultimately, ruled itself. Our verse is basically understood to be addressing these judges.

One Talmudic interpretation, which Rashi quotes but doesn’t really like much, reads it this way: “Do not go after the many for evil,” - do not condemn a defendant in a capital case (that is the “evil” being done in the verse) by a majority vote of just one. “do not respond to a quarrel to turn” - in the aforementioned capital case, when the judges discuss their opinions, do not begin the deliberations with the senior judges, as that will inhibit the junior ones; begin the deliberations with the junior ones, so that they can speak freely. “turn towards the many.” - only condemn a defendant to death with “many”, i.e., at least a majority of two judges more than those who acquit him. In this reading, the verse is about our distaste for capital punishment, and demands that it only take place with a majority of at least two. It also tells us to guarantee the judges in a capital case the freedom to express their opinions during their deliberations.

The Sforno basically agrees, and adds an interesting scenario: if there are 10 judges arguing for the defendant’s innocence and eleven who say he is guilty, and you are then called upon to voice your opinion, do not say that you will simply go along with the majority, thereby condemning the defendant to death with the requisite two-man majority. Rather, formulate your own opinion, whether it is to condemn, along with the other eleven, or acquit, along with the ten-man minority. The Sforno specifically understands the verse as warning a judge to think for himself, and not just go along with what most of his colleagues think.

Rashi feels that this is a farfetched reading; the one-man/two-man majority when judging a capital case business is not to be found anywhere in the Torah’s text, and does not seem to be the real point here. Instead, he suggests this broader reading: “Do not go after the many for evil” - If you see evil people perverting justice, do not follow their opinion, excusing yourself with the fact that they are, after all, the majority. “Do not respond to a quarrel to turn, turn towards the many.” - Rashi reads this last half of the verse as one negative phrase - if you, the judge who is in the minority, who did not go after the majority “for evil”, are asked your opinion about the case by the defendant, do not respond with the opinion of the [evil] majority; tell him what you think the truth is in his case, and let the majority be damned.

We see that, unlike the reading of the phrase “turn towards the many” in the story about the argument over the oven, here the phrase is read to mean the exact opposite - do not go after the majority if you think they are wrong. Even after a case has been decided, and the majority has voted, if you believe that they are “evil” - wrong about this case - you must say so. You may not excuse yourself from having the courage of your convictions simply because the majority has decided against you. Even if it means acting in a way which seems to subvert the judicial process - one of the members of the court telling the defendant that he thinks the court’s decision was wrong - one must not, intellectually, bow to the tyranny of the majority; one must continue to believe, and speak for, what one believes.

Like the Sforno’s understanding of how the “swing” judge in a close decision must not simply go along with the majority, but must formulate and express his own, independent position, Rashi sees this verse as encouraging judges to buck the majority, even after it has made its decision. Looking at these two different interpretations of this verse, we are left, perhaps, with what may be the crucial message about the democratic process. Yes, one must “turn towards the many”, the majority does have the final say in deciding public policy. However, this does not exempt us from seeking after that which is true, right, and just, no matter what the majority thinks. And so the Torah presents us, in one verse, with democracy and its corrective: follow the will of the majority, but don’t stop thinking, and speaking out, for what you believe to be right.

This week’s parsha begins with a visit from Moshe’s father-in-law, the Midianite priest, Yitro. The Torah tells us that after Yitro heard about the miraculous events surrounding the exodus from Egypt, he took Moshe’s wife and children, whom Moshe had left behind in Midian when he went to free the Jewish people from Egypt, and brought them to the Israelite camp in the desert. Moshe comes out to greet him, and then tells him about all of the tribulations the Israelites had gone through, and how God had, again and again, saved them. The Torah records Yitro’s response to this miraculous tale - “va’yichad Yitro” - “And Yitro was happy for all the good which God had done for Israel, that he saved them from the hands of Egypt.” Va’yichad is a rare word, which appears only a handful of times in the Bible, and apparently means to rejoice or be jubilant. Rashi, in his commentary says that that is, in fact, the simple meaning of the word here.

