Introduction
\nIn theory, rabbis don\u2019t give \u2018sermons\u2019!
\nThough, truth to tell, we have been influenced by the forms and terms of the wider society\u2014including some of the worst aspects: A late-arriving congregant asks another who is just departing: \u2018Has the rabbi finished his sermon?\u2019 \u2018Yes,\u2019 comes the answer, \u2018but he is still talking!\u2019
\nInstead of a sermon, traditionally the rabbi, or indeed any lay member of the congregation, might give a derashah, a commentary on the particular passage from the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, that was being read on Shabbat morning that week in the synagogue. (Actually the Hebrew text is not \u2018read\u2019 but chanted according to a traditional set of melodies whose musical divisions also form a kind of commentary on the text.) Darash means to seek out, to search out, to delve into the many potential meanings within the biblical text itself, often aided by commentaries composed by rabbinic scholars over the past two thousand years.
\nThe word \u2018Torah\u2019, from a root word \u2018yarah\u2019, meaning to shoot arrows at a target, is best translated as \u2018teaching\u2019, containing as it does both the narrative parts of the Bible and the legal aspects, everything that points the way towards a spiritual life. Though initially the term referred to the Five Books of Moses alone, understood traditionally as the direct revelation of God to Israel through Moses, Torah developed over time to include the rest of the Bible and indeed all the laws, teachings, opinions and personal examples derived from it. The derashah allows the rabbi to make his or her own contribution to the accumulated wisdom derived from the Torah.
\nThe Five Books are divided into 54 units or parashiot so that the entire collection is covered in the course of a year\u2014actually a leap year (one in which an extra month is added because the Jewish year is about one week shorter than the calendar year and has to catch up every few years). In non-leap years, of 50 weeks, some of the parashiot are joined together. Texts from Genesis are read in the autumn; from Exodus from the beginning of the year till about March; from Leviticus through to May; from Numbers till July, and from Deuteronomy over the summer months and into the autumn. The entire cycle of readings is completed in the autumn after the Jewish New Year at a festival called Simchat Torah, the rejoicing in the Torah, when we read the end of the Book of Deuteronomy and immediately begin again with Genesis. The cycle never ends, and with it the responsibility of rabbi and congregation together to seek out, to search for, the message embedded in the text by God with its lessons relevant for today.
\nFollowing the passage from the Torah in the synagogue there is a reading from the second division of the Hebrew Bible, the \u2018prophets\u2019, nevi\u2019im. This prophetic reading is called the Haftarah, meaning conclusion. The passage for the week was chosen by the rabbis to echo some aspect of the Torah reading, but at various times of the year it is used instead to introduce or reflect upon the current Jewish festival. In addition, certain biblical books, the five megillot, scrolls, are read in conjunction with five key festivals and one fast during the course of the year: Esther at Purim in early spring; the Song of Songs at Pesach, Passover; Ruth at Shavuot, Pentecost; Lamentations on Tisha b\u2019Av, the fast day during the summer commemorating the destruction of Solomon\u2019s Temple by the Babylonians; Ecclesiastes during the autumn harvest festival of Sukkot. So all of these texts may be drawn upon for comment.
\nThe various chapters in this book were not delivered in the conventional location of a synagogue on Shabbat morning. Instead, like those in From Autumn to Summer, they are a second collection of broadcasts given on German radio over a number of years during a Friday evening programme welcoming the Shabbat. Though ostensibly aimed at Jewish listeners, their real audience was a far broader one of people who were interested in matters Jewish. So the comments had to reflect some aspect of the Torah reading but also address a far wider community, as part of a broader commitment to interfaith dialogue. The 52 chapters in the book do not follow completely the cycle of the year, but may offer something for a personal weekly dip into the Bible. Some readings relating to specific festivals are to be found towards the end of the book.
\nWhether called a derashah or a sermon, it is a difficult art\u2014to compress into a limited time enough information to explain the context within the Bible itself, and then translate it or open it up to address the expectations and needs of the congregation. Few rabbis can be sure that they have been faithful both to the Torah text itself and the listening congregation even once, let alone week after week. Perhaps the best one can hope for is the kind of positive response I experienced once at a civic service in a small synagogue in south London. At the end, the visiting non-Jewish mayor, said: \u2018That wasn\u2019t a sermon. You spoke to us!\u2019
\n1
\nThe Call to Abraham
\nGenesis 12
\nWe begin the cycle of stories about Abraham, the founding figure of biblical faith. He is a most unlikely hero for such an extraordinary achievement. He is 75 years old. Nothing in the previous references to him in the Bible has suggested that he will be a religious pioneer. Indeed, so little information is given that the rabbis are forced to fill in his earlier life with stories that explain how he came to the belief in the one God.
\nThis biblical silence encourages us to enquire about beginnings in general. For example, why does Abraham\u2019s story begin here in Genesis 12? Or rather, what are we to make of the few tantalizing glimpses of his earlier life in the chapter before?
\nThere is already something of a puzzle about the opening verses of our chapter. God speaks to Abram, as he is then known\u2014only later will his name be changed to Abraham. God invites him to depart from his land, his family and his father\u2019s house to go to a land that God will show him. God\u2019s two words in Hebrew, lekh l\u2019kha, are actually an invitation to go, not a command as many translations suggest. The two words mean \u2018go to yourself\u2019, \u2018go for yourself\u2019, or \u2018go for your own sake\u2019. This suggests that Abraham is free to accept this task or not. For God\u2019s plans for humanity to have any meaning Abraham has to be a free agent. He must willingly choose to place his life and future in the hands of this God who calls to him.
\nNothing is said about how Abraham considered the matter and came to the decision to go. Instead, we are simply told that Abraham went and took his extensive household with him. These include the servants he had acquired during his stay in a place called Haran. This is an important city on the main route from Abraham\u2019s birthplace, Ur, on the Euphrates river, to Aleppo. But at this point something becomes a little unclear in the biblical story.
\nTo understand the problem we have to go back to the previous chapter, Genesis 11. It introduces Abraham\u2019s family and the cast list of people we will need to know something about as the story unfolds. Genesis 11 consists of a genealogy extending over ten generations from Shem, the son of Noah, down to Terach, the father of Abraham. We are told that Terach has three sons, Abraham, the oldest, Nahor and Haran. Haran dies, and his son Lot becomes Abraham\u2019s ward. He will accompany Abraham on his journey and cause him considerable trouble in the future.
\nWe learn that both Abraham and Nahor marry. Nahor has children who will also feature in later stories about Abraham\u2019s family. But Abraham\u2019s wife Sarah, we learn, is barren and cannot have children. So much for the background.
\nBut next we learn that it is actually Terach, Abraham\u2019s father, who originally set out on a journey away from his homeland, from the city of Ur. Terach\u2019s destination is the Land of Canaan, the unnamed land that Abraham is invited by God to visit. Under the name, the land of Israel, it will forever be associated with Abraham and his descendants. Under Terach\u2019s leadership the family only get as far as the city of Haran, and there it seems they become settled and remain. So here is the problem. Terach has already set out from the family homeland for the land of Canaan. So what is the meaning of God\u2019s invitation to Abraham to leave his homeland, if he has already long since done so accompanying his father? In fact, whose initiative is the whole journey, Terach\u2019s or Abraham\u2019s? Was Terach also obeying a word from God? Was Abraham merely following a path established by his father?
\nOne thing this apparent contradiction illustrates is the difficulty of pinning down where exactly something begins. Events always have a previous history. What factors might have led to the present moment? A chance encounter, a personal experience, an entire lifetime spent in a certain way, may all turn out to be the preparation for something entirely new and unexpected. Something out of the past, perhaps long forgotten, has had its quiet effect that only now bears fruit. Like the ripples that spread out when a stone is thrown into water, they will touch many other places and have effects that could never have been anticipated.
\nOur lives are part of a web of endlessly developing results of events from our past, only some of which we may remember. We are held in a matrix of cause and effect, of actions and consequences, of infinite complexity. Perhaps we catch an occasional glimpse of how things came about in a particular case. Mostly we simply try to make sense of what is happening to us now, at this precious moment.
\nWhat was it that made Abraham particularly open to the call he received from God? Was it something about the city of Haran that disturbed him? The rabbis assumed it was a place of many gods and many idols that Abraham became unable to tolerate. They tell a story about how he came to worship the one God.
\nAs a child, Abraham began to worship the stars, but when he saw the moon he worshipped that instead. However, when the powerful sun arose the following morning, he became convinced that here indeed was the true God. But then the sun was hidden by a cloud, and he realized that behind all these natural phenomena was a greater power that controlled them. In this way, be came to discover the one God. Once he had made this discovery, he found it difficult to remain in a place of idol worship. So this inner journey explains his need to break with the past and make the outer journey to a new land.
\nBut perhaps there were other factors that made Abraham ready for such a move. Maybe we have to look more closely at the information given us in the previous chapter. The death of his uncle brought new responsibilities as his nephew Lot entered his immediate family. Abraham became suddenly the possessor of two households, not one. Later in Genesis, we will learn that there is friction between the two families so that they have to separate and each has to settle in a different territory. Perhaps this was a factor that opened Abraham to new possibilities. The need for additional pasturage for his cattle helped break the bonds that kept him tied to his father in Haran. When the call came from God he was more than ready to hear it and to move.
\nBut we know of one other factor that must have weighed heavily upon him\u2014the barrenness of his wife Sarah. A man with no children in that biblical world was a man with no future. Though it is the wife who is assumed to be unfruitful, it was nevertheless a poor reflection on the man who was incapable of producing children. It would have been a source of embarrassment and shame in his immediate society.
\nWe will learn that Sarah is beautiful. Perhaps Abraham is torn between his love for her and the need to find another wife, if his wish to procreate is to be fulfilled. Maybe his departure was not intended as a journey of discovery but rather an escape from an intolerable domestic situation.
\nAll the above reasons suggest some factors that might have predisposed Abraham to make such an extraordinary move at an advanced age. But none of them quite explain the power of his call or the willingness with which he responded. Feeling ill at ease in an alien culture, struggling to support a growing family, or torn by a painful domestic situation\u2014all of these have led throughout history to population migrations. But few have led to a vision that has transformed humanity. Abraham may have thought the call was an invitation to go for himself alone, for his own benefit\u2014but it became a journey not simply for himself but for us all.
\n2
\nEtiquette and Hospitality
\nGenesis 18\u201322
\nThis passage from the Torah begins with Chapters 18 and 19 of Genesis and provides us with a mystery and some lessons in etiquette. First the mystery! We are told at the beginning of the chapter that God appears to Abraham while he is sitting in his tent during the hot time of the day. Yet, it is not God that Abraham sees but instead three men. In the conversation that follows, it is not certain whether Abraham is speaking to all three of the men, or just one of them, or simply to God. Indeed, does Abraham know that he is speaking to God at all? Who are these three mysterious men, or what are they? Is the whole episode simply a figment of Abraham\u2019s imagination? After all it is the hottest part of the day. Perhaps they are a mirage, or he is dreaming. Or are they some kind of supernatural beings, sent as messengers by God?
\nThe more we try to understand the passage, and the chapter that follows, the more our confusion grows. For it seems that one of the \u2018men\u2019 either stays with Abraham or disappears, because in the next chapter there are only two of them. Moreover, in the next chapter, they are no longer referred to as \u2018men\u2019 but as \u2018angels\u2019. Now they are visiting Abraham\u2019s nephew Lot and will rescue him when the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed. From the sequence of chapters, they would definitely appear to be two of the original three. But if so, why are they called something different in the chapter about Abraham than they are called in the chapter about Lot?
\nFirst, we need to clear up a problem in the Hebrew language. The word translated as \u2018angel\u2019 is mal\u2019akh, which actually means \u2018messenger\u2019, someone fulfilling a particular task. When the word was translated for the Greek version of the Bible they chose the Greek word for messenger, angelos, from which comes our word \u2018angel\u2019. It is only later traditions that turned these messengers into the supernatural angels that we think of today with wings and feathers.
\nSo on one level of the story, it is three men who encounter Abraham bringing him a message from God. Two of them will then continue their journey to Sodom and Gomorrah to rescue Lot.
\nThe rabbis were a bit critical about Lot, and in this they were following the biblical evaluation of him. His wealth is all derived from Abraham, but that very wealth leads to the two men quarrelling and separating. Lot, it seems, was a bit too much concerned with his financial situation, which made him forget certain other values about family loyalty and respect. This leads to the rabbinic explanation of why the mysterious visitors are sometimes called men and sometimes angels. Although Abraham only saw men approaching him, strangers, probably idol worshippers, he was such a generous host that he went out into the heat of the day to greet them and showed them great hospitality. But Lot, on the other hand, was so mean that if he had only seen two men coming he would have ignored them. However, because they appeared to him looking like angels, supernatural beings, he was willing to greet them and look after them!
\nRabbinic tradition develops the story a bit further and identifies the angels. They pointed out that this story occurs just after Abraham has circumcised himself and his first son Ishmael. Since this was a major operation, no wonder Abraham was lying down in his tent recovering from the trauma. So the first messenger was Raphael, the angel appointed to look after the process of healing. He was there to help Abraham recover. The second was the angel Michael, whose task was to give Abraham\u2019s wife Sarah the good news that she would have a child. The third was Gabriel, whose task was to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
\nThe rabbis derived a number of important lessons from these stories about how we should behave. From Abraham\u2019s actions, they taught the importance of hospitality, for Abraham went out of his way to look for, welcome and feed his guests. In the same way we should also be generous hosts.
\nFrom God\u2019s behaviour, we learn the mitzvah, the commandment, of bikkur holim, visiting the sick. We too should imitate the actions of God and visit those who are ill and support and comfort them.
\nThe rabbis also noticed a difference between the behaviour of the visitors in the two chapters. When Abraham offered them food they ate it at once. When Lot offered them hospitality at first they refused and only accepted when he insisted. From this, they derived the responsibility of guests. Abraham was clearly a rich man and could afford to feed them, so they did not refuse. But it was not clear whether Lot was wealthy and could afford to be so generous, so they refused hospitality at first so as not to embarrass him. Only when he insisted did they agree.
\nIf these are the lessons in etiquette to be derived from the chapter we are left with the mystery of these visitors and how to understand them. One approach is to see them as normal human beings who happen to be messengers for someone else even if they are unaware of it themselves. This means that any encounter with another person contains a message for us, some kind of spiritual lesson, for everyone is made in the image of God. If we behave like Lot, we will never learn this, or recognize the message when it comes to us, because we will always be looking for the extraordinary, for the supernatural, for angels with wings and feathers. But if we are like Abraham, then we will treat each person we meet as a potential guest and will listen out for the special message they have for us, the message that only we can hear, the message that is meant for us alone.
\n3
\nMourning for Sarah
\nGenesis 23
\nThis reading from the Book of Genesis presents us with one of the recurrent puzzles about why certain passages were chosen to be included in the Hebrew Bible. Genesis Chapter 23 tells of the death of Abraham\u2019s wife Sarah and the arrangements he made to purchase a burial place for her. The previous chapter is the powerful story of God\u2019s call to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, one of the most difficult and challenging stories in the whole of the Bible. From the major religious questions this raises about God we are suddenly returned to a very everyday practical problem. So why is such a chapter included?
\nLet us look at it in detail. The chapter itself is a fascinating account of how negotiations were conducted in the Ancient Near East. Abraham and the sons of Het behave with great formality and politeness, but under the surface we can see them working towards an agreement that is acceptable to all parties.
\nAbraham points out that he is only a resident alien among them. This means that he has only limited legal rights and must rely on their good will if he is to be allowed to purchase land in which to bury his dead. The men of Het, being equally polite, point out that Abraham is an important and celebrated person, indeed a prince of God! His legal status does not matter and it would be an honour to them to give him any piece of land that he desired.
\nThe German Jewish Bible commentator of the last century, Benno Jacob, points out that nowhere in the negotiations do they talk of buying and selling. It would be inappropriate for great leaders of their society to use the crude language of commerce. Rather they talk about exchanging gifts with one another\u2014though it is clear that such gifts have to be of equivalent value!
\nAbraham asks for the cave at the end of the field of a man called Ephron. Since Ephron is present, and permission has now been given for such a transaction, he is equally generous in offering it to Abraham as a gift. However, while Abraham only asked for the cave, Ephron includes the entire field in the sale as well. Naturally, this adds to the purchase price and probably disposes of a piece of unproductive land at the same time. When the price is finally named, Ephron presents it once again in a gentlemanly style: \u2018A land worth 40 shekels, what is that between you and me?\u2019 The price of 40 shekels, according to biblical standards, is exorbitant. Nevertheless, Abraham pays without a murmur and the transaction is formally witnessed and completed. Thus the cave of Machpelah, in Hebron, will become the burial place of Abraham and Sarah, and their family after them.
\nSo what is the point of the story with all of its details? Perhaps it was seen as important since it was the one part of the land of Israel actually purchased by the first patriarch, Abraham. It symbolizes the rootedness of his descendants in the land. Perhaps for the biblical author such domestic incidents in the lives of the patriarchs were also of importance. Here Abraham acted in a proper fashion and the reader could note how well respected he was in the eyes of his non-Israelite neighbours. But we might also see another dimension in this simple event.
\nTo explain this dimension I have to tell the story of a very special man called Eugene Heimler. Born in Hungary, he was a survivor of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. After the war, he became a psychiatric social worker in Britain and worked particularly with other survivors of Concentration Camps and their families.
\nHe once experienced a brief psychotic episode himself, when his whole world suddenly fell apart. This came as a particular shock, because he had thought that years of personal analysis and therapy had helped him overcome the effects of his experiences in Auschwitz. Nothing seemed to help. Then one day a friend asked him if he had undertaken a process of ritual mourning for the members of his family, who had been murdered in the concentration camps. When Heimler thought about it, he realized that he had not done so. As he explained, many survivors kept up the hope for years after the war that missing loved ones would reappear, long after they knew that this was impossible.
\nSo Heimler decided to go through the formal Jewish mourning procedures, which include reciting the memorial prayer, the Kaddish, daily for a full year. In this way, he, too, could finally say goodbye to those he had lost and \u2018bury\u2019 his own dead. Shortly after undertaking this practice the psychotic episode ceased. So he began to explore with his clients the extent to which they too had unfinished business to work through because of some great loss in their life that they had never really come to terms with.
\nThe story of Abraham mourning for his wife and then making the formal arrangements for her burial describes the normal way in which we face such an experience of loss. Tragically, like survivors of the Shoah, or indeed the surviving families of any major natural catastrophe or war, some people may never learn the fate of their loved ones who were killed. As long as the hope is there that the missing person may still one day return, this possibility can sustain them. But at the same time it may prevent them accepting the reality of their loss. Eugene Heimler was able to understand the great damage this had done to his own emotional state. For many the wounds of some such terrible experience, and the unreality of the sudden disappearance of someone so close to them, may have effects long into the future.
\nThe mourning traditions of Judaism aid the process of facing the death of a loved one. The different stages support the mourner in the healing process from the time of the initial shock and pain of loss through the period of recovery and a gradual return to life. Unlike so many who have lost those they love through natural disasters or human violence, at least Abraham was able, in both a physical and emotional sense, to bury his dead, and begin to rebuild his life.
\n4
\nThe Servant\u2019s Test
\nGenesis 24
\nThis reading from the Torah is rather surprising. All it contains are a couple of domestic stories from the end of Abraham\u2019s life. They are far removed from the drama of God\u2019s call to Abraham in Chapter 22 to sacrifice his son, which is so often singled out as a central biblical story. In Genesis 23, we learn of the death of Abraham\u2019s wife Sarah and the negotiations he undertook to find a burial plot for her and his family. In Chapter 24, he sends a servant back to the land of his birth to find a wife for his son Isaac. But these domestic events, personally important to Abraham but not obviously of wider significance, could have been described in a couple of sentences. So why the need to go into such great detail?
