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The Religious Autonomy Project: Religious Autonomy as a Key to Understanding Women’s Role in Judaism
Written by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
Thursday, 29 July 2010 03:54

In recent decades, women have been re-examining their roles in many areas of life, including religion. Some of what they have found, areas into which they have fought to be included, have redounded to the good of all, enriching society as a whole. In Judaism, that process has uncovered areas of sensitivity, where the religion seems to relegate women to a role they find restrictive or dismissive. One particular such area has been the unequal levels of obligation between men and women, the fact of women having been exempted from many mitzvot. Those exemptions in turn prevent them from serving in certain public roles, such as blowing shofar for the congregation, since helping others fulfill a mitzvah requires that the agent be equally obligated in that mitzvah.

Even leaving aside the question of participation in the public community, which is complicated by other factors, many women feel excluded by the very fact of being exempted from mitzvot such as the study of Torah, wearing tefillin, hearing shofar on Rosh haShanah, or sitting in a Sukkah on Sukkot. So many men experience these observances as central to their religiosity, that many if not most women see them as ineluctably central to religiosity, period. If so, the exemption can send the message that Judaism either cares less about women’s relationship with God, or does not imagine that women are capable of building such a relationship as well as men.

A Different Lens: A More Autonomous Religiosity

In the light of previous posts and what they have shown about the role of personal decisions in a religious life, I think we can look at women’s exemption from manyמצוות עשה שהזמן גרמא– positive commandments with a time element to them– with new eyes. Doing so will, I hope, further our understanding of how important personal input is to the religion while also rejuvenating our recognition that Judaism values women’s religious development as much as men’s.

The first step is noticing that we have already seen that the Torah itself does not always value specificity of obligation as the highest value. Not being included in certain obligations excludes women in one way—they cannot be agents of fulfillment of that mitzvah, as we mentioned—but might leave them with an equally valuable result, a greater autonomy to shape their service of God as they see fit. Especially if some examples of God’s commanding us were responses to the human failure to develop the proper type of autonomy, women’s reduced heteronomy need not carry the bite it otherwise might.

This suggestion differs, I hope, from the well-known, roundly rejected argument that women did not need certain mitzvot because of their greater innate spirituality or because other mitzvot already trained them sufficiently. As I have argued elsewhere, there is no obvious evidence that women are naturally better at serving God, or reason to believe that a woman’s obligations regarding her monthly cycle should teach her about seasonal mitzvot such as sukkah or shofar.

My argument instead is that the category of positive time-related mitzvot, מצוות עשה שהזמן גרמא, establishes specific acts of worship, not general categories of religiosity. Since those acts all support broader goals—goals in which women are equally obligated—women’s exemption does not leave them out of anything of significance to the religion. Rather, while men are guided more specifically in how to achieve a proper religiosity, women are left with greater freedom as to how to shape their religiosity.

Exemption is Not Exclusion: The Availability of These Mitzvot

I should also pause to stress the difference between exemption and exclusion. Women often feel that they are “left out” of these mitzvot. That impression is accurate in the realm of helping others fulfill their obligation and in the level of reward we assume each person receives for that particular mitzvah; someone obligated in a particular mitzvah does, indeed, receive greater reward for that mitzvah than someone not obligated. Were the mitzvot in question essential to the religion, or were there no other way to secure reward, exemption would in fact equal exclusion. If not, the difference remains crucial; women may use these acts to foster a relationship with God, but need not see them as the only path to that goal.

Jewish men do experience these rituals as definitive of their religiosity, seemingly justifying women’s feeling that the exemption discriminates. For men, acts such as saying Shema twice a day, wearing tsitsit and tefillin, shaking a lulav on Sukkot, and counting the Omer between Pesach and Shavuot are the markers of their religiosity, how they define themselves as observant. Judging from men, truly serving God necessarily involves these acts.