The strangeness of the word, however, seems to prompt the Rabbis to see another implication here, which Rashi also quotes: “His flesh became chidudin chidudin [a play on the word va'yichad, and which means his skin was full of sharp points, i.e., he had goosebumps], as he was upset over the loss of Egypt. This is what people mean when they say ‘Do not, even after ten generations, insult a non-Jew in front of a convert.’” On one level, this Rabbinic understanding of the rare word va’yichad teaches us about sensitivity. People carry their backgrounds and histories around with them. Yitro, as a non-Jew from Midian, identifies and sympathizes, on some level, with Egypt. Even though he is now more closely identified with the people of his son-in-law, daughter, and grandchildren, he still retains some measure of identification with the Egyptians, and is upset by news of their defeat.

The Rabbis parallel this with a descendant of converts who, even though he or she is now a Jew, never completely loses elements of his ancestors non-Jewish identity, and feels a kinship of sort with non-Jews. For this reason we must be sensitive in his presence to what we say about and how we act towards non-Jews, as he is liable to be insulted if they are. This midrash also teaches us something about the complexity of the human heart. Although consciously and overtly identified with the Jewish people, Yitro can not, apparently, simply erase who he was and how he once felt. On a visceral level (hence the goosebumps, an automatic, emotional, physical, response to the situation), he still retains his feelings for the Egyptian nation. His newer relationship with Moshe, God, and the Jewish people does not erase his old personality, or his old sensitivities. We are complex beings. We can consciously choose and espouse one set of values and beliefs, while at the same time, on a deeper, more intuitive level, harbor within us very different, even opposing, emotional connections and responses.

It is not an accident that the Rabbis see Yitro’s body - his flesh - as the thing that gives him away, and reveals to us, and to him, who he really is, underneath. In addition to the conscious, intellectual choice which Yitro has made to praise God and recognize the miracles He has done for His people, he also has a set of deeply felt emotional commitments which he can not simply decide to undo. Like the rest of us, Yitro lives somewhere in between who he is, and who he would like to be.

There is a remarkable story in the Talmud, in Tractate Avoda Zara (Idol Worship - it deals with the laws of idolatry) about Onkelos the son of Kalonymus (c.35-120) - it’s on page 11a if you’d like to see it. Onkelos lived in Rome. He was a nephew of the Emperor Titus, who defeated the Jewish Revolt and destroyed the Second Temple; he celebrated these events back in Rome, by building the Arch of Titus and the Coliseum. Onkelos converted to Judaism (a story in itself), which the Roman establishment did not like. The emperor (not Titus, he was dead already) sent a legion to arrest Onkelos and bring him before him. When they got there, Onkeles, using Biblical verses, convinced them all to convert to Judaism (sadly, which verses he used is not recorded). Caesar then sent another legion to arrest him, instructing them this time to not talk with Onkelos. While they were taking him into custody, he asked if he might speak to them of every-day matters, not Torah. They agreed, and he asked them the following question: “The torchbearer carries a torch before the elder, who carries a torch before the duke, who carries a torch before the governor, who carries a torch before the king. Does the king carry a torch before anyone?” They answered him - “No”. He said to them, “And yet the Holy One, Blessed be He, carried a torch before Israel, as it says [in this week's parsha, B'shalach, just after the exodus from Egypt]: ‘And God walked before them during the day in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way, and at night in a pillar of fire as a light for them…’”. When they heard this, they all converted to Judaism as well. The Emperor then sent yet another legion, and told them not to converse with Onkeleos at all. As they were taking him to the emperor, he saw a mezuza on the door, touched it, and asked the soldiers if they knew what it was. They said they did not, and asked him to tell them. He said: “It is the way of the world for a flesh and blood king to sit indoors, while his servants guard him from without, but the Holy One, Blessed be He, is different; His servants are inside while he guards them from without, as it is written, ‘God will protect your comings and goings from now and forever’” [a verse from Psalms understood here as a reference to the mezuza as a symbol of God's protection when one exits or enters one's home]. They all also converted, and the emperor stopped sending his men to arrest Onkelos.