\nBeneath the surface we can see something of Abraham\u2019s insecurities as an immigrant in the land of Canaan. To acquire a burial place requires not only the approval of the owner of the cave that he needs, but also of the leading citizens of the society. The negotiation is conducted with great civility on both sides, with expressions of respect and even flattery. But Abraham\u2019s success depends on his ability to pay whatever price they impose on him. Some of the prejudice against immigrants tends to disappear or at least be ignored, if they can more than pay their way. Abraham is forced to buy not only the cave he needs but also the surrounding field, and probably even then at an exorbitant price. The deal is agreed and Abraham buries his wife. One day, he himself will be buried there by his two sons, Isaac and Ishmael.
\nBut the story in the following chapter reminds us of other aspects of immigrant life. However much Abraham has established himself in the land, in one respect he still feels himself to be an outsider. Like so many people who come from a traditional society, when he looks for a wife for his son, he wants to bring over from his homeland someone from his own family and people and tradition. In the biblical world, marriages were arranged by the family, because they concerned more than just the two people. A marriage was also a merger of two families, two sets of property and complex inheritance rights and issues. But beyond these practical and material aspects, all families are concerned to ensure the happiness of their children. So in a traditional society one checks out the family background of the proposed spouse: the respect it has in its society, the stability it has displayed over the generations, the absence of any disturbing behaviour, its piety, and in Jewish society especially, the religious learning and study of its members. It is assumed that these qualities have been passed on to the prospective bride or groom, and so the family can feel assured about the marriage. Today is very different, because the couple alone usually make all those decisions about the suitability of their partner. If the family ask questions, it is likely to be about the groom\u2019s financial prospects. Traditional societies look to the past for guidance and reassurance; modern societies look to the future.
\nBut Abraham\u2019s situation is complicated. He has left this task to find an appropriate daughter-in-law very late. From the opening of the chapter we learn that Abraham was already very old, and perhaps he was now simply unable to make the journey to his homeland himself. Instead he entrusts the mission to his trusted servant, who has control over his household. The servant is never named in the chapter, but rabbinic tradition identifies him as Eliezer. The basis of this seems to be the earlier reference to a certain Eliezer of Damascus (Gen. 15:2), who would become Abraham\u2019s heir, if he was without a son. If the servant is this same Eliezer, it becomes clear why Abraham asks him to make a solemn oath to God at the start of his mission to make sure he does his duty. It would also explain the servant\u2019s immediate response\u2014what happens if the girl refuses to accompany me back here, should I take Isaac there? Abraham is very quick to forbid him to take Isaac back to his homeland. No reason is ever given. Perhaps Abraham is worried that Isaac is not strong enough to resist the temptation to stay in the family land rather than return to Canaan. But perhaps he is also worried that a convenient accident might befall his son on the way, as would happen to Joseph in a later generation. So he tells the servant that if the girl refuses to come, then the servant is released from his vow. If the servant is indeed Eliezer, and likely to inherit, then he is faced with a huge temptation. All he has to do is make it impossible to find the right girl or prevent her accompanying him, and he will increase his chances of inheriting.
\nDoes the servant fall into this trap? He travels to the land, leading a huge camel train bearing evidence of the wealth of his master. He stops beside the well, which is the centre of community life. But instead of enquiring about the family of his master and meeting with potential brides, he makes a wager with God. If the first girl he asks for water offers to give water to his camels as well, she is the right one, and God is indeed looking out for Abraham his master.
\nAt first glance, this seems like a reasonable bargain to strike with God. It would show the hospitable nature of the girl, an important virtue in the ancient Near East. But there is a catch that was pointed out by a great Bible teacher, Nechama Leibowitz. She asked the simple question: How much does a thirsty camel drink? Of course, it depends on what kind of camel and doubtless many other factors. But it is something like 120 litres. And the servant has ten camels. We usually picture Rebecca as a pretty little girl with a water jar on her shoulder. Happily she pours a little water into a trough. But this must have been a major, back-breaking undertaking, going back and forth to the well.
\nThe Bible records that the servant simply stood and stared at her, as she managed to achieve it. Any ideas he might have had to avoid finding a wife for Isaac have now been destroyed. He gives her a golden ring and places two expensive bracelets on her wrists, but only then asks whose daughter she is. When he learns that she is indeed from Abraham\u2019s family, he bows to the ground to Abraham\u2019s God.
\nThere then follows the negotiation with the family to let the girl undertake the journey to marry Isaac. The servant uses all his persuasive powers, though he has to be careful how he explains the fact that he picked Rebecca before knowing who she was. So he tells the story of the well and God\u2019s intervention, but changes the sequence slightly. In his version, he asked who her family was before giving her the gifts! He is successful, and with the family\u2019s agreement, Rebecca gives her consent to go with him.
\nThis chapter, with its 67 verses, is the longest in the Book of Genesis. So why is so much space devoted to this story? True, it describes the hand of God directing the destiny of Abraham and his future family. It is also a fascinating tale of negotiation and diplomacy. But it also shows that the Hebrew Bible is not just about politics and the great affairs of nations. It is concerned with the practical realities of daily life. How we handle these basic domestic responsibilities within our family is a reflection of our core values and hopes. And, as in the case of Abraham, they give us qualities and credentials for acting with responsibility and compassion in the wider world.
\n5
\nA Failure of Communication
\nGenesis 25:19\u201328:9
\nAs we read the biblical stories in the Book of Genesis, it is clear that it is men who play the dominant role. Simply naming Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph conjures up the main stories and events. Yet, the women are clearly there behind the scenes. And sometimes they even come to the forefront. It is Sarah who insists that Abraham sends away his son Ishmael and Ishmael\u2019s mother Hagar. Rachel and Leah, in competition with one another for the love of Jacob, will produce the twelve sons who will become the twelve tribes. It is as if the women in these stories concern themselves with domestic issues, especially about who belongs to the family and who will inherit. Though this seems to be a minor role, in the Bible, it is significant. An old joke puts these issues in perspective. A woman explains to her friend how she and her husband divide up their responsibilities: \u2018He deals with the large matters, and I deal with the small ones. So he sorts out international politics, world peace and the problems of the environment, and I decide where we live, how we earn our money, what careers our children should have!\u2019
\nIn one of the biblical stories, the domestic concerns of a woman have a far wider significance. It is the story that we read in the section of Genesis called \u2018Toledot\u2019, which means \u2018the history of the generations\u2019 (Gen. 25:19\u201328:9).
\nThe story begins by telling how Rebecca, the wife of Isaac, became pregnant with twins. This was an unusual experience, and since the twins always seemed to be moving around in her womb as if fighting, she went to consult God. The Bible does not explain how she did this. Did she go to some holy place to consult an oracle, or a priest or a prophet? That is certainly how the rabbinic tradition understood it. The rabbis suggested that she might even have consulted Abraham who would still have been alive at this time. But while the text leaves that possibility open, the obvious sense is that she herself has direct contact with God, and God gives her a direct reply. But the rabbinic tradition is again quick to suggest that the answer came through a messenger, indirectly.
\nWhy this need on the part of the rabbis to find an intermediary? It does seem to be part of a rabbinic discomfort with the idea that God might have spoken directly to a woman. The Bible itself will name other women as prophetesses, notably Miriam the sister of Moses, Deborah and Huldah. But the culture of the early rabbinic period had a different view of such things. Religious authority was in the hands of men. It is only in the past few centuries, and especially the final decades of the twentieth century, that this has been challenged.
\nWhat is it that Rebecca learns from God? Just as the twins are struggling with one another inside her, so they will continue to struggle after their birth. Indeed, the older will come to serve the younger. What seems to be at stake here is who will be the one to inherit the particular religious tradition of Abraham. Just as Isaac was chosen and his brother Ishmael was not, so Jacob and Esau will compete for the blessing that was given by God to their grandfather Abraham.
\nThe twins are born. The first to emerge is Esau. But when his twin, Jacob, emerges, he is holding onto this brother\u2019s heel, as if trying to get out first. This will give him his name, Ya\u2019akov, from the word for heel, \u2018ekev\u2019.
\nWe learn that Isaac loves Esau, but that Rebecca loves Jacob, so the seeds of conflict are already being sown in their childhood. Since Rebecca has learnt from God that the older will serve the younger, perhaps she tells Jacob about his destiny and awakens his own ambition. That would explain the first negotiation between the brothers, perhaps when they are still children. When Esau returns hungry from the fields, he asks Jacob for some of the food that he is cooking. Jacob sells it to him, but in exchange for Esau\u2019s rights as the firstborn child. It is as if Jacob is trying to live out the prophecy told to his mother.
\nBut it is later that Rebecca herself takes a direct hand in the story. She hears Isaac tell Esau that he wishes to bless him before he dies. This blessing would be the equivalent to a final testament in which everything is handed on to Esau. Rebecca is so convinced of the prophecy that she goes to extreme lengths, even deceiving her blind husband, so that Jacob will gain the blessing instead of Esau. Jacob disguises himself, pretends to be Esau, betraying his father and brother in a shocking way. But the blessing that he steals, the one that Esau should have had, seems to be different from the one that Abraham would have handed down. It is for good harvests and success and power in the world. It is the kind of blessing that any father might wish for his firstborn son. Because of this deception and Esau\u2019s hatred for him, Jacob is forced to leave home. But on his departure, his father gives him another blessing (Gen. 28:3\u20134). This time Isaac speaks explicitly about the blessing that he had received from Abraham, the special blessing about becoming a large nation and inheriting the land.
\nIt will take Jacob 20 years of exile and suffering, before he can finally return home to claim that blessing. On the journey back, he sends a gift to his brother, some of the vast herds and flocks that he has acquired during his time away. It is as if he is repaying Esau for the material blessing that he had stolen. Jacob tries to correct the wrong that he had done in the past to his brother. Esau refuses to accept Jacob\u2019s gift, which is referred to with the Hebrew word \u2018minchah\u2019, and it is only when Jacob explicitly calls it a b\u2019rachah, blessing (Gen. 33:10) (a distinction that is sometimes lost in the translation!) that Esau accepts it.
\nAs for Rebecca who had sacrificed so much for the sake of Jacob and the prophecy, she died before Jacob returned. She never saw again the son whom she loved and for whom she risked so much.
\nWas Rebecca wrong to act in the way that she did? She had had the experience of a direct word from God with the prophecy about her two sons. So how could she stand by and see her husband make what she thought was a serious mistake, to give God\u2019s blessing to the wrong son?
\nIt is not clear whether she had told her husband about the prophecy. Even if she did, she seems to have assumed that Isaac chose to ignore it. Perhaps in his time as well, women had a very limited say in religious matters. Or maybe it was simply the nature of that family that men made decisions by themselves without consulting their wives or sharing responsibility with them for such important matters. It was only by chance that Rebecca heard Isaac speaking to Esau, the event that started the whole tragic history of deception, conflict and exile.
\nCould the story have turned out differently? If Rebecca had asked Isaac what blessing he was going to give Esau, she might have learned that there was no problem. Isaac intended to give his older son the blessing that he needed to succeed in life. But he was saving Abraham\u2019s blessing for Jacob. Jacob would never have had to go into exile, and the family could have spent the next 20 years together.
\nThere are lessons here about communication, and about sharing responsibility within a family: who makes the large decisions and who the small. There is also a serious challenge posed to any society or culture that ignores the role and spiritual importance of women. These chapters are also about power and the lengths to which people will go when power over their own lives is denied them. The roots of conflict begin in the family, but their consequences can reach around the globe.
\n6
\n\u2018Surely God is in this Place\u2019
\nGenesis 28:10\u201322
\nThis reading from the Torah contains one of the most famous images in the Hebrew Bible. The young man called Jacob is destined to become the father of twelve sons, the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel. But all of that is in the future. Now he is in disgrace. He has deceived his father Isaac and stolen the blessing that should have gone to his twin brother Esau. He has to leave home and journey to a distant land. On the first night of his journey, he lies down to sleep in a place he does not know. But when he sleeps, he dreams of a ladder rising up to heaven. Angels ascend and descend the ladder, and standing over it is God. God promises him that there will be a great future for him and his descendants and that God will protect him on his way. Jacob wakes up with a start and exclaims: \u2018Surely God is in this place and I did not know it!\u2019
\nThese words of Jacob have surely been repeated in thousands of sermons. For they correspond to a familiar human experience. We encounter a place where something of enormous importance happens to us, perhaps something that radically changes the course of our life. Before it happens we may have paid no attention whatsoever to our surroundings. But afterwards we realize that the place itself must have contributed in some indefinable way to our experience. We will remember that place and maybe return there, for it has become a special part of our life.
\nThere are places that attract the attention of people. Sometimes the reasons are disturbing. Hundreds of thousands of people each year make the journey to Auschwitz concentration camp, to mourn those who died there, or to try to understand how so much horror and destruction could happen. The burial places of notorious people can also become places of pilgrimage for their loyal followers, or for curious tourists.
\nBut there are places that have acquired a reputation as being special in a spiritual way. Sometimes we call them holy and build a shrine or a temple there. Sometimes they are famous because of a miracle that happened there, and people come to be healed in body or in spirit.
\nBut are such places holy because of their very nature, or because of the emotions and hopes that have been brought to them by successive generations of visitors? If anyone but Jacob had come to the same place, would he or she have had a similar experience of the presence of God? If Jacob had not been in such an emotional state and so vulnerable, would he have had such a dream? Is it the place that is holy or is it the people who bring holiness to a place?
\nOne year, I encountered two places that in very different ways seem to me to have a kind of holiness. I had the privilege of conducting High Holyday services in Berlin. Some of the time I served in Oranienburger Strasse, in the beautiful Synagogue that has been partly restored and is used by a new Jewish congregation. One day, I walked around the area near the Hackescher Markt and found a small alley leading off Rosenthaler Strasse. It had still been untouched despite all the rebuilding and beautifying that is going on all around it. Not knowing what I might find, I wandered down the alley and passed a door. The notice on it indicated that it was related to the Jewish Museum, so I went in. It was the \u2018Workshop for the Blind\u2019 (Blindenwerkstatt).
\nIt consisted of three small rooms. During the war, the owner Otto Weidt had employed Jewish and non-Jewish blind and deaf people producing brooms and brushes. By selling them to the military, the business was classified as \u2018important for the war effort\u2019. In order to protect his Jewish workers, he maintained that they were indispensable. He bribed the Gestapo, the employment agencies and informers. He arranged false papers for those most under threat. He hid four members of a Jewish family in a room behind the workshop. He even went to Auschwitz in order to get one of his workers released from there. He is counted among the \u2018Righteous Among the Nations\u2019 at Yad Vashem in Israel.
\nThe rooms that make up the Museum contain a few simple documents and photos of life in the workshop. It is preserved more or less as it was during the war.
\nI was very moved to be there. The generosity of spirit, the quiet heroism, the exceptional activity of Otto Weidt created this tiny safe haven in the midst of hatred, fear and destruction. No miracle happened here, no supernatural event, no act of revelation. But by any definition, this was and is a holy place because of what was achieved there. And if any place deserves to be a place of pilgrimage, this should be one because of what it can teach us of human courage, dignity and integrity.
\nI know personally one other \u2018holy place\u2019 in Germany but of a very different kind. Sadly I had to say goodbye to it after 35 years. I was a student rabbi at Leo Baeck College when I first visited the Hedwig Dransfeld Haus (HDH) in a town called Bendorf, nine kilometres from Koblenz. It was a conference centre and a kurort, a spa, for mothers, established by Catholic women. After the war, the director was an extraordinary woman, Anneliese Debray, who had opened it up to new directions. She was committed to all kinds of reconciliation work. She organized conferences where German families could spend time together with French and Polish families in an attempt to build a new kind of relationship despite the War. In the same way, she began to work for reconciliation between Germans and Jews. It was in that context that I first visited the HDH. Out of that visit came an annual Jewish-Christian Bible Week, unique in its mixture of textual study and personal encounter. Even more challenging was the Jewish-Christian-Muslim Student Conference that ran there for 30 years. This has been an extraordinary pioneering activity that has influenced generations of theology students, rabbis, social workers and teachers from Europe, America and the Middle East. The Conference was honoured with the Hermann-Maas Medaille.
\nFrau Debray managed to preserve the independence of the Haus so that it could continue to explore new areas. Despite her retirement and death some years ago, it managed to preserve this ethos, among other activities hosting mixed groups from the Middle East and from Northern Ireland. But the finances were always precarious, and it finally went into receivership, and has now closed. The two conferences that were established there, and which contributed to the ethos of the HDH, managed to find new homes and have continued to flourish. Somehow that particular spirit was able to be carried over to inspire new generations.
\nThe Hedwig Dransfeld Haus had a number of useful physical qualities. There was a swimming pool, and it is located in beautiful woods, with a friendly little stream running nearby. But none of these elements gave it its special quality. Rather this came from the generosity of spirit and the personal dedication of those who worked there. It came from the commitment of those who attended over the years, from their hunger to learn and their willingness to take risks in opening themselves to others. It was these that gave the place its special ethos and the love that could be found there.
\nIs it the place that is holy, or is it the deeds that are performed there that make a place holy? The answer probably lies somewhere between these two possibilities. But of both of the places I have talked about, we can say with Jacob: Surely God was in this place and all who came there knew it.
\n7
\nJacob\u2019s Ladder
\nGenesis 28:10\u201332:3
\nThe biblical patriarch Jacob is an extraordinary character. Two of the most famous images to be found in the Bible belong to his personal story.
\nOne of them is Jacob\u2019s midnight struggle with the mysterious man or angel. It led to his name being changed from Jacob to Israel, though the struggle left him limping.
\nBut the other image comes from this reading. Jacob has stolen the blessing that belonged to his brother Esau. Now, in fear of his life, he has to leave home on his way into exile. He cannot know at this moment that it will be 20 years before he returns to his homeland, years of suffering but also years of great material success. Since the blessing he stole was all about material success that is not surprising, but Jacob cannot have realized at the time what a price in pain he would have to pay.
\nBut all that is ahead of him. Now he is simply alone. Later he will speak of this moment and remember that all he took with him from home when he crossed the Jordan river was his shepherd\u2019s staff. He arrives at a place where he will stay the night. Jacob falls asleep and dreams the famous dream of the ladder, the other great biblical image that comes from his life.
\nAnd he dreamed and behold! there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold! the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold! the Eternal stood above it \u2026 (Gen. 28:12\u201313)
\nThe Rabbis were puzzled by one aspect of this dream. If angels are heavenly beings then surely they should be coming down the ladder from heaven and only then going up it. But the biblical text specifically puts it the other way round. First they are described as going from the ground upwards towards heaven and only then coming down. The Rabbis found one explanation that fits very closely to Jacob\u2019s personal situation at this time.
\nIn this interpretation, these figures on the ladder were the guardian angels that protected Jacob. But the ones that had been looking after him throughout his life till now were restricted to the land of Israel. Now that he was about to leave the land, their task was completed, and they were returning to their base; other angels would now take over to protect him on the journey to other places. Jacob had fallen asleep at the border post at the edge of the land of Israel.
\nIn his dream, Jacob does not try to climb the ladder himself. He remains earthbound. Even when God speaks to him Jacob fails to understand the full implications of what is said.
