Shall they go marchin' in? Or not? Maybe? Early evening event of a night of summer equinox, equity deals this week in Jerusalem, with the gay and lesbian pride or parade or demonstration, for others, provocation.
Our one-sex society makes males a bit too feminine and females a bit too masculine or "butch". It removes or adds hair of any color, waxing up skins, making-up faces, or reduces any difference in clothing, mostly pants here, in particular jeans and daily comfortable dress.
Unisex is also forbidden by the Jewish tradition and a woman should clearly be dressed or look different from a man, and vice versa. This is far from being obvious when you walk through the streets of Jerusalem. We can compare with any city in this country or even abroad, but there seems to be a problem with Jerusalem. The problem dealt with “Sanctity”.
True, the city is pious and has a lot of very religious (all faiths) inhabitants or passers-by, tourists, pilgrims. Some long hair male can be terribly effeminate, considering the fact that they might spend hours in combing their hair. Some yeshive bechurim or students would automatically curl their peyses/pe'ot (hair locks) with their index in a way that is "between" maleness and femininity: some ambiguous and equivocal swing of the hips. But the walk/gang has a spiritual meaning.
The same shows in traditional Churches where celibacy has been a rule for centuries. Curiously, Oriental nuns would retain a strong sense of womanhood while men often tend to some sort of effeminate behavior, just as shown at the present in all western societies.
The combat for equality and supposed equal rights has developed and continues to evolve in some sort of "androgynous" character that is rather pregnant in our generation. It is difficult to frankly distinguish some attitudes that swing between male and female acquired tendencies and the trends of daily new objects or products of consumption. As regards the gay and lesbian pride, it is banned by definition from our awareness. One can regret the absence of real and serious theological arguments that might not be even understood or accepted by those whoever they can be who protest against their pride. Is it a parade or a provocation?
We could also think in terms of a “farce”, a way to play the jester that curves up and down sexes and confuse them. Many a true word is spoken in jest as the clown could call to the king and mock him without being punished. Religions have too often played with the sex of the angels among the humans, or they have denaturized human beings and imposed illegal postures and situations. I always keep in mind that gays and lesbians were deported as such to the extermination camps and used as playmates by masochist gangsters.
This week, the parshat shavua or reading portion from the TaNaKh is “Chukkat = this is the ritual, non-rational commandment” in Bemidbar/Numbers 19:1- 22:1. To begin with, the reading portion deals with the red cow or “parah adumah – red heifer” that was bred and then slaughtered mixed with cedar tree branches, hyssop and crimson stuff (scarlet); its ashes were mixed in a huge cistern whose waters were precisely handled by young children who had never been in contact with death.
We do have our own way to separate young males from any danger of corruption. Judaism can be obsessed by any kind of sin, i.e. corruptibility through the contact with death. Now, this commandment regarding the red heifer has no rational basis or explanation. Contrary to all usual commandments that are explained by the rabbis in the Gemara, it is absent from any commentary.
The Mishna does include a very small tractate Parah (Cow, heifer) as a part of the larger tractate Taharot (purifications). It is evident that there is no rational basis to the fact that if some black hair would be found on this very sacrificial and penitential cow, she would become non-kosher. This tracks back to no explainable law. One, two black hairs and the cow could not be slaughtered to produce the ashes that could save the people from their sins.
This week, we face in the reading portion the problem of how waters spring out to be drunk by the congregation and their beasts. Then we read how anomalies can turn to save the sinful. In terms of biology, it is not normal and natural to get a “parah adumah – a red heifer”. The animal is a rarity and in some way a reverse of natural cow colors. Cows are cows: we love them in this country. Black and white, they are sweet milking beasts. Brown cows in some areas and other countries. Many restaurants show ensigns in shape of a red heifer. But the red cow was not edible. It was meant to purify, was slaughtered at the top of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and its blood sprinkled out in the direction of the West, i.e. to the world and the Temple. It is said in tractate Parah 2,1 that only eight red heifers might have be slain from the time of Moses till the destruction of the Temple. Other Jewish traditions would consider there were nine of them.
Thus, it is considered as a “chok = non-rational commandment/mitzvah” that still has to be perpetually fulfilled, especially in regard with the Yom Kippur ritual of purity. Nobody can show any evidence as concerns the coherence of the commandment. It is the same chok that only has to be accepted and accomplished by faith and confidence (emunah shlemah) as the Sha’atnez (Lev. 19:19), the prohibition to mix wool and linen, except, for instance, in the girdle the High Priest (Yevamot 4b-5b). It is a very important and pending question at the present because, the people should be purified in case of building-up the Temple…
The principle of a “chok/chukka” corresponds to this: “I will leave to my sons a due share (a fixed living)” (Erubin 54a). These laws without reason are engraved, drawn like circles in order to remind God’s will: “He ordered a mark to be put on his (Abraham’s) flesh” (Shabbat 137b). In these quotations, as in a general stand, “a chok” is full of meaningfulness in God’s eyes and His decrees are totally founded. In our society, it seems that we are at times in a situation of absence of any coherence, as if we were shapeless.
There are also some trends to lead us to social or emotional lack of structural egos, destruction or lessening of consistency. Call it bozo for a while, there are times that lead people to reduce their reactions and spiritual forces. “Timtem” means this kind of tendency as in ‘troubles obstruct the heart, making a man dull (Pessahim 42a). Thus, “sin blunts the understanding of human beings (Yoma 39a), “till man become a shapeless mass” (Hallah 1c). The example of the dough is often used because bread be “kneaded” in various shapes that may make sense or not, without reason. Yiddish and the Jewish folklore tradition have considered that “timtum” are those without clear sexual orientation, not necessarily a condemnation of homosexuals as they can be today; they represent with the lesbians a growing identity group marketing group and target. The problem is rather a sort of grin at shapeless souls, which is indeed a lack of compassion.
God convoked Moses and Aaron and told them to give water from the rock to let the congregation and their beasts drink a lot of water. Moses took his rod and addressed the “morim/rebels” to get copious water. Okay, he stuck the rock twice and not only once as usual. And God said to Moses and Aaron that because they, personally, did not obey to God’s Commandments, they will not lead the congregation into the given land!!! At this point, today, any normal guy in this country would immediately rush to the Supreme Court and make a scandal!! And they would cc/forward a note to the chief rabbinates, the members of the Knesset and eventually contact The Hague and Geneva, if not the numerous “heretics”. This is the usual way we behave at the present towards God but we hardly can notice that because we are framed both as actors and mirrors.
At the mey Merivah/Meribah waters, the congregation did quarrel with the Lord as He affirmed His sanctity in and through them. Such a rebellion is not acceptable. God enough, so the rebels could die in the wilderness. We had seen that the “nassi: leader, ruler, head of the nation” will not be pardoned his sin like the other members of the congregation.. He must atone in a specific way in his quality of leader.
The chok seemingly extends as a law without reason that condemned Moses and Aaron not to enter the Land of Canaan. There is definitely no explanation in the Chumash (Five Books of Moses). In the reading portion of this week we only know about the death of Aaron. This would eventually be more understandable. The High priest shaped the golden calf to provide a deity to the congregation as Moses did not seem to come back from the mountain. He did commit the sin of idolatry. And now he apparently dies because of copious waters? After having served as priest all over the trip throughout the wilderness?
As for Moses who never quarreled with God. This is this interesting point. He also accepted God’s decisions. He would intercede for the others, never on his own behalf. Indeed, chokkim – laws without reason or rational basis- show that God naturally speaks to the heart of His servant and to those who do follow Him. It is an indisputable evidence.
This question has always been a terrible spiritual problem for the rabbinic leadership as for the leaders of all the Churches and Muslim guides. This is a horrible quest indeed for the monotheistic believers. Last Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI was in Assisi for the 800 years of the Franciscan Order. Saint Francis came to Rome with his followers as a consequence of a dream that the Church should be rebuilt, consolidated. The Besht Baal Shem Tov) or Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer certainly unwillingly launched the first Chassidic movement, singing around the marvels of God in his native Polish area.
We need men of conscience. It is not a matter of politics. Not even of morals and ethics. It is beyond that, an attitude that is so evident that is implemented as a commandment that does not appeal to understanding or judgment. Yes, people have the right to err. And they are free to do whatever would not harm or restrict their true own freedom. But as regards societal errors, the leadership – whenever religious or governmental – mostly lacks the close intimacy that existed between God and His obedient servants Moses and Aaron.
“We have reached the stage of being led by people without any self-respect, leaders who attempt to save themselves at the expense of the sins, omissions and errors made by those under them, who acted under their leadership. This is unlike the faithful shepherd that the Jewish people had, who, when the people died as a result of their sins, died with them, even though there was no sin on his part”, wrote, in 1986, Rav Y. Leibowitz (Yoke of heaven, p. 148). It was courageous. Curiously, he then wrote a sort of Jewish and somehow Christian-like statement about Moses.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
Sherut/im: various services
Summertime begins within a few days - in fact, locally we have already entered the Kaytz/end of time heat for quite a while. People have a summer look with sunglasses, light dress, relaxed, comfy. Indeed - this is absolutely not known abroad - there is a strong feeling of security due to a lot of checking, and preventive actions, intelligence connections.
Still, we are in a society in war and there are moments when some inhabitants feel afraid to go out of their quarter. This is not the basic Israeli reaction. Individuals are less prudent than they used to be, but we feel relaxed and secure. Of course this is not the case at the moment in Sderot, as it happened for years in Kiryat Shmona. Kibbutz Netivah, that officially became Israeli in 1952, is located on the Lebanese border. It was normal until very recently for the Lebanese shepherds to enter the place in and out, hello and bye.
This relaxing or easygoing atmosphere is not known abroad where the media give a very poor description of how a society evolves. There are points of fragility and it is evident that constant exposure to danger develops anxiety, in particular among the youth. But let’s say that trust is trust. Nonetheless, this rather full relaxed atmosphere under self-control is, on some significant occasions, submitted to restricting phenomena. For instance, the poor number of free and open accessible places to restrooms and toilets, i.e. sherutim.
The matter is definitely relevant, even if would not sound very spiritual to begin with. The Oriental civilizations are often very raw, rough and hard-nosed. As stated in the Talmud: “Those who mock the words of the Sages are like boiling excrements” (Gittin 56a). We are humans and we want to keep Jerusalem (and all other cities, towns…) clean. In any shop, any place, not only restaurants and coffee-shops, people are shaking the cleaning product bottle. They wash and wash again and again. There might be some defects still persistent in many places, or a sort of strange combination between cleanness and dirt. The Arabs are definitely very clean and can spend their days washing their cars, table, walls, whatever. It may be due to the climate and sand and an usual attitude.
So let’s go out of the closet. It is sometimes very funny to see the reaction of people looking for some restroom, bathroom, 00. Local workers may have concluded a deal or gotten to some kind of agreement with the security to let them go into malls where they are known. But the thing is intriguing in some areas. There is one restaurant – the only one, well who knows? – where half the street, mainly women, enters the place and, without a word or anything , not even hello, go directly to have a rest. Having relaxed, the bizarre aspect is that many of these individuals leave the restaurant with a cup of kafe hafuch / cappuccino. In the meantime, the clientele is panicked at the idea to go to the toilets and almost ask the permission of the manager and waiters. We can wear the last model of sunglasses on our foreheads; still we are very shy with privacy, normal stuff what! And there is also the water to wash the hands before meal.
In the Old City of Jerusalem, there is always a sort of wild rush to some restrooms. This is also quite fascinating. The whole country comes to the Old City. Workers, local tourists, i.e. Israelis of all origins, Arabs, foreigners come and tour to visit the various historical and religious quarters and their specific traditions. East Jerusalem is special and the Old City is peculiar. There is the way to the Kotel, or to the Shuk/bazaar, the Holy Sepulcher or the Mosques. Restrooms can be found everywhere as public spaces, from Damascus Gate or Lions’ Gate down to the Wall, or on the way to the Jewish Quarter, inside the shuk as on the way to the First Temple walls.
On the other hand, the major entrance to the Old City, Jaffa Gate, has one place on the way to the fortification walls that is rather unknown. So people enter, as a permanent march, the unique restaurant that seems likely to welcome them and looks nice. The restaurant only serves food and does not sell any typical souvenirs. The owner is Christian Orthodox Arab. The stream is incredible. Say, a good day (end of the week-Sunday) 30 people per hour… Not clients, passersby with arrogance, what a cheek! Interestingly, the owner will never rebuke pious Jewish schoolgirls in emergency or similar cases, thus not usual.
In fact, sherutim in Hebrew implies that the restrooms are a place of services, given to the public at their convenience. It is usual for many people to spit in the street. Physical decency requires special treatments and care. In this respect, the Jewish tradition can be driven to obscenity and crude words. On the contrary, it can be very prude and restrained.
“Sherut – service” designates the service of the Temple as the function to “to sing the Name of the Lord while attending the sacrifices” (Arakhin 11a). This is even why, curiously, Modern Hebrew is the only language that directly connects the “sherut leumi – national (military) service” with a deeply religious-rooted tradition, tracking back the Temple. This may sound a bit peculiar, but it is often considered as a possible and non-aggressive participation in the collectivity.
The root “sharah” has different meanings: “to dissolve, soak”. “Man is made out of earth, when you put a drop of water on it, it is at once dissolved, but women is made of a bone which is not dissolved, even if you let it tie in water for many days” (Taanit 1,64b). A second radical “sharah, shara in Aramaic” means “to loosen, untie”. In the Jewish tradition it is rather connected to the presence of the Shechinah that rested upon the Tabernacle (Sanhedrin 11a). It also means that there is a move of transition from outside to inside and then back again from inside to outside; this deals with spiritual connections but mainly with food. It happens quite often in the Talmud that latrine quarrels show up as regards the service in the Temple. How, why, is it permitted for a high priest to build his own latrine.
Yiddish makes use of a lot of crude or obscene words, just as Aramaic in the Talmud. Hebrew is firstly rather “innocent.” “Oto makom – this place” is a very neutral expression to speak of female genitals and traces back to the Temple. This is far from being evident in daily speech. Now, this has nothing to do with colloquial modern slang and obscene words.
Our body is some dwelling of the Shechinah which is stated in the Mishna and by Paul of Tarsus (1 Corinthians 3:16). “Eat up to the third of the capacity of your stomach, drink also a third measure and let another third “empty” (Gittin 70a) or “Eat till you are hungry, drink till you are thirsty” (Berachot 62b) also show the importance of feeding, that in ancient times, could be rather frugal for the poor: “bread and salt”(Berachot 2b). This means that we swallow or eat up food and have to reject them. It is meaningful that, in Russian “zhivot = stomach, belly” means “life” (Church Slavonic).