There are at least three simple errors in this view. First, even men overemphasize the centrality of these mitzvot; most of them are, in fact, specific expressions of broader religious ideals, acts by which the Torah hopes to inculcate less exactly delineated ideas. Rather than ends of their own, these mitzvot are tools to achieve a broader goal. Women, in each case, were exempted only from the specific acts, not the general ideals.

That only leads to another question, why the system required these acts of men but not women. The Talmud’s derivation of this exemption, it is already interesting to point out, makes no broad claims about women, their nature, or their lack of appropriateness for these mitzvot. Rather, it cites verses, leaving to us the task of teasing out the implicit messages of those verses.

When we turn to those verses next time, I hope to be able to articulate a valid and reasonable understanding of the assumed distinction between men and women that underlay this separation. Deciphering that distinction and its underpinnings will provide the deep comprehension of the exemption that we seek, and will, I hope, lead us to a better understanding of the role of religious autonomy for women and in the religion generally.

Defining the Exempt Category

When the Talmud mentions positive time-related mitzvot, it provides a list we can use as the basis for our discussion. The Talmud says:

ת”ר: איזוהי מצות עשה שהזמן גרמא? סוכה, ולולב, שופר, וציצית, ותפילין; ואיזוהי מצות עשה שלא הזמן גרמא? מזוזה, מעקה, אבידה, ושילוח הקן. וכללא הוא? הרי מצה, שמחה, הקהל, דמצות עשה שהזמן גרמא, ונשים חייבות! ותו, והרי תלמוד תורה, פריה ורביה, ופדיון הבן, דלאו מצות עשה שהזמן גרמא הוא, ונשים פטורות! אמר רבי יוחנן: אין למדין מן הכללות ואפילו במקום שנאמר בו חוץ, …

Our Rabbis learned: What are positive commandments with a time element? Sukkah, lulav, shofar, tsitsit, and tefillin; And what are positive mitzvot without any element of time? Mezuzah, ma`akeh [building a fence around any elevated platform], avedah [returning lost objects], and shiluah ha-kan [sending away the mother before removing babies from a nest]. Is it a general rule? Look at matsah, simhah [celebrating on holidays], and hakhel [the national gathering on Sukkot after the shemittah year], positive commandments with a time component, and women are obligated! In addition, look at Torah study, procreation, and redeeming a first-born son, which are not positive commandments with a time component, yet women are exempt! Said R. Yohanan: We do not rely [completely] on general rules, even where the rule was stated with some exceptions…

Aside from the list itself, oddities in the presentation also help guide our analysis. First, calling these mitzvot, “commandments that time causes,” is problematic, since the time component of some of them is extraordinarily difficult to identify. The time aspect of sukkah or shofar is clear—they come around once a year—but less so for tsitsit and tefillin.

Indeed, the Talmud recognizes that some opinions would exclude tefillin from this list, because they hold that tefillin can be worn on Shabbat and at night. In the general opinion that includes tefillin in the category—and, as we will see, uses it as the source for women’s exemption—the Talmud assumed that the fact that it could not be done on Sabbaths and holidays sufficed to consider it “caused by time.” So, too, tsitsit make the list because the mitzvah applies during the day but not at night (although it does apply every day). The Talmud does not explain how that justifies the term “שהזמן גרמא, that time caused.” Deciphering the term would seem crucial to understanding what the Talmud meant by this category.

The whole interest in categorizing should itself raise questions, since there are so many exceptions– mitzvot in which women are obligated despite their being part of the category, and ones from which they are exempt despite their not being time-related. We continue to think of the category as useful because it does guide our assumptions about practices not specifically mentioned in the Torah or Talmud; faced with a new mitzvah that has a time component, we would assume that women are exempt.

I suspect, though, that the positing of this category captures some truth about what the Torah meant in terms of women’s observance as well. If I am right, though, it is not immediate obvious what that would be, since there are no clear commonalities among all these observances.