\nI am the Eternal, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. And by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you till I have done that of which I have spoken to you. (13\u201315)
\nGod spells out the entire vision of Abraham\u2019s blessing and the destiny of the Jewish people; to spread throughout the world but also to live in this special land; to become a blessing for all the peoples of the earth. It is a dazzling and challenging destiny. But Jacob is not ready yet to comprehend what he has heard. His personal situation is too frightening and his immediate needs too great\u2014they overwhelm any long-term ambitions he might have. So when he responds he makes no mention at all of the promise of Abraham. Instead he offers a vow of his own to God, but one that only speaks about his personal needs:
\nIf God will be with me, and will keep in in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father\u2019s house in peace, then the Eternal shall be my God, and this stone which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God\u2019s house; and of all that You give me I will give the tenth to you. (20\u201322)
\n\u2018Just get me home safely,\u2019 he asks, \u2018with food to eat and clothing on my back\u2014that is my only ambition at this moment.\u2019 It is partly a promise to God, partly a kind of bargain. Jacob is still Jacob and not yet Israel. Till now all that we know of him is that he is tricky and willing to be dishonest. He seems to be the least likely person for God to want to choose to carry on Abraham\u2019s task of bringing blessing to all the peoples of the world. But this same Jacob can also dream dreams, can have a vision of a ladder rising to heaven. So there is also within him the promise of a greater quality to his life that could emerge. He could become two quite different people: the Jacob who steals and cheats or the Israel who wrestles with God and on behalf of God. That is why his name keeps changing back and forth in the different stories about him\u2014Jacob becomes Israel, Israel becomes Jacob.
\nBefore his spiritual self can fully emerge, all of his trickiness and practicality will also be tested. Ahead lies the meeting with Laban his future father-in-law who is more than a match for Jacob when it comes to being tricky and dishonest. Jacob will see in Laban, as if in a distorting mirror, all of the worst of his own qualities. That must make him reconsider his own actions. But he will also meet angels on other occasions in his life, and with one he will struggle all night. But is Jacob trying to pin the angel to the ground, to bring him down to his own level; or is he trying to force his way up the ladder to heaven and overcome the angel who stands in his way? These two key pictures from Jacob\u2019s life, the ladder and the struggle, actually belong together.
\nToday we meet fewer angels, or if we meet them we do not recognize them for what they are. But we can understand the struggle, for we each contain within us a Jacob and an Israel, the material and the spiritual, the earthbound and the heavenly, the part of us that manipulates other people and the part of us that has the potential to bring a blessing to the whole world. And just as Jacob keeps changing to Israel and back again, so the struggle within us is never over till the day we die.
\n8
\nJacob meets Esau
\nGenesis 32:4\u201336:43
\nBecause we read the same biblical stories year after year on Shabbat morning, they become a part of our personal lives. They offer us lessons in how to behave and, more often, in how not to behave. Because of this familiarity, we know from the very beginning of each story what will happen to the characters. But just when we think we have learned all there is to know about them, something changes our perspective and we discover a new dimension.
\nHere we read about the dramatic moment when Jacob finally confronts his twin brother Esau. Twenty years earlier, Jacob had stolen the blessing that belonged to his brother. Out of fear of Esau\u2019s hatred, and on the excuse of going to find himself a wife, Jacob had left his family home and country to go into exile, to the homeland of his mother\u2019s family. After much success but also bitter hardships, Jacob was now returning. He had God\u2019s promise of protection, but before him stood the figure of Esau, coming to meet him with 400 men. For Jacob this could only mean the possibility of conflict as his brother took revenge for Jacob\u2019s crime of all those years ago. He took all the possible steps to appease his brother, sending gifts on ahead. But he also took precautions to protect his family, in case it came to a fight. In the night before the encounter, Jacob had another fight, with a man who wrestled with him till dawn. This unknown man, elsewhere called a mal\u2019ach, the Hebrew word used for a divine messenger, might have really been someone sent by God. But he could also represent an inner struggle within Jacob himself, as he wrestled with his fear and guilt about the past. But after all these events and preparations, the stage is set for the meeting of the two brothers and the conflict we anticipate.
\nTo our surprise, and certainly to Jacob\u2019s, Esau greets him with a hug and a kiss. It is as if the past about which Jacob must have felt so much guilt, had never happened. Esau had simply accepted it and gone on to lead his own successful life. He was even prepared to greet his long-lost twin brother with affection and joy. What Jacob felt at that moment is not recounted. We only know that he took precautions to keep the two families, their possessions and their retainers, apart for the long term. Perhaps he did not trust Esau\u2019s friendliness, or felt that it might not last as old memories came back. Perhaps Jacob, a complex character, could never understand someone like Esau who may have been as open and generous as his response to Jacob suggests.
\nBut there is another factor that must have stood in the way of Jacob\u2019s ability to understand his brother. For the 20 years of his exile, he had retained in his mind the memory of his brother\u2019s anger and despair. This image of Esau, the powerful hunter, had grown in his mind to almost overwhelming proportions. Jacob\u2019s guilt made it impossible to see his brother as he was. Esau had put aside the burden of his anger; Jacob was still carrying the burden of his guilt.
\nThe rabbinic tradition was suspicious of Esau\u2019s apparent forgiveness and generosity of spirit. In part they based this on a far later historical situation. When living under Roman occupation, the Jews needed a kind of code language through which to express their feelings about the regime. They used the figure of Esau for this purpose, reading into the details of the references to him in the Bible hidden allusions to the misdeeds of the Romans. When the Roman Empire became Christian and Jews found themselves persecuted by the new regime, Esau could continue to stand for this power as well.
\nNevertheless, however much the rabbis may have been justified in using the name of Esau for this purpose, we must note a problem with it, at least in terms of the biblical narrative itself. Making Esau somehow the villain of the story is a serious displacement of Jacob\u2019s responsibility for what happened. Today we are more aware of the danger of such displacement, whereby the victims are made to seem responsible for their fate, as if that somehow exonerated the perpetrator. The rabbis argued that the biblical text never loses its plain meaning, however much later tradition may read into it. In this case, Esau\u2019s innocence is a key to the story itself. That is the particular perspective that I want to bring to the familiar story this time.
\nLong before the rabbinic interpretation, the story of the conflict between Jacob and Esau had further echoes within the Hebrew Bible itself. When Esau learnt that Jacob had cheated him out of his birthright, \u2018he let out a loud, bitter cry\u2019, \u2018vayitz\u2019aq tz\u2019aqah g\u2019dolah oomarah!\u2019 (Gen. 27:34). The exact same words reappear only once in the Hebrew Bible, this time in the Book of Esther. When Mordechai, the hero of the book, learns that Haman, the villain, plans to exterminate the Jews, he walks about the city crying out with the identical loud, bitter cry: \u2018Vayiz\u2019aq z\u2019aqah g\u2019dolah oomarah!\u2019 (Esther 4:1). For the biblical author of the Book of Esther, Esau\u2019s suffering needed to be matched by that of Jacob\u2019s descendants, as if to balance out the misdeed of the past and thus finally cancel it. But the linkage between the two passages is even stronger, due to one of those underground connections that run through the Bible.
\nWe learn from one of the genealogies in the Book of Genesis (Gen. 36:16), that one of the grandsons of Esau is called Amalek. When the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness, the weak and the older people who are at the rear of the encampment are attacked by a people called the Amalekites. For this unacceptable act of violence Amalek will be portrayed as an enemy of God and of Israel. Generations later King Saul will fail to destroy them after a battle, sparing their King, Agag. For this, Saul forfeits the throne. But to return to the Book of Esther, the Haman who wishes to exterminate the Jews is called an Agagite, a descendant of King Agag of the Amalekites. That ancient battle is refought in the pages of the Book of Esther. It is as if a family dispute that began in the distant past has never entirely disappeared. Indeed, history is littered with family feuds that may lay dormant for generations only to spring to life when some change of historical circumstances triggers violence once again. These stories offer little comfort, but they do present us with certain unpalatable truths about human conflict.
\nBut all of this is in the biblical future. We are poised now at the moment when Jacob meets Esau. As readers, we have followed until now the detailed story of Jacob, because he will be the direct ancestor of the nation. Moreover, the Bible is interested in exploring the complexity of our relationship with God and the ways in which an individual changes and grows over time. Jacob\u2019s journeys and struggles give us much to consider. But the focus on Jacob should not blind us to the significance of Esau. For it is Esau who manages to transform his justifiable anger into something else; to make a successful life for himself and even, 20 years later, to be able to accept with generosity, and maybe even with love, the brother who had wronged him. As is so often the case in the Hebrew Bible, it is the secondary characters, the ones who appear to provide a mere background to the main events, who help us understand the significance of the story before us. Jacob may be the focus of our attention, but it is Esau who offers the hope that despite conflicts and betrayals of the past, forgiveness and reconciliation between people are always possible.
\n9
\nRivalry among Brothers
\nGenesis 44:18\u201347:27
\nThe story we consider here reads like an episode from a soap opera. An elderly man has a number of sons, but his special love is reserved for the youngest. The older brothers are jealous and when the opportunity arises, they kidnap the youngest and sell him to slave traders who take him to another country. They deceive their father into believing that his beloved son is dead. Years later, the young man rises to power in his new country. When his brothers experience a severe drought in their homeland, they come on a visit to the same country to buy food. They meet the man who oversees its sale and distribution, but do not recognize him as their long-lost brother. However, instead of revealing himself, their brother pays a number of distressing tricks on them some of which may be deliberately intended to hurt his father. For if his father truly loved him, why did he not come looking for him all those years ago when he disappeared. In the end, the youngest son does reveal himself to his brothers, forgives them, meets up with his father, and they all seem to live happily ever after. Just to spice up the story, there is also an attempted seduction of the young man by a beautiful woman. And to add to the tension, he spends some time in prison and just when he is about to be released, his hopes are dashed. He is doomed to wait another two years, before his fortune finally changes for the better.
\nOf course, the story is the biblical account of the life of Joseph, son of the patriarch Jacob. It takes up most of 14 chapters of the Book of Genesis. The story is so dramatic and attractive that Thomas Mann expanded it into a vast novel, and it was even turned into a successful musical. Describing it as a soap opera seems perfectly reasonable.
\nHere we read a section of the story which is one of the major turning points. During it, Joseph resolves one of the mysteries that must have haunted him throughout his time of exile. Joseph has forced his brothers to bring his younger brother Benjamin down to Egypt, even though he knows it will cause great pain to his father. He has had Benjamin arrested on a false charge. Now his brother Judah who has played an increasingly more important role in the biblical stories of Genesis, offers himself as a substitute for Benjamin. In doing so, he recounts the impact these events have had upon his father Jacob. But he also reveals something that Joseph did not know, why his father did not try to find him. Also how the brothers could have got away with their plot of selling him to traders bound for Egypt. For the first time, he learns that Jacob had been deceived into thinking that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. This may have confirmed his worst suspicions about the deceitfulness of his brothers, but at least it meant that his father had not known the truth. It was only because his father believed that Joseph had been killed that he had not searched for him. Joseph had not been abandoned by his father, who truly loved him.
\nThe fact that Joseph did not know the truth also explains why he had never tried to visit his family or even get in touch with them in all the years after he had come to power. Now he weeps. Perhaps they are tears of joy at having been able to reunite with his family. Perhaps they express bitter regret at all the wasted years and the added pain he has caused his father. The brothers will never be absolutely certain that Joseph has forgiven them. Such pain and suffering may never completely disappear, even though he can see that the brothers have changed.
\nWe have to remember that the Book of Genesis is full of stories of rivalry between brothers. It starts with Cain murdering Abel, and it includes the tensions between Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau. At least here, at the end of the book, some kind of reconciliation between brothers does take place.
\nSo is it legitimate to describe the story of Joseph as a soap opera? Does that not diminish something that is part of the Bible itself? Or rather, what distinguishes a biblical story from a soap opera? Perhaps biblical stories are the equivalent of the soap operas of an earlier age. That is to say they fulfil some of the same purposes. Biblical stories carried the memory of the people\u2019s history and of the personalities who had created that history. By telling those stories the characters remained alive. It has been said that we are not truly dead until there is no one left to remember us. But telling the stories also provided some kind of teaching for the present time. How the great figures of the tradition had dealt with events could be a model for how to deal with them today. Though sometimes the lessons might be how not to make the same kind of mistakes this time. So the stories offered a sense of continuity with the past of the family or tribe. But they also provided a link to others within the family or tribe who lived elsewhere. What we share as a family or community helps unite us.
\nBible stories are not read so often today, nor in the same way as in the past. Certainly a simplified version may be taught to our children, but the biblical stories need to be read through adult eyes. There are large breaks in continuity between past generations and today\u2019s open and largely secular society. Old bonds between families have disappeared. People live far apart from each other in our European society. Moreover, our secularized culture no longer views the Bible with the same awe, respect and authority that it had in the past. In a fragmented world, the television soap opera that reflects more immediately today\u2019s reality is more powerful. And indeed, it often contains morality tales about human struggles, successes and failures. Nevertheless, one difference is important. Soap operas come to us as passive observers in words and pictures on television. We are robbed of the opportunity of using our own imagination to picture what is happening. We do not even need the discipline of reading that forces us to think about what is being told to us and what is going on between the lines.
\nAt least, our Jewish tradition of reading from the Torah on a weekly basis keeps both the stories and the written text before our eyes. So it remains our responsibility to try to understand these stories, and ourselves make the interpretation that relates them to our lives. This activity of interpretation seems to be mirrored in the Joseph stories themselves.
\nThere is something in the cycle of Joseph stories that is different from the previous stories of the patriarchs. In the accounts of the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God is very much present, in direct contact with them and members of their family. In the Joseph cycle, God never appears directly and is only spoken about. In many cases we learn about God\u2019s actions through the words of Joseph himself. For example, it is Joseph, looking back on his life, who sees a pattern that reinforces his trust in God. As he says to his brothers to reassure them after the death of Jacob: \u2018You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today\u2019 (Gen. 50:20). Joseph understands that his faith in God in the darkest moments of his life is vindicated by his later success.
\nAs we move out of the legendary world of the patriarchs towards the recorded history of the descendants of Jacob, God is less obviously present. The word of God will come now through specially appointed people, the prophets. Or else, we turn to those who claim to interpret for us the actions of God.
\nThe Joseph story shows how God may intervene in the lives of individuals and entire peoples, sometimes visibly, sometimes in a hidden way. It asserts God\u2019s presence, but also the tantalizing mystery of that presence that is only sometimes glimpsed. A certain innocence has been lost. Like Joseph it is now up to us to discover if we can find it in the ups and downs of our lives the presence of God. We are our own soap opera, or we can become our own Bible story.
\n10
\nJoseph and Pharaoh
\nGenesis 41:1\u201344:17
\nThe Joseph story reads at first like a fairy tale. The handsome young hero, poorly treated by his family and unjustly accused and imprisoned is suddenly summoned before the king. His talents are finally recognized and he is elevated to power. It is an archetypal story and each society produces its own variation. In the Hollywood version, the understudy takes over when the leading lady breaks a leg and becomes a star overnight.
\nOf course, the Bible version has its own nuances and emphases. Joseph\u2019s destiny has been signalled all along. He is the favourite son of Jacob. Although he is an outsider in Egypt, he becomes the favourite of his Egyptian master, Potiphar, because of his administrative abilities. He is also liked by Mrs Potiphar, but for other reasons. When she accuses him of attempting to rape her and he ends up in prison, he becomes the favourite of the captain of the guard.
\nThe biblical story of Joseph\u2019s final rise to power is familiar. Pharaoh, king of Egypt, has two dreams. In the first, seven fat cows come out from the Nile to be followed by seven thin ones that devour the first but remain unchanged. In the second dream, seven fat ears of corn are similarly devoured by seven lean ears. Surprisingly, Pharaoh\u2019s wise men seem unable to explain the dreams. Or perhaps no one was willing to explain the dreams to Pharaoh\u2014rulers do not like to receive bad news and may shoot the messenger!
\nThe applause for Joseph\u2019s interpretation is also puzzling since the dream is rather transparent. The Nile, from which the cows emerged, was the source of Egypt\u2019s food supply and grain was part of their staple diet. A warning about a famine to come was an obvious interpretation. Joseph has waited two years for such an opportunity and wastes no time. He goes beyond the task of simply interpreting and suggests that Pharaoh appoint a man to collect a portion of the grain harvest during the good years so that it is available during the years of famine.
\nInterestingly, the audience that approves this advice no longer includes the \u2018wise men\u2019. Instead Pharaoh is joined by his \u2018servants\u2019, presumably his political advisers. This project calls for different kinds of skills for it has serious political consequences. Joseph\u2019s solution amounts to imposing a major new tax on the people, one fifth of all their produce, justified by a possible famine many years ahead. Whether the prophetic dream turns out to be true or not, Pharaoh will do well out of it, but at the possible cost of alienating his people. Pharaoh declares that Joseph is just the man for the job\u2014presumably his previous success in gaining prosperity for Potiphar is on record. Joseph has successfully overcome disasters and risen to power as was promised long before in the dreams he told his father and brothers.
\nBut is there a catch in all of this honouring? Joseph becomes the first of many Jewish individuals who will rise to high position in the service of a ruler. The dangers of such a position are clear. For despite the appearance of power, the situation is very precarious. A whim of the king can appoint him and another whim dethrone him. Moreover, Joseph is at risk in another way. For, effectively he is the intermediary between the regime and the people. He is the man overseeing the major new tax imposed on the people during the seven years of plenty and likely to be the target of their anger. He will be the one who controls the distribution of food during the time of famine so subject to further resentment. He is the visible face of the regime and therefore the potential object of popular unrest. He can be dropped by Pharaoh at any time if it suits his policy needs or to offer the public a scapegoat. The rabbis warned:
\nBe careful of those in power! For they draw no one near to them except in their own interest. They seem like friends when it is to their own advantage, but they do not stand by people in their hour of need! (Sayings of the Fathers 2.3)
\nAnd yet, in this case it works, and does so exceptionally well throughout Joseph\u2019s lifetime. With Pharaoh\u2019s blessing, he is allowed to bring his entire family down to Egypt to settle there with him. Though Joseph and his family became integrated within Egypt they did not totally assimilate. Joseph was given an Egyptian name by Pharaoh, but retained his own Hebrew one. Though he married an Egyptian wife, his children will be counted among the ancestors of the twelve tribes. The Egyptians respected the fact that Joseph had different dietary requirements and allowed him to make separate arrangements. There was no attempt to impose Egyptian culture on this group of immigrants and their children. But the Egyptians were self-confident and proud of their culture and did not feel the need to impose it on others.
\nBecause of Pharaoh\u2019s willingness to accept Joseph as he was and welcome the qualities he brought to the land, he has gone down in biblical history as a person of wisdom and tolerance. But there came a later Pharaoh who \u2018knew not Joseph\u2019. That one stirred up his people against these foreigners, playing on popular fears that they might be dangerous. It was only a small step to enslave the Israelites and begin a secret campaign that would lead in the end to attempted genocide. For all his skill at political manipulation, this later Pharaoh will always be remembered as an evil man and a fool. The net result of his schemes and activities was to bring death and tragedy to his own society and to himself.
\nPlaying on fears and prejudices for political purposes is always dangerous because the emotions released cannot easily be controlled. Those who play that political card end by losing their reputations and the respect of their own people. Pharaoh became utterly isolated and his people lost forever the contribution that the descendants of Joseph might have brought to his nation. What a tragedy that after all the destruction in Europe in the past century, caused by fomenting hatred of the \u2018other\u2019, the lesson still does not seem to have been learned.
\n11
\nDaily Miracles
\nExodus 10:1\u201313:16
\nThis reading from the Torah takes place in the middle of the struggle between Moses and Pharaoh to secure the release of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. Against the military power of Pharaoh\u2019s Egypt, Moses comes with the power of the word of God. This power is expressed through a series of plagues and disasters that befall the Egyptian people, each one worse than the one before. At the climax, the firstborn of the Egyptians are killed in a single night, a punishment that corresponds to Pharaoh\u2019s act of murdering the male Israelite children.