The Book of Eycha (Lamentations), read on the Ninth of Av in commemoration of the destruction of the two Temples, has violent phrases showing the suffering of the people. The same is expressed in Prophet Isaiah and the final redemption of the nation.
Each time Jerusalem was besieged, life conditions became inhuman, with mothers eating their babies (Lam. 2:20), filth is on the city’s skirt (Lam. 1:9), excrements profaning the place that should be dedicated to bridge holiness and purity with the inhabitants. The deportation to Babylon, the fall of Jerusalem and the various persecutions strongly imprinted the Jewish memory about the absence of physical respect to the body. This is a general stand that also proves how far torture used as a tool for “intelligence” or to exercise might. And thus ordinary and honest people can change to brainless beasts. We see at the present – but it seems it has always existed – how armies using the most sophisticated weapons (soon you will be able to just nuke up your best enemy with a disposable self-destroyable mini-lighter).
At the same time, abject tortures are committed dealing with obscenity, utilizing feces inter alia. It is in tragic memory of the concentration camp social life where there was no privacy and the point was for the inmates to remain human in their attitude to each other. Psalm 22 is rather special in the series of these first psalms. It states: “Veanochi tola’at velo ish / but I am a worm, less than a man – cherpat adam uvzuy am / scorned by men, despised by people” (v.7-8). The point is that he is mocked because he believes in the Lord. But the heart of verse is the description of despise, “being less than a man” and the subsequent feelings: “My life pours like water, all my bones are disjointed / my heart is like wax melting within me, my vigor dries up like a shard” (Ps. 22:15-16).
Such can be the feelings of many people: either because of humiliation imposed in jail by a role game of power between the police and the prisoners. This is also very frequent in hospitals after heavy operations when individuals are totally dependent on the constant (often remarkable) assistance of nurses and helpers. This can be worse in elderly homes: strange there, people are sitting or laying in bed moaning-groaning as if they never had existed: their actions, personal lives, emotions seem to have vanished in speechless hours and days and permanent pampering.
Psalm 22 is famous because of the first verse: “My God, my God, why have You abandoned me” uttered by Jesus of Nazareth on the Cross. It is even quoted in Aramaic in the Gospel (Matthew 27:46). The Christian tradition considers that Jesus’ cry is not limited to that verse. It presupposes that all the verses of the psalm should be read, thus also the above-mentioned ones showing the absence of respect toward human nature.
It is rather curious indeed that we might measure a society at the level of its attitude toward human dignity… and its “latrine system”. It is not possible to pretend to glorify the living God Who created us in His likeness and let people in filth and dirt. Or there is something wrong. Quoting the Sages, Jesus said: “Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine. But what comes out of a person, that is what defiles: evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly” (Mark 7:19-20).
From latrine gossip to elevation of the thoughts and proper reflection, it is strange how some thrones bring us back to good old ethics and sometime real places of meditation.
COMMENTS
Still, we are in a society in war and there are moments when some inhabitants feel afraid to go out of their quarter. This is not the basic Israeli reaction. Individuals are less prudent than they used to be, but we feel relaxed and secure. Of course this is not the case at the moment in Sderot, as it happened for years in Kiryat Shmona. Kibbutz Netivah, that officially became Israeli in 1952, is located on the Lebanese border. It was normal until very recently for the Lebanese shepherds to enter the place in and out, hello and bye.
This relaxing or easygoing atmosphere is not known abroad where the media give a very poor description of how a society evolves. There are points of fragility and it is evident that constant exposure to danger develops anxiety, in particular among the youth. But let’s say that trust is trust. Nonetheless, this rather full relaxed atmosphere under self-control is, on some significant occasions, submitted to restricting phenomena. For instance, the poor number of free and open accessible places to restrooms and toilets, i.e. sherutim.
The matter is definitely relevant, even if would not sound very spiritual to begin with. The Oriental civilizations are often very raw, rough and hard-nosed. As stated in the Talmud: “Those who mock the words of the Sages are like boiling excrements” (Gittin 56a). We are humans and we want to keep Jerusalem (and all other cities, towns…) clean. In any shop, any place, not only restaurants and coffee-shops, people are shaking the cleaning product bottle. They wash and wash again and again. There might be some defects still persistent in many places, or a sort of strange combination between cleanness and dirt. The Arabs are definitely very clean and can spend their days washing their cars, table, walls, whatever. It may be due to the climate and sand and an usual attitude.
So let’s go out of the closet. It is sometimes very funny to see the reaction of people looking for some restroom, bathroom, 00. Local workers may have concluded a deal or gotten to some kind of agreement with the security to let them go into malls where they are known. But the thing is intriguing in some areas. There is one restaurant – the only one, well who knows? – where half the street, mainly women, enters the place and, without a word or anything , not even hello, go directly to have a rest. Having relaxed, the bizarre aspect is that many of these individuals leave the restaurant with a cup of kafe hafuch / cappuccino. In the meantime, the clientele is panicked at the idea to go to the toilets and almost ask the permission of the manager and waiters. We can wear the last model of sunglasses on our foreheads; still we are very shy with privacy, normal stuff what! And there is also the water to wash the hands before meal.
In the Old City of Jerusalem, there is always a sort of wild rush to some restrooms. This is also quite fascinating. The whole country comes to the Old City. Workers, local tourists, i.e. Israelis of all origins, Arabs, foreigners come and tour to visit the various historical and religious quarters and their specific traditions. East Jerusalem is special and the Old City is peculiar. There is the way to the Kotel, or to the Shuk/bazaar, the Holy Sepulcher or the Mosques. Restrooms can be found everywhere as public spaces, from Damascus Gate or Lions’ Gate down to the Wall, or on the way to the Jewish Quarter, inside the shuk as on the way to the First Temple walls.
On the other hand, the major entrance to the Old City, Jaffa Gate, has one place on the way to the fortification walls that is rather unknown. So people enter, as a permanent march, the unique restaurant that seems likely to welcome them and looks nice. The restaurant only serves food and does not sell any typical souvenirs. The owner is Christian Orthodox Arab. The stream is incredible. Say, a good day (end of the week-Sunday) 30 people per hour… Not clients, passersby with arrogance, what a cheek! Interestingly, the owner will never rebuke pious Jewish schoolgirls in emergency or similar cases, thus not usual.
In fact, sherutim in Hebrew implies that the restrooms are a place of services, given to the public at their convenience. It is usual for many people to spit in the street. Physical decency requires special treatments and care. In this respect, the Jewish tradition can be driven to obscenity and crude words. On the contrary, it can be very prude and restrained.
“Sherut – service” designates the service of the Temple as the function to “to sing the Name of the Lord while attending the sacrifices” (Arakhin 11a). This is even why, curiously, Modern Hebrew is the only language that directly connects the “sherut leumi – national (military) service” with a deeply religious-rooted tradition, tracking back the Temple. This may sound a bit peculiar, but it is often considered as a possible and non-aggressive participation in the collectivity.
The root “sharah” has different meanings: “to dissolve, soak”. “Man is made out of earth, when you put a drop of water on it, it is at once dissolved, but women is made of a bone which is not dissolved, even if you let it tie in water for many days” (Taanit 1,64b). A second radical “sharah, shara in Aramaic” means “to loosen, untie”. In the Jewish tradition it is rather connected to the presence of the Shechinah that rested upon the Tabernacle (Sanhedrin 11a). It also means that there is a move of transition from outside to inside and then back again from inside to outside; this deals with spiritual connections but mainly with food. It happens quite often in the Talmud that latrine quarrels show up as regards the service in the Temple. How, why, is it permitted for a high priest to build his own latrine.
Yiddish makes use of a lot of crude or obscene words, just as Aramaic in the Talmud. Hebrew is firstly rather “innocent.” “Oto makom – this place” is a very neutral expression to speak of female genitals and traces back to the Temple. This is far from being evident in daily speech. Now, this has nothing to do with colloquial modern slang and obscene words.
Our body is some dwelling of the Shechinah which is stated in the Mishna and by Paul of Tarsus (1 Corinthians 3:16). “Eat up to the third of the capacity of your stomach, drink also a third measure and let another third “empty” (Gittin 70a) or “Eat till you are hungry, drink till you are thirsty” (Berachot 62b) also show the importance of feeding, that in ancient times, could be rather frugal for the poor: “bread and salt”(Berachot 2b). This means that we swallow or eat up food and have to reject them. It is meaningful that, in Russian “zhivot = stomach, belly” means “life” (Church Slavonic).
The Book of Eycha (Lamentations), read on the Ninth of Av in commemoration of the destruction of the two Temples, has violent phrases showing the suffering of the people. The same is expressed in Prophet Isaiah and the final redemption of the nation.
Each time Jerusalem was besieged, life conditions became inhuman, with mothers eating their babies (Lam. 2:20), filth is on the city’s skirt (Lam. 1:9), excrements profaning the place that should be dedicated to bridge holiness and purity with the inhabitants. The deportation to Babylon, the fall of Jerusalem and the various persecutions strongly imprinted the Jewish memory about the absence of physical respect to the body. This is a general stand that also proves how far torture used as a tool for “intelligence” or to exercise might. And thus ordinary and honest people can change to brainless beasts. We see at the present – but it seems it has always existed – how armies using the most sophisticated weapons (soon you will be able to just nuke up your best enemy with a disposable self-destroyable mini-lighter).
At the same time, abject tortures are committed dealing with obscenity, utilizing feces inter alia. It is in tragic memory of the concentration camp social life where there was no privacy and the point was for the inmates to remain human in their attitude to each other. Psalm 22 is rather special in the series of these first psalms. It states: “Veanochi tola’at velo ish / but I am a worm, less than a man – cherpat adam uvzuy am / scorned by men, despised by people” (v.7-8). The point is that he is mocked because he believes in the Lord. But the heart of verse is the description of despise, “being less than a man” and the subsequent feelings: “My life pours like water, all my bones are disjointed / my heart is like wax melting within me, my vigor dries up like a shard” (Ps. 22:15-16).
Such can be the feelings of many people: either because of humiliation imposed in jail by a role game of power between the police and the prisoners. This is also very frequent in hospitals after heavy operations when individuals are totally dependent on the constant (often remarkable) assistance of nurses and helpers. This can be worse in elderly homes: strange there, people are sitting or laying in bed moaning-groaning as if they never had existed: their actions, personal lives, emotions seem to have vanished in speechless hours and days and permanent pampering.
Psalm 22 is famous because of the first verse: “My God, my God, why have You abandoned me” uttered by Jesus of Nazareth on the Cross. It is even quoted in Aramaic in the Gospel (Matthew 27:46). The Christian tradition considers that Jesus’ cry is not limited to that verse. It presupposes that all the verses of the psalm should be read, thus also the above-mentioned ones showing the absence of respect toward human nature.
It is rather curious indeed that we might measure a society at the level of its attitude toward human dignity… and its “latrine system”. It is not possible to pretend to glorify the living God Who created us in His likeness and let people in filth and dirt. Or there is something wrong. Quoting the Sages, Jesus said: “Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine. But what comes out of a person, that is what defiles: evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly” (Mark 7:19-20).
From latrine gossip to elevation of the thoughts and proper reflection, it is strange how some thrones bring us back to good old ethics and sometime real places of meditation.
COMMENTS
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Chazak o chalash: strength and weakness
Could we compare two events that are apparently totally different and not connected? Yesterday, Shimon Peres became the ninth president of the State of Israel. Living memory of this State and its up-building, he has been present in almost all decisive moments of the implementation and development of the Jewish State.
Born in Poland, he came to Israel in 1936 and has been present on the acting scene from Ben Gurion to today. It has often been said that he is a "loser." Easy to say, but not so obvious and when the two opponents left the scene yesterday; either it meant that he was chosen by absence of competitors or maybe it was a sort of silent plebiscite. Anyway, the man had be active over all the decades with much constancy, swinging along the mud and troubled waters of a new-old state that did not know much about how to run politics and diplomacy.
At the end of the year, newly elected president Shimon Peres will initiate a mandate that should endure seven years. Along with all the blessings and wishes that accompanied this final aliya to the top of the Israeli State, the moral and personal credit aspect is very significant. He sketched out different peace processes together with Yitzchak Rabin. Not only with the Palestinians, but also in all the region, with the envisioning of future networking collaboration between the Arab neighboring countries, in particular Jordan.
We can be very superstitious or on the verge of some magic Kabbalah, but rumors have to go on that he had been “cursed” by the Rav Itzchak Kaduri as also the Gerer Rebbe. Now, in our culture cursing and blessing are intermingling and change from hours to weeks and years. It is indeed appealing that the final touch came with the full blessing of his election by Rav Ovadya.
On the same day, at a session of the Iriyah (City Hall of Jerusalem), for seemingly the fourth time in a row, late Rav Yeshayahu Leibowitz was refused to be given the name of a street in Jerusalem. Chemist, professor at the Hebrew University, Talmudist and co-editor of the famous Encyclopedia Judaica, it is exact that the man of God had the chic to curse and use crude words, ideas or expressions. The problem is that he was very into brainstorming and thinking. He admitted once that his critics were harsh but he argued that, in a very hard society as Israel, such expressions really exposed meaningful positions.
Is the IDF “Nazi” for their misconduct after 1967? Is it really possible to say, for a rabbi, that the Kotel/Western Wall turned to be now a sort of “discotheque” because of praying excessive folklore? It was far too violent. But the man was questioning the society in which he was living and has always reminded others of the real significance of faith and observance of the Mitzvot. Let’s say that when Rav Shimon Gershon Rosenberg passed away on Sivan 24 (06/10), the young and very open rosh yeshivah had spent his 58 years to reach out to various forms of Hassidism as well as secular matters such as theater, as a part of the true Jewish interrogation at the present. He was quiet and viewed Judaism through the glances of Arts and Films as well as philosophy.The parshat hashavua is “Korah – Now Korah, son of Izhar of Kohat son of Levi” and the portion includes Bemidbar/Numbers 16:1-18:32. And gung-ho again, guys! A new clash blows up and enflames the elite of the descendants of Reuben: Korah, Dathan and Abiram son of Eliab together with 250 chiefs of the community. They accused Moses and Aaron of having gone too far and, as usual, asked: “Why do you raise yourself above the Lord’s congregation?”