The Subsidiary Status of Time-Related Mitzvot

Almost the only clear connection among them is their all being explicitly phrased by the Torah as an adjunct to a broader religious idea. Sitting in a sukkah and taking a lulav on the holiday of Sukkot, for example, are properly seen as contributing acts that help create and fortify the holiday, not as independently important.

One way to note their contributing status is how minimal a time commitment these mitzvot tend to require. A few seconds suffice to shake the lulav; even its use as part of the prayer service is done by the end of morning services. Living in a sukkah sounds time-consuming, except that it only addresses itself to those hours when one is ordinarily home—eating meals, sleeping, relaxing. People can feasibly spend all day away from the sukkah, returning there only for those activities normally pursued at home. (Not incidentally, this aspect of these mitzvot would also seem to refute the frequent claim that women’s traditional child-care responsibilities are what led to the exemption—it is simply hard to accept that the need to take care of children would prevent women from shaking a lulav for 30 seconds).

I have already argued that שביתה, rest, means more than just avoiding certain acts; that should prepare us to realize that the מצוות היום, the commanded practices, are there to provide substance to the day. The Torah makes this explicit at least for the requirement to live in sukkot, which it says is “למען ידעו דורותיכם כי בסכות הושבתי את בני ישראל בהוציאי אותם מארץ מצרים, so that your generations should know that I caused the Jews to reside in tents when I took them out of Egypt.”

This verse does not mean that the Torah wants us to remember the Exodus only when actually inside that temporary residence; it wants the day as a whole to inculcate and fortify that awareness and commands these practices as obligatory avenues to that goal. Even for men, the Torah could have set up the holiday without such practices and still expected us to remember these aspects of the Exodus.

This same analysis applies to other such mitzvot, as we will see next time; once we have demonstrated these mitzvot’s role in our religiosity, we can get back to understanding how the exemption from them shapes a different religiosity for women.


(i)And which I have discussed elsewhere, such as in “Women’s Aliyot in Contemporary Synagogues” Tradition 39;2, Summer 2005, 36-58.

(ii)”Men’s and Women’s Differing Religious Experiences, as Taught by the Category of Mitzvot `Aseh She-haZman Grama” (Winter 2002) in Women in Judaism, (www.women-in-judaism.com).

(iii) bKiddushin 33b-34a.

(iv)See, e.g., bKiddushin 29a, s.v. אותו, where Tosafot assume that being applicable only by day suffices to render a mitzvah time related. In the question, Tosafot entertained the possibility that only starting at the eighth day of life would also suffice for membership in the category.

(v) bKiddushin 35a, with the sources mentioned by Rashi.

(vi)That the whole distinction is assumed to apply only to positive commandments is itself suggestive, but beyond our current scope.

(vii)Vayikra 23;43. The plainest sense of the text seems to apply that reason to the taking of the Arba Minim, the Four Species, as well, although many explain that obligation as related to the harvest aspect of the holiday. Either way, lulav is almost always seen as reflecting a deeper idea, not an end of its own.

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Last Updated on Thursday, 29 July 2010 03:54
The Religious Autonomy Project: The Personal Element in the Holidays, Charity, and Honoring Parents
Written by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
Thursday, 22 July 2010 05:00

Before I start this week’s discussion, I note that Radak on Yeshaya 56:2 (the haftara we read at Mincha on Fast Days), on the prophet’s reference to keeping Shabbat, assumes there is a bodily component to such observance as well as a soul component. He defines that soul component as using the day to distance ourselves from our ordinary mindset and focus on God. For him, that means learning Torah and contemplating Creation and God’s acts. It seems clear to me that fulfilling Radak’s view of Shabbat would also involve individual choices as to what to learn, which acts of God to contemplate, and the lessons to be drawn from them. Now we can move on to this week’s topics.

The Personal Element in the Holidays, Charity, and Honoring Parents

In many senses, the holidays are all the same. For example, all the holidays have a similar rule about desisting from creativity, differing from Shabbat in that the holidays allow for several kinds of labor, known as מלאכת אוכל נפש, activity that sustains the soul.