\nThe ten plagues belong to a series of miracles that mark this stage of biblical history. The exodus from Egypt is followed by the miraculous crossing of the Sea of Reeds, when the waters part to allow them to cross on dry land. But then the waters return to destroy Pharaoh\u2019s army. After this they journey through the wilderness, fed by manna, food that comes each day from heaven. As a climax, the Israelites encounter God at Mount Sinai.
\nYet how are we to understand these miraculous events today? Does God really intervene so directly in human history with supernatural miracles? And if God sometimes does so, why not at other times? Sadly, there are always people who claim to see the hand of God in any disaster that befalls somebody else and explain precisely what they have done wrong so as to deserve it. The rabbis argued against such an approach with the saying: \u2018Do not judge someone else, until you have stood in their place!\u2019
\nA different, but fairly common, approach to the problem of miracles is to ask the question: were events like the ten plagues really miraculous or simply a series of natural catastrophes that were later interpreted as miracles? There have certainly been attempts to explain the Egyptian plagues as a logical sequence. A large mud slide polluted the waters of the Nile turning it red\u2014the first plague of blood. Because the waters were poisoned, frogs were forced to leave it for the shore in large numbers, the second plague. When they died on the dry land, their rotting bodies attracted insects, the third plague. This, in turn, caused the disease that affected the cattle. And so it goes on. Similarly the crossing of the Sea of Reeds could be explained by an unusual tidal surge.
\nBut for most of the past 2,000 years, those who have turned to the Bible as the revelation of God, have viewed these events and many others as miracles. They had to be accepted as divine interventions and a true believer would never question them.
\nYet, there is a strand within the Bible itself that reflects a kind of scepticism\u2014not about miracles themselves, but about their significance and lasting effect. Elijah the prophet conjures up a major miracle when he challenges the prophets of the pagan god Baal to a competition between the gods. Two altars are built, and slaughtered animals are laid upon them as a sacrifice. But instead of the worshippers setting them alight, fire is supposed to come down from heaven, directly from Baal or from Israel\u2019s God, to consume them. The Baal fails the test. And even though Elijah covers the animals with water, God sends down fire and they are consumed. It is a genuine miracle, and all who saw it were impressed and praised God. But one chapter later, Elijah is complaining that the people have abandoned God, and he alone remains faithful. In fact he is ready to give up his vocation as a prophet. Miracles may be dramatic but do they have a lasting effect on people? A few days after encountering God at Mount Sinai, the Israelites worshipped the golden calf.
\nThe rabbinic tradition tried to limit the belief or expectation that God was always prepared to intervene with a miracle. They taught that a number of miraculous events, like Balaam\u2019s talking donkey, were created by God in the twilight between the end of the sixth day of creation and the beginning of Shabbat (Sayings of the Fathers 5.6). Similarly, miracles like the dividing of the Sea of Reeds, and the occasion when the sun stood still for Joshua, were prepared at the time of creation and stored up for the moment when they would be needed. Having created the world and the laws of nature, God was not going to disturb things in an arbitrary way.
\nA medieval rationalist like Moses Maimonides could suggest that the donkey that talked to Balaam did so in his prophetic imagination, not in an outer reality. As is often the case in Judaism, our tradition divides between those who favour the pious, mystical interpretation of events and those who prefer the rational and logical understanding.
\nThere is a nice story that illustrates the different consequences, depending on which of these two approaches you follow. A town is about to be flooded with water, and all the inhabitants are warned to leave for safety. All of them do so, except an elderly pious Jew, who insists on staying in his home. When a police car comes to evacuate him, he refuses to go with them saying: \u2018I have faith that God will save me!\u2019 The police car leaves. Then the flood comes, and he has to move up to the first floor of his house. A rowing boat comes past with a rescue team and invites him to climb out of the window into the boat and go to safety with them. But again he refuses, saying: \u2018I have faith that God will save me!\u2019 Finally, the waters rise so high that he has to climb onto the roof. A helicopter comes along and they lower a rope to pull him to safety. But once again, he shows his trust in God and says: \u2018I have faith that God will save me!\u2019 And then the waters rise higher, and he drowns. When he gets to heaven, he is most angry and insists on lodging a complaint to God. \u2018I have been a faithful and pious Jew all my life, so I assumed You would be there for me when I needed You!\u2019 \u2018It\u2019s strange that you\u2019re here,\u2019 God answers, \u2018I sent a police car, a boat and a helicopter to rescue you!\u2019
\nSo, what are miracles? Jewish tradition sees a kind of miracle in the fact that we wake up each morning. That the world continues in its normal way, that seasons come and go, that life is ended in death but renewed by the birth of the next generation, these are astonishing events that we should acknowledge and celebrate as evidence of God\u2019s daily concern with the world. It only takes a breakdown in some of the basic organization of our lives that we are used to for us to realize how dependent we are on the regular ordering of the universe, be it nature itself or human society. As if to remind us of this way of looking at reality, a text in our daily prayers spells it out: \u2018In every generation we thank You and recount Your praise for our lives held in Your hand, for our souls that are in Your care, and for the signs of Your presence that are with us every day. At every moment, at evening, morning and noon, we experience Your miracles and Your goodness.\u2019
\nAs the great teacher Hillel expressed it: \u2018The process by which we get our daily bread is a greater miracle than the splitting of the Sea of Reeds!\u2019 (Pesikta Rabbati 152a).
\n12
\nStubborn Pharaoh
\nExodus 6:2\u20139:35
\nThis reading is about one of the best known events in the Bible\u2014the ten plagues that were inflicted by God upon the Egyptians during the struggle to release the children of Israel from slavery. Each plague builds on the last leading to the horrifying climax with the death of the Egyptian firstborn.
\nWe read the story from the standpoint of Moses and the children of Israel. Pharaoh has gradually reduced a people who were guests in his land to the level of slaves. He has eroded their rights by a series of laws, brutalized them by the work he has forced them to do and instituted a policy of secret genocide that only the heroism of the midwives has postponed. He has given his people licence to destroy their fellow citizens, the Israelites. Standing against him is the lone figure of Moses, seemingly powerless against the might of the leader of the greatest empire of the time.
\nWe the readers know how it will turn out. We know that Israel\u2019s God is more powerful and can call into play the whole of nature to defeat Pharaoh. By the time the plagues are well advanced, we feel sorry for the Egyptians\u2014not Pharaoh who stubbornly maintains his position, but his people who are the ones who suffer directly as the plagues get worse. But of course that is part of the power of the story\u2014this reversal of a situation where it seemed at first that Pharaoh held all the cards. How many movements of liberation from slavery have turned to this story for support and inspiration in their struggle against oppression!
\nBut if we know from the very beginning that God is bound to win, we read the story with somewhat different eyes. For, in effect, the struggle between Moses and Pharaoh is a prolonged negotiation between those seeking liberation and justice for themselves and a dictator who is not prepared to relinquish any of his power whatever the consequences. Read in that way we find ourselves in very familiar territory. Human rights, ethnic cleansing and the struggle to combat totalitarian regimes are central issues for Europe facing a new century.
\nGod\u2019s intention is not only to force Pharaoh to let the Israelites go but to establish God\u2019s power in the eyes of the Egyptians and with it the principle of justice (Exod. 7:4). To do so, God is prepared to be just as manipulative as Pharaoh in the process. That is why Moses is to start the proceedings with a sign that is bound to be unconvincing. When Moses throws down his rod that turns into a snake, he is merely performing the kind of conjuring trick that Pharaoh\u2019s magicians can easily reproduce. Pharaoh is led from the beginning into a false sense of security that will ultimately prove to be his downfall.
\nFor the same reason God insists that Moses performs the first plague, turning the water of the Nile into blood, using the same rod (Exod. 7:15\u201317). Pharaoh sees this as a further trick that his own magicians can do just as well. His heart becomes harder and his resistance grows.
\nIt is only with the plague of frogs, even though his magicians can reproduce it, that Pharaoh seems to change his mind and give in to Moses\u2019 request to release the people. But as soon as the plague is removed, he hardens his heart again. If we translate these events into today\u2019s political realities, the first two plagues are the equivalent of imposing sanctions on a country as a way of forcing its government to improve their human rights record. When the first two sanctions begin to have an effect on the economy, the government is ready to open negotiations. This is the phase in which both sides are testing the other, trying to see how strong is their willpower in the short and long term. So it is no surprise that as soon as God has cancelled the plague of frogs Pharaoh \u2018hardens his heart\u2019 once again (Exod. 8:11). True, Pharaoh has shown weakness in asking for the plague to be removed, but he is still very much in control. As far as he is concerned, he is the winner of the first round.
\nHis apparent success gives him the strength to resist the next plague, the gnats, even when the magicians cannot remove them. They say it is the \u2018finger of God\u2019, which presumably means a natural disaster beyond any magic they can control. Pharaoh is not impressed.
\nThe plagues continue in groups of three. Before each group Moses warns Pharaoh, and each plague is more severe than the previous one. With the next plague, boils, Pharaoh is ready to make his first concession. Yes, the Israelites may worship their God, but only in the land of Egypt. Moses negotiates further, insisting that the Israelites have to leave the territory and Pharaoh agrees\u2014only to change his mind once again as soon as the plague is lifted.
\nAgain the analogy with sanctions is clear. For there is always a major debate\u2014should one let up on sanctions, when the oppressive government offers to negotiate seriously, or keep up the pressure until the matter is completely resolved? In this case, Pharaoh once again sees the lifting of the plague as a sign of weakness, or at least as an opportunity to reassert his authority and control, and he backtracks on his promise.
\nThis pattern leads to certain inevitable results. It is not Pharaoh who suffers but his people as crops fail, disease affects the livestock and the people themselves. Long before Pharaoh is prepared to listen, his people have acknowledged the power of Moses\u2019 God, and his advisers have warned him to surrender before everything is destroyed. Only Pharaoh holds out till the ultimate sanction, a brutal act of war, the killing of the firstborn children of Egypt.
\nBy this reading, there are ten stages to such a negotiation, and at each stage, there is the opportunity for agreement and resolution. Direct physical violence is only the last resort, when everything else has failed. As usual, it is the common people who suffer, while their leaders take their calculated risks, hold onto their power and become increasingly autocratic and isolated.
\nThe biblical account offers no comforting solutions. It presents us with the reality of human folly and conflict, leaving it to us to learn from it what we can and do what we must. Again, we are haunted by the victims, visions of the death of children\u2014the Israelite babies thrown into the Nile, the Egyptian firstborn slain in the darkness of night. What better a reminder could there be of our responsibility to the next generation. What better a text to challenge us at the start of a new century, and new millennium.
\n13
\nMoses\u2019 Secret Identity
\nExodus 13:17\u201317:16
\nThis parashah begins in a curious way. After the successful defeat of Pharaoh by the ten plagues, the children of Israel march triumphantly out of Egypt. One of the opening sentences seems to emphasize this\u2014the Children of Israel went up \u2018chamushim\u2019 from the land of Egypt. What is the meaning of this Hebrew word, chamushim? It seems to derive from the number chamesh, five, and it is generally assumed that they went out in some kind of military formation based on the number five. Hence, some translations read that they went up \u2018armed\u2019 or \u2018equipped for battle\u2019. But the previous sentence conveys a very different impression. It explains God\u2019s perspective on this exciting moment: \u2018God did not lead them through the land of the Philistines, which was the nearest route, for God thought that when the people saw the possibility of war they might change their minds and turn around and go back to Egypt!\u2019 (Exod. 13:17).
\nSo we have here a kind of tragicomic picture. The Israelites themselves go out brandishing weapons, suddenly feeling heroic because they have been given freedom. But God knows that beneath this bravado, they are still slaves at heart, their spirits broken by their past experience. At the first sign of trouble, their courage might collapse. This had happened once before in Egypt. When Moses first asked Pharaoh to let the people go, he had not only refused, but he had made conditions worse for the Israelites. In this way, he succeeded in driving a wedge between the people and Moses. At that time, they had confronted Moses and said: \u2018You have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and you have put a sword in his hand to kill us! You have given him a pretext to destroy us.\u2019 But Pharaoh was already killing their firstborn sons, and hardly needed an excuse! For a slave any change is somehow threatening and dangerous.
\nThere is an ironic little joke that exactly describes this kind of fearful mentality\u2014it is literally a case of gallows humour. Two men are standing in front of a firing squad waiting for the command to shoot them. One of them turns to the other and says: \u2018Do you think I could ask for a cigarette?\u2019 The other replies: \u2018Shhh\u2014don\u2019t make trouble!\u2019
\nGod sees through the apparent courage of the Israelites marching in formation out of Egypt and decides not to take a risk with their newfound confidence. In fact, as the story develops, we know that almost all of this generation that has come out from Egypt will not enter the Promised Land at all. Instead, they will die in the wilderness during the 40 years of wandering.
\nThe great medieval Jewish commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra explained the reason why that generation could not enter the land. In their hearts they were still slaves and lacked the kind of courage needed to conquer the land. Instead, the children of Israel had to wait till a new generation had been born in the desert as free people, able to face hardship and tackle difficult situations, before the next step could be taken.
\nOnly Moses was truly free. He had been brought up in the court of Pharaoh, so he had lived a life of independence and freedom. Moreover, he had been groomed for leadership. Yet, he could have simply stayed within his Egyptian palace and led the life of an Egyptian prince. What led him back to his people and a very special destiny?
\nAn episode in his early life reveals something of his character and helps explain why he acted as he did. In the familiar story, when Moses grew up he \u2018went out to his brothers and saw their burdens and he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, one of his brothers\u2019 (Exod. 2:11).
\nWe tend to assume that when he went out to see his \u2018brothers\u2019, it is the Israelites that are meant. But again Abraham Ibn Ezra forces us to look more carefully at the passage and asks why the word \u2018brother\u2019 comes at the beginning and again at the end of the sentence. Moses has grown up as an Egyptian. His last contact with his Jewish origins ceased when he was weaned. Later, at the burning bush, he will not even know the name of his ancestral God! So, when he goes out to see the burdens of his brothers, it is as an Egyptian Prince that he goes out to see the burdens of his Egyptian people. For the Egyptians are indeed burdened with their huge building projects. (Compare Exodus 2:11 with 1:11, where the burdens are those of the Egyptians, not the Israelites.) But at the moment when Moses witnesses the brutal striking of a slave, despite all the assumptions of his royal upbringing, he intervenes on behalf of the victim. At that point, he identifies who is truly his \u2018brother\u2019, whoever is the victim of oppression. Moses becomes an Israelite only after he has discovered his compassion and sense of justice.
\nAt the beginning of the parashah, Moses has succeeded in the first part of his task. The children of Israel are setting out on their way to freedom. But there is a major contrast between Moses and the Israelites at this moment. For Moses takes the time to collect the bones of Joseph and ensures that they are taken with the Israelites, when they depart. He was fulfilling the promise that Joseph had extracted from his brothers. That when Israel left Egypt they would take his bones with them for burial in the Promised Land. Moses makes sure that this promise to Joseph is fulfilled. While the Israelites are acting as if they were warriors, Moses, the only real warrior among them, remembers their spiritual responsibilities.
\nPerhaps we see here a further sign of the slave mentality. Once freed, slaves can remain trapped in the violence that has been done to them. So they in turn may do violence to those in their power and not even recognize or acknowledge what they are doing. They may also come to believe that brandishing swords and making threatening gestures is the way to show their authority, that aggression and force can resolve conflicts. While the Israelites think of weapons, Moses thinks instead of Joseph. He was sold as a slave by his brothers, but he had the inner strength to seek reconciliation with them. Joseph had been treated as a slave but never became a slave.
\nSo filled with these inner tensions, torn between slavery and freedom, at once outwardly triumphant, but fearful within, the children of Israel set out on their journey to the Promised Land.
\n14
\nWho is Jethro?
\nExodus 18
\nThis reading from the Torah is known by the name of Yitro (Jethro), the father-in-law of Moses. He appears in the first section, Chapter 18 of the Book of Exodus, and advises Moses on how to give a better legal structure to the Israelite society. Jethro is described as a priest of Midian, which means that he is not an Israelite nor does he worship Israel\u2019s God. So it is surprising that the whole Torah reading should carry his name since it contains two major events that seem to be exclusive to Israel\u2014the revelation at Mount Sinai and the giving of the Ten Commandments. This raised a number of questions for the rabbis about the character of Jethro and the role that he played.
\nOne view of him was very negative. The rabbis listed him, together with Balaam the foreign prophet who tried to curse Israel, as one of the advisers of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. So Jethro would have helped plot the murder of the male children born to the Israelites. But a contrasting story has him saving Moses\u2019 life. When he was still a child, Moses once sat on Pharaoh\u2019s lap, and tried to take the crown off Pharaoh\u2019s head. Pharaoh wanted to kill Moses at once as a possible usurper of the throne. But Jethro devised a test to show that, like any child, Moses just liked glittering objects, so his actions were completely innocent.
\nWhat about Jethro\u2019s religious status as a Priest of Midian? Again the rabbis had radically opposing views. One rabbinic text suggested that he was not just the worshipper of one idol alone, but that he was a real enthusiast, trying out every conceivable form of idol worship available in the world! But again there is a contrasting opinion suggesting that he was so inspired by Israel\u2019s God that he converted and then converted all his people as well to the worship of the One God.
\nThere is a possible position between these extremes that would see Jethro as at best a pragmatist and at worst an opportunist. When Pharaoh was powerful he worked for Pharaoh. When Moses became successful he joined himself once again to the winning side.
\nThe Bible itself raises none of these questions and shows Jethro in a positive light. Jethro was willing to give a refuge to Moses when he was fleeing from Egypt. Indeed, according to the Midrash, Jethro hid Moses for ten years and his daughter Zipporah went every day to feed him till it was finally safe to emerge from hiding. On the other hand, the biblical text hints at a very different possible reason for Jethro\u2019s warm welcome to the stranger. After all, he had seven unmarried daughters who needed husbands! As to the religious differences between them, when Jethro advises Moses on how to structure the Israelite society, he is careful to conclude his advice with the words: if God so commands you. In fact, the relationship between the two men offers one possible model for interfaith dialogue\u2014the sharing of practical advice and mutual support.
\nAt the end of Chapter 18, it says that Moses sent Jethro away and that he returned to his land. Since the very next chapter tells of the preparation for the revelation on Mount Sinai, this would suggest that Jethro had already left, before it happened. But, as the rabbis noted, the Bible is not always arranged chronologically, so he may well have been present at that turning point in religious history. If he was there, this would confirm that the revelation was not confined to the Jewish people alone. Indeed, the rabbis insisted that the Torah was given in the wilderness of Sinai precisely because it belonged to no particular people and no one could claim exclusive ownership of it.
\nThe Bible itself is not clear about Jethro\u2019s presence at the revelation at Mount Sinai. However, by calling this reading by the name of Yitro, he is forever associated in our minds with that key event that determined the spiritual task of the Jewish people. This means that we must try to be partners with all who consider themselves to be the spiritual descendants of that moment.
\n15
\nChoose Judges
\nExodus 18
\nThis reading from the Torah offers us an opportunity to reflect on the kinds of people that we entrust with leadership roles in our society. When Moses\u2019 father-in-law Jethro visits the Israelite encampment in the wilderness, he finds Moses sitting all day judging cases brought to him by the people. It is clearly an inefficient system that wears out Moses and frustrates the people. So Jethro suggests that Moses seek out men to act as judges and create a system of lower and higher courts. In that way, all legal matters can be dealt with quickly and effectively. Moses will retain his position as the final court of appeal for cases that cannot be dealt with at a lower level. Thus one of the first institutions to be established in the new Israelite society is to be an independent judiciary, one of the key elements in any democratic society.