Always the same rampant quest; why am I not above everybody and why do you take the lead? Is the question so churlish?
Korah and the group perfectly agreed to the exodus and the fled from Egypt. We cannot know with precision how the Books of the TaNaKH have been written and the chronological order of the Mitzvot or ordinances. But Again, Korah would have preferred to remain in Egypt. At least a country they knew, with secured slavery and normal food, not these quails and unknown manna. Moreover, there was no contest among the people: we cannot really speak of an egalitarian proletarian union of tribes, but it was sufficient to be the son of a Hebrew name and the name was respected.
The structure appeared with the requirement to manage the tribes. You remember the good advice given by Jethro to Moses to assign the “anshey chayil – men of wisdom, government.” It seems then that something happened with the giving of the Mitzvot. We are all equal.
Well, this is also a statement that sounds like a magic slogan. Human societies are definitely obsessed by a profound drive to embody the reality that all humans are equal. In terms of health, wealth, capacities, work, chances, hopes, desires, accidents we experience that equality merely appears as a dream and not a basic social and human, psychological care. This is because we are far from digging out the sense of the Mitzvot and the Written and Oral Laws and all the insights of the Sages. Equality does not mean that we are even, clones living with clones at any level or rate. Some post-Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. “Be like other men and don’t consider yourself exempt from the laws of morality (Numeri Rabba 9,3). Or, “divide it into equal shares, for what it is worth, reasonable” (Sanhedrin 106a). This is the human way to value and thus it does take into account what the Talmud and the Tradition says.
In terms of divine status, the mitzvot are far above and beyond what we may understand. It is easy then to speak of some treachery or disloyalty. This is why it is so important that God underscored Moses’ humbleness. Human rights exist but they cannot be a lobby or transformed to permanent contesting bodies. Korah questions Moses and rebels with his group because the Mitzvot, creating various functions of priests, levites and children of Israel, were only starting to function. The Mitzvot are both to be accomplished in time and over our own time and generation. They do not evolve. We evolve and then amplify the meaning of God’s speech in the wilderness. The more we read these reading portions right now, the more can we be astounded by the fact that the structure determined by God and given to Moses an utmost pattern of service and this is foreign if not totally alien to most societies, with counter-examples in the historic development of the monotheistic faith. Not the faith that is invariant and thus adapts to maximize God’s Presence. But the way we focus more on ourselves as humans and cannot reach this balance that corresponds to “equality.”
Korah and his followers had another claim: they were all equally “holy” (kedoshim). This is a constant pretence and concern. As a matter of fact, the Hebrew society could think that it has been called to some unique and exceptional destiny. The destiny is unique, but it is in order to sanctify the world and its inhabitants and become ordinary coworkers of God in the creation that is still in a state of expansion: “asher bara Elokim la’assot- that God created and continues to develop” (Bereishit 2:3).
The pretence to be “positively untouchable” because definitely protected by God is dangerous because faith first exposes to danger without imperiling the tribes as a structure of service. Human frustrations have often reached such peaks that, instead of focusing on God, some groups preferred to systematically deny the existence of the priests, Levites and Bnei Israel and level down, certainly not up, the specific responsibilities. Korah could maybe question Moses because the Israelites had not reached the Land of Canaan.
The point is that any mitzvah or commandment requires much time to be understood in the context of our history. Nonetheless, it is certain that if we were to meet Jews of the time of Moses, in the wilderness, with Korah and the followers’ claims, we still would perfectly – I guess immediately – feel in our mishpuche – our people but also the same issues and realistic problems of who we are.
Some rabbis did interrogate whether the protection of Holy One extended in Jewish history to some kind of covering and pardoning trespasses. This is more present in the books of Isaac Bashevis Singer.
We started with Shimon Peres and the Rav L. Leibowitz. Maybe each of them and a lot of people try to achieve something that can only viewed partially at the present. We might also consider another point of view debated in the Talmud. We are called to accomplish the mitzvoth, without judging them or justifying who we would pretend to be. Measuring the “length, depth, width, breadth” we can accomplish a commandment would be rather ridiculous. On the other hand, some rabbis taught that a human being’s destiny may consist in trying to get to the farthest possible point in the accomplishment of a mitzvah that copes with a spiritual and personal project. It does not mean that the person would succeed. And this is important. Because we are seeds of future, not only of what we think that we have achieved in this world.
Christianity is going through very hard time in the Middle-East. In Iraq, priests and lay people are constantly murdered and the Assyro-Chaldean Churches who sowed the Semitic form of celebration brought from Jerusalem by the Apostle Thomas is shattered. The same phenomenon seems to destroy some parts of the Muslim society. Power and will for power is a constant test. Say, if people suddenly feel loose and would surrender they would only appear as weak shlemazls, no luck, no prestige, no courage. Courage may fail at the present, in particular among the youth. It is so wondrous to see how a pure and instinctive struggle for life can attest that we continue to walk on a road…a long way that turns back like a boomerang to “good”. .
Born in Poland, he came to Israel in 1936 and has been present on the acting scene from Ben Gurion to today. It has often been said that he is a "loser." Easy to say, but not so obvious and when the two opponents left the scene yesterday; either it meant that he was chosen by absence of competitors or maybe it was a sort of silent plebiscite. Anyway, the man had be active over all the decades with much constancy, swinging along the mud and troubled waters of a new-old state that did not know much about how to run politics and diplomacy.
At the end of the year, newly elected president Shimon Peres will initiate a mandate that should endure seven years. Along with all the blessings and wishes that accompanied this final aliya to the top of the Israeli State, the moral and personal credit aspect is very significant. He sketched out different peace processes together with Yitzchak Rabin. Not only with the Palestinians, but also in all the region, with the envisioning of future networking collaboration between the Arab neighboring countries, in particular Jordan.
We can be very superstitious or on the verge of some magic Kabbalah, but rumors have to go on that he had been “cursed” by the Rav Itzchak Kaduri as also the Gerer Rebbe. Now, in our culture cursing and blessing are intermingling and change from hours to weeks and years. It is indeed appealing that the final touch came with the full blessing of his election by Rav Ovadya.
On the same day, at a session of the Iriyah (City Hall of Jerusalem), for seemingly the fourth time in a row, late Rav Yeshayahu Leibowitz was refused to be given the name of a street in Jerusalem. Chemist, professor at the Hebrew University, Talmudist and co-editor of the famous Encyclopedia Judaica, it is exact that the man of God had the chic to curse and use crude words, ideas or expressions. The problem is that he was very into brainstorming and thinking. He admitted once that his critics were harsh but he argued that, in a very hard society as Israel, such expressions really exposed meaningful positions.
Is the IDF “Nazi” for their misconduct after 1967? Is it really possible to say, for a rabbi, that the Kotel/Western Wall turned to be now a sort of “discotheque” because of praying excessive folklore? It was far too violent. But the man was questioning the society in which he was living and has always reminded others of the real significance of faith and observance of the Mitzvot. Let’s say that when Rav Shimon Gershon Rosenberg passed away on Sivan 24 (06/10), the young and very open rosh yeshivah had spent his 58 years to reach out to various forms of Hassidism as well as secular matters such as theater, as a part of the true Jewish interrogation at the present. He was quiet and viewed Judaism through the glances of Arts and Films as well as philosophy.The parshat hashavua is “Korah – Now Korah, son of Izhar of Kohat son of Levi” and the portion includes Bemidbar/Numbers 16:1-18:32. And gung-ho again, guys! A new clash blows up and enflames the elite of the descendants of Reuben: Korah, Dathan and Abiram son of Eliab together with 250 chiefs of the community. They accused Moses and Aaron of having gone too far and, as usual, asked: “Why do you raise yourself above the Lord’s congregation?”
Always the same rampant quest; why am I not above everybody and why do you take the lead? Is the question so churlish?
Korah and the group perfectly agreed to the exodus and the fled from Egypt. We cannot know with precision how the Books of the TaNaKH have been written and the chronological order of the Mitzvot or ordinances. But Again, Korah would have preferred to remain in Egypt. At least a country they knew, with secured slavery and normal food, not these quails and unknown manna. Moreover, there was no contest among the people: we cannot really speak of an egalitarian proletarian union of tribes, but it was sufficient to be the son of a Hebrew name and the name was respected.
The structure appeared with the requirement to manage the tribes. You remember the good advice given by Jethro to Moses to assign the “anshey chayil – men of wisdom, government.” It seems then that something happened with the giving of the Mitzvot. We are all equal.
Well, this is also a statement that sounds like a magic slogan. Human societies are definitely obsessed by a profound drive to embody the reality that all humans are equal. In terms of health, wealth, capacities, work, chances, hopes, desires, accidents we experience that equality merely appears as a dream and not a basic social and human, psychological care. This is because we are far from digging out the sense of the Mitzvot and the Written and Oral Laws and all the insights of the Sages. Equality does not mean that we are even, clones living with clones at any level or rate. Some post-Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. “Be like other men and don’t consider yourself exempt from the laws of morality (Numeri Rabba 9,3). Or, “divide it into equal shares, for what it is worth, reasonable” (Sanhedrin 106a). This is the human way to value and thus it does take into account what the Talmud and the Tradition says.
In terms of divine status, the mitzvot are far above and beyond what we may understand. It is easy then to speak of some treachery or disloyalty. This is why it is so important that God underscored Moses’ humbleness. Human rights exist but they cannot be a lobby or transformed to permanent contesting bodies. Korah questions Moses and rebels with his group because the Mitzvot, creating various functions of priests, levites and children of Israel, were only starting to function. The Mitzvot are both to be accomplished in time and over our own time and generation. They do not evolve. We evolve and then amplify the meaning of God’s speech in the wilderness. The more we read these reading portions right now, the more can we be astounded by the fact that the structure determined by God and given to Moses an utmost pattern of service and this is foreign if not totally alien to most societies, with counter-examples in the historic development of the monotheistic faith. Not the faith that is invariant and thus adapts to maximize God’s Presence. But the way we focus more on ourselves as humans and cannot reach this balance that corresponds to “equality.”
Korah and his followers had another claim: they were all equally “holy” (kedoshim). This is a constant pretence and concern. As a matter of fact, the Hebrew society could think that it has been called to some unique and exceptional destiny. The destiny is unique, but it is in order to sanctify the world and its inhabitants and become ordinary coworkers of God in the creation that is still in a state of expansion: “asher bara Elokim la’assot- that God created and continues to develop” (Bereishit 2:3).
The pretence to be “positively untouchable” because definitely protected by God is dangerous because faith first exposes to danger without imperiling the tribes as a structure of service. Human frustrations have often reached such peaks that, instead of focusing on God, some groups preferred to systematically deny the existence of the priests, Levites and Bnei Israel and level down, certainly not up, the specific responsibilities. Korah could maybe question Moses because the Israelites had not reached the Land of Canaan.
The point is that any mitzvah or commandment requires much time to be understood in the context of our history. Nonetheless, it is certain that if we were to meet Jews of the time of Moses, in the wilderness, with Korah and the followers’ claims, we still would perfectly – I guess immediately – feel in our mishpuche – our people but also the same issues and realistic problems of who we are.
Some rabbis did interrogate whether the protection of Holy One extended in Jewish history to some kind of covering and pardoning trespasses. This is more present in the books of Isaac Bashevis Singer.
We started with Shimon Peres and the Rav L. Leibowitz. Maybe each of them and a lot of people try to achieve something that can only viewed partially at the present. We might also consider another point of view debated in the Talmud. We are called to accomplish the mitzvoth, without judging them or justifying who we would pretend to be. Measuring the “length, depth, width, breadth” we can accomplish a commandment would be rather ridiculous. On the other hand, some rabbis taught that a human being’s destiny may consist in trying to get to the farthest possible point in the accomplishment of a mitzvah that copes with a spiritual and personal project. It does not mean that the person would succeed. And this is important. Because we are seeds of future, not only of what we think that we have achieved in this world.
Christianity is going through very hard time in the Middle-East. In Iraq, priests and lay people are constantly murdered and the Assyro-Chaldean Churches who sowed the Semitic form of celebration brought from Jerusalem by the Apostle Thomas is shattered. The same phenomenon seems to destroy some parts of the Muslim society. Power and will for power is a constant test. Say, if people suddenly feel loose and would surrender they would only appear as weak shlemazls, no luck, no prestige, no courage. Courage may fail at the present, in particular among the youth. It is so wondrous to see how a pure and instinctive struggle for life can attest that we continue to walk on a road…a long way that turns back like a boomerang to “good”. .
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
B'chom hayom: in the very heat of the day
The heat is waving here and there tough and dry air. In Jerusalem, the air can still be very slightly refreshed towards the end of the day by a swift wind that remains still imperceptible in the bigger part of the country. One of the consequences of such a heat is a sort of "siesta - hesychia (Greek)" atmosphere.
Either people would really have a nap in the afternoon or some slowdown of their activities. Sleeping - not only to have a nap - is a major creative activity along the Great Sea (Mediterranean Sea) that resembles to some relaxing sojourn, for a limited number of hours, in the belly of the Big Fish, supposedly the "whale", that hosted Jonah before he went to Nineveh (Mesopotamia). He was onboard a ship when a terrible tempest broke up and the sailors got so scared that they suspected one of them, namely cast the lots and got to the idea that "Jonah the Hebrew" was the initiator of the storm.
Jonah thus declared when he was heaved overboard after they had cast the lots: "I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of Heaven, who made both sea and land - Ivri anochi veHaShem Elokei hashamayim ani yare" (Jonah 1:9). The seamen cried out to the Lord an intriguing prayer: "Lord, do not hold us guilty of killing an innocent person! For You, O Lord, have brought this about" (Jonah1:14). The Book of Jonah is read every Yom Kippur/Day of Atonement as the reminder that Jonah, against his will to begin with, accepted to proclaim the yoke of Heaven and after having reposed in the Big Fish throughout the city of Nineveh that converted to God.
As we enter the month of Tammuz on Friday 15th of June, we shall go along the days of heat. They pave the move to the penitential act of conversion: the destructions of Jerusalem, deportation to Babylon, the extermination of the two Temples. There are different days of fast during that period, that starts on Tammuz 15th and leads to Av 9th (Destruction of the Temples).
How curious that this area of the world is so inhabited by an intense and effective power of death. It is maybe more sensitive because of the message of hope and resurrection, afterlife, world-to-come that spread from Jerusalem and Eretz Israel till the ends of the world.