While in that sense they are all the same, other components distinguish them from each other; Pesach celebrates the Exodus and the beginning of the harvest season, Shavuot reminds us of the offering of the שתי הלחם, the two loaves of bread that are the first sacrifices given from that year’s grain harvest and occurs on or around the anniversary of the Giving of the Torah at Sinai, and Sukkot marks both the completion of the harvest and commemorates God’s protecting us in the desert.

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Last Updated on Thursday, 22 July 2010 11:40
The Religious Autonomy Project: Torah Study and the Positive Observance of Shabbat as Loci of Autonomy
Written by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
Thursday, 15 July 2010 05:00

As we continue our study of mitzvot, remember that I am only discussing those aspects of these mitzvot that necessarily obligate us to make personal decisions, not exactly codified by the system. The next example is the mitzva of Torah study.

Talmud Torah—Transmitting Cultural Knowledge

Three points Rambam includes in describing the mitzvah suggest that God was interested in more than the act of study per se. The first two– that the verse says ושננתם לבניך, you shall teach it to your children,[i] and that the Sifre rules that this obligates teaching any students who wish to learn, since Scripture elsewhere refers to students as sons–[ii] show that the focus is less on study than transmission, to sons or students.

Rambam also cites Sifre’s non-literal reading of ושננתם, where the Sifre midrashically twists the word so that it can mean we are obligated to know the literature of Torah well enough to answer all questions immediately. Leaving the derivation aside, since it is only persuasive within the context of Midrash’s ways of reading texts, part of what Sifre is saying is that knowledge is so that others will have access to it, not as an end of its own.

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Last Updated on Sunday, 18 July 2010 10:07
The Religious Autonomy Project: A First Foray Into Mitzvot
Written by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
Thursday, 8 July 2010 05:19

Of all the areas of human activity, mitzvot would seem least amenable to autonomous behavior, since they are, by definition, commandments from God. There is some human input in understanding the Biblical and Talmudic texts that define those mitsvot, since traditional sources recognize that the Biblical text leaves room for differences of interpretation that produce halachically different outcomes. For an easy example, Rambam (Hilchot Mamrim 1;2, but I don’t think the point is disputed) is comfortable with the idea that courts might apply the rules of interpretation to the same Biblical text and come to differing conclusions about what the Torah wants from us.

That form of autonomy is too limited to interest me here, since that is meant to be an attempt to get at original intent of the texts themselves, in all their legal, spiritual, and conceptual ramifications. While it may be a part of the human condition that we differ even in our best efforts in this regard, the only hoped-for originality and creativity in this context is in achieving truer insight into what God and the Torah wanted. This is not autonomy, it is a recognition of the necessary barriers we strive to overcome in our search for an externally-determined truth.[i]

Central Mitzvot As Exemplars of the Need for Personal Input

If forced, I might use that to back up my autonomy claims, but I can do better, since numerous central requirements of the religion are expressed so loosely as to necessitate significant personal decisions about how to achieve the Torah’s desideratum. Filling in these blanks is an individual and personal matter, although Chazal often provide useful guidance. By looking at some of the most basic of those obligations, I hope to show how the very fabric of a Jew’s life is or ought to be set by each Jew for him or herself.

It will take several posts, but we will see that while this is true of men, it is even more so for women, who were left with even greater autonomy in defining their service of God. Rather than seeing them as excluded from commandedness—a phrasing that assumes the superiority of being told exactly what to do—I plan to show that women are exempted precisely from those mitsvot that go beyond the basic obligation to specify a particular way of achieving one or more of the Torah’s goals. Women are given obligations that set up a similar desired outcome, but with a more open path to get there.