\nBut how does one select the judges, who will have so much responsibility? Jethro puts forward a list of ideal qualities for potential candidates (Exod. 18:21). He includes four categories, each of which requires some analysis. The first phrase he uses is \u2018anshei chayil\u2019, meaning something like \u2018men of power\u2019. The word \u2018chayil\u2019 includes anything from physical strength, to wealth, to spiritual strength or virtue. Modern translations suggest that it means \u2018able\u2019 or \u2018capable\u2019 men, those with the necessary qualities to undertake such a major responsibility. The medieval Jewish commentators had more practical suggestions. If they are already rich men, then they will fear no one and be objective in their judgement.
\nThe second quality that Jethro lists is \u2018yir\u2019ei elohim\u2019, which literally means \u2018people who fear God\u2019. Here one has to look at the meaning of both of these words. The Hebrew verb \u2018yarei\u2019 has two senses: \u2018to fear\u2019, but also \u2018to be in awe of\u2019. Someone who \u2018fears God\u2019 is not simply frightened, but full of respect and wonder at the power and nature of God. But even the word \u2018elohim\u2019, one of the regular Hebrew words for God, has wider meanings. On two occasions, Abraham pretends that his wife is his sister so as to protect her from possible kidnapping by a foreign king. When challenged he explains that he thought there was no \u2018fear of God\u2019 in that society. By this, he meant the absence of basic moral values. It was a society where the rule of law did not operate. So it would seem that Jethro\u2019s second quality is a strong sense of morality in someone who will have so much power and authority.
\nNext on the list is the phrase \u2018anshei emet\u2019, literally \u2018men of truth\u2019. \u2018Emet\u2019, \u2018truth\u2019, is derived from a familiar word \u2018amen\u2019, which basically means that something is \u2018firm\u2019, that you can depend on. So this quality is about people whose word is reliable, who are known to be trustworthy. They do not lie.
\nJethro\u2019s final quality is absolutely crucial given the temptations of the office of judge. The right people should be \u2018son \u2019ei vatza\u2019, literally those who \u2018hate bribes\u2019 or any other illegitimate way of obtaining money. The early rabbis explored this idea even further. They felt that the true judge should not only hate bribes, but not be overly concerned about his own personal wealth. They taught that a judge who has to be taken to court to force him to pay money that he owes to a plaintiff should not be a judge at all (Baba Batra 58b)!
\nMoses accepted these suggestions of Jethro and set about finding such people. But the Bible reports a rather surprising result. It is reflected in another change of language. Jethro\u2019s suggestion to Moses is that he seek out men, and the Hebrew verb is one that is used of prophetic visions. Moses is to see beyond the outer appearances in this exacting selection process. But shortly afterwards (Exod. 18:25), the biblical text simply states that Moses chose \u2018anshei chayil\u2019, \u2018capable men\u2019. This word \u2018choosing\u2019 is not the prophetic act that Jethro had called for but instead a more pragmatic one. Moreover, instead of listing all four of Jethro\u2019s qualities, the verse only mentions the first one on Jethro\u2019s list, capable men. So what about the other three? There are a number of possible explanations. One is that the Bible, rather than bother to repeat the same list, simply refers to the first one and includes in it all the others. It is even possible that this was what Jethro intended. The general term \u2018capable men\u2019 would have included the three qualities that he mentioned next.
\nBut there is a deeper problem in Jethro\u2019s suggestion. No one, not even Moses, is able to look into the heart of another and know who truly \u2018fears God\u2019, whether in the religious sense or in terms of true morality. That someone has proved to be reliable and trustworthy can probably be assessed. But most people can be tempted by a bribe if the circumstances are right. And a bribe need not simply be about money, but about the abuse of power or giving in to some personal desire. All three qualities open up too many uncertainties, so Moses settled for something more practical.
\nAnother interpretation suggests that once Moses set about applying all four criteria, he simply found no one who could live up to all of them. Or perhaps he realized that it was only by exposing people to the responsibilities of office that one could discover their true qualities. So he was forced to compromise and at least choose people whom he felt would do an effective job.
\nElsewhere in the Bible, the responsibilities of a judge are further elaborated. The judge should neither show favour to the poor nor give honour to the great (Lev. 19:15). The judge should not let either his compassion for those in difficult circumstances nor his wish to please the powerful and wealthy affect his judgement. Elsewhere, the judge is warned against simply yielding to the pressure exerted by a majority if this would lead to a false judgement (Exod. 23:2).
\nThese biblical instructions and warnings were reinforced by later rabbinic teachings. One rabbinic passage gives an awesome description of the pressure on a judge to act with integrity. \u2018A judge should consider himself as if a sword was held above his shoulders, and the underworld was open below him, and he was suspended between them. If he proved to be worthy, he would be rescued from both of them, but if he did not prove worthy, he would be handed over to both of them\u2019 (Sanhedrin 7ab) (q. Rabenu Bachya).
\nPerhaps the most awesome statement about the responsibility of a judge is summed up in the rabbinic teaching: \u2018Any judge who judges truly, even for an hour, the scripture reckons it as if he had been a partner with God in the work of Creation\u2019 (Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 10a).
\nPerhaps Jethro had too high expectations about the abilities of his son-in-law Moses and the quality of the people he was leading. The Israelites were like any other people, with a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, good and bad qualities. That was why it was important at least to create a system that would offer the best hope for ensuring that justice governed the way they behaved towards one another.
\nJethro\u2019s four criteria may be too idealistic for choosing judges or other leaders. Nevertheless, they represent a useful way of evaluating over time those who take on significant positions in society. They should be capable of the task they undertake. They should demonstrate moral qualities. They should be reliable and trustworthy in what they do. Above all, they should be seen to resist the many temptations that come with power.
\n16
\nTen Commandments and Human Rights
\nExodus 20
\nThe year 2008 was significant for anniversaries. The seventieth anniversary of the Reichskristallnacht, night of broken glass, when synagogues throughout Germany were burnt to the ground, Jewish shops were looted and individual Jews were attacked was marked on 9 November. But on 10 December, in stark contrast, another kind of event could be celebrated, one that offers hope for many people throughout the world. On that day in 1948 the United Nations published the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
\nThe main architect of that document was Rene Cassin, a French Jew, a jurist, a humanitarian and a man with a deep commitment to universal values. Born in 1887, he fought in the First World War and was severely wounded. This led him to found an organization to support disabled war veterans and to work for war orphans. He had a distinguished career teaching law until the German occupation of France. In 1940, he was one of the first to follow General De Gaulle to England. There he drafted all the legal agreements between Winston Churchill and De Gaulle that defined the status of the Forces Fran\u00e7oises Libres. After the War, he held high offices in France, which he represented at the United Nations during 1946\u201358. He was one of the founders of UNESCO. For his work in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968. He died in 1976.
\nCassin wrote an article comparing the Universal Declaration to the Ten Commandments. He noted a major difference between them. The Ten Commandments are religious in their orientation, with God at the centre. They define human \u2018duties\u2019, and human \u2018rights\u2019 can only be derived from them indirectly. In contrast, the Universal Declaration is essentially a humanist document, and those who drafted it consciously excluded any reference to God. It begins: \u2018All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.\u2019
\nNevertheless, its humanist values owe much to the principles established already in the Hebrew Bible and taught by the three great monotheistic religious traditions of Europe. The Bible begins with the creation of a single human being which also asserts that all human beings, whatever their colour, race or belief system, are ultimately equal. That Adam was created in the image of God underscores the inestimable value of each human life. As Jewish and also Muslim teaching express it, whoever takes a single life it is as if he had destroyed an entire world.
\nFor the Hebrew Bible, the future of humanity is bound up with the life and example of the patriarch Abraham. In a key sentence, God explains that Abraham has been chosen so that he may teach his descendants the way of God. This way is defined by two key terms: tz\u2019dakah umishpat, righteousness and justice (Gen. 18:19). Abraham is immediately put to the test by God who informs him about the imminent destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their evil acts. Abraham is so shocked that innocent people might be killed alongside the guilty that he challenges God directly. \u2018Will the judge of all the earth not do justice?!\u2019 In a biblical world, where gods dominate all human actions, this is an extraordinary reversal and a tribute to Abraham\u2019s courage.
\nThis challenge to act on the basis of justice has been addressed to rulers and leaders throughout history. In its absence the world falls into chaos and destructiveness. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the logical extension of that biblical call for justice for all human beings, whether it is based on a divine command or a response to the agonized cries of suffering human beings.
\nThe name of Rene Cassin has been given to a Jewish human rights organization that \u2018uses the experience of the Jewish people to promote the human rights of all people\u2019. In this sense, Cassin and his legacy are a direct heir of the biblical charge given to Abraham, to exemplify and to teach righteousness and justice to the world.
\nWhen receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace, Rene Cassin said: \u2018The time has come to proclaim that, for the establishment of peace and human dignity, each of us must work and fight to the last.\u2019
\n17
\nThe Rule of Law
\nExodus 21\u201324
\nThe Ten Commandments are among the best-known passages in the Hebrew Bible. Beyond their important place within Judaism and Christianity, they have helped shape our Western values. They are a kind of checklist against which to measure the state of our society. The image of the two tablets on which they were written, and of Moses holding them aloft, are familiar symbols of the law as a basis for human life in community.
\nThe Ten Commandments were so important that they appear twice in the Hebrew Bible, once in Exodus when they are given to Moses on Mount Sinai and once again in Deuteronomy, when Moses repeats them to the community. Yet, for all their significance, it is necessary to point out that in the Book of Exodus they are only a preamble to the laws that follow. It is the laws that come afterwards that are to provide the basic rules for community life under God. Even the term \u2018commandments\u2019 is not an accurate translation of the Hebrew word. The Hebrew text speaks of them as the \u2018ten words\u2019 or \u2018ten sayings\u2019, and that is how they are known in Jewish tradition. In that sense, they are not exactly commandments. Rather they describe the kind of behaviour which will naturally follow as a consequence of the covenant with God. Once you accept it, your behaviour will change so that you simply will not do anything that might damage your relationship with God or with other people.
\nPerhaps this will come as a surprise, but Jewish tradition is rather cautious about the prominence that should be given to the Ten Commandments. At one time they were publicly recited in the Temple service. However, some groups came to believe that only these Ten Words were the direct revelation of God to Israel. Since the rabbis believed that the entire Five Books of Moses were the words of God and therefore equally significant, they gave them less prominence. So Jewish tradition insists that the passages we read from Exodus 21 to 24, are just as important. These chapters contain the laws that Moses presented to the Israelites as the basis of how they were to build their society. So if we are to be true to Jewish tradition, we should study them as a whole and in detail.
\nBut this is not so easy. We have to enter into an unfamiliar world and a very special way of organizing legal materials. The very first laws in Exodus 21 establish an important principle. They are about releasing a slave who works for you after six years. In the seventh year he is to be set free. The freedom of the seventh day, the Shabbat, is also to apply to the counting of years as well. Since the children of Israel have just left behind the slavery of Egypt, this law clearly establishes a new basis for the society they are about to build, a society where slavery is to be regulated and in effect abolished.
\nBut after this opening section, we enter into what seems to be a strange mixture of different subjects. They begin with a series of laws which deal with murder, manslaughter and kidnapping. They also describe situations in which a man hits another man or a slave, or when two men fight and accidentally hurt someone who gets in the way. In all these cases, the law is concerned with the punishment of the perpetrator or with the compensation that has to be paid to the victim. But quite unexpectedly they are interrupted by a law forbidding people to curse their parents.
\nThe next section is about what happens, when the ox that you own gores the ox of your neighbour. The penalty depends on whether this is the first time such a thing has happened, or the ox has been known to be dangerous. In this same agricultural setting are laws about the danger of digging a pit that an animal falls into, about the penalty for stealing animals and about what happens if your animals graze in someone else\u2019s field. A later section deals with the responsibility you have for objects or animals that are left in your care and are stolen or damaged.
\nBut after that the series of laws seems to be increasingly more random. There are laws forbidding sorcery or idolatry followed by the command not to oppress strangers, a law that comes several times in the Bible. In between are to be found the prohibition on charging interest when you lend someone money and the command to return an animal that belongs to your enemy if you find it lost somewhere. These are just a few of the different subjects that are covered. So what is the connection between these very different kinds of law?
\nThere does not seem to be a single principle that holds them all together. It may be that there was originally a core of laws about a particular theme. Over time additional laws were added so that the original intention was lost and the collection became a kind of anthology. Nevertheless, there is one factor that runs through most of them. They are about the problem of what happens when there is a breakdown in relationships between people. They range from the most extreme cases of murder and feuding to the everyday problems that arise when something is damaged and a judgement has to be made about who is responsible and who has to compensate whom. So most of them are about resolving conflicts between neighbours and the legal basis for making a correct judgement. The overarching question is how you restore the relationship between people when it has broken down because of conflict. These laws assume that without a comprehensive legal system to regulate such matters society can very easily fall apart. This is very practical law making, with a limited set of concerns, even though they cover a wide range of areas.
\nIt is also obvious that these laws are not comprehensive. There are any number of areas that are not covered. Perhaps the particular ones collected here are included because these represent major differences from the legal codes of the societies surrounding ancient Israel. It was sufficient to indicate here the special concerns of Israel\u2019s God. For example, Israel\u2019s laws do not demand the death penalty for stealing property, even though that was the norm in other ancient Near Eastern codes. Life is more important than property.
\nThe biblical concern with protecting the stranger is a good example of how law can function in a broader way. Fear about other people, in particular about new immigrants, can lead to prejudice, discrimination and violence. It is hard to change people\u2019s attitudes and emotional states. That may take years of education and positive steps to develop understanding, trust and respect. But the law can provide a safeguard for those who might become the victims of prejudice. More than that, the law can indicate that certain kinds of behaviour against other people are simply not acceptable to society as a whole. They form the minimum basis of a shared commitment to justice on which positive relationships can be built.
\nAll the laws in these chapters start from this negative standpoint. Something has gone wrong, so how do we fix things so that normal life can be restored? They tell us nothing about how positive relationships between people are to be cultivated. For this we have to turn to Leviticus 19, which leads up to another very familiar biblical statement about how we are to move from the negative to the positive.
\nYou shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbour, lest you bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance nor bear a grudge against the children of your own people, but you shall act in a loving way towards your neighbour as you would towards yourself. (Lev. 19:17\u201318)
\n18
\nShekels, Swords and Altars
\nExodus 30:11\u201316
\nThroughout the Jewish year, the regular cycle of readings from the Torah is amended for special reasons. On those occasions, additional readings may be included that reflect the particular theme of that Shabbat, such as Shabbat Shekalim, the Shabbat of the Shekel.
\nThe name comes from an event that occurred during the time when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness. Moses undertook a census of the population, counting the men from the age of 20 years and upwards. This suggests that it had a military purpose. The Israelites have escaped from centuries of slavery in Egypt. They are on their way to becoming a nation, but must learn how to defend themselves. Producing a register of available fighters is clearly an important step. But there was a problem. In the biblical world, there seems to have been a taboo associated with counting people. In a later period, King David will be severely punished for undertaking a census without taking some kind of precautionary measures. The additional passage from the Torah that we read in synagogue this Shabbat from Exodus 30 (11\u201316) shows how this problem was overcome.
\nEach of the men to be counted was to bring a half-shekel. This was not a coin but a piece of silver of a particular weight. It is possible that when everyone had given their half-shekel, these were counted or weighed instead of counting the men themselves. In this way the problem of counting actual people was resolved. This donation is described as a \u2018ransom for his soul\u2019 (Exod. 30:12), suggesting that each person was protected from the dangers of the census by making the donation. The moneys that were raised would be used to help build the sanctuary. Although our passage in Exodus suggests that this was a one-off event, it later became institutionalized as a head tax which would be used to maintain the Temple. The money was collected during the Jewish month of Adar. For this reason the tradition arose of reading the passage from Exodus about the half-shekel on the Shabbat before the month of Adar began to remind people of what was coming.
\nHowever, it is possible that there is another purpose behind the idea that the half-shekel was to be a ransom to save the soul of each of the men. If the census is to discover how many able-bodied men were available for military purposes, their lives would be at risk. But also soldiers must inevitably shed blood. The Hebrew Bible is very concerned about taking the life of another human being. Even in the case of a war, where killing may be justified as self-defence, it does not change the fact that a life has been lost and blood has been shed. Some kind of acknowledgement must be made to oneself and to God that another human being, made in the image of God, has been destroyed. That would be another explanation of why the half-shekel donation is said to be a \u2018ransom for his soul\u2019. It is a way of acknowledging that taking life is against the will of God and an admission of responsibility must be made. According to King Solomon, his father King David was not allowed to build the Temple, because he was a man of war and had shed blood.
\nNevertheless, it is strange that the shekels collected in connection with warfare and killing should go towards the maintenance of the Temple, the spiritual centre of the Israelite nation. Indeed, there is another biblical passage which suggests that the exact opposite should be the case. In Exodus 20:24\u20136, there is the description of the building of the altar on which the Israelites are to make their sacrifices to God. It is to be a simple one made of earth. However, if they wish instead to make one of stones a special directive is given: \u2018If you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones; for if you wield your tool upon it you profane it\u2019 (Exod. 20:25).
\nThe rabbis were puzzled by this idea that cutting the stones with a metal tool would make the altar \u2018profane\u2019 and unacceptable to God. They found the following explanation:
\nThe altar is created to lengthen the days of human beings, but iron has been created to shorten the life of human beings\u2014because iron can be made into a sword. It is not fitting that an object which shortens human life should be lifted up above that which lengthens it. Also the altar makes peace between Israel and their father in heaven, and so nothing should be used in fashioning it that cuts and destroys. (Rashi quoting Mechilta, Middot 3.4)
\nSo it seems we are faced with two contradictory teachings. The soldiers who might have to shed blood make a donation to maintain the Temple. But the metal with which they might do their fighting should not be used in building the altar which stands in the centre of the Temple. There is no comfortable way of resolving this contradiction. At its heart is the awareness that conflict, even war, is apparently an inevitable part of human reality and behaviour. Or rather, that the dream of human beings is a world without conflict and war, but we are still a long way from realizing that dream.
\nThe Hebrew Bible already suggests that limitations must be placed on one\u2019s freedom to wage war. When attacking a city, the opportunity to surrender peacefully must be offered (Deut. 20:10). There are laws about the treatment of captives (Deut. 20:11). No scorched earth policy is allowed (Deut. 20:19). These are early steps which helped pave the way towards modern conventions about the conduct of war. According to the Hebrew Bible, only certain people were obligated to fight. Those who are in the process of establishing their families, homes or farmlands were exempt (Deut. 20:5\u20137). Maintaining life and values, building human society, these are the things for which we should dedicate our lives. War is a sign of our failure to understand our true human priorities.
\nOn the basis of this biblical distinction between those who were legally obligated to fight and those who were exempted, the rabbis developed the idea of two kinds of war. In a war of self-defence, everyone was needed and duty bound to take part, because their very survival was at stake. This was called an \u2018obligatory war\u2019. Wars started by the king for political purposes or for expanding his realm were called \u2018permitted wars\u2019, but in those cases the general population was under no obligation to take part. However, such clear-cut distinctions are not always possible. When is a pre-emptive strike an act of self-defence and when is it a disguised act of aggression? Such questions are alive and played out today on the world stage.
\nThese distinctions were largely hypothetical for the Jewish people for the best part of 2,000 years. The rabbis who formulated them in the past had no army and no say in the wars of the nations around them. The Jewish re-entry into history as a nation, through the creation of the State of Israel, has radically changed that situation. The brutal fact of war or the threat of war is an everyday reality in the Middle East with no simple solutions.
\nWhatever the justification, war means the killing and maiming of human beings made in the image of God, people like us, people who, in other circumstances, could be us. The tradition of the half-shekel reminds us that war is not glorious but disastrous, not a sign of human greatness but of human failure. Counting people for the purpose of fighting a war is but a step away from counting body bags. In death, there is no distinction between the two sides of the conflict. All of the dead are made in the image of God, as are all who are maimed by it, all who call for war and all who fight it. All need a ransom for their souls.