As if heat could be a sign of life and, at the same time, call to quarrels and fencing hatred. It is thus quite amazing how millions of people have fought in the name of God in this area and got embattled in harsh conflicts, full of passions, bloodsheds, assassinations. The cause of God is like a permanent war against death.
Still, deathly eradication and destruction, extinction and extirpation from this world would seem the most fascinating and appealing trace of divine Presence “underneath”. It is correct that we live in very strange times of mental strangulation and ruthless sophisticated manslaughter in the Middle East. We are living in a region where there is just a switch between life and death. It is obvious everywhere, a bit more here. The rule is simple and tragic or, on the contrary, magnificent: every minute should be a full breath of gratitude or marvel, down-to-earth gladness.
The paradox of Eretz Israel, at this point, is that the society is exceptionally dynamic, although it lacks real time of peace and suspension of constant death threats. There can be mobs in Paris and its suburbs, at times terrorists in Europe and in particular in Germany or Italy. Any guy can so quietly enter any supermarket in the United States – it is even a sort of recurrent symptom – and just shoot down the clientele and the employees; thus, this a different attitude toward the real challenges of life and death.
South American people can be totally fascinated by death. A famous Russian Jewish film avant-garde found a shelter in Mexico during World War II because he was married to a Mexican painter, a hot-tempered colorful native. She actually used to clash with him and threaten to kill him with a huge knife, a dramatic scene – just because she could not refrain this profound call for blood that never happened. Whatever unbelievable killings were committed during the conquista of Latin America, in particular by the churches, we can only be stunned by the numerous and century-long human sacrifices offered by the Amerindians who used to remove the hearts of the victims as a sign of life-giving! The same occurred in Africa, Asia with repulsive savage masochism.
The Israeli society is at pain with a kind of uncertainty. Yes, we ought to back the survival of Israel, but in a way that is so diverse and unclear that everybody could think s/he is entitled to do anything except harming his/her own self. Or not really protest in case of obvious violations of human rights.
Abraham was a wandering Aramean (Deut. 26:5). He used to sit “b’chom hayom – in the very heat of the day”, under an open tent and to welcome those who were passing along the way (Gen. 18:1). He was peacefully giving hospitality to those who needed a rest when the heat was reaching its peak. On the other hand, Saul slaughtered the Ammonites till the heat of the day (1 Samuel 11:11; cf. 2 Sam. 4:5). Heat can also be a matter of remuneration as in Jesus’ parable to give one talent pay to all the workers, those who bore the burden of the day and those who came for an hour (Matthew 20:11; cf.Avodah Zarah 10b).
“Cham = hot, hot-tempered, warm, boiling” is a basic Semitic and thus Hebrew word, rooted in “H-H-M – hot, warm, to boil”, mainly referring, in the Talmud, to water and cleansing activities or to special colors (as “red”, the same as today some women would love to have red hair or, in between, some strawberry dye close to red). It may relate to rituals: “The bathers began to heat the water on the Shabbat (Shabbat 40a). Teaching: “Warm yourself by the fire of the scholars and try to associate with them (Avot 2,10). “Hammam = Turkish baths, the sort of sensual Oriental vaporous bath and massaging” that is upgraded in our spas.
In terms of heating as healing processes, “chacham” turns to “chum = heat and heal, excite” as also “to be hot, covet, carnally excited”. “I had a desire for his embrace” (Niddah 20b) and “He got so hot that he was (healed) by his pollution, though not once but again and again (Niddah 43b). On the other hand, “This is a land which all great men were anxious to possess” (Tanhumah Mishpatim 17) connects carnal desires and hotline with a deeper feeling of anxiety and insecurity, which is quite frequent.
The word is very intriguing, indeed. “Chum” swindles from heat to departure. “Arouse the feeling of the people when delivering my funeral address for my soul (I) shall be present” (Shabbat 153a, about a righteous man because people were speaking warmly of his memory). “b’khol chumma’o = in his full heat = youth”. Curiously, this heat that is the sign of daytime and life dynamics, including confrontations, implies, in the Semitic realm, some need for limitation of space and accessibility.
The Old City of Jerusalem is partly surrounded by the “chomot – Walls (of the Old City)” that are much frequented from the different places where one can climb up and down along the Gates. We have a very poor historic and cultural memory; say, we prefer not to know. From the time of Abraham to Jericho, everything in this region was a matter of fortification, walls of protection. And each time, throughout history, the main issue is to know how to cool down the fever (chamah), quench excitement (chamad /chamda) and reduce anger (chemah, cf. Daniel 3:13.19). “It is not possible to live without (moral) protection”, states Talmud Yevamot 62b (cf. Jeremiah 31:21). “Chomah = fortification” is currently used in Talmud Megillah (1:1- 5b) to designate walls or a “protecting lake” that serves as fortifications.
This is something we do not accept easily and that is totally misunderstood abroad for various reasons. The essence of Judaism is to be in need of protection. Firstly, Jewishness requires to be protected by God or the Divine Presence, the Shechinah. Then, there is a permanent lack of comprehension. Pious Jews, the world of “Jews in prayers” cannot mix in any way with the non-Jewish or Gentile world, and somehow some part of secularized Judaism. This is even ridiculous to pretend that a “Non-Jew” can enter that world freely and deliberately.
There is an immeasurable gap between pious Jewishness and any connection between this society segment and the non-Jews. There is an earth-to-heaven line that cuts it as an invisible wall of fortification. Something we often see here in microclimates and rain: rain on your left, no rain on your right! But people often misunderstand that because they think in terms of framing and ghettos created by hatred against pious Jewries. Decades ago, Fr. Marcel Dubois, a Dominican, who was the first Christian to teach Christian Philosophy at the Hebrew University, wittingly answered that “every Catholic congregation was usually fenced in”, i.e. that those who are not members of that specific community are not allowed to enter the bigger part of the monastery, or very rarely. We never think in terms of “positive” separation and thus often consider situation with much framed points of view.
“In the very heat of day,” Abraham was pretty much exposed to killings, alienation. His tent was open. In this region, we are still living on the pattern of this radical “cham/chum”. Are there some linguistic “reality words”? “Cham = father-in-law” (from the same root) and “chamot = mother-in-law”. This is amusing because this parentage is supposedly very inquisitive and even nosy in their children’s lives. Some are delicious; and good that they exist, because their grandchildren’s parents often have to rely on them financially and in learning how to reach adulthood.
There is a meaningful example of the presence of such a Semitism in the Gospel when Jesus started preaching and met with Shimon-Kaipha whose “mother-in-law was laying sick with a fever” (Aramaic “eshata – fire” lines with Greek “puressousa –had a fire = fever”). In Hebrew, the specificity of the “chom/cham” is present twice, i.e. redundantly: chamuto = his mother-in law, “chom = fever”. And the “wall of sickness” is lifted up. (Mark 1:29).
There is a stimulating deutero-canonical (apocryphal) Book – not recognized by the Jewish and Protestant Bible, but accepted and rather widespread in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches: Tobit; a fragment of the book was found at Qumran. It deals with God’s Tovah/tobiyah, goodness. Tobit is a kohen (priest) who strangely spends his time collecting and burying the dead slain by Sennacherib in Nineveh. At the present, it seems bizarre because the kohanim are not allowed to be in contact with the dead. The point is that it had not always been like that in the Jewish tradition even if we must accept the present development. When the Temple was existent, the priests were offering the daily sacrifices. They had no properties and no tribe territory. They were given the charities of the sacrifices. And thus, they were indeed in contact with burnt-offerings, i.e. with dead animals slaughtered for the sanctification of the Name. They were making their living with dead animals.
Our messy situation in the Middle East is going through fire, anger, fever and irrationality. It is marked by law infringements and lack of true respect for human beings and souls. Abraham’s hospitality in the very heat of the day at Mamre’s Oaks (Marc Chagall’s painting is the icon I chose for this blog) seems to be a real mitzvah as also to assist all the dead that multiply and loosen unclear fences that pull off at the moment.
Either people would really have a nap in the afternoon or some slowdown of their activities. Sleeping - not only to have a nap - is a major creative activity along the Great Sea (Mediterranean Sea) that resembles to some relaxing sojourn, for a limited number of hours, in the belly of the Big Fish, supposedly the "whale", that hosted Jonah before he went to Nineveh (Mesopotamia). He was onboard a ship when a terrible tempest broke up and the sailors got so scared that they suspected one of them, namely cast the lots and got to the idea that "Jonah the Hebrew" was the initiator of the storm.
Jonah thus declared when he was heaved overboard after they had cast the lots: "I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of Heaven, who made both sea and land - Ivri anochi veHaShem Elokei hashamayim ani yare" (Jonah 1:9). The seamen cried out to the Lord an intriguing prayer: "Lord, do not hold us guilty of killing an innocent person! For You, O Lord, have brought this about" (Jonah1:14). The Book of Jonah is read every Yom Kippur/Day of Atonement as the reminder that Jonah, against his will to begin with, accepted to proclaim the yoke of Heaven and after having reposed in the Big Fish throughout the city of Nineveh that converted to God.
As we enter the month of Tammuz on Friday 15th of June, we shall go along the days of heat. They pave the move to the penitential act of conversion: the destructions of Jerusalem, deportation to Babylon, the extermination of the two Temples. There are different days of fast during that period, that starts on Tammuz 15th and leads to Av 9th (Destruction of the Temples).
How curious that this area of the world is so inhabited by an intense and effective power of death. It is maybe more sensitive because of the message of hope and resurrection, afterlife, world-to-come that spread from Jerusalem and Eretz Israel till the ends of the world.
As if heat could be a sign of life and, at the same time, call to quarrels and fencing hatred. It is thus quite amazing how millions of people have fought in the name of God in this area and got embattled in harsh conflicts, full of passions, bloodsheds, assassinations. The cause of God is like a permanent war against death.
Still, deathly eradication and destruction, extinction and extirpation from this world would seem the most fascinating and appealing trace of divine Presence “underneath”. It is correct that we live in very strange times of mental strangulation and ruthless sophisticated manslaughter in the Middle East. We are living in a region where there is just a switch between life and death. It is obvious everywhere, a bit more here. The rule is simple and tragic or, on the contrary, magnificent: every minute should be a full breath of gratitude or marvel, down-to-earth gladness.
The paradox of Eretz Israel, at this point, is that the society is exceptionally dynamic, although it lacks real time of peace and suspension of constant death threats. There can be mobs in Paris and its suburbs, at times terrorists in Europe and in particular in Germany or Italy. Any guy can so quietly enter any supermarket in the United States – it is even a sort of recurrent symptom – and just shoot down the clientele and the employees; thus, this a different attitude toward the real challenges of life and death.
South American people can be totally fascinated by death. A famous Russian Jewish film avant-garde found a shelter in Mexico during World War II because he was married to a Mexican painter, a hot-tempered colorful native. She actually used to clash with him and threaten to kill him with a huge knife, a dramatic scene – just because she could not refrain this profound call for blood that never happened. Whatever unbelievable killings were committed during the conquista of Latin America, in particular by the churches, we can only be stunned by the numerous and century-long human sacrifices offered by the Amerindians who used to remove the hearts of the victims as a sign of life-giving! The same occurred in Africa, Asia with repulsive savage masochism.
The Israeli society is at pain with a kind of uncertainty. Yes, we ought to back the survival of Israel, but in a way that is so diverse and unclear that everybody could think s/he is entitled to do anything except harming his/her own self. Or not really protest in case of obvious violations of human rights.
Abraham was a wandering Aramean (Deut. 26:5). He used to sit “b’chom hayom – in the very heat of the day”, under an open tent and to welcome those who were passing along the way (Gen. 18:1). He was peacefully giving hospitality to those who needed a rest when the heat was reaching its peak. On the other hand, Saul slaughtered the Ammonites till the heat of the day (1 Samuel 11:11; cf. 2 Sam. 4:5). Heat can also be a matter of remuneration as in Jesus’ parable to give one talent pay to all the workers, those who bore the burden of the day and those who came for an hour (Matthew 20:11; cf.Avodah Zarah 10b).
“Cham = hot, hot-tempered, warm, boiling” is a basic Semitic and thus Hebrew word, rooted in “H-H-M – hot, warm, to boil”, mainly referring, in the Talmud, to water and cleansing activities or to special colors (as “red”, the same as today some women would love to have red hair or, in between, some strawberry dye close to red). It may relate to rituals: “The bathers began to heat the water on the Shabbat (Shabbat 40a). Teaching: “Warm yourself by the fire of the scholars and try to associate with them (Avot 2,10). “Hammam = Turkish baths, the sort of sensual Oriental vaporous bath and massaging” that is upgraded in our spas.
In terms of heating as healing processes, “chacham” turns to “chum = heat and heal, excite” as also “to be hot, covet, carnally excited”. “I had a desire for his embrace” (Niddah 20b) and “He got so hot that he was (healed) by his pollution, though not once but again and again (Niddah 43b). On the other hand, “This is a land which all great men were anxious to possess” (Tanhumah Mishpatim 17) connects carnal desires and hotline with a deeper feeling of anxiety and insecurity, which is quite frequent.
The word is very intriguing, indeed. “Chum” swindles from heat to departure. “Arouse the feeling of the people when delivering my funeral address for my soul (I) shall be present” (Shabbat 153a, about a righteous man because people were speaking warmly of his memory). “b’khol chumma’o = in his full heat = youth”. Curiously, this heat that is the sign of daytime and life dynamics, including confrontations, implies, in the Semitic realm, some need for limitation of space and accessibility.
The Old City of Jerusalem is partly surrounded by the “chomot – Walls (of the Old City)” that are much frequented from the different places where one can climb up and down along the Gates. We have a very poor historic and cultural memory; say, we prefer not to know. From the time of Abraham to Jericho, everything in this region was a matter of fortification, walls of protection. And each time, throughout history, the main issue is to know how to cool down the fever (chamah), quench excitement (chamad /chamda) and reduce anger (chemah, cf. Daniel 3:13.19). “It is not possible to live without (moral) protection”, states Talmud Yevamot 62b (cf. Jeremiah 31:21). “Chomah = fortification” is currently used in Talmud Megillah (1:1- 5b) to designate walls or a “protecting lake” that serves as fortifications.
This is something we do not accept easily and that is totally misunderstood abroad for various reasons. The essence of Judaism is to be in need of protection. Firstly, Jewishness requires to be protected by God or the Divine Presence, the Shechinah. Then, there is a permanent lack of comprehension. Pious Jews, the world of “Jews in prayers” cannot mix in any way with the non-Jewish or Gentile world, and somehow some part of secularized Judaism. This is even ridiculous to pretend that a “Non-Jew” can enter that world freely and deliberately.