Proving this contention for all or even a representative sampling of mitzvot requires a book of its own, so I will take seven central commandments as a representative sample– to love God, follow His ways, study Torah, rest on Shabbat, rest on the various holidays, give charity, and to honor one’s parents. I hope that as we go along, we will see that the seven show a system where commandments are the necessary basis of our actions, but are only the basis, not the sum total of the expected actions.

What has been perhaps neglected in our experience of those and other obligations is that they necessarily involve people making significant religious choices of their own. Try as we might to hide in the world of well-defined obligation, these mitzvot– some of the most central to being a Jew– show that a true religious life involves decisions that are not, and cannot be, subordinated to the commands of tradition.[ii]

Love of God

The centrality of the mitzva to love God, if not inherently obvious, expresses itself in the Torah’s separately commanding men to twice daily recite Shema, so that at least male Jews will be repeatedly reminded of “ve-ahavta et Hashem Elokecha, you shall love the Lord your God.”[iii] Defining that obligation presents significant challenges. I hasten to add that women are equally obligated in the underlying mitzva, just not the need to articulate it twice daily.

The Torah seems to be commanding an emotion towards God, which is difficult when it comes to a Supreme Being. Love ordinarily involves a sense of deep identification, a connection that can be based on blood relationship, living together, or shared interests. God’s Otherness would seem to preclude that form of love, leaving unclear what the Torah seeks in this commandment.

Rashi and Ramban offer one way around the problem. They assume that ve-ahavta refers to performing the mitzvot me-ahava, out of love, which they define as without any ulterior motive. This view relates ahava, love, to lishma, performing these acts simply because God commanded them, without any interest in rewards that accrue from such performance.[iv] The love of ve-ahavta, for these commentators, is at least partially expressed in the underlying motivation in submitting to God’s rule.[v]

The Emotion of Love of God in Rambam’s View

Rambam takes the requirement of love more literally. Early in the first book of the Mishneh Torah, Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, he notes that contemplating the wonders of the created universe engenders a sense of love for the One who put all this into place.[vi] The love that comes from this experience, it seems, parallels the human love that arises in gratitude for a longstanding relationship of giving. While that might only be a starting point, Rambam implies that a Jew should start building love for the Creator in the same way, contemplating His kindnesses and the wondrous world He created.

Later in that section, Rambam records the Talmudic claim that foregoing certain kinds of medical treatment constitutes a fulfillment of the obligation to love God even at the cost of one’s life.[vii] He closes the section by writing of constant, almost obsessive, focus on God as either itself constituting love or helping to build it.[viii] Although commonly thought of as an arch-rationalist, Rambam parallels the relationship he is describing to that of a lovesick man, who thinks about his beloved constantly.

He does not mean that the person simply states his or her love of God, just as human love does not consist solely of what one says. Rather, he means that the person is always thinking of God, just as a person in love cannot get his or her mind off of the beloved. The basic principle seems to be that acting as if one is in love, using the human tools of constancy of concern and thought, will lead towards love itself.

Particularly since he explicitly relates love of God to human love, Rambam seems clear about the personal aspect of this mitzva, at least in the first and third examples he gave. We all appreciate different aspects of Creation, meaning we would all contemplate God’s role in that creation from different perspectives and with varying emphases. So, too, we each have our individual approaches in our expressions of love. As such, the commandment shifts with each Jew, meaning, at least in Rambam’s presentation, that each Jew must construct a personal and loving relationship with God, one that goes beyond the programmed, as in his or her other relationships.


To Mold One’s Character to Become “Similar” to Him

The Torah repeatedly refers to the Jews’ needing to follow His ways, ללכת בדרכיו la-lechet bi-drachav,[ix] which we might have taken as referring to those ways God identified, mitzvot. Rambam, based on several rabbinic statements (and, I believe, without serious dispute from others), understands this mitzvah to include personal character development.

For him, that meant the Aristotelian middle path, which inherently forces personal input into the activity. Judging one’s character traits and how best to bring them more to the perfect middle is inherently an individualized activity; the person can seek advice from a sage or other counselor, but the actual efforts will need to be defined and executed by that person alone.