\nWe need to return to the story of King David\u2019s census. According to the biblical account, he undertook it even against the advice of Joab, his commander in chief. It is not clear why he did so, but there is one significant difference between the count David undertook and the one we are reading about. In Exodus, it refers to counting men of 20 years and above. In the case of David, he counted all the people \u2018capable of bearing arms\u2019 (2 Sam. 24:9), old and young alike. In one explanation of the difference, David was not only concerned with those who were able to fight at the present time, but was anticipating future wars as well, so he counted the young men and boys below the age of 20 years. He was condemning the next generation to war, instead of trying to build a future of peace.
\nThe half-shekel of our Torah reading is meant to save lives, not destroy lives. It is not to be used to manufacture swords, but to help build a Temple for God. It is not for creating stock-piles of weapons, but for a far more difficult task, for creating stockpiles of mutual understanding and respect, of reconciliation and peace.
\n19
\nThe Absent Congregation
\nExodus 35\u201340
\nDuring a visit to America I went to a variety of synagogues to learn at first hand how they address the needs of the Jewish community. Like Jews everywhere Americans are aware of major changes taking place in their community. Up to 50 per cent of American Jews marry non-Jews. So, despite the relatively large size of the community, people have been increasingly concerned about its long-term future. Intermarriage and assimilation are the price we pay for being part of an open society. We may regret it and do all we can to strengthen Jewish identity and loyalty, but very few people want to return to some kind of closed-off Jewish ghetto. Instead communities, especially in America, have begun to seek ways of encouraging Jews to participate more in Jewish life. When there is an intermarriage, some congregations actively try to find a place for the non-Jewish partner. Their hope is that he or she will be supportive when it comes to raising their children as Jews and may possibly even convert to Judaism one day.
\nThe synagogue has become one of the most active agencies in America trying to reach out to Jews. For example, the last few years have seen major investments in resources, personnel and ideas to make synagogue worship services more attractive, as well as offering other activities for people who attend.
\nThese thoughts are sparked off by our Torah reading, vayakhel-pekudey, \u2018he gathered\u2019\u2014\u2018this is the sum \u2026\u2019, which describes the building and setting up of the sanctuary in the wilderness. Here was a temporary building, later to be replaced by the Temple, that was to be the centre of the religious life of the community. The main religious act was the sacrifice of animals to God. This would be accompanied in Temple times by the reading or singing of Psalms. A Psalm would be chosen that described the situation of the person bringing the sacrifice, either asking God for help or thanking God for rescue from some kind of trouble. Whatever the reason for coming to the Temple, the central intention was to come nearer to God by this means and to hope that one\u2019s particular prayers would be answered.
\nAt a later period, after the Temple was destroyed, our prayer life became more formalized. The three services a day became part of our religious obligation as individuals and as members of a community. Since we had to have a minyan, a minimum of ten adult males, for the full religious service to take place, Jews were obligated to support their community in a very practical way. There has always been room in Judaism for private prayers, both within the service and spontaneously. But coming to the synagogue was seen as a duty and a natural part of the rhythm of daily life. Moreover, you did not ask what you got out of the experience, but hoped that you had put the right amount of concentration and sincerity into reading the prayers.
\nWhile that still remains true for many Jews today, there has been a major shift in our spiritual concerns. We live in a secular society where belief in God has become a more private matter. The open society has changed our sense of community and raises questions about which group we feel we belong to and for whom we take some kind of responsibility. Above all we live in a consumer society and we judge everything in our lives by the price we have to pay for it and what we get in return. Religion, too, comes to be judged in the same way. This has particular consequences in America and other countries where, unlike Germany, there is no church tax and people have to pay directly to support their synagogue. If the synagogue does not meet the needs of its members, they can simply leave and go elsewhere. That causes a certain level of insecurity but it does make the leadership of the synagogue sensitive to the needs of its members.
\nWhich brings me back to the synagogues I visited in America. They all belong to the American Reform movement. In the past, this was the most radical Jewish organization because of the changes it made in Jewish ritual. Today, it is the largest Jewish religious movement in America and includes a wide range of different religious practices. Some congregations still have so-called classical Reform services, with organ music and a shortened liturgy. But others have returned to more traditional forms, restoring rituals, prayers and practices that previous Reform generations had removed. Of course, one thing they all have in common is that they are completely egalitarian, with men and women playing equal roles in leading the prayers.
\nAt one morning service I attended, almost everyone was wearing tallit and tefillin, the ritual garments of tradition, and the service itself included most of the traditional prayers. The next day the same group was experimenting with a service for \u2018healing\u2019, selecting a few prayers from the traditional liturgy and interweaving them with new songs and leaving time for meditation. At one Shabbat evening service, the three rabbis and cantor standing in front of music stands and microphones looked more like a pop group. They led a service made up of popular Hebrew songs built around a few traditional prayers. It was almost like a concert, but the atmosphere was very welcoming. More important, some 500 people attend that service each week, and most of them stay on in different groups to study Jewish texts or to socialize or to learn together with their children. In other synagogues, several different Shabbat services are held at the same time catering to the very different needs and wishes of members of the community.
\nWill such experiments have an impact on the Jewish community of America? Will they slow the rate of intermarriage or bring more people back to Judaism? No one can tell what the long-term effect will be. But, from the tabernacle built in the wilderness of Sinai to the synagogue on the West Coast of America, there is a tradition of prayer and worship that defines the spiritual life of the Jewish people. And as long as Jews gather together to pray, whatever the form it takes, there is hope for our future.
\n20
\nOn Hats and Hijabs
\nExodus 38:21\u201340:38
\nHere we complete the reading of the Book of Exodus. It ends in an unexpected way. The Book starts with the arrival in Egypt of the patriarch Jacob and records how his family flourished and grew. They became so many that a new Pharaoh, in order to consolidate his power, built his political platform on fear about these Israelites as a potential fifth column. He laid secret plans to destroy the male children as they were born. But this was prevented by the actions of the Hebrew midwives, the first recorded act of civil disobedience against the misuse of political power. When Moses challenged Pharaoh, a series of plagues seriously damaged the country. The Israelites finally left Egypt, ending their period of enslavement. At the Sea of Reeds, the Egyptian army was utterly destroyed. The end result of Pharaoh\u2019s scaremongering policy was exactly the thing that he had wanted to prevent.
\nIn the desert at Mount Sinai, the newly formed nation received its constitution. It contained laws formulated in deliberate contrast to the slave state they had left behind. Theirs was to be a society built on individual freedom within a system based on the rule of law and mutual responsibility.
\nBut the narrative part of the Book of Exodus comes to a sudden halt. The last 16 chapters describe in enormous detail the plans for the building of the sanctuary, a religious centre, where they are to meet their God. The same details are even repeated almost verbatim as the sanctuary is actually fashioned and built.
\nThe change of emphasis between the beginning and end of the Book of Exodus reflects a transition in the life of the people. After the extraordinary experiences of liberation, wandering and nation building, they needed a new kind of stability in their lives. The sanctuary with all the regular sacrifices that took place there provided just this kind of continuity and security. The detailed and repeated description of every element that went into the building of the sanctuary helped provide an awareness of the presence of God in their lives. Each element had meaning and significance.
\nAlmost an entire chapter is devoted to the fashioning of the clothing of Aaron, the High Priest, and his sons who were to serve God in the sanctuary. Each piece of the clothing of the priests had significance in itself, but also as part of defining the role and purpose of the one who wore it. Clothing, especially clothing associated with a religious tradition, can be an essential part of identity building for those within the faith.
\nBut things change over time. With the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the entire institution of the priesthood and sacrifice disappeared from Judaism. Nevertheless, other forms of distinctive dress have become part of Jewish tradition in different times and in different cultures. Some form of head covering has been an important part of Jewish religious identity since the early rabbinic period. Though changes of clothing are often caused by outside influences, they can also reflect inner debates within the Jewish community itself. For example, the issue of whether or not to wear a hat became a source of contention with the emergence of the Reform movement in Judaism in the nineteenth century. In America, where the movement was more radical than in Europe, many Reform Temples insisted that no one should wear a head covering during services.
\nThese thoughts, about the nature and significance of clothing, have been raised by the current debates in Europe about the public wearing of the hijab by Muslim women and other outer symbols of religious affiliation.
\nThe bitterness of the debate reminded me of an experience described by the late Rabbi William Braude, a great Jewish scholar and the spiritual leader of a Reform Temple in Providence, Rhode Island. He told about an evening arranged by his Temple in 1938 a week after the Reichskristallnacht, \u2018night of broken glass\u2019. It was to be a service of grief and sorrow because of the synagogues in Germany that had been destroyed. The congregation invited all the Jewish refugees in Providence to attend. On the Friday night, as he was preparing for the service, one of the members of the Temple rushed into his office and asked: \u2018Did you give permission to these people to wear hats?\u2019 The Temple belonged to the classical Reform tradition, where hats were removed on entering the synagogue. But this would have been surprising, even shocking, to any Jewish refugee from Europe with a more Orthodox background. Rabbi Braude writes:
\nThe fact was that until that instant I had given no thought to the headgear of our guests\u2014the refugees. I did not know whether or not our guests chose to wear hats, to put on Yarmulkes, or not to wear either. And so my response to the question \u2026 was indirect. I began to say: \u2018But these people are our guests. They have suffered so much. Whether or not they choose to wear their hats, surely we do not wish to add insult to the injuries they had already suffered.\u2019 But my interrogator was implacable. \u2018Answer my question. Did you or did you not give permission to these people to wear their hats?\u2019 To this day, I don\u2019t know the outcome of the battle of the hats. I was too choked up with pain. Involuntarily I thought of comparable demands\u2014of Cossack officers saying to Jews: \u2018Shapka doloi\u2019, \u2018Off with your hat\u2019, of SS men saying: \u2018Hut ab, Jude.\u2019 So when I walked into the Temple I did not look. My head was reeling; my eyes were filled with tears. To this day I do not know whether ushers took it upon themselves to tell our guests to remove their hats and whether some of the refugees left in protest. Whatever happened to the hats worn by our guests, that service for me at least was indeed a service of grief and sorrow.
\nThis story says much about the nature of intolerance. The congregant was so blinded by what he considered to be the tradition of his Temple that he lost sight of the larger picture, the experience of the refugees who were their guests for that evening. He allowed convention to overcome compassion, and dogma to deaden sympathy for and sensitivity to the needs of others.
\nThat is why we need to juxtapose the beginning and the end of the Book of Exodus. To wear or not to wear a hat, or any other special clothing, may carry with it an enormous weight of emotions and historical experiences for the wearer. To prevent any individual or group from expressing their own religious or cultural identity through their clothing is a disgrace to any civilized society.
\nPharaoh used the perceived difference of the Israelites for his own political ends. He stirred up anxiety and hatred to consolidate his power, but ultimately he only damaged and almost destroyed the very society he wanted to preserve and protect.
\nEverywhere today we experience the growing coexistence of a multitude of different cultures, races and religious traditions within any given society. This is a difficult and challenging reality that needs courage, mutual respect and generosity of spirit. We do not need new Pharaohs trading on people\u2019s fears for their own purposes. Instead, we need sanctuaries for all the different religious traditions within our society. We need to create and defend a public space where the clothing or symbols that reflect our own religious tradition, and that of others, can be worn with confidence and without fear.
\n21
\nIntroducing Leviticus
\nOne of the keys to understanding the Book of Leviticus is Genesis 1, the account of the creation of the world. The world that God creates comes into being through a series of separations: between light and darkness, between the waters above and below the firmament, between the sea and the dry land. In the end, there are three major divisions, the heavens, the earth and the waters beneath the earth, each with its own distinctive features and inhabitants. As the Psalmist explains, the heavens are the domain of God, but the earth has been given to human beings to inhabit. However, because of God\u2019s experience with human beings, there will be one further act of separation, the choosing of Israel from among all the peoples of the world to be a \u2018kingdom of priests and a holy nation\u2019.
\nThe Book of Leviticus is about how the collective life of Israel is to be regulated so as to fulfil this task as a kingdom of priests. A key term is \u2018kadosh\u2019, usually translated as \u2018holy\u2019, but basically meaning \u2018separate\u2019, \u2018distinctive\u2019, and in this particular context, \u2018set apart\u2019 for God. Being set apart for God, one has to exist within certain boundaries and divisions that should not be crossed. Effectively, Israel is to align itself with the pattern laid down by God for creation.
\nThis translates into the language of \u2018clean\u2019 and \u2018unclean\u2019. The food you eat must conform to certain categories. The animals you eat should be herbivores and neither hunt nor scavenge. Animals that live between two domains, between sea and land, like shellfish, or between land and sky, are explicitly forbidden\u2014they cross boundaries. Clothing made from different kinds of materials should not be worn together. Different kinds of animals should not be mated together. Certain physical or pathological states of the body make one temporarily \u2018out of alignment\u2019 with the normal, and this state must be remedied. Certain human relationships are seen as conforming to an acceptable pattern and others not. Even time must be contained within a divine pattern of weekdays and Shabbat and a festival calendar governing the entire year.
\nFurthermore, the behaviour among the \u2018kingdom of priests\u2019 must be correct. Yet, inevitably things go wrong. Mistakes are made, boundaries are crossed, human realities, rivalries and needs constantly threaten to destroy the idealized pattern of existence. So an elaborate system is needed to constantly monitor and correct these lapses. The legal system is to ensure that wrongdoing is dealt with, punishment is meted out and the correct human relationships are re-established. But the sacrificial cult fulfils the role of restoring the relationship with God which has been damaged by these activities. The blood of the sacrifice formally washes away the \u2018uncleanness\u2019, in the immediate situation, and once a year on Yom Kippur for the priesthood and the people as a whole.
\nIt is a remarkably coherent and comprehensive system. It assumes that God is a desired presence in their midst, but also a dangerous and barely containable force. It requires an entire population to understand their responsibilities and a priestly hierarchy able to service the system, but with safeguards also to prevent the abuse of their power. As a system it served effectively for more than 1,000 years.
\nBut there is also another possible perspective on the Book of Leviticus. The first word of the Book is \u2018Vayikra\u2019, literally, \u2018He called\u2019. But if you look at the Masoretic text you will see an anomaly. The last letter of vayikra, the \u2018alef\u2019, is written small and raised above the line. It looks as though it was squeezed in as an afterthought. Without it, we would read the word \u2018vayikar\u2019, \u2018it happened\u2019. This led to a midrash, a rabbinic commentary. Moses was a very modest man and was embarrassed to write that God specifically called to him, so instead wrote \u2018vayikar\u2019, as if God simply happened to come across him. But God insisted that he add the \u2018alef\u2019\u2014he was really called by God! The two verbs, though pronounced the same, \u2018kara,\u2019 have diametrically opposite meanings: one is about a calling, a vocation, the other is about chance. And therein lies the problem within the Book of Leviticus. For the entire system is about eliminating chance, of ensuring a rigorous control over every aspect of life, and over everything that happens, within an isolated and hermetically sealed environment. It includes no real relationship with other peoples around, no political dimension, leaving that up to God as the guarantor of their safety. It may be true to the designation, \u2018holy nation\u2019, but takes no account of the responsibility as a \u2018kingdom of priests\u2019, for just as priests mediate between the people and God, so a \u2018kingdom of priests\u2019 bear the same responsibility to the other kingdoms of the earth. It is other strands of biblical thought that address these wider issues.
\nThe Book of Leviticus itself brings us into a remarkable world, far more complex than this superficial introduction suggests. Though it requires a leap of imagination to enter, nevertheless it poses real questions about how a religious society and community should operate; how people should interact with one another, and how, as individuals and collectively, to mediate the encounter with God.
\n22
\nMartyrs and Sacrifices
\nLeviticus 16
\nHere we read two sections from the Book of Leviticus. The first takes its name from the dramatic opening words: \u2018Aharei-mot sh\u2019nei bnei aharon\u2019, \u2018After the death of the two sons of Aaron\u2019. To understand its significance it is helpful to imagine we are watching a film. At a crucial point in the story we learn about an event that happened some time before but which continues to impact upon one of the characters. In a flashback, we see this event as it happened and relive it together with the person who had the experience. In the case of the opening words, we will need to look back at two particular scenes in the Bible to understand the significance of our opening words, \u2018After the death of the two sons of Aaron\u2019.
\nAaron the High Priest, the brother of Moses, had four sons. The first two were called Nadav and Abihu. In a mysterious story in Leviticus 10:1\u20132, we are told that the two sons brought \u2018strange fire\u2019 into the sanctuary, the holiest part of the encampment in the wilderness where the sacrifices were made to God. The text adds that they had not been commanded to do this. Suddenly, fire comes down from heaven and burns them up. That is all we are told. Our first flashback establishes the background scene in which this occurred. From the verse before (Lev. 9:24) we learn that it took place at the precise moment that the sanctuary in the wilderness was completed. At that moment, fire descended from heaven and consumed the sacrifice on the altar. This was the proof that the sanctuary, and all that took place within it, was accepted by God. But that same fire seems also to have consumed the two sons of Aaron but no one else.
\nMuch of the crucial information we would need to understand the story is missing. What was the nature of this \u2018strange fire\u2019 that they brought? What was so wrong with it that it led to such a tragic loss of life? Many of the commentaries try to establish some kind of wrongdoing by the two young men to explain their shocking fate. The passage in Leviticus is followed at once by a command to Aaron that the priests should not enter the sanctuary when they have drunk wine or strong liquor (Lev. 10:9). So perhaps Aaron\u2019s sons were actually drunk at the time and hence this new commandment. In another view, they were simply impatient young men who wanted to take on the role of their father Aaron instead of waiting till they inherited his task. But if they were simply impatient to serve God in the sanctuary, perhaps their motive was not such a bad one. If so, is there another way to understand what happened?
\nIn order to explore this possibility, we need to look at a second flashback. This time, we return to the moment when the children of Israel stood at Mount Sinai and entered into the covenant with God. The Bible describes an elaborate ceremony, which sealed the agreement between God and the people. At the end, there occurred a unique event. Till now, only Moses had been allowed to climb the mountain to meet God. But now a small group was invited to share that experience. They included Aaron and his two sons Nadav and Abihu as well as 70 elders of the people. In a text unique in the Bible, all of them saw the God of Israel (Exod. 24). This mystical experience seems to have had a profound effect on those who took part. In a later passage 70 elders, presumably the same ones, began to prophecy. So what must have been the impact on the two young men, the sons of Aaron?
\nPerhaps they became overwhelmed by the direct experience of God and as a result burned with an inner passion and zeal to serve their God. It was this enthusiasm to participate in the sacrifices in the sanctuary that led them to break the rules and enter that special place at the wrong time. On this interpretation, what happened to them was not a punishment. But rather it was a kind of fulfilment of their desire to offer themselves to God. They themselves became a kind of sacrifice, literally burnt up with their own inner fire.
\nSuch passion is the special quality to be found in young people. It fuels feelings of devotion and love, whether directed at another person or a cause. It is single-minded and often uncritical, simply because it is not constrained by the breadth of experience or the weight of responsibilities that come with age. It can lead to great achievements or equally great disappointments. But it is also the driving force that leads to self-sacrifice for a cause, whether it be a religious tradition, or a nationalist movement or a political ideal. It is the energy that creates martyrs and saints.
\nThis story about the death of two young men consumed by fire is not a comfortable one at the best of times. Their passion to serve their God cost them their lives. But any tale about martyrdom has challenging echoes today in the aftermath of 9\/11 and in the ongoing cycle of violence in the Middle East. Young men and women are prepared to blow themselves up in public places for the sake of their cause.