This really is some story. Since it is, ultimately, about mass conversion, I think it should be understood as presenting us with a central concept of Judaism, as if to say: this is why one should be Jewish, this is what Judaism is all about. Looked at that way, the central message is inescapable, and remarkable. Onkelos is talking to a Roman legion, a quintessential symbol and instrument of Roman order, rank, privilege, and military and political power. Why the Emperor is so put off by Onkelos’s conversion that he sends a brigade to arrest him may not be clear at the start of the story, but it certainly becomes obvious once Onkelos starts talking: his description of a highly stratified Roman society, in which there is a clear hierarchy of who serves whom, each with his title and concomitant entitlement, is vividly played off against a Jewish world of democracy, equality, and egalitarianism, under the benevolent protection of the one God. This perspective subverts the values which are the very foundation of Roman life, and which, we now understand, the Roman Emperor sent his legions to uphold - hierarchy, title, rank, service, and order. The remarkable and revolutionary point Onkelos makes with his two examples - the Pillars of cloud and fire in the desert and the mezuza on the doorposts of Jewish homes - is that Judaism takes a position against the normal order of things, in which the weak and the poor naturally and inexorably serve the strong and powerful, who, in turn, serve those who are even stronger and more powerful. Instead, it substitutes a value system wherein God himself, the King of Kings - or, perhaps more correctly, the only king - serves His people, upending the hierarchical world view of Rome. In the Jewish worldview, high rank, truly possessed only by God, is a burden, in that it seems to demand an ethic of service towards those less fortunate, less powerful, and less able to take care of themselves. Instead of a world where it is understood as right and proper for the strong, the rich, and the well-born to take advantage of the weak, and deserve, as something taken for granted, their service, Onkelos presents a world turned upside down, in which God Himself serves His subjects.

The fact that, once they convert, the soldiers seem to go AWOL, and disappear into the Jewish community, is remarkable. It is as if the story is saying that becoming a Jew will free one of the burden of servitude which is the norm in Roman life - become Jewish and free yourself from the weight of service to Rome and its hierarchies. By joining the egalitarian Jewish society, one escapes the hierarchical Roman one - an offer that no Roman Legionnaire, it would seem, could resist.

The implications for the way we order our societies, the way those of us with wealth and power behave towards those without, and our attitudes towards Roman-style hierarchies of rank and privilege, are profound

This week we read about the last of the plagues in Egypt. The ultimate plague, the one which finally convinces Pharaoh and the Egyptians to let the Israelites go, is the death of the firstborn sons. This plague stands out, in contrast to the first nine, as especially tragic. Whereas the earlier plagues certainly hurt, and may well have caused fatalities, they also had something humorous about them - the frogs swarming all over Egypt, Pharaoh and his advisers itching with lice and then boils - it seemed as if the Egyptians were being toyed with by God, for our sake. With the plague of the firstborn sons, however, everything changes. We are presented with a situation almost too horrible to imagine. The entire population was effected - “from the first born son of Pharaoh, who sits on his throne, to the first born son of the captive in the dungeon, and every firstborn of beast…there was no house in which there was not a dead person.” It is this horror which moved the Egyptians to finally free the Israelites, but whose ferocity is hard, I think, for us to readily accept.

I would like to take a look at the message implied by the choice of this last, horrible plague, and try to see if we can understand what is communicated to us by the killing of the firstborn sons. After all, God certainly could have killed in a more just fashion - all those who had actually thrown Jewish babies into the Nile, or Pharaoh and his fellow members of the ruling class, or those task masters who were particularly oppressive to the Jewish people. Why the choice of the firstborn son of every family? I would like to begin our investigation of this question by pointing something out about firstborns in general. The Torah seems to not like them. Starting from the first firstborn, the murderously jealous Cain, continuing to Ishmael, the firstborn whom Abraham rejects, to Esav, the firstborn who is bested by Yaakov, to Reuven, Yaakov’s firstborn, who is overshadowed by a number of his younger brothers and is criticized by his father on his deathbed, the firstborn just about never reaps the supposed benefits of his position.

The Torah’s sympathy for the younger child is obvious. It would seem, therefore, that the killing of the Egyptian firstborns is, in a way, in keeping with the Torah’s antipathy to this position - in Egypt, the Torah seems to be taking its negative opinion of firstborns to a deadly degree. We must understand the root of the Torah’s dislike of the firstborn. The obvious explanation is that the Torah, as part of its basic monotheistic message, wants to undermine the practice of classifying individuals in any way other than by their individual merit. The system of privileging firstborns is, by definition, the opposite of a meritocracy. It does not matter what you do, how you behave, what you accomplish; what matters is the immutable fact of when you were born. This kind of thinking is symptomatic of a society which sees human beings as locked into their fate from birth, as being classified and categorizing within a specific socio/religious role not as a result of any act that they have done, but simply by an accident of birth. This mind-set stands in direct contradistinction to the monotheistic world view, in which everyone of us is judged before God by our behavior.