There is an immeasurable gap between pious Jewishness and any connection between this society segment and the non-Jews. There is an earth-to-heaven line that cuts it as an invisible wall of fortification. Something we often see here in microclimates and rain: rain on your left, no rain on your right! But people often misunderstand that because they think in terms of framing and ghettos created by hatred against pious Jewries. Decades ago, Fr. Marcel Dubois, a Dominican, who was the first Christian to teach Christian Philosophy at the Hebrew University, wittingly answered that “every Catholic congregation was usually fenced in”, i.e. that those who are not members of that specific community are not allowed to enter the bigger part of the monastery, or very rarely. We never think in terms of “positive” separation and thus often consider situation with much framed points of view.
“In the very heat of day,” Abraham was pretty much exposed to killings, alienation. His tent was open. In this region, we are still living on the pattern of this radical “cham/chum”. Are there some linguistic “reality words”? “Cham = father-in-law” (from the same root) and “chamot = mother-in-law”. This is amusing because this parentage is supposedly very inquisitive and even nosy in their children’s lives. Some are delicious; and good that they exist, because their grandchildren’s parents often have to rely on them financially and in learning how to reach adulthood.
There is a meaningful example of the presence of such a Semitism in the Gospel when Jesus started preaching and met with Shimon-Kaipha whose “mother-in-law was laying sick with a fever” (Aramaic “eshata – fire” lines with Greek “puressousa –had a fire = fever”). In Hebrew, the specificity of the “chom/cham” is present twice, i.e. redundantly: chamuto = his mother-in law, “chom = fever”. And the “wall of sickness” is lifted up. (Mark 1:29).
There is a stimulating deutero-canonical (apocryphal) Book – not recognized by the Jewish and Protestant Bible, but accepted and rather widespread in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches: Tobit; a fragment of the book was found at Qumran. It deals with God’s Tovah/tobiyah, goodness. Tobit is a kohen (priest) who strangely spends his time collecting and burying the dead slain by Sennacherib in Nineveh. At the present, it seems bizarre because the kohanim are not allowed to be in contact with the dead. The point is that it had not always been like that in the Jewish tradition even if we must accept the present development. When the Temple was existent, the priests were offering the daily sacrifices. They had no properties and no tribe territory. They were given the charities of the sacrifices. And thus, they were indeed in contact with burnt-offerings, i.e. with dead animals slaughtered for the sanctification of the Name. They were making their living with dead animals.
Our messy situation in the Middle East is going through fire, anger, fever and irrationality. It is marked by law infringements and lack of true respect for human beings and souls. Abraham’s hospitality in the very heat of the day at Mamre’s Oaks (Marc Chagall’s painting is the icon I chose for this blog) seems to be a real mitzvah as also to assist all the dead that multiply and loosen unclear fences that pull off at the moment.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Bishgagah: unwittingly
The parshat hashavua "Shelach lecha" or this weekly reading portion "Send (men to scout the Land of Canaan)" recounts one of the most famous episodes of the TaNaKH about the spies, and includes essential Jewish Mitzvot/Commandments in the Book of Bamidbar/Numbers 13:1-15:41.
It is time to march into the Land of the Avot/Ancestors. Moses decides to assign twelve men from the ancestral tribes to scout the land = latur et-eretz Kena'an (Num. 13:17), have a real look at the country, the inhabitants, a full spying survey with much discretion and know-how. At this point, this is a typical and very proficient activity of Israel over the world. Moses did not send the men the same way we have a pending problem with Jonathan Pollard. He was not on a "tour". In Hebrew, "tur" means "to spy", still in a way that implies to walk, go around, be awake and on alert, go on foot (regel/leg - meragel = spy in Modern Hebrew). "You have espied the Land and found fault with God's Tent", says Talmud Shebuot 47b, echoing Numbers Rabba 16, 20: "You have espied the faults of the Land of Israel".
A good spy, for the Talmud, is Aaron: "The great spy (Aaron) died who had espied for them the road of life" (Yoma 1:38b). The Israelite spy is a man of God who is accomplishing a sort of divine mitzvah for the benefit of the whole community of Israel. In this view, our spies should not be corrupt... totally under self-control... not utter any slander... of rumors, and we should not hear any blah-blah about them in return.
The perfect shomer/guardian of the integrity and rigor is also the model of the bney chorin/ free men (and women). Numerous names come then to our minds, especially of those people who, in terrible days when Jews were persecuted and for the sake of the State of Israel, offered their lives with courage and silence. Israelis have developed amazing and witty tricks to confound the enemies. We love thrillers, but curiously the good old-fashioned Israeli spies are more of the Lamed-Vavnikim sort (the 36 unknown tzaddikim/righteous that save the world) than full-tanned oriental green-eyed guys and girls jumping from beds to couches with guns, poisoning pills, killing kisses, pocket bombs and Holy Land bullets. Everybody knows the joke of a man who answers – in the middle of a dark night in Tel Aviv – that he is Yaakov the violinist, but that Yaakov the spy lives on the fourth floor, up there…
Moses sent the twelve men and they had a wonderful tour. They brought gorgeous fruits, clusters of grapes and pomegranates after forty days of scouting. The report was disparate. Exceptional landscapes and country, but the inhabitants seemed a bit bizarre. How difficult to recognize the people after an absence of 400 years! Land of milk and honey, but the inhabitants are powerful; their cities are fortified and terribly large. This is dangerous, reported ten of the men who saw the Amakelites and the mighty Hittites. They got scared.
Worse than everything: they even met with very tall men, something like 100 XXXL size guys, the Nephilim, that had disappeared since Gen. 6:4. There, they were looking at the Sons of the Covenant like grasshoppers, and the “spies” did have the courage to look back. These ten also spread some rumors that the country they saw devours the inhabitants and they successfully slandered around so that the Israelites wanted to return to good old Egypt.
Slander is called to disappear by nature, said the Sages. But the reaction of these “reporters” is exactly the same as what we hear about our Israeli society and the country at the present. We all have our dreamy Nephilim, extra sized ghosts. We look at each other so often like grasshoppers or chimpanzees in a zoo. And the land is wonderful but no oil, only honey and milk fruits and grapes, olives.
Indeed we are fortified. Everybody is even fortified here. And always better or more threatening than in Egypt. When we find some family connection from America to Israel, we may discover we have a “rich” uncle in some Rehov Ben Yehudah, who owns a tiny falafel stand or pizza corner. But what a location! Well, this week, we should maybe pray for our spies… and all the honest spies because the problem is that they are very buddy-buddy and interconnected and can easily be spoiled.
On the other hand, it is really difficult to account the truth and keep balanced. Caleb and Joshua exposed what they had seen and that it was possible to conquer the land. They said “Do not fear the people of the country for they are our “lachmenu =bread=food (prey)”. “Milchamah = war” in Hebrew does mean that we are no more in a situation of rather natural hospitality in the tribal culture. We doubt, suspect, attack or flee. “Mi’lchamah = it is no more possible to share the same meal/food/bread, which induces a state of war, a conflict”. This is very significant in spiritual life and also as regards the Christian bread sharing rooted in the Kiddush partaking of bread. Caleb and Joshua underscored that the Israelites should not rebel against God.
Now, “kibush, conquest” shows more than the way we even use the word at the present. In the case of the Israelites – again in revolt against God and Moses and willing to return to Egypt – we must consider something else. They got out of the womb of some foreign “fostering” country, i.e. Egypt, symbolically a “house of slavery”. Let’s say that the wilderness, in the Sinai, is a place of dizziness, tests, wandering and giving of the Torah. It is time for the Israelites to behave as grownups and face the conquest of their own identity, the fulfillment of their being. They cry exactly as spoiled children do. And the rumors just match with what they fear: why getting ahead to the Land of Canaan? True, the same question is pending in the present as regards the apparently unexpected renewal of a Jewish State and of the Arab nation, Semitic heritage in the region.
Curiously, I will send these lines to my contact at the BlogCentral, early on the 7th of June, the civil date when forty years ago, I felt a total change in my life in entering the Old City of Jerusalem, a upside down turn on my route. But then, the present reading portion obliges us to consider how we behave in terms of righteousness or deep injustice. When Caleb and Joshua witness that the kibush, conquest is possible, how can we show today that the Israelites do not rebel against God? In our time, it is more questionable. The real interrogation is how to get to a target that does not harm but will allow building actions. No unjust expropriations but a progressive and comprehensive “Semitization” of the Israeli society in the Middle East.
Indeed, the false rumors conveyed by the ten men, their lies and betrayal of Moses’ mission are constant stuff. We are reluctant to grow, to become adults. Adulthood is so frightening for some Jews because of the monstrous experience of history. This is why – even it sounds as some kind of a vitz /joke – good scouting eyes and brains allow growing spiritually. No way to compare with some servile traitors conveying sugary gossiping reports to some potentates.
The point is to be found in the accomplishment of the first commandment given to all beings: “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it “vekhivshua””(Bereishit 1:28). We must be careful not to damage human souls and this is quite a challenging problem for our society. “Kibush” is also the means of subduing evil, pride and will of useless conquest, preventing overbearing what is proper to others”, states Pessikta Zutrathi 197a (Buber Ed.). On the other hand, reaching out to our own self-control allows enhancing oneself and sometimes a society.
Thus, it makes sense that the Jewish tradition proposes the systematical reading of the Pirkey Avot – Sayings of the Fathers, a portion of the Talmud Tractate Nezikin (Damages) from Pesach to Shavuot, usually till Rosh Hashanah in most congregations today. The book is included in most Shabbat prayer books and is composed of five chapters plus one (Kinyan Torah=acquisition of the Torah) brought from a minor Tractate “Kallah”. As the Book of Job or Lamentations, the Sayings of the Fathers (Avoth according to Mishnaic Hebrew) is one of the best-sellers and most read books in the world. It is very ethical, down-to-earth and spiritual, crude and full of wisdom and thus can bring some reflection, insights and responses to all humans in search of who they are.
This also deals with our weekly reading portion. The spies or scouts were to examine with insightful and ethical eyes the realm of the country. Interestingly, at the end of the parshah, God gives the commandment to hold the tzitzit / fringes at each corner of the garments with a blue cord (techelet), “to look at it, observe them so that you don’t follow your heart and eyes /velo tituru (scout astray, make the wrong tour) acharei levavchem veacharei eyneichem (in lustful urges)” (Bamidbar 15:39-40). The commandment to look and observe the tzitzit in order to achieve and accomplish all the Mitzvot held in hand and upon our eyes is basic and extant for every Jew. They introduce to a daily viewing and consideration of how to behave with decency and dignity.
It is not a problem of “derech haaretz = morals” that obliges every soul to make healthy use of their brains and will. In the reading portion, it is repeatedly mentioned that “if something was done unwittingly = le/bishgagah”, there were some provision to be observed. This traces back to the wondrous prayer of Yom Kippur: “Forgive us, cleanse us, atone us, all the House of Israel as the inhabitant who resides in her midst (leger hagar betocham) / ki kol ha’am bishgagah (because all the nation, people, community) has erred unwittingly. The word is linked to “meshugah – insane, fool, foolish” that became Slang Yinglish “shmeggegeh” (just sounds so lovely and exact!). We could say “weird, weirdo, spaced out without any drugs except our ego’s pressure”.
The word “mussar” is usually considered as the correct word for “ethics”, or authentic tradition of good behavior. But the commandment to look at the tzitzit is not moral, not ethical. Who can know what is inside of a soul? Morals or ethics suggest attitudes or pave the way to measure how we dare or not behave toward ourselves and the others. The twelve men were called to more: to see and not to get astray from a path that they might consider dangerous. Our lives can be imperiled by many events or situations. We can then choose to respond like Caleb and Joshua, by taking over the truth and facing it. In that view, the Mitzvot are not moral, ethical, judgmental, pleasing. They show our connection with God and how we accept him. Moses was very humble and thus could not enter the Land taking upon him the lack of faith of the Israelites.
On the second Sunday after Pentecost, the Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates the local Saints. Interestingly, in the 4th century, seemingly in the Celtic Roman Catholic Church of the West, the Church of Rome decided to recall the Saints on November 1st and then All the Souls (Departed) that were defunct (had accomplished their officium/task) on the following day, showing a sort of hope in wintertime.
The Orthodox Church celebrates the Saints as those who lived in the Pentecostal breathing-in of the Spirit. Firstly, all the Saints as last week and now the local Saints. Thus, the Palestinian Saints track back to the Avot, the ancestors and all the prophets of the Bible. From the time before Abraham till the cave of Machpelah, the Land of Canaan and Eretz Israel, each territory of the ancestor tribes and Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Arabia till so far away… God-seekers scout souls and soil and teach how to share wittingly.
It is time to march into the Land of the Avot/Ancestors. Moses decides to assign twelve men from the ancestral tribes to scout the land = latur et-eretz Kena'an (Num. 13:17), have a real look at the country, the inhabitants, a full spying survey with much discretion and know-how. At this point, this is a typical and very proficient activity of Israel over the world. Moses did not send the men the same way we have a pending problem with Jonathan Pollard. He was not on a "tour". In Hebrew, "tur" means "to spy", still in a way that implies to walk, go around, be awake and on alert, go on foot (regel/leg - meragel = spy in Modern Hebrew). "You have espied the Land and found fault with God's Tent", says Talmud Shebuot 47b, echoing Numbers Rabba 16, 20: "You have espied the faults of the Land of Israel".
A good spy, for the Talmud, is Aaron: "The great spy (Aaron) died who had espied for them the road of life" (Yoma 1:38b). The Israelite spy is a man of God who is accomplishing a sort of divine mitzvah for the benefit of the whole community of Israel. In this view, our spies should not be corrupt... totally under self-control... not utter any slander... of rumors, and we should not hear any blah-blah about them in return.