\nJewish history has its own list of martyrs who were willing to die for the sake of their faith. The Talmud recalls ten rabbis who were executed by the Romans for continuing to teach the Torah to their people when such activities were banned. A passage from early rabbinic teachings asks: \u2018Why are you brought out to be killed?\u2019 \u2018Because I performed the rite of circumcision on my son.\u2019 \u2018Why are you to be stoned to death?\u2019 \u2018Because I have observed the Shabbat.\u2019 \u2018Why are you led out to be burned by fire?\u2019 \u2018Because I studied the Torah.\u2019 (Tanchuma Toledot on Genesis 6 (Buber edition)).
\nThroughout the Middle Ages, Jews chose to die rather than convert to Christianity or Islam. Tragically, even whole families would voluntarily choose death, the last survivor killing himself. And yet, the rabbis recognized that such self-sacrifice contradicted a fundamental religious value\u2014the preservation of life. So they tackled the problem in the way they knew best. They created laws which set strict limits on when and in what circumstances it was permitted to offer one\u2019s life for the sanctification of God\u2019s name.
\nThe rabbis often turned to biblical figures to provide models for ideal behaviour. But there is one obvious martyr in the Bible, whose example they did not seek to follow\u2014namely Samson. When Samson killed himself by pulling down the pillars of the Philistine temple, he killed thousands of his enemies at the same time. This could have provided an example to emulate\u2014a self-sacrifice that also served to kill other people. But this never became legitimized in Jewish law. Nevertheless, in times of war, Jews have also been willing to offer their lives and take their enemy with them into death.
\nIt would be nice to make a neat distinction between martyrdom and murder. In such a distinction, the death of the true martyr is an act that only harms directly the person who undertakes it. It is an act of individual resistance and dedication to one\u2019s religious faith. On the other hand, deliberately to set out to kill innocent bystanders at the same time as taking one\u2019s own life, is an act of murder. For Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike, such an act cannot be considered to be a genuine service of God. And yet, at different times and places, such destructive acts have taken place in the name of any number of religions and in the service of any number of gods.
\nReligion is also about what people actually do in its name, just as much as it is about what the teachings declare that people ought to do. True religion is always about the struggle between the values it seeks to promote and the sins it all too often commits. So an essential element of religious faith has to be the willingness to admit such sins and seek out the roots within the religious tradition that make them possible. Without such courage and honesty, the sin itself becomes the new truth, and religion becomes its own victim.
\nThis does not change the further duty of religious believers when caught up in conflicts, especially those made more complicated or bitter by religion itself: the duty to remove the causes that lead to such desperate acts of martyrdom; to seek justice where it is absent, pragmatism where there is fanaticism, compromise where there is dogma. Only then can one hope for the possibility of reconciliation and the beginning of the long, long journey to peace.
\nTo paraphrase a dialogue from Bertolt Brecht\u2019s Life of Galileo: \u2018Unhappy the land that has no martyrs.\u2019 \u2018Unhappy the land that needs martyrs!\u2019
\n23
\nMysteries of Sex and Death
\nLeviticus 21
\nThere is a certain wisdom in the Jewish tradition of reading a passage from the Torah each week, sections from the Five Books of Moses. They contain such a mixture of material: stories, laws, poetry, cultic information, that we never know what is going to turn up or what will strike our imagination. So each reading challenges us in a new way to try to discover significance within it. However obscure or difficult the passage may be, this is a word of revelation to be explored, interpreted and applied to our life.
\nThe beginning of this reading from the Torah is an example of such a challenge. It introduces us to a world as remote and bewildering as any we are likely to meet in the Hebrew Bible. It describes the rules of mourning for the priests, the cohanim, the descendants of Aaron. But it describes these rules in terms of a puzzling set of restrictions. The priests are only allowed to undertake a mourning ritual for their immediate family: mother and father, son and daughter, brother and sister. But this last case, that of the sister, is even further circumscribed. The sister of the priest must still be a virgin at the time of her death. If she has married, he may not perform the rituals associated with death. Why impose these limits that seem so unnatural on the priests? And why this special distinction in the case of the sister alone?
\nThe very language is also problematic. The priest who comes into contact with death becomes \u2018tamei\u2019, variously translated as \u2018impure\u2019 or \u2018unclean\u2019, words which carry a negative connotation in our Western culture. But this is actually misleading, as tamei only applies to a symbolic status. It makes no value judgement. The priest who functions in the holiest part of the sanctuary, in intimate contact with God, has to remain ritually pure.
\nIt is rather like a surgeon in an operating theatre, who has to wear sterile clothing and wash in disinfectant before he operates. Moreover, everything and everyone around him must also be prepared in the same way. If he does not do so, then any bacteria he carries may infect the patient. The sanctuary was seen as a holy place, set aside for God\u2019s powerful presence. So nothing must contaminate it, in case God\u2019s anger be aroused and disaster strike the community.
\nThe price paid by the priest for his privileged position of directly serving God was the extra precautions he had to take. Contact with the dead caused ritual impurity, so in theory he should never be in the presence of one who has died. But the Torah at least allows him to be in attendance, when those of his closest family have died and are buried. It is a concession to his natural grief.
\nThe verses we read specify some of the details. He is forbidden to shave his hair or make cuts in his skin as signs of mourning. Physical damage of any sort would also disqualify him from functioning as a priest.
\nBut why may he not mourn for his sister, if she is no longer a virgin? Having opened up this subject, the same text adds that he may not marry a woman who has been a prostitute or a divorcee. Obviously, these are all cases where the woman in question has had sexual intercourse. The priest is to be \u2018holy\u2019, which means that he is \u2018set aside\u2019, \u2018dedicated\u2019 to God alone. Presumably any woman who plays a significant part in his immediate family must be similarly set apart and special, for she is either born into or has married into the priestly caste. Once the sister has had intercourse through marriage, she has left that special domain. The wife of the priest must similarly have an exclusive relationship with him.
\nI noted at the beginning that this aspect of the biblical world is remote from us. In Judaism, for almost 2,000 years, we have had no Temple, no sacrifices and no officiating priests. Nevertheless, something remains of this past world. There are families who preserve the tradition that they are cohanim, descended from the biblical priests. They still have certain limited ritual functions in Jewish life. They are given the honour of being the first to be called up to read from the Torah in Synagogue. In services, they recite the priestly blessing over the community. Moreover, according to traditional Jewish law, they still may not marry a divorced woman or a convert to Judaism. They are not allowed to enter a cemetery, though there are no other limits placed on their ability to mourn members of their family who have died. These are restrictions that are taken very seriously by some who consider it to be an honour to be descended from the biblical priests. But others may simply ignore the tradition which they find has little meaning.
\nSo what do we make of such biblical laws? After all, they do not even apply to the majority of Jews, who are not descended from these priestly families?
\nThe passage touches on two of the great mysteries of life\u2014human sexuality and death itself. Sexual intercourse binds two people physically together, however temporarily, and however casually it is undertaken. They become one. On the other hand, death tears people apart, however intimate, deep or prolonged their relationship might have been. The biblical priest is somehow to remain almost untouched by these experiences, dedicated exclusively to God, to an intimacy that is total, though completely non-physical. Nevertheless, he is expected to marry and have children like anyone else. He is bound to a kind of eternal life beyond the normal boundaries and limitations of human existence.
\nThe biblical priest by his otherness points to the normal dimensions within which we actually conduct our lives. These texts remind us of the extraordinary varieties of human intimacy, the limitless relationships we experience in our lifetime and the many losses we will suffer and have to mourn. The responsibility for how we conduct our lives, how we cope with death, and how we live in the presence of God today no longer depends on the ritual acts of a priestly caste. Those responsibilities and opportunities are in our hands alone.
\n24
\nAgainst Cruelty
\nWhen a word only occurs a few times in the Hebrew Bible, we need to compare the different contexts for clues as to its meaning. An example is found in Leviticus 25:39\u201346. The context is the treatment of Hebrew slaves. These are fellow Israelites who have fallen into debt and earn their way out of it by working for someone. The Torah insists that they are not to be treated as slaves, but rather as paid workers, to be released from their debts in the Jubilee year. They cannot be bought and sold like non-Israelite slaves, and above all they are not to be treated harshly. The word variously translated as \u2018with rigour\u2019, \u2018ruthlessly\u2019 or \u2018harshly\u2019 is \u2018b\u2019 farech,\u2019 and it comes twice in this section (Lev. 25:43, 36).
\nSlavery brings with it memories of the bitter experience of the Israelites as slaves in the land of Egypt, and here, too, we find b\u2019farech: \u2018The Egyptians made the children of Israel serve them b\u2019farech, with rigour\u2019 (Exod. 1:13). It occurs as part of a gradual escalation of the harshness of the treatment of the Israelites, embittering their lives and forcing them to do the most difficult physical labour. Israelite society is to be different from that of Egypt, though still willing to use non-Israelite slaves.
\nThe rabbis were curious about the meaning of this word. As a verb it means to crush or break down, and they understood it here in two possible senses: to crush the body but also to crush the spirit. They played with the word, breaking it into two syllables: \u2018peh,\u2019 \u2018mouth\u2019 and \u2018rach\u2019, \u2018soft\u2019, suggesting deceitfulness. They told how Pharaoh deceived the Israelites. He too started making bricks as if setting an example. The Israelites, keen to show their loyalty, immediately set to the work with energy and enthusiasm. At the end of the day, Pharaoh stopped, but insisted that the Israelites fulfil the exact same quota from then on!
\nThe harsh treatment described in Exodus could be understood simply as arbitrary cruelty, performed by those who enjoyed tormenting the Israelites to demonstrate their power over them. But such cruelty can be a deliberate policy of breaking the spirit of the victims, destroying their independence, making them seem less than human and so easier to regard as disposable. In the concentration camps, people were set meaningless tasks, like carting loads of bricks from one end of the compound to the other and then carting them all the way back.
\nIf these are the extreme consequences of such a policy, Rashi, following the midrash, draws attention to the implications within a domestic setting. On Leviticus 25:43, he explains:
\n\u2018Do not rule over him with rigour, by making him do useless work just to oppress him. Do not say to him, \u201cwarm this cup for me\u201d, even though you do not need it; or, \u201choe beneath this vine till I come\u201d [when he does not know when this will be]. Do not say to yourself, no one will know whether this is meaningful activity or not, so I will tell him that it is necessary. This matter is concealed in his heart, hence the verse (Lev 25:43) concludes: But fear God in your heart!\u2019
\nBy focusing on domestic violence and the abuse of those who work for us, actions that are often concealed from the public gaze, we are forced to examine our own behaviour and the way we use the power we hold over others. An unusual word and a remote verse, are suddenly brought uncomfortably close to home.
\n25
\nThe Small Print in the Contract
\nLeviticus 26:3\u201327:34
\nWith this reading we come to the end of the Book of Leviticus. It is an exploration of the theme of holiness and contains one of the central commands and values of the Hebrew Bible and of Judaism: \u2018You shall love your neighbour as yourself.\u2019 Holiness is about the relationship that exists between people and the care with which they maintain that relationship.
\nBut Chapter 26 comes as something of a shock. There seems to be very little about holiness here, instead it is made up of a series of blessings and curses: blessings that will come to Israel if they obey God; but curses if they do not.
\nBehind this language is actually a legal document. These \u2018blessings and curses\u2019 correspond to the small print at the bottom of any business contract. Both parties agree to work together, and then set out in the contract the conditions of their partnership. But suppose one or other of the partners fails to live up to the terms of the contract\u2014then the contract contains a list of sanctions and penalties that come into force.
\nThe curses in Leviticus are just such a section in the contract, the covenant between Israel and God. And they are very disturbing to read. If Israel disobeys the laws of God, then diseases will flourish in the land and enemies will invade and rule them. If they still refuse to obey God, then in successive stages more and more misfortunes will befall them. Under siege in their cities they will starve to death. Their cities and altars will be destroyed. Worse yet they will be taken into captivity in exile, where they will live a life of constant fear and anxiety.
\nIt is a chilling warning of a situation of insecurity and terror. It is a situation that has been experienced all too often by Jewish communities in exile.
\nThis detailed spelling out of punishment seems to reinforce the image of the God of the Hebrew Bible as a vengeful, angry God, always ready to punish the Israelites.
\nBut on the other hand, a contract is a contract. Much of our life is about negotiations, compromises and agreements we make with others. The moment there are two people in the world, they have to examine their relationship with each other: how to share resources; how to respect each other\u2019s needs, property and personal space; how to define their mutual responsibilities to each other.
\nWe build our relationships on the basis of trust, and much of the time we hardly even think about this. But when things go wrong, when a crisis occurs, then we realize how fragile many relationships actually are, and how many unspoken problems exist between us. Groups of people who have coexisted for long periods can suddenly find themselves in violent disagreement with each other, and then discover that there is no proper framework for resolving their difficulties. Then emotions take over, demands are made for loyalty to one\u2019s own group and confrontation and conflict with the \u2018other\u2019 becomes almost inevitable. That is why it is so important that at the time when people do make an agreement with each other, when there is good will on both sides, that provisions for the future be made.
\nThis applies not only to business agreements. Whenever there is a deep emotional commitment as well, such as when two people marry each other, then the terms and conditions need to be spelled out even more carefully. But a couple deeply in love may well resent this. They may not be able to imagine, or want to imagine, that they might one day change their minds and wish to separate. To talk about the practicalities of settling some possible future disagreement seems to undermine the very basis of their new relationship. Yet, traditional wisdom has always led societies to make such provisions, especially where something so central to the community as marriage is concerned.
\nIf all this seems to be a very negative way of looking at relationships between people, there is also a positive side, especially when it involves two people in love. Precisely because we know that there is a contract, and that contracts contain the possibility of being dissolved, both partners can recognize and accept the freedom that they have within the contract. In theory, at least, there should be no dependency or manipulation here when both are free to walk away. Their individuality and sense of responsibility are recognized and validated. They can build something together, but know that it will only work if they actually choose to stay together. It is not external pressures, not even religious pressures, that hold them together in the end, but such mutual respect and loyalty as they can create between themselves. The contract also means that there is a structure and framework to use for dealing with problems that arise and one which can be turned to in times of tension or difficulty.
\nThe sanctions in the contract, sanctions that they have both understood and accepted, are a kind of warning. But they are also a reminder of the value of what they have built together, the care with which they created their partnership and what they risk losing by dissolving the relationship.
\nSomething of these ideas exists in our parashah as well. These \u2018blessings and curses\u2019 are expressions of love and of anger, so they remind us of the deep emotional bonds between God and Israel and the paradox of the God of the entire cosmos entering into a covenant with a human society. If God\u2019s love was given full reign, it would be all-devouring; if God\u2019s anger was set free, it would be utterly destructive. Instead these emotions are contained within a ritualized language of warnings and graded sanctions. They are shocking threats because they are so graphic and real; but they establish boundaries and limits, and contain the promise of reconciliation and restoration.
\nIn the end, we also know that God cannot be contained within the pages of a contract. Israel too, in all its diversity and complexity, can no longer be defined by the language and metaphors of Leviticus. But the emotional ties remain, the love and the anger. In Jewish history, pain and suffering, the lure of idols and the challenge of new loves have time and again threatened to pull Israel and God apart. But in bad times and in good ones the formal ties and sanctions and promises of the covenant have helped us freely and consciously to choose to remain bound to one another.
\n26
\nHoly Places
\nNumbers 4:21\u20137:89
\nThis reading from the Book of Numbers describes a moment of change in the life of the children of Israel on their journey through the wilderness. They have built the sanctuary that is to be at the centre of their encampment. While that sanctuary exists, God will be present among the people. But certain precautions have to be taken so that the sanctuary does not become ritually impure. If that should happen, the anger of God would be aroused, and plague would break out in the camp. Holy places need to be handled with respect and care.
\nThe passages in this section detail the precautions that had to be taken. In theory when the people finally set out on their march, everything would be perfectly in place and nothing could go wrong.
\nOf course a few chapters later, when the theory gets tested, things do go wrong. Mistakes happen; the people disobey God; and on one occasion a plague does indeed break out. All religious systems have to find a balance between an ideal way in which things are to happen and human reality. Chance and change affect us all. Often the best we can hope for, especially in religious matters, is some kind of holy compromise.
\nI became acutely aware of the need to cope with change because of a particular experience. For over 30 years I had helped to organize an annual conference in Germany. It brings together Jewish, Christian and Muslim students, future leaders of the three faiths. The aim is to give them a greater understanding of each other\u2019s beliefs and practices. Above all the hope is that this will create relationships and a network of contacts that will continue into their lives and professional work.
\nFor most of the 30 years the conference had been held at the same place, the Hedwig Dransfeld Haus in Bendorf (HDH). But when the HDH had to be closed for financial reasons we had to transfer at short notice to a new location. Though we had to make adjustments to the programme, we were able to retain all the basic elements, and the conference was successful. But there was one unexpected problem we had to address.
\nOne of the highlights of the conference each year is the opportunity to attend each other\u2019s religious services. In the HDH there was a large room set aside to be used as a non-denominational room of prayer. During the conference, on Friday it could serve as a Mosque, on Saturday as a Synagogue and on Sunday as a Church. During the rest of the year the local Catholic community used it for their regular daily worship. During the week of the conference all the Christian symbols were either removed or covered so as to create a neutral space in which all the participants of different religions could feel comfortable as they conducted their services. It showed a great sensitivity on the part of those who directed the HDH and the great generosity of spirit on the part of those who prayed there regularly, to allow the room to be used in this way. As hosts they wanted to be sure that their guests felt at home. But they also recognized the power of religious symbols both to their own religious community and to others. Somehow the right balance had to be reached between their own needs and those of their guests.
\nIt is a mark of our own religious security and trust that we are willing to sacrifice something of our own sacred space to make room for others. During the 30 years of the conference we felt the presence of God in that room on many occasions\u2014but despite making changes to our shared sanctuary, no biblical plague ever broke out!
\nWhen we moved to our new temporary home we found a very different situation. The place we were using was a Catholic house with a conservative tradition. In virtually every room there was a large crucifix as well as religious pictures and symbols. Some members of the organizing team experienced quite a strong reaction to them. Instead of the neutral territory we were used to, we were in a place with a powerful religious identity of a particular type. We felt that this was potentially disturbing for the participants at the conference, especially those coming for the first time.
\nWhen the organizing team met for the final planning session we recognized the relevance of this issue for the topic of the conference itself. Our theme was the contribution of our different religious traditions to current socio-political issues. We had encountered one of today\u2019s major questions. How do we deal with the public display of the religious symbols of another community? How are we to react to Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps, Christian crosses or Sikh turbans in a multicultural society? Do we allow all such symbols to be displayed? Do we allow none of them? Do we assume that there is a majority culture that is allowed free expression of its religious symbols but deny the right to others?
\nWe became very aware of our own particular situation as a conference. After so many years in the same place where we had felt at home and could control our environment, we were now in exile. We were dependent upon the generosity and openness of our new host. Like others in exile we carried with us memories of the place we had left behind and the freedom of worship that we had known. We were grateful to our new host, and wished to respect their culture and religious expressions. But how could we find space for our own needs?
\nWe discussed a number of possible strategies. We could request that all religious symbols in the building be removed, and if our hosts were unwilling, look for another place. We could try to ignore them, as if they were simply part of the decorations and wallpaper and of no significance. But that would mean showing little respect for the religious life and the traditions of our host. We began to appreciate the difficulties faced by those forced to start a new life in a strange place. How far do you try to preserve your own traditions and identity? How far do you assimilate to the traditions of the new place? Or do you find a way of balancing the two by creating a private space within which you can preserve your own ways while fitting into the outside world as far as possible?
\nOf course the choice may not be yours to make. The host may insist that you conform to their ways and practices. How far they will allow you to preserve your identity is probably a measure of their sense of security in their own identity. If those in the host culture are also insecure they will be less tolerant of the presence and the needs of others. When two sets of insecure people confront each other in this way then the situation is potentially explosive.