It is this lesson, I believe, that the Torah is trying to teach us with all of the rejected-first-born stories I mentioned above. Every single one of those firstborns forfeited whatever advantage the accident of their birth had given them by their negative behavior. Their younger brothers, on the other hand, achieved greatness in spite of their disadvantaged position within the family, through the merit of their actions. In Jewish tradition, ancient Egypt was seen as representing precisely the pagan world view which sees each of us as locked into his or her fate from birth. Victims of the decree of the stars and the will of the Gods, locked into highly ritualized attempts to outwit those stars and appease those Gods, human beings do not have the individuality they are granted in Judaism; this is why Egypt is presented in the Jewish tradition as a nation which enslaves, a nation which refuses to see every human being as being of intrinsic, independent value. Rather, people are defined by their utility, their pre-ordained role within the hierarchy of society, and are limited and dehumanized by it. This is true not only of the Jewish victims of the Egyptian will to dominate and enslave, but also of the Egyptians themselves, turned into murderers by Pharaoh’s oppression of the Israelites, and forced to relate to their king as a God, as someone whose power is absolute.

It is for this reason that God chooses to kill the Egyptian firstborns. The privileged, pre-ordained position of the firstborn is a perfect example of what Jewish ethical monotheism is meant to combat. It is important to also note that the exodus story begins with God telling Moshe, just as he is about to go for the first time to speak to Pharaoh about freeing the Jews, to tell Pharaoh that “My son, my firstborn, is Israel. I say to you: send free my son, that he may worship me, and if you refuse to free him, behold I will kill your firstborn son.” This, besides prefiguring the final plague, redefines the term firstborn. The Egyptians, a civilization which at this time was already thousands of years old, are being told that God has chosen to call this younger, weaker people his firstborn. Firstborn, therefore, is not an absolute, static role, but rather a dynamic choice, a title which one earns, which one comes to deserve.

Interestingly, Rashi on this verse refers us to Yaakov’s taking the firstborn’s rights away from his older brother Esav; God, by calling Israel his firstborn is recognizing Yaakov as he who became the firstborn, through his actions, rather than by an accident of birth. That is how the Jewish people, as a nation, are His firstborn. It is the assumption that Egypt makes about its natural primacy that God, through Moshe, is attacking here. Similarly, at the end of our parsha, we are given the laws of the firstborn: “…and every firstborn among your sons you shall redeem…and it was, that when Pharaoh refused to free us, God killed all of the firstborn in the Land of Egypt…therefore…every firstborn of my sons I will redeem”. The redemption of every firstborn son seems to me to stand in opposition to the “firstborn-ness” of Egypt; we, as Jews, strive to unmake every firstborn, to redeem him, release him, free him from the constraints of his birth, in order to allow him to be the person that he, through his own actions, will ultimately create.

Firstborn-ness, the cult of the firstborn, goes hand and hand with the Egyptian refusal to free, with the need to dominate and control. The killing of the Egyptian firstborns was a blow for freedom; not just the freedom of the Israelites from their specific slavery, but freedom for all mankind from the chains of birth, rank, and circumstance.

The Nile River figures prominently in the Exodus story. Last week, we read how Moshe was placed in a small ark and put on the river in an attempt to save him from the Egyptians; it was from there that he was taken by Pharaoh’s daughter and brought into the royal household. This week, as we begin the story of the ten plagues, the action opens on the banks of the Nile:

“And God said to Moshe…go to Pharaoh in the morning, behold, he goes out to the water, and stand before him on the banks of the river, and take in your hand the staff which changes into a snake.”

It is at this meeting with Pharaoh, on the shores of the Nile, that Moshe threatens him with the first of the plagues - the river itself, the life-blood of Egypt, will be turned, literally, into blood.

Although I would have thought that standing by the river lends the appropriate dramatic touch to Moshe’s threat about this first plague, and that is the reason why God instructs him to meet Pharaoh there, the Rabbis seem to look for more of a message in the fact that the Torah specifically notes that Moshe met Pharaoh at the Nile the first thing in the morning.