Rambam expands our understanding of his idea by his differing presentations in his various works. In Sefer haMitzvot, he cites the Midrash[x] rather than the Talmud. Commenting on the key words, ללכת בכל דרכיו, to walk in all His ways,[xi] the Midrash says, “Just as He is called חנון (compassionate), so you be chanun; just as He is called, etc.” The Midrash does not claim that God is compassionate, merciful, or any of the other listed traits, just that he is called such.

Given Rambam’s concerns about ascribing emotions and actions to God, the Midrash’s saying only that God “is called” those characteristics serves the vital function of maintaining a distinction between God and humans; Scripture uses certain words for God not because they describe Him but because they instruct people as to how to best improve their character.

Two other of his sources complicate the picture. First, the verse, “אחרי ה’ אלוקיכם תלכו, You shall follow after the Lord Your God,”[xii] leads the Talmud to assert that God’s clothing the naked (as with Adam and Eve), visiting the sick (Avraham after his circumcision), and comforting the bereaved (after Sarah died), obligates humans to do so as well.[xiii] In contrast to the Midrash, the Talmud stressed God’s having acted in those ways, suggesting that the obligation to follow His ways is more literal than Rambam saw it in Sefer haMitsvot.

This may not go that much farther than the Midrash, since it only calls on us to imitate God’s actions as they impact this world, which does not involve claiming that we could become like God. As another possibility, we could say that here, too, the Talmud really only meant that God is described as acting a certain way, but that it, too, is a metaphor for saying we should just learn a lesson from the Torah’s description.

Rambam also cites Abba Shaul’s statement, recorded in the Talmud, that the verse “zeh eli ve-anvehu, this is my God and I will glorify Him,”[xiv] means that just as God is חנון, so, too, Jews have to be חנון, and so on, leaving out the crucial words “is called.”[xv] Here, the verse speaks only of identifying and glorifying God, but Abba Shaul reads it as requiring us to become like God, apparently assuming that those terms accurately describe God.

Rambam’s explanation of this last source helps us understand his view of the mitzva. He says that God’s impact on this world—not how He does it, but the results of His influence—would, if a human were to have such impact, betray certain traits of character, particularly those listed in the 13 Attributes so central to the liturgy of Yom Kippur.[xvi] Those character traits are binding, and it is in that sense that we can meaningfully say that God is compassionate (He has created a world which, if a human had created it, would betray its Creator’s compassion), or any other such description.

Rambam’s reading of “walking in His ways,” an actual obligation, thus shows the balance of heteronomy and autonomy I have been discussing. Based on human beings’ best powers of discernment, one aspect of character formation is to adopt the Golden Mean. Beyond that, the descriptions of God in Scripture are at least partially intended to provide an example of the kinds of acts and emotions to cultivate. Finally, the world also provides evidence of God’s “character,” meaning we should extrapolate from the world to figure out how to mold our characters.

Obviously, in a world as multifaceted as ours, the attempt to extract from it a picture of an ideal character can be almost infinitely productive. Depending on personal proclivities and with little halachic guidance, Jews seeking to imitate God will necessarily differ in which aspects of the world around them they emphasize in shaping their own character. Some might focus on how God sustains all living creatures and enter or volunteer for wildlife conservation, others might think of how God feeds the hungry and seek to alleviate the plight of the poor.

Trying to help the poor itself could fuel numerous ways of attempting to imitate God; some might choose to study agriculture or plant biology to help find ways to make food more readily available in certain parts of the world, others might study economics to identify inequities in the system and how they can be best remedied, others might enter politics to try to implement those ideas, others might actively collect excess food and distribute it to those in need. As with loving God, the definition of the mitzvah leaves much to individual choice, a venue for autonomy.

Next week, we will continue our study of some central mitzvot, finding more venues where personal choice legitimately shapes how we serve our Father in Heaven.