The perfect shomer/guardian of the integrity and rigor is also the model of the bney chorin/ free men (and women). Numerous names come then to our minds, especially of those people who, in terrible days when Jews were persecuted and for the sake of the State of Israel, offered their lives with courage and silence. Israelis have developed amazing and witty tricks to confound the enemies. We love thrillers, but curiously the good old-fashioned Israeli spies are more of the Lamed-Vavnikim sort (the 36 unknown tzaddikim/righteous that save the world) than full-tanned oriental green-eyed guys and girls jumping from beds to couches with guns, poisoning pills, killing kisses, pocket bombs and Holy Land bullets. Everybody knows the joke of a man who answers – in the middle of a dark night in Tel Aviv – that he is Yaakov the violinist, but that Yaakov the spy lives on the fourth floor, up there…
Moses sent the twelve men and they had a wonderful tour. They brought gorgeous fruits, clusters of grapes and pomegranates after forty days of scouting. The report was disparate. Exceptional landscapes and country, but the inhabitants seemed a bit bizarre. How difficult to recognize the people after an absence of 400 years! Land of milk and honey, but the inhabitants are powerful; their cities are fortified and terribly large. This is dangerous, reported ten of the men who saw the Amakelites and the mighty Hittites. They got scared.
Worse than everything: they even met with very tall men, something like 100 XXXL size guys, the Nephilim, that had disappeared since Gen. 6:4. There, they were looking at the Sons of the Covenant like grasshoppers, and the “spies” did have the courage to look back. These ten also spread some rumors that the country they saw devours the inhabitants and they successfully slandered around so that the Israelites wanted to return to good old Egypt.
Slander is called to disappear by nature, said the Sages. But the reaction of these “reporters” is exactly the same as what we hear about our Israeli society and the country at the present. We all have our dreamy Nephilim, extra sized ghosts. We look at each other so often like grasshoppers or chimpanzees in a zoo. And the land is wonderful but no oil, only honey and milk fruits and grapes, olives.
Indeed we are fortified. Everybody is even fortified here. And always better or more threatening than in Egypt. When we find some family connection from America to Israel, we may discover we have a “rich” uncle in some Rehov Ben Yehudah, who owns a tiny falafel stand or pizza corner. But what a location! Well, this week, we should maybe pray for our spies… and all the honest spies because the problem is that they are very buddy-buddy and interconnected and can easily be spoiled.
On the other hand, it is really difficult to account the truth and keep balanced. Caleb and Joshua exposed what they had seen and that it was possible to conquer the land. They said “Do not fear the people of the country for they are our “lachmenu =bread=food (prey)”. “Milchamah = war” in Hebrew does mean that we are no more in a situation of rather natural hospitality in the tribal culture. We doubt, suspect, attack or flee. “Mi’lchamah = it is no more possible to share the same meal/food/bread, which induces a state of war, a conflict”. This is very significant in spiritual life and also as regards the Christian bread sharing rooted in the Kiddush partaking of bread. Caleb and Joshua underscored that the Israelites should not rebel against God.
Now, “kibush, conquest” shows more than the way we even use the word at the present. In the case of the Israelites – again in revolt against God and Moses and willing to return to Egypt – we must consider something else. They got out of the womb of some foreign “fostering” country, i.e. Egypt, symbolically a “house of slavery”. Let’s say that the wilderness, in the Sinai, is a place of dizziness, tests, wandering and giving of the Torah. It is time for the Israelites to behave as grownups and face the conquest of their own identity, the fulfillment of their being. They cry exactly as spoiled children do. And the rumors just match with what they fear: why getting ahead to the Land of Canaan? True, the same question is pending in the present as regards the apparently unexpected renewal of a Jewish State and of the Arab nation, Semitic heritage in the region.
Curiously, I will send these lines to my contact at the BlogCentral, early on the 7th of June, the civil date when forty years ago, I felt a total change in my life in entering the Old City of Jerusalem, a upside down turn on my route. But then, the present reading portion obliges us to consider how we behave in terms of righteousness or deep injustice. When Caleb and Joshua witness that the kibush, conquest is possible, how can we show today that the Israelites do not rebel against God? In our time, it is more questionable. The real interrogation is how to get to a target that does not harm but will allow building actions. No unjust expropriations but a progressive and comprehensive “Semitization” of the Israeli society in the Middle East.
Indeed, the false rumors conveyed by the ten men, their lies and betrayal of Moses’ mission are constant stuff. We are reluctant to grow, to become adults. Adulthood is so frightening for some Jews because of the monstrous experience of history. This is why – even it sounds as some kind of a vitz /joke – good scouting eyes and brains allow growing spiritually. No way to compare with some servile traitors conveying sugary gossiping reports to some potentates.
The point is to be found in the accomplishment of the first commandment given to all beings: “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it “vekhivshua””(Bereishit 1:28). We must be careful not to damage human souls and this is quite a challenging problem for our society. “Kibush” is also the means of subduing evil, pride and will of useless conquest, preventing overbearing what is proper to others”, states Pessikta Zutrathi 197a (Buber Ed.). On the other hand, reaching out to our own self-control allows enhancing oneself and sometimes a society.
Thus, it makes sense that the Jewish tradition proposes the systematical reading of the Pirkey Avot – Sayings of the Fathers, a portion of the Talmud Tractate Nezikin (Damages) from Pesach to Shavuot, usually till Rosh Hashanah in most congregations today. The book is included in most Shabbat prayer books and is composed of five chapters plus one (Kinyan Torah=acquisition of the Torah) brought from a minor Tractate “Kallah”. As the Book of Job or Lamentations, the Sayings of the Fathers (Avoth according to Mishnaic Hebrew) is one of the best-sellers and most read books in the world. It is very ethical, down-to-earth and spiritual, crude and full of wisdom and thus can bring some reflection, insights and responses to all humans in search of who they are.
This also deals with our weekly reading portion. The spies or scouts were to examine with insightful and ethical eyes the realm of the country. Interestingly, at the end of the parshah, God gives the commandment to hold the tzitzit / fringes at each corner of the garments with a blue cord (techelet), “to look at it, observe them so that you don’t follow your heart and eyes /velo tituru (scout astray, make the wrong tour) acharei levavchem veacharei eyneichem (in lustful urges)” (Bamidbar 15:39-40). The commandment to look and observe the tzitzit in order to achieve and accomplish all the Mitzvot held in hand and upon our eyes is basic and extant for every Jew. They introduce to a daily viewing and consideration of how to behave with decency and dignity.
It is not a problem of “derech haaretz = morals” that obliges every soul to make healthy use of their brains and will. In the reading portion, it is repeatedly mentioned that “if something was done unwittingly = le/bishgagah”, there were some provision to be observed. This traces back to the wondrous prayer of Yom Kippur: “Forgive us, cleanse us, atone us, all the House of Israel as the inhabitant who resides in her midst (leger hagar betocham) / ki kol ha’am bishgagah (because all the nation, people, community) has erred unwittingly. The word is linked to “meshugah – insane, fool, foolish” that became Slang Yinglish “shmeggegeh” (just sounds so lovely and exact!). We could say “weird, weirdo, spaced out without any drugs except our ego’s pressure”.
The word “mussar” is usually considered as the correct word for “ethics”, or authentic tradition of good behavior. But the commandment to look at the tzitzit is not moral, not ethical. Who can know what is inside of a soul? Morals or ethics suggest attitudes or pave the way to measure how we dare or not behave toward ourselves and the others. The twelve men were called to more: to see and not to get astray from a path that they might consider dangerous. Our lives can be imperiled by many events or situations. We can then choose to respond like Caleb and Joshua, by taking over the truth and facing it. In that view, the Mitzvot are not moral, ethical, judgmental, pleasing. They show our connection with God and how we accept him. Moses was very humble and thus could not enter the Land taking upon him the lack of faith of the Israelites.
On the second Sunday after Pentecost, the Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates the local Saints. Interestingly, in the 4th century, seemingly in the Celtic Roman Catholic Church of the West, the Church of Rome decided to recall the Saints on November 1st and then All the Souls (Departed) that were defunct (had accomplished their officium/task) on the following day, showing a sort of hope in wintertime.
The Orthodox Church celebrates the Saints as those who lived in the Pentecostal breathing-in of the Spirit. Firstly, all the Saints as last week and now the local Saints. Thus, the Palestinian Saints track back to the Avot, the ancestors and all the prophets of the Bible. From the time before Abraham till the cave of Machpelah, the Land of Canaan and Eretz Israel, each territory of the ancestor tribes and Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Arabia till so far away… God-seekers scout souls and soil and teach how to share wittingly.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Nezikin, damages
The inhabitants of the State of Israel can be rough, rude, tough. They are basically nice, gentle, mild and ready to help. The statement is a bit abrupt. It depends what segments are considered to be so "cute" with some famous sabra coarseness. The youths can be very kind, “yeled melech” - we are a “child is a king here" sort, but then show some help to many people of all ages.
Everywhere we go in the streets, buses, taxis, trains disabled people work in all possible fields of activities and they are normally protected by the law. Their rights and possibilities to be granted and enjoy a wide range of social and medical as well as "entertaining activities" could and should be developed. But handicapped people, who are disabled since their early age, or as a consequence of a genetic problem, are also accompanied by the great number of injured individuals who were shot and hardly survived with limited capacities. Others must be very strong to get to the level required by their bosses.
Basically, Israel does respect those who were hurt by life. Endogamy and seemingly poor renewal of blood created a danger for some pious communities, who, on the other hand, show real caring love to their babies and grownups.
There are also the mentally disabled who seem to frighten an increasing part of the Israeli society at the present. This appeared in a recent survey realized by the Ministry of Social Affairs. “Pachadim – fears, irrational panics” that also can technically depict the hypochondriac anxieties of the elderly. They are progressively knitted within our brains, along with the frightening events of our lives.
“Mishley – the Book of Proverbs” alerts us about the dangers to be in frequent with strange people, thus considered as “forbidden”: “This will save you from the forbidden woman (= ishah zarah; the one who is strange and alien) / “menachriyah amariyah hechalikah = from the alien woman whose talk is smooth” (Prov. 2:16). “Estrangement” to usual and common sense is a first step toward some kind of alteration that may drift us from others.
It is very peculiar how suspicious we became and careless in other ways. Decades ago, we were taught in a very simple way: films, ads showed us how to take care if we find something on the floor. Take a stone, throw it on the object from afar; if it does not explode, it can eventually be yours. At the present, children are overprotected and would leave their rucksacks on the side. But if we see faces or people dressed in what is not usual for our usual group, we would be more suspicious and shelter ourselves from them.
Two reactions are then intriguing. Either to mock a group and run away, which is more than common among the teens and not very courageous, or to avoid glances. When the “war situation“ started seven years ago, it was even funny to see Jewish Israelis packed together at the bottom of the buses, some ghetto-like reaction to reach the farthest point. In 2001, there was a curious trend in Jerusalem. It appeared immediately after the first terror attacks happened in the city. Increasing numbers of Arab women started to visit the center of the town and the big stores while the other inhabitants would keep aside or dubiously consider what to do, even the police at that time.
“Zar” comes from root “zarar = to smash, be smashed, scattered, rotten” as in Talmud Niddah35b, Hullin 12,3; useless ovulation of a woman or an “egg that fell from the nest and is rotten (Sanhedrin 82b). The appealing aspect of the word is that it corresponds, to some extent, with what happens with “goy – geviyah (corpse)”. Either it is oddly used by the Jews to speak of non-Jews. Or, in Biblical language it both refers to “goy qadosh – holy people” (Ex. 19:6), i.e. the “reinvigorated corpses or bodies” who are called to sanctify God or the “simple goyei haaretz – nations (Gentiles of the earth)”.
In the Talmud, “zar” often refers to the simple children of Israel, the non-priests (Yoma 42a). On the one hand, despise that can turn to be royal and sublime! Or it may cause a sort of competition, as between the Jews and the Christians: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a chosen nation (Gr. “ethnos”)” wrote the Apostle Peter-Kaipha (1 Peter 2:9); the Byzantine Liturgy of Saint Basil that strongly influenced the Fourth Order of the Latin Mass includes the reference as a replacement of the Jews, ignoring the commandment of fulfillment and unity, oneness in God given by Jesus. How fascinating is it that those who should be considered as chosen by God seem alien to some and crazy to the others. Unity is not shown. It is mocked.
Why should people replace others in God’s likeness? Because it is evidently easier to exclude and remove all kinds of inmates rather than integrating and assimilating them. Thus, it is more convenient to regard our diversity as a symphony (Gr. sun – with, phone – voice) and not only as splits. As Paul of Tarsus said: “The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25). These words are close to the saying of Hillel read this week in the Jewish communities. It climaxes with this famous quotation: “Seeing a skull floating on the surface of the water, he (Hillel) said: Even if they have drowned you because you drowned others, those who drowned you will themselves be drowned” (Pirkey Avot 2:6-8). In Hebrew, a skull is not only the content of our brains, eyes, face and vertebrae. It is on a move, revolving, turning here and there, like “megilgul hazeh legilgul acher = from one to another identity “transmigration, movement” (Prayer before going to sleep).
Hillel is right. We cannot touch the integrity of a skull because death will haunt, in various ways, those who want to kill the soul and cannot (which is one of the most important aspects of Hanukkah’s victory in the rededication of the Temple and the miracle of the light). It is thus the profound meaning of the Golgotha as the place of Calvary or of the Skull in the Gospel.
There is a significant link between the way a society respects, pays attention, takes care and monitors its handicapped or disabled. This is, in general, true for the respect due to any creature and being. Thirty years ago, when disabled were taken by car to the Western Wall, they could open up the wheelchair that was in the trunk and get by themselves to the Kotel; it was amazing. Curiously, the same could happen in Germany and the Netherlands to get to a supermarket. At the present, we see everywhere this kind of personal motorcycles with access to more and more places. We have a lot of soldiers who were wounded.
It is correct that many mentally sick are visible in Israeli society, maybe more openly present in caring arms of more pious Jewish families. It may be the consequence of recurrent war situations, rampant poverty and lack of medical assistance in different segments of the population; anyway, disabled are basically not rejected or hidden as in some other continents.
There is also a spiritual context which is naturally supportive. Walking along the administrative center of Jerusalem and other cities, we can meet with heavily handicapped secretaries, executives and some groups of people of all age, joyfully rushing in their wheelchairs.
I saw once in the North, at a hospital, a whole village of deaf Arabs. At that time, they were given hearing aids that had been carefully stored in their rooms. The Kupat Cholim/Medical care center obliged them to check the devices but they said: we don’t need them because we are all deaf and understand each other perfectly. Other individuals would stay from time to time in hospitals, but the mentally sick are not systematically removed from the society.
God really trusts in the humans. Usually we would think of the opposite and attest that humans hardly can trust in God. No, God entrusted His creation with defects that can profoundly interrogate or cause the despair of so many people. It is therefore very important never to despise any soul, human attitude. In the genocides that developed over the twentieth century, killings aimed at extirpating any mark of God’s image and likeness. Thus, the disabled and mentally sick were either to be murdered or to endure inhuman experiences as if they were toys for sadists.