One of the things they say is that Pharaoh always went to the river in the morning; he claimed that he was a god, and snuck away to the river every day in order to go to the bathroom, something gods are not supposed to do. (This idea may be prompted by the Torah’s initial use of the word “water” rather than “river”.) Another, related, idea, based on a verse in Ezekiel, is that Pharaoh would go out to the river daily and stake his claim as a God over it, saying “this is my river, and I created it”. The idea is that if you claim to be the God of Egypt, you have to lord it over the other obvious candidate for the job - the life-giving Nile. In both explanations of Pharaoh’s early-morning visits, he is expressing his ‘divinity’. In the one, he uses the Nile, physically, as a toilet, in order to keep up the pretense of his divine nature. In the other, he claims the Nile, the most important thing in Egypt, as his creation, his subject, as a way to assert his own divinity.

If we juxtapose these two stories, and posit that he did both - went to the bathroom in the Nile in order to hide his humanity, and, at the same time, claimed the Nile - the most powerful thing in Egypt - as his, in order to emphasize his divinity - we have a pretty interesting dynamic: at the same time that he claims the Nile as his subject, he abuses it, and fouls it.

I would argue that this behavior is typical of a certain kind of leadership, a leadership which actually destroys that which it claims to rule, and, in fact, to have created. For Pharaoh to be a God, he must be a God not only over something (”this is my river and I created it”), but also at its expense - he literally dumps refuse on that which he rules; that is how he proves he is its ruler. Paradoxically, and tellingly, it is precisely this act of abuse which reveals to us that he is not actually a god, not really the creator and ruler of the Nile, because, after all, he has to go to the bathroom. The abuse of the Nile actually reveals Pharaoh’s weakness, and failure as a god.

Pharaoh’s behavior here at the Nile is, in fact, a model of his leadership all through the Exodus story. His need, as a new king, to subjugate the Jewish people at the beginning of the story; the way that, in order to prove that he is greater than the God of the Israelites, he allows his own people to go through the ten plagues, causing them endless suffering, is all part of an ongoing attempt to assert his primacy by harming, rather than helping, those he claims to rule.

This stands in sharp contradistinction to a leadership model which respects, and empowers, those who are led, which does not need to abuse those who are ruled over in order to prove who’s in charge. The Exodus story, in which God frees the Jewish people from slavery, gives them an independent homeland, with instructions how to run it (the Torah), along with the freedom to succeed or fail on their own, is the archetypal example of an empowering, enabling leadership, the leadership of a God who respects and enables, rather than abuses and subjugates.

In this week’s portion, Shmot, the Jewish people are enslaved and oppressed in Egypt, and Moshe begins the process of freeing them. At a critical stage in the narrative, at the burning bush in the desert, where God first reveals Himself to Moshe, He explains His plan: “Go and gather the elders of Israel and tell them: ‘the Lord, the God of their fathers has appeared to me; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has spoken, saying…I will take you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite…to a land flowing with milk and honey’… And you and the elders will go to the king of Egypt and you will say to him: ‘the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has appeared to us, now let us please go a distance of three days in the desert and offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ And I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go, not unless it is with a strong hand.” God seems to be proposing a somewhat duplicitous plan: tell Pharaoh we only want a three-day vacation, he’ll say no, and then I will be morally within my divine right to really give it to him (’a strong hand’), free you altogether, and bring you to the land of Canaan.

The obvious question is this: What if Pharaoh had been reasonable? What if he had agreed to this fairly minimal request for a three-day religious holiday for the Jews? The answer seems inescapable: the Exodus never would have happened. The Israelites, and God, would have been forced to accept their status in Egypt - slaves, but with the right to freedom of religion, and some free time to practice that religion - as a reasonable one, a fair one. If Pharaoh had had the decency, and foresight, to permit a degree of religious pluralism, and a certain amount of freedom and autonomy to the Jews, they would not have had the religious and historical need, or, perhaps, right, to leave Egypt.

Of course, God, who knows a thing or two about power, and control, knew that this would not happen, and predicts, correctly, that Pharaoh would not grant them these minimal human rights, thereby necessitating the Exodus. The implications of the liberal path which Pharaoh could have taken but did not, however, are fascinating, and should be part of every conversation we have about Jewish nationhood, power, and autonomy.

Parshat Vayechi, with guest speaker, Rabbi Shimon Felix.
 
Click here to view the source sheet