[i] Rabbi Soloveitchik’s philosophical writings stressed exactly this kind of autonomy. For him, Torah scholars’ innovative understandings of tradition revolutionarily impacted the world of Torah and mitzvot. I am arguing here that the system also sought a much broader autonomy from all people, one that moved beyond (without in any way discarding) the mitzvot.

[ii] Note that I am not implying that Jews were supposed to come up with new laws, a clear prohibition. It is in applying minimally defined mitzvot that leaves Jews have maximum room to meld the religion’s stated concerns with his or her own interests and talents.

[iii] Deuteronomy, 6:5.

[iv] Judaism’s defining love as fulfilling mitzvot out of pure obedience seems to run counter to my endeavor here, as well as to the project of ta`amei hamitzvot, finding reasons and rationales for the commandments. The contradiction falls away when we recognize that the rock-bottom motivation that insures observance can differ from the experience of mitzvot; we ultimately keep the commandments because God told us to do so, but our experience of those mitsvot can, should, and must be informed and enriched by understanding the contribution this particular observance makes to the entire framework of Torah.

[v] I see no reason Rashi and Ramban could not accept Rambam’s view of love of God as well.

[vi] Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 2;2. The experience also fuels yir’a, awe.

[vii] Ibid, 5; 7.

[viii] Laws of Repentance 10; 3 and 6.

[ix] For some examples, see Devarim 8;6, 10;12, 11;22, 19;9. Note that in each, the Torah juxtaposes “following His ways” to some other experience, fear, love, or cleaving to Him, as if the “following” leads to or is the result of the others.

[x] Yalkut Shimoni Parshat Ekev, Paragraph 873.

[xi] Deuteronomy 10:12 and 11:22

[xii] Devarim 14; 5.

[xiii] Sota 14a.

[xiv] Exodus 15:2.

[xv] Guide I;54. Rambam cites the Midrash on Parshat Kedoshim; we have it in Shabbat 133b.

[xvi] 34:6.

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Last Updated on Thursday, 8 July 2010 05:19
The Religious Autonomy Project: Personal Autonomy and Prayer in Tanach After Avraham
Written by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
Thursday, 1 July 2010 05:18

Last time, I made a couple of suggestions I don’t know of as being generally recognized. First, I offered reasons for my belief that it was at Sodom that Hashem taught Avraham that he was allowed, if not expected, to make petitions in his prayer. Not only could humans talk to God, he was being told, humans have the right if not responsibility to ask God to shape the future as they prefer.

The best way to do this, I then also argued, was to show how the course of events the person wants actually produces a better outcome than the one currently expected. In the example we saw, Avraham noted that saving all the cities because of the presence of righteous people would leave open the possibility of improvement, of moving away from evil, without the death and destruction God intended. While in that case the prayer failed, the lesson remained.

A first example for our purposes is Moshe, who, like Avraham, is taught about prayer at a crucial juncture in his career.

God Teaches Moshe How to Pray

Moshe’s early prayers suggest that it was not a natural skill. When Pharaoh asks Moshe to pray for him, he uses the verb העתרה (“to entreat”).[i] The Torah describes Moshe as צועק (“shouts out”),[ii] פורש כפים (“spreads his hands”),[iii] and מעתיר, all verbs of notable effort.[iv] The master of prophets, at this stage, seems unsure of how to speak effectively to the living God.

His early difficulties contrast remarkably with his handling of two later incidents. When God afflicts Miriam with leprosy, Moshe successfully elicits relief in just five words.[v] A chapter later, when God mentions destroying the Jewish people, Moshe composes a lengthy, eloquent prayer that elicits the desired response: “סלחתי כדבריך, I have forgiven as per your request.”[vi] Elsewhere, the text uses the simple verb ויתפלל, and he prayed.[vii]

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Last Updated on Tuesday, 29 June 2010 10:44
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