It may happen that our Israeli society is going through the terrible times of wasting money and lacking care and “love to the neighbor, other.” There is a slide-down that may physically effect the sick. We approach a borderline as Shoah survivors can hardly get the money they are due to receive. They are the ones who that suffered the ignominious reality of death camps, pogroms, assassinations. For decades, we have lived on German money that creates a special connection between the survivors and the State. There is much of a spiritual act of mutual recognition from Germany and Israel and vice versa that we must acknowledge.
The way the disabled are treated questions along the same line, and even more as regards the mentally sick. It is easy to insult somebody whom one considers as alien and runaway. This is not the attitude of faith. Silence, disdain and haughtiness would exert a sort of impulsive censure.
There are two Hebrew words for “disability = mum and nachut”. “Mum = something, anything but as compared to “klum = nothing” (Nedarim 66b). It also means “repulsive” in the Talmud as referring to mamzer/bastard (Kiddushin 3, 64). But “Never reproach the mum (handicap, defect) of your neighbor with a defect that you have in common”(Bava Metziah59b). Nachah/nachi means “to be lessened, reduced”. It paves the way to some perception of alterability that can develop into foreign and estranged suspicions.
The problem with disabilities and handicaps is that they challenge individuals and society by requiring a lot of care, patience, hope without any certitude of healing, over time. Thus they test the faithful about their real commitment with the absence of any response to suffering. My daughter is now 23 years old and was born with no real diagnosis of a muscular and cerebral disease. She went to the gates of death and came back totally death-proof, which is psychological “rule.” My wife and I have spent 20 years helping her to socialize and to be in contact, often educated by others because they had a different experience of her. It took 10 years to know the defect and the disease. It took 10 more years for the social and medical institutions, as well as the families, to understand how she could live in an adequate environment. It will take 10 more years – and will not be applicable to her generation – to replace the defective cells and genes and repair, correct. Then, it is quite probable that some 10 additional years will slowly allow eradicating the syndrome.
The disabled people allow a society to measure its stand and never lie or use pious words about suffering, value of each life. With much prudence and respect, every soul embodies Hillel’s words to the faithful read this week: “Do not set yourself apart from the community; do not be sure of yourself till the day of your death. Do not judge your fellow man till you have been in his position…” (Pirkey Avot 2:5).
Everywhere we go in the streets, buses, taxis, trains disabled people work in all possible fields of activities and they are normally protected by the law. Their rights and possibilities to be granted and enjoy a wide range of social and medical as well as "entertaining activities" could and should be developed. But handicapped people, who are disabled since their early age, or as a consequence of a genetic problem, are also accompanied by the great number of injured individuals who were shot and hardly survived with limited capacities. Others must be very strong to get to the level required by their bosses.
Basically, Israel does respect those who were hurt by life. Endogamy and seemingly poor renewal of blood created a danger for some pious communities, who, on the other hand, show real caring love to their babies and grownups.
There are also the mentally disabled who seem to frighten an increasing part of the Israeli society at the present. This appeared in a recent survey realized by the Ministry of Social Affairs. “Pachadim – fears, irrational panics” that also can technically depict the hypochondriac anxieties of the elderly. They are progressively knitted within our brains, along with the frightening events of our lives.
“Mishley – the Book of Proverbs” alerts us about the dangers to be in frequent with strange people, thus considered as “forbidden”: “This will save you from the forbidden woman (= ishah zarah; the one who is strange and alien) / “menachriyah amariyah hechalikah = from the alien woman whose talk is smooth” (Prov. 2:16). “Estrangement” to usual and common sense is a first step toward some kind of alteration that may drift us from others.
It is very peculiar how suspicious we became and careless in other ways. Decades ago, we were taught in a very simple way: films, ads showed us how to take care if we find something on the floor. Take a stone, throw it on the object from afar; if it does not explode, it can eventually be yours. At the present, children are overprotected and would leave their rucksacks on the side. But if we see faces or people dressed in what is not usual for our usual group, we would be more suspicious and shelter ourselves from them.
Two reactions are then intriguing. Either to mock a group and run away, which is more than common among the teens and not very courageous, or to avoid glances. When the “war situation“ started seven years ago, it was even funny to see Jewish Israelis packed together at the bottom of the buses, some ghetto-like reaction to reach the farthest point. In 2001, there was a curious trend in Jerusalem. It appeared immediately after the first terror attacks happened in the city. Increasing numbers of Arab women started to visit the center of the town and the big stores while the other inhabitants would keep aside or dubiously consider what to do, even the police at that time.
“Zar” comes from root “zarar = to smash, be smashed, scattered, rotten” as in Talmud Niddah35b, Hullin 12,3; useless ovulation of a woman or an “egg that fell from the nest and is rotten (Sanhedrin 82b). The appealing aspect of the word is that it corresponds, to some extent, with what happens with “goy – geviyah (corpse)”. Either it is oddly used by the Jews to speak of non-Jews. Or, in Biblical language it both refers to “goy qadosh – holy people” (Ex. 19:6), i.e. the “reinvigorated corpses or bodies” who are called to sanctify God or the “simple goyei haaretz – nations (Gentiles of the earth)”.
In the Talmud, “zar” often refers to the simple children of Israel, the non-priests (Yoma 42a). On the one hand, despise that can turn to be royal and sublime! Or it may cause a sort of competition, as between the Jews and the Christians: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a chosen nation (Gr. “ethnos”)” wrote the Apostle Peter-Kaipha (1 Peter 2:9); the Byzantine Liturgy of Saint Basil that strongly influenced the Fourth Order of the Latin Mass includes the reference as a replacement of the Jews, ignoring the commandment of fulfillment and unity, oneness in God given by Jesus. How fascinating is it that those who should be considered as chosen by God seem alien to some and crazy to the others. Unity is not shown. It is mocked.
Why should people replace others in God’s likeness? Because it is evidently easier to exclude and remove all kinds of inmates rather than integrating and assimilating them. Thus, it is more convenient to regard our diversity as a symphony (Gr. sun – with, phone – voice) and not only as splits. As Paul of Tarsus said: “The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25). These words are close to the saying of Hillel read this week in the Jewish communities. It climaxes with this famous quotation: “Seeing a skull floating on the surface of the water, he (Hillel) said: Even if they have drowned you because you drowned others, those who drowned you will themselves be drowned” (Pirkey Avot 2:6-8). In Hebrew, a skull is not only the content of our brains, eyes, face and vertebrae. It is on a move, revolving, turning here and there, like “megilgul hazeh legilgul acher = from one to another identity “transmigration, movement” (Prayer before going to sleep).
Hillel is right. We cannot touch the integrity of a skull because death will haunt, in various ways, those who want to kill the soul and cannot (which is one of the most important aspects of Hanukkah’s victory in the rededication of the Temple and the miracle of the light). It is thus the profound meaning of the Golgotha as the place of Calvary or of the Skull in the Gospel.
There is a significant link between the way a society respects, pays attention, takes care and monitors its handicapped or disabled. This is, in general, true for the respect due to any creature and being. Thirty years ago, when disabled were taken by car to the Western Wall, they could open up the wheelchair that was in the trunk and get by themselves to the Kotel; it was amazing. Curiously, the same could happen in Germany and the Netherlands to get to a supermarket. At the present, we see everywhere this kind of personal motorcycles with access to more and more places. We have a lot of soldiers who were wounded.
It is correct that many mentally sick are visible in Israeli society, maybe more openly present in caring arms of more pious Jewish families. It may be the consequence of recurrent war situations, rampant poverty and lack of medical assistance in different segments of the population; anyway, disabled are basically not rejected or hidden as in some other continents.
There is also a spiritual context which is naturally supportive. Walking along the administrative center of Jerusalem and other cities, we can meet with heavily handicapped secretaries, executives and some groups of people of all age, joyfully rushing in their wheelchairs.
I saw once in the North, at a hospital, a whole village of deaf Arabs. At that time, they were given hearing aids that had been carefully stored in their rooms. The Kupat Cholim/Medical care center obliged them to check the devices but they said: we don’t need them because we are all deaf and understand each other perfectly. Other individuals would stay from time to time in hospitals, but the mentally sick are not systematically removed from the society.
God really trusts in the humans. Usually we would think of the opposite and attest that humans hardly can trust in God. No, God entrusted His creation with defects that can profoundly interrogate or cause the despair of so many people. It is therefore very important never to despise any soul, human attitude. In the genocides that developed over the twentieth century, killings aimed at extirpating any mark of God’s image and likeness. Thus, the disabled and mentally sick were either to be murdered or to endure inhuman experiences as if they were toys for sadists.
It may happen that our Israeli society is going through the terrible times of wasting money and lacking care and “love to the neighbor, other.” There is a slide-down that may physically effect the sick. We approach a borderline as Shoah survivors can hardly get the money they are due to receive. They are the ones who that suffered the ignominious reality of death camps, pogroms, assassinations. For decades, we have lived on German money that creates a special connection between the survivors and the State. There is much of a spiritual act of mutual recognition from Germany and Israel and vice versa that we must acknowledge.
The way the disabled are treated questions along the same line, and even more as regards the mentally sick. It is easy to insult somebody whom one considers as alien and runaway. This is not the attitude of faith. Silence, disdain and haughtiness would exert a sort of impulsive censure.
There are two Hebrew words for “disability = mum and nachut”. “Mum = something, anything but as compared to “klum = nothing” (Nedarim 66b). It also means “repulsive” in the Talmud as referring to mamzer/bastard (Kiddushin 3, 64). But “Never reproach the mum (handicap, defect) of your neighbor with a defect that you have in common”(Bava Metziah59b). Nachah/nachi means “to be lessened, reduced”. It paves the way to some perception of alterability that can develop into foreign and estranged suspicions.
The problem with disabilities and handicaps is that they challenge individuals and society by requiring a lot of care, patience, hope without any certitude of healing, over time. Thus they test the faithful about their real commitment with the absence of any response to suffering. My daughter is now 23 years old and was born with no real diagnosis of a muscular and cerebral disease. She went to the gates of death and came back totally death-proof, which is psychological “rule.” My wife and I have spent 20 years helping her to socialize and to be in contact, often educated by others because they had a different experience of her. It took 10 years to know the defect and the disease. It took 10 more years for the social and medical institutions, as well as the families, to understand how she could live in an adequate environment. It will take 10 more years – and will not be applicable to her generation – to replace the defective cells and genes and repair, correct. Then, it is quite probable that some 10 additional years will slowly allow eradicating the syndrome.
The disabled people allow a society to measure its stand and never lie or use pious words about suffering, value of each life. With much prudence and respect, every soul embodies Hillel’s words to the faithful read this week: “Do not set yourself apart from the community; do not be sure of yourself till the day of your death. Do not judge your fellow man till you have been in his position…” (Pirkey Avot 2:5).
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Peh al-peh: Moses' unique humbleness
Time passes and the next memorial feasts or days will show in June with the commemoration of the destructions of the Temples and the city of Jerusalem that will climax on the 9th of Av (07/23-24).
We just left Shavuot and the Giving of the Written and Oral Laws to Moses. The journey through the wilderness continues with Shabbat Beha'alotekha (Moses, when you will elevate the lamps) and the weekly reading portion in the Book of Bamidbar/Numbers 8:1-12:16. There starts the second year of the Israelites' sojourn in the desert. The Levites are called to mount = ha'alah the lamps in the Tent of the Meeting. They are told to serve from the age of 25 until they reach 50. Then, they would stay on the side of the acting Levi'im, without performing anything.
Moses proposes to celebrate the feast of Passover, thus for the second time in the wilderness. It happens that some men come with specific requests. Can they join the feast as they had been in contact with corpses and are unclean? At each step, Moses answers them that he knows nothing and needs to get God's advice and response. This is the repeated motto of this weekly reading. Moses goes ahead but constantly needs God's personal answer. In the case of the feast of Passover, the reply is that these men should wait one full month and then celebrate Pesach on Iyar 14, i.e. what became "Pesach sheni = Second Passover" for those who were absent at the feast and could not participate for some valid reason.
This provision is mentioned as a sort of leitmotiv that accompanies the Israelites during their journey in the Sinai. It is said that they should take good care of everybody, every soul and to never reject anyone. Today, this sounds as a typical reminder from the wilderness times. The Sinai is per se a kind of no-man’s land, a wild area full of dangers, with plenty of visible, invisible, day or night enemies or fictions that may exert their power even through fictitious visions.
Moses repeated the Lord’s commandment: “when a stranger who resides with you (“ve-khi yagur ger”) will offer a Passover sacrifice to the Lord, he must offer it in accordance with the rules and rites (mishpato) of the Passover sacrifice. There shall be one law for you, whether stranger or citizen (velager ule’ezrach) of the country”(Bamidbar 9:14). This extends the rather permanent issue we face in this country, much after the time spent in the wilderness and discussed as an actual problem in the previous blog. The time in the Sinai corresponds to a pedagogical tour. It is not a labyrinth because this wonderful space and mind route has but only two possible goals. The Cretan labyrinth combined secrecy and hardship to get free and/or memorize. It was also a mythological way to hold the Minotaur and thus to restrict one’s thought on limited solutions. The Egyptian pyramids were built on the same confusing pattern. Human rulers and leaders love these sorts of quizzes. Genetics and specialists of memory diseases or defects would show how such paths can be controlled with much insight.
The journey through Sinai is not of the same nature. It is not built upon myths and mythological attempts to tie up human beings. We are still in the Sinai in many ways, in particular as regards our desires or expectations, beliefs or faith that we came and will continue to come out of serfdom to freedom. In the wilderness, the Hebrew nation was a displaced living body that advanced in some dizzy darkness. This means they missed explanations, maps, central piloting headquarters and strategy.
Today, just look at the mobiles. We get the last breaking news in whatever alphabet, the weather forecast for the week, a living map showing where we are and where you may go. It also means you know where our friends, buddies are located and where the next conflict will nuke out. And, along with the view of the Tent of the Meeting, if any, your favorite pictures or flashing ads, SMS and fax services, access to your credit cards and personal documents, with the exact time. We hold the world in the palm of our hand, or around our neck, provided there is no strike somewhere. Then, you can call your friend who is at the Kotel/Western Wall and cry out all our distress lives from Anchorage! In Israel, beside a weapon on a belt, there are people who have 3, 5 cell phones at hand. It does not mean we know how to use our cells. But we are not lost… well!
Now, in the desert, when there is a grain of sand, everything gets blurred. And there they were the ancestors! They were journeying ahead with camels, donkeys and sheep, rattling around without real understanding of where the route should lead them to. In this respect, as people were also dying in this environment, it should be interesting to analyze with precision that were listening to Moses. It is quite a pity that no TV nor Arutz “something” could not record daily life, counseling with Moses and prayers at the Tent of Meeting.
The Talmud is rather lively, but still… It is evident that, progressively, the marching in the desert appeared to be dangerous. They were not at Jericho. But the Israelites made two hammered silver trumpets (chatzotzrot kesef) to summon the divisions and convoke the congregation with long blasts. The task was given to Aaron and the priests. Because these trumpets were to be blown in case of a war in order to remind the people that God is able to deliver the nation from their enemies (Num. 10:9). Everything still focuses and is naturally centered on God. He is the One and only Counselor at this point. There are “intermediate contacts or laws that allow to make a ‘chatzitzah – partition’ between clean and unclean and shake a situation” (Hagigah 78b). The trumpets and their resounding name in Hebrew have this function. It does not mean that God will save. It does not mean that the human divisions of the Israelites were strong or powerful, mighty. On the contrary, they did know that only Moses could advise them adequately because he was conversing with God in full obedience and consent, mutual trust.
At times, the Israelites could not accept such a situation. This is why it is inquiring to see how Moses tries to persuade Hovav the Madianite to guide the division across the desert and help them avoiding wrong routes (Bemidbar 10:29). Hovav was a sort of “stranger and citizen.” He answered to Moses that he preferred not to guide him and return to his home. Moses tried a second time to convince him to “give his eyes” in order to find the right direction. He got no response. The scene is fascinating because we still go through the same temptations, tests and frightening experiences, here in this country but also everywhere because the mental configuration is rather similar. Nahmanides had stated that: in the wilderness, Hovav would have given a human hand in a situation that basically defies God actions and certainly not Moses’ non-existing power. Thus, two radicals are used that are essential in Judaism: “tov – good – yetiv – to be good”, which Moses said to Hovav to persuade him to guide them; in return, he would be good, generous toward Hovav.
Hovav’s refusal is more than significant. It is precisely when the ger is a full resident and still claims his own freedom. This can upset or rebuke. Moses is a simple man and has the human right to be feeble. In that sense, leaders are terribly weakened by nature. Hovav reminds Moses that his only guidance comes from God’s mouth and nobody else. When Moses insists “lecha itanu – come with us”, he forgets for a very short while that is definitely essential, that the Israelites are to join the spiritual path accomplished by the Avot – the ancestors and three first patriarchs. As concerned leaving idolatry and the house of Terach, Abraham heard “lech lecha – go, leave – go to yourself and who you are- go, go then to your country”. This is a divine call, a bit “weird” and that he could hardly listen and accept immediately. We have the same problem. We have more: we know this by heart! So leave it to the highbrows and we shall pull in/out, backward/forwards, around/away, underneath/in the air. And there go the strikes in the reading portion: the people protest: they want to eat, weep upon all these delicious products of Egypt. They got quail and manna.
But this was in the desert and the real thing concerns Moses. It is written about him: “Moses was a very humble man more than any other man on earth (anav meod mikol adam asher al-haadamah)” (Num. 12:3). This traces back a parallel with the first human being. “With him, says the Lord, I speak mouth to mouth (peh al-peh) (v.8), without riddles and he beholds the likeness of the Lord.”. Moses could not utter words properly. He was “ani – poor” as God expecting His people prayer (Tehillim 104). He could not boast God or the Israelites or Pharaoh or anyone by his experience with God. How can we expect anything of God if we think we are strong and know anything about Him? Everywhere, leaders will declare that they know; they will not step down because they know. And even when the downfall, collapse is definitely clear, still they are strong and know. Leaders can just be any anonymous person who blows up for some odd reason.
Moses’ humility has become a model that remains unsurpassed in the TaNaKH. He is the model of the Jewish “anawim – poor that totally rely on God”. He was obedient to God. “Obedience” does not mean a lot at the present. True, it sounds “too Christian” and servile. The Latin word “ob-audire” means “to hear, listen in a converging way, together.” This is the most difficult point to reach. It does not consist in “hearing” (sh’ma) and then do what pleases us. It does not mean a sort of constantly frustrating reduction of personal freewill or freedom.
On the contrary, as “the poor in spirit – oi ptokhoi to pneumati” (Matthew 5:3), lauded by Jesus, the way is widely open to who believes that God can work unexpected things. Jewishness has deep feeling toward those they would assume to be “anawim” or “tzadikim – righteous”, beyond any titles. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates, on this Sunday after Pentecost, the Saints who lived as human beings in the total abandonment to God’s Providence and Commandments. There is something very close to the Jewish “Devekut – attachment” in the Chassidic tradition. The Saints were not supermen/women, just ordinary people whose lives radiated God’s Acting Presence and Providence. The Orthodox and the Catholic Churches have recognized (canonized), in the past thirty years, a immense number of Saints. This can be a real questioning between the Jews and the Christians.
The 20th century has been a monstrous time of apostasy and crimes. Some men and women, children did trust in God and joined those who witnessed for God along the centuries. Curiously, Judaism also started to recognize, under specific circumstances, the merits of the “Righteous among the Nations”. Saints and Righteous are not E.T.’s. They sanctify God’s reign everywhere.
COMMENTS
1. Great job Rabbi!!!
This was very well written and thought out. Keep up the good work.
John Tobin, Tennessee, USA, May 31 8:05PM
Posted by Av_A at 8:32 AM 0 comments
We just left Shavuot and the Giving of the Written and Oral Laws to Moses. The journey through the wilderness continues with Shabbat Beha'alotekha (Moses, when you will elevate the lamps) and the weekly reading portion in the Book of Bamidbar/Numbers 8:1-12:16. There starts the second year of the Israelites' sojourn in the desert. The Levites are called to mount = ha'alah the lamps in the Tent of the Meeting. They are told to serve from the age of 25 until they reach 50. Then, they would stay on the side of the acting Levi'im, without performing anything.
Moses proposes to celebrate the feast of Passover, thus for the second time in the wilderness. It happens that some men come with specific requests. Can they join the feast as they had been in contact with corpses and are unclean? At each step, Moses answers them that he knows nothing and needs to get God's advice and response. This is the repeated motto of this weekly reading. Moses goes ahead but constantly needs God's personal answer. In the case of the feast of Passover, the reply is that these men should wait one full month and then celebrate Pesach on Iyar 14, i.e. what became "Pesach sheni = Second Passover" for those who were absent at the feast and could not participate for some valid reason.
This provision is mentioned as a sort of leitmotiv that accompanies the Israelites during their journey in the Sinai. It is said that they should take good care of everybody, every soul and to never reject anyone. Today, this sounds as a typical reminder from the wilderness times. The Sinai is per se a kind of no-man’s land, a wild area full of dangers, with plenty of visible, invisible, day or night enemies or fictions that may exert their power even through fictitious visions.
Moses repeated the Lord’s commandment: “when a stranger who resides with you (“ve-khi yagur ger”) will offer a Passover sacrifice to the Lord, he must offer it in accordance with the rules and rites (mishpato) of the Passover sacrifice. There shall be one law for you, whether stranger or citizen (velager ule’ezrach) of the country”(Bamidbar 9:14). This extends the rather permanent issue we face in this country, much after the time spent in the wilderness and discussed as an actual problem in the previous blog. The time in the Sinai corresponds to a pedagogical tour. It is not a labyrinth because this wonderful space and mind route has but only two possible goals. The Cretan labyrinth combined secrecy and hardship to get free and/or memorize. It was also a mythological way to hold the Minotaur and thus to restrict one’s thought on limited solutions. The Egyptian pyramids were built on the same confusing pattern. Human rulers and leaders love these sorts of quizzes. Genetics and specialists of memory diseases or defects would show how such paths can be controlled with much insight.
The journey through Sinai is not of the same nature. It is not built upon myths and mythological attempts to tie up human beings. We are still in the Sinai in many ways, in particular as regards our desires or expectations, beliefs or faith that we came and will continue to come out of serfdom to freedom. In the wilderness, the Hebrew nation was a displaced living body that advanced in some dizzy darkness. This means they missed explanations, maps, central piloting headquarters and strategy.
Today, just look at the mobiles. We get the last breaking news in whatever alphabet, the weather forecast for the week, a living map showing where we are and where you may go. It also means you know where our friends, buddies are located and where the next conflict will nuke out. And, along with the view of the Tent of the Meeting, if any, your favorite pictures or flashing ads, SMS and fax services, access to your credit cards and personal documents, with the exact time. We hold the world in the palm of our hand, or around our neck, provided there is no strike somewhere. Then, you can call your friend who is at the Kotel/Western Wall and cry out all our distress lives from Anchorage! In Israel, beside a weapon on a belt, there are people who have 3, 5 cell phones at hand. It does not mean we know how to use our cells. But we are not lost… well!
Now, in the desert, when there is a grain of sand, everything gets blurred. And there they were the ancestors! They were journeying ahead with camels, donkeys and sheep, rattling around without real understanding of where the route should lead them to. In this respect, as people were also dying in this environment, it should be interesting to analyze with precision that were listening to Moses. It is quite a pity that no TV nor Arutz “something” could not record daily life, counseling with Moses and prayers at the Tent of Meeting.
The Talmud is rather lively, but still… It is evident that, progressively, the marching in the desert appeared to be dangerous. They were not at Jericho. But the Israelites made two hammered silver trumpets (chatzotzrot kesef) to summon the divisions and convoke the congregation with long blasts. The task was given to Aaron and the priests. Because these trumpets were to be blown in case of a war in order to remind the people that God is able to deliver the nation from their enemies (Num. 10:9). Everything still focuses and is naturally centered on God. He is the One and only Counselor at this point. There are “intermediate contacts or laws that allow to make a ‘chatzitzah – partition’ between clean and unclean and shake a situation” (Hagigah 78b). The trumpets and their resounding name in Hebrew have this function. It does not mean that God will save. It does not mean that the human divisions of the Israelites were strong or powerful, mighty. On the contrary, they did know that only Moses could advise them adequately because he was conversing with God in full obedience and consent, mutual trust.
At times, the Israelites could not accept such a situation. This is why it is inquiring to see how Moses tries to persuade Hovav the Madianite to guide the division across the desert and help them avoiding wrong routes (Bemidbar 10:29). Hovav was a sort of “stranger and citizen.” He answered to Moses that he preferred not to guide him and return to his home. Moses tried a second time to convince him to “give his eyes” in order to find the right direction. He got no response. The scene is fascinating because we still go through the same temptations, tests and frightening experiences, here in this country but also everywhere because the mental configuration is rather similar. Nahmanides had stated that: in the wilderness, Hovav would have given a human hand in a situation that basically defies God actions and certainly not Moses’ non-existing power. Thus, two radicals are used that are essential in Judaism: “tov – good – yetiv – to be good”, which Moses said to Hovav to persuade him to guide them; in return, he would be good, generous toward Hovav.
Hovav’s refusal is more than significant. It is precisely when the ger is a full resident and still claims his own freedom. This can upset or rebuke. Moses is a simple man and has the human right to be feeble. In that sense, leaders are terribly weakened by nature. Hovav reminds Moses that his only guidance comes from God’s mouth and nobody else. When Moses insists “lecha itanu – come with us”, he forgets for a very short while that is definitely essential, that the Israelites are to join the spiritual path accomplished by the Avot – the ancestors and three first patriarchs. As concerned leaving idolatry and the house of Terach, Abraham heard “lech lecha – go, leave – go to yourself and who you are- go, go then to your country”. This is a divine call, a bit “weird” and that he could hardly listen and accept immediately. We have the same problem. We have more: we know this by heart! So leave it to the highbrows and we shall pull in/out, backward/forwards, around/away, underneath/in the air. And there go the strikes in the reading portion: the people protest: they want to eat, weep upon all these delicious products of Egypt. They got quail and manna.
But this was in the desert and the real thing concerns Moses. It is written about him: “Moses was a very humble man more than any other man on earth (anav meod mikol adam asher al-haadamah)” (Num. 12:3). This traces back a parallel with the first human being. “With him, says the Lord, I speak mouth to mouth (peh al-peh) (v.8), without riddles and he beholds the likeness of the Lord.”. Moses could not utter words properly. He was “ani – poor” as God expecting His people prayer (Tehillim 104). He could not boast God or the Israelites or Pharaoh or anyone by his experience with God. How can we expect anything of God if we think we are strong and know anything about Him? Everywhere, leaders will declare that they know; they will not step down because they know. And even when the downfall, collapse is definitely clear, still they are strong and know. Leaders can just be any anonymous person who blows up for some odd reason.
Moses’ humility has become a model that remains unsurpassed in the TaNaKH. He is the model of the Jewish “anawim – poor that totally rely on God”. He was obedient to God. “Obedience” does not mean a lot at the present. True, it sounds “too Christian” and servile. The Latin word “ob-audire” means “to hear, listen in a converging way, together.” This is the most difficult point to reach. It does not consist in “hearing” (sh’ma) and then do what pleases us. It does not mean a sort of constantly frustrating reduction of personal freewill or freedom.
On the contrary, as “the poor in spirit – oi ptokhoi to pneumati” (Matthew 5:3), lauded by Jesus, the way is widely open to who believes that God can work unexpected things. Jewishness has deep feeling toward those they would assume to be “anawim” or “tzadikim – righteous”, beyond any titles. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates, on this Sunday after Pentecost, the Saints who lived as human beings in the total abandonment to God’s Providence and Commandments. There is something very close to the Jewish “Devekut – attachment” in the Chassidic tradition. The Saints were not supermen/women, just ordinary people whose lives radiated God’s Acting Presence and Providence. The Orthodox and the Catholic Churches have recognized (canonized), in the past thirty years, a immense number of Saints. This can be a real questioning between the Jews and the Christians.
The 20th century has been a monstrous time of apostasy and crimes. Some men and women, children did trust in God and joined those who witnessed for God along the centuries. Curiously, Judaism also started to recognize, under specific circumstances, the merits of the “Righteous among the Nations”. Saints and Righteous are not E.T.’s. They sanctify God’s reign everywhere.
COMMENTS
1. Great job Rabbi!!!
This was very well written and thought out. Keep up the good work.
John Tobin, Tennessee, USA, May 31 8:05PM
Posted by Av_A at 8:32 AM 0 comments
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