\nIn the event we spoke to the director of the house and he was very sympathetic to our needs. We had decided for ourselves the compromise we wanted that would respect both parties. We requested that the crucifixes be removed from the public rooms for the duration of the conference. However, they would remain in the bedrooms and people would be free to leave them on the wall or remove them as they wished. But we also proposed that the other religious pictures and symbols should remain so that the identity of the house would be preserved. The director agreed at once. He felt it important that as the host he should do everything in his power to make his guests feel at home. And that is how it was resolved. We explained what had been decided to the participants of the conference and it never became an issue. As soon as the conference was over the crucifixes were replaced in time for the next group of visitors who would expect to see them there.
\nOf course this was a limited situation in which it was relatively easy to negotiate a solution. But it allowed the generosity and openness that is at the heart of our religious traditions to find their expression. We had learnt to share our sanctuary. We could celebrate a successful holy compromise.
\n27
\nSpying out the Land
\nNumbers 13\u201315
\nThis reading comes from the Book of Numbers and tells the story about the men sent by Moses to spy out the promised land of Canaan. The effect of the mission was disastrous. All of the spies agreed that the land was indeed fruitful. But they also reported that the people were strong, the cities were well fortified and there were even giants there. Ten of the twelve spies were convinced that they would never be able to conquer the land. But two of them, Caleb and Joshua, argued that they would be able to do so. This triggered a crisis that nearly destroyed the entire project. Some people even suggested that they should appoint a new leader, turn round and go back to Egypt.
\nWhen we look at the story in more detail we find that there were actually two stages in the report of the spies. They were given to different audiences, and, in each case, there was a different emphasis. This seeming repetition has led scholars to suggest that there were two different accounts of what happened, and they have been edited together. But whenever there are such seeming repetitions in the Hebrew Bible, it is worth looking more closely at the differences between them.
\nThe sequence is quite clear. The returning spies brought their report to Moses, Aaron and a selected group of the leaders of the people. They showed the fruit, praised the quality of the land, but then emphasized the military difficulties involved in conquering it. It is at this point that Caleb intervened. He silenced the people and said: \u2018Let us go up and we shall inherit the land. We can do it!\u2019 But the ten spies contradicted him: \u2018We cannot go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.\u2019
\nThe discussion appears to have been conducted in purely military terms. Were the Israelites powerful enough to undertake the conquest of the land? Clearly the ten spies had a legitimate argument. The Israelites had only recently been freed from centuries of slavery in Egypt. They probably lacked the necessary military skills. But above all they did not have the self-confidence to take this kind of risk. Certainly this group of leaders of the people lacked the willpower to undertake such an adventure.
\nAs so often in the Hebrew Bible, between this discussion and what follows something seems to have happened that has not been recorded. For in the next sentence we are told, even though no reason is given, that the spies leaked their negative report to the people. Since they were trying to convince the people of their views, the land itself became a problem in their description. Now it is a land that \u2018devours its inhabitants\u2019. Moreover, all of the inhabitants are now giants and the spies felt themselves to be insignificant in their eyes. It may be that they simply told these stories to their families, when they got home, and that is how the word got round. However, it is more likely that they spread these tales deliberately. Despite their misgivings and warnings, Moses must have said that they were going to go ahead with the conquest. In order to stop Moses, they leaked the negative report, so as to stir up public opinion against him.
\nThe next chapter describes what happened that night. The community leaders met together and shouted and argued about what to do. In contrast, the people in the camp wept the whole night long. In the morning, they all turned against Moses and the talk began about appointing a new leader to take them back to Egypt.
\nIn response, Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before the full assembly of the people. There are various explanations for this action. Perhaps they were praying to God. But the act of falling on their face may have been a formal matter in the language of the Bible. It meant that Moses and Aaron showed that they were willing to accept the authority and decisions of this full assembly of the people. There would be a public debate and referendum to decide what was to happen next, and Moses was signalling that he would accept the will of the people.
\nIt is in this context that we hear a second report about the land. But this time it is Joshua who is mentioned before Caleb, and we must assume that he is taking the lead in the argument. They begin by asserting that the land is very good. But now bring in a different factor. If God favours them, then it is God who will give them the land not their own military power. Their refusal to undertake the conquest is a rebellion against God. The people of the land should not be feared, because their protecting spirits had departed.
\nBut despite all they had experienced of God\u2019s power in rescuing them from Egypt and bringing them safely through the Sea of Reeds, the people were unconvinced by these arguments. They even threatened to stone Joshua and Caleb to death. It was only God\u2019s intervention that saved the day.
\nIt is noteworthy that throughout the public debate about the report of the spies Moses is silent. Caleb suggests his military option. Joshua relies on God\u2019s intervention on their behalf. The spies themselves are torn by doubts and fears. The people experience confusion and anger. But Moses is silent.
\nAll of these are recognizable reactions to a crisis in the life of the nation. The Bible offers its own view of who turned out to be right in the end and who had understood the will of God. Joshua will eventually become Moses\u2019 successor as leader of the people. But at the time when such life or death decisions had to be made about what to do, no one could have known which option to take or who to believe. So the biblical record is painfully accurate in describing all the different voices and opinions at such a time, and the difficulty of making a choice. The will of God is not so easy to recognize.
\nThis story of the spies inevitably takes on special dimensions today. The land of Canaan, after 2,000 years, is once again in the hands of the Jewish people. As before, there are other people who live there who are perceived as a threat. There are leaders like Caleb, who would offer a military solution to the problems they pose. There are others who believe that God will fight their battles for them and remove all obstacles. But these apparent certainties of a few people mask the deep uncertainty of the mass of the nation.
\nToday a new kind of territory has to be entered. This territory is not simply a geographical area but an inner landscape, inhabited by two peoples reluctantly struggling to find a way of living together. There is still a vision, of a fruitful land, flowing with milk and honey, but now it has to be a land shared by both peoples. What stands in the way of that vision are the same elements that the biblical spies encountered. Both peoples who inhabit this inner landscape have a history and experience that make it almost impossible for them to imagine a way of living together in peace. There are fortified cities to be overthrown, places and attitudes where defensiveness and aggression have become ingrained responses to any change. And there are giants to be defeated as well, monstrous images of each other, based on past horrors and rumours that haunt the imagination of both peoples. Such images make it almost impossible to see the humanity and vulnerability of those on the other side. Any report about this new territory brought by spies is likely, once again, to lead to disaster.
\nSo we are left with conflicting opinions about what to do. Political leaders meet in all night sessions and shout and argue with each other. And in their respective encampments both peoples weep in despair and hopelessness.
\nIn the biblical story, as a result of this crisis, the Israelites had to wander for 40 years in the wilderness. They had to wait for another generation, born in freedom, to have the courage and inner security, to take the risk of entering the Promised Land. But today neither side can afford to wait another 40 years. Together they are fated to stand on the border and together endure the bitterness, insecurity and self-destruction of exile. Or else together, without spies, without a Moses, and without any divine guarantee, they have to take the risk and enter this new land together.
\n28
\nRebelling against Moses
\nNumbers 16\u201318
\nThis Torah reading tells the dramatic story of the rebellion in the wilderness against the leadership of Moses by Korach and various other Israelites. The reading from the prophets that accompanies it, the Haftarah, is taken from the First Book of Samuel 11 and 12. It tells of the anointing of King Saul and the warning by the prophet Samuel that Israel has to remain obedient to God, even though they now have a king as leader. Israel\u2019s covenant with God requires the creation of a society based on justice for everyone. Samuel is concerned that with the appointment of their first king he might abuse his power and undermine the values of the covenant. In both of the passages, a leader of the nation, whether Moses or Samuel, invites a public scrutiny of his activities for any evidence that he has acted in a corrupt way or abused his power.
\nIn the rebellion against Moses, he is accused of failing as a political leader to bring the children of Israel into a land flowing with milk and honey, as he had promised. The Bible records for the first time that Moses loses his temper!
\nAnd Moses was greatly angry and said to the Eternal: \u2018Do not turn to their offering! Not one donkey of theirs did I take, nor did I harm any single one of them.\u2019 (Num. 16:15)
\nMoses was making a public oath before God so as to demonstrate that he had been totally honest in his dealings. But why illustrate his honesty by referring to never having taken a donkey? The rabbis suggested a solution. Moses had used his own donkey, when he travelled from Midian back to Egypt to confront Pharaoh. He was so scrupulous in his behaviour that, even though he was entitled to ask the Israelites to refund him for the food the donkey had eaten on the way and any other legitimate expenses, he refused to ask for payment! He refused to charge mileage.
\nWhen Samuel handed over authority to King Saul he also made a declaration before the people that he had never taken advantage of his leadership position for his own private purposes. So this is one of the themes linking the two passages. Samuel says:
\nHere I am, testify against me before the Eternal and before his anointed: Whose ox have I taken? Or whose donkey have I taken? Whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed? From whose hand have I taken a bribe to blind my eyes with it, so that I may restore it to you? (1 Sam. 12:3)
\nThe people confirm that Samuel is indeed guiltless of any such crimes. When Samuel asserts that he has always acted with integrity, he is also giving another hint to the people about the risks of appointing a king. He had already warned them that a king would confiscate their land and give it to his friends. He would also take their young men and women, and even take their donkeys to work for him (1 Sam. 8:16). Samuel is stepping down, but he is demonstrating to the people and, indeed, to his successor King Saul, that a true leader in Israel must act within the law and behave with integrity.
\nBoth of our passages show that leaders must be publicly accountable, and that their activities, in particular their financial transactions, must be utterly transparent and open to inspection.
\nMoses only referred to one specific wrongdoing, taking a donkey, whereas Samuel speaks of five separate situations that a leader might exploit for his own advantage. For Moses leading the Israelites through the wilderness, the opportunities for abusing his power were relatively few so one example was enough. For Samuel, living among a settled community on the verge of becoming a nation, the temptations of office were far greater. How might we understand Samuel\u2019s list today?
\nAn ox in biblical times was an expensive animal to own, so to steal someone\u2019s ox would have been a serious crime. But the rabbis understood the verse in another way. They pointed out that Samuel used to offer sacrifices of oxen to God and use the occasion to plead to God to show mercy on the people. So the rabbis suggested that whenever Samuel made such a sacrifice he did so using one of his own oxen and never asked the people to pay for it. That suggests that a leader should not be motivated primarily by the desire for personal gain, whether that meant financial reward or greater prestige, but should put the needs of the people he leads first. Leadership in this sense is a kind of personal sacrifice for the good of others.
\nThe rabbis thought that Samuel, like Moses, used his own donkey, when he travelled round the country on behalf of the people and never received payment, even though he was entitled to it. So this example would relate to all the perks of office that become available to political leaders. Using government transport for private travel, or making expense account purchases for what are really personal items, or hiring family or friends for special tasks, all such things are an abuse of the privileges of office. Samuel insists that his record in this area should also be properly examined.
\nThe rabbis understood the third wrongdoing that Samuel mentions to mean \u2018defrauding\u2019 people. They meant when people take unfair advantage of a trust that has been given to them. A modern illustration would be the promises that politicians make before an election which they do not always fulfil once they are in power. Government is always more complicated than it might seem to those outside, so it is understandable, if election promises have to be adjusted and compromises made. But promises that are given cynically just for the sake of being elected, with no intention of honouring them, are a breach of trust. Moreover, they bring the whole process of politics and government into disrepute. The rabbis call that kind of unacceptable behaviour, \u2018stealing the heart\u2019.
\nSamuel\u2019s fourth question \u2018Whom have I oppressed?\u2019 is potentially even more serious. Leadership is often a delicate attempt to balance the needs and interests of a wide variety of groups within society. As one rabbi expressed it:
\nPray for the welfare of the government, for but for the fear it inspires, we would swallow each other alive! (Sayings of the Fathers 3.2)
\nBut the temptation to any leader is to favour those who are most likely to re-elect him or her, to the neglect of others. In its mildest, form this can lead to unfair treatment and discrimination. At its worst, it can mean the deliberate isolation and even persecution of a particular minority. All too often, leaders have stirred up the emotions of one sector of a society against another so as to further their own political ends or simply hold onto power. Samuel warns us that we must be aware of the particular biases or even prejudices of those we elect to positions of authority and put in place the mechanisms which can monitor and correct any abuse of power.
\nThe last element Samuel mentions, bribery, the selling of favours by those in power, is the most subversive and corrosive of crimes. For bribery destroys the judgement, and ultimately the reputation, of the one who accepts it, and corrupts the integrity of the one who gives it. Bribery undermines the basis of trust in the rule of law without which society cannot hold together.
\nIf Moses and Samuel, among the greatest leaders of the biblical period, felt the need to place their record before the public for scrutiny, how much more so should anyone entrusted with a leadership role. No one is above the temptations of power. It is our responsibility to ensure that safeguards are in place to prevent the kinds of abuse by leaders that Samuel describes and to encourage honest behaviour, for the sake of those in power as much as for ourselves. Unless we do so, we should not be surprised if our leaders fail us. For ultimately we have failed them.
\n29
\nThe Loss of Miriam
\nNumbers 20
\nThis reading includes Numbers 20, which records two deaths. At the beginning comes the brief announcement of the death of Miriam, the sister of Moses. She has featured in a number of dramatic episodes in the Hebrew Bible. When Moses was born, and it was no longer possible to conceal him from the Egyptians, his mother placed him in a basket on the Nile. Miriam, his sister, followed its course until eventually it was found by Pharaoh\u2019s daughter. Miriam\u2019s initiative enabled Moses\u2019 true mother to wet-nurse him and watch over his earliest years.
\nMiriam next appears leading the women in song and dance after the Israelites have successfully crossed the Sea of Reeds. Here she is called a prophetess (Exod. 15:20), though nothing more is said about this title. In a later episode (Num. 12), she and Moses\u2019 brother Aaron complain about Moses\u2019 leadership. Surely God has also spoken to them as well! As a punishment, Miriam is struck with a disease that makes here skin turn white. Moses prays to God on her behalf and she is cured. Now, in our chapter, without warning, we are told simply that she died.
\nAt the end of the same chapter, we learn about the death of Aaron, Moses\u2019 brother. He has been a more prominent figure than Miriam, the first High Priest and the founder of a dynasty of priests. At the court of Pharaoh, he was Moses\u2019 spokesman. He shares some of the responsibilities of leadership, but seems to have been a less decisive figure than his brother. When Moses was delayed by God on Mount Sinai and the people feared that he would not return, it was Aaron who created the golden calf to give them a tangible god to worship. At a later time, in a tragic moment, Aaron witnessed the death of two of his sons, struck down by a fire from heaven when they tried to come into the presence of God in the wrong way. Now when he dies, there is public mourning for 30 days, a sign of his importance and popularity.
\nThe rabbis said that three good leaders arose for Israel: Moses, Aaron and Miriam. And three great gifts were given through them: the well of water, the cloud and the manna (Babylonian Talmud Ta\u2019anit 9a). The cloud led them through the wilderness and the manna was their food. But the first thing listed, the well of water, is related by the rabbis specifically to Miriam. Our chapter simply records that she died and was buried. But the sentence that follows starts a new subject entirely. It tells us that there was no water and the people held a public protest against Moses and Aaron.
\nOne of the methods used by the rabbis when they interpreted the Bible was to try to understand why two seemingly unrelated passages are placed next to one another. In this case, they tried to understand the connection between the death of Miriam and the absence of water. This led to the idea that during her lifetime a well of water accompanied the Israelites on their journeys through the wilderness, appearing every time that they encamped. So when she died, the well disappeared.
\nOur chapter contains one other major dramatic event. When faced with this latest protest of the people about the lack of water, Moses turns to God for support. He is told to take his staff, with which he has previously worked miracles. He is then to speak to a prominent rock in the wilderness, and God promises that water will flow from it. Moses takes his staff, but instead of simply speaking to the rock, he vents his anger and frustration on the people. \u2018Listen, you rebels,\u2019 he says, \u2018shall we bring water out of this rock?!\u2019 Then he strikes the rock with his staff just, as he had done once before (Exod. 17:6). As promised by God, abundant water flows from it. But God is angry at his behaviour. As a result, both Moses and Aaron, like the whole of that generation, are condemned to die in the wilderness and not enter the Promised Land.
\nA great deal has been written about the severity of this judgement on Moses by God. Also many theories exist as to exactly what it was that Moses had done wrong. But since we are discussing the sequence of events in this chapter, perhaps there is another question to be asked. Why is it that despite all his leadership experience and all the crises Moses had successfully faced in the past, he made such an elementary mistake this time? Why not just speak to the rock as he was told? And why lose his temper with the people? Could it also have something to do with the death of Miriam?
\nOf the three leaders, Aaron dealt with ritual matters and the cult. Moses spoke directly with God and defined the general purpose and direction of the journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land. However, someone else had to deal with the practical day-to-day issues raised by the people. Perhaps that was the particular role played by Miriam. After all, she had shown her practical skills when she saved Moses. That she and Aaron shared some kinds of responsibility is clear from the time when they complained about Moses\u2019 leadership. Why was he the prominent one, when they were also special? This typical argument among siblings becomes much more serious when the brothers and sisters are also the leaders of the nation.
\nIn our chapter, people complain about the absence of water, as they have done in the past. Perhaps until now, Miriam had been the person who dealt with these day-to-day concerns of the people. She was the one who encouraged them, offered practical solutions for their problems, or simply acknowledged the legitimacy of their fears and concerns. She was the one of the three leaders to whom the people could turn, the one who listened to them. She in turn would be the intermediary, who would bring these issues to the attention of Moses. But in doing, so she could present them in such a way that Moses did not feel personally attacked and could understand what was needed. He could then deal with the problem with the right degree of detachment and effectiveness. Without Miriam, Moses was now directly confronted with the anger and fear of the people, and his judgement was affected. Without her calming presence as a buffer, he felt threatened and over-reacted.
\nIs there any evidence for this suggestion? Possibly in the title \u2018prophet\u2019 that Miriam has been given. One task of the prophets was to be intermediaries, standing between the people and God. To the people they convey God\u2019s will, often criticizing their behaviour, but also consoling them in times of trouble. The great prophets, like Moses himself and Jeremiah, stood before God and tried to represent the needs and weakness of the people. They pleaded for mercy on their behalf. Miriam may have played such a role in the life of Moses. She helped him cope with the challenges and demands of leadership by protecting him from the direct attack of the people. With her death, a key figure in the governance of the people was lost. And an essential support for Moses was taken away. At the first new challenge to his leadership, Moses, without Miriam, failed. The well of water that had sustained him for so long was no more.
\n30
\nListen to your Donkey
\nNumbers 22
\nIf we first learn about the Bible as children, we often do so using books especially designed to entertain us. The stories we read are simplified, and they are picked for their obvious appeal. They are often beautifully illustrated so that certain pictures become imprinted on our minds: little David defeats the giant Goliath with his slingshot; Noah supervises the pairs of animals entering the ark.
\nBible stories become part of our lives in much the same way as fairy stories or the legends of ancient Greece and Rome.
\nFor children, a heroic animal and a really villainous bad man are especially appealing. This Torah reading, from the Book of Numbers, has both: a faithful donkey and a wicked sorcerer called Balaam. Our children\u2019s picture would show us Balaam on his way to curse the people of Israel. He is snarling in anger and holds a big stick in his hand, raised as if to strike his donkey. But he cannot see that there is an angel with a drawn sword standing in the way, even though it has golden wings and shimmers with light. So Balaam seems extremely stupid and cruel, completely unaware of what is going on around him. But the donkey on which he is riding is clearly the real hero of the story and of the picture. Loyal to his master the faithful animal has stopped in its tracks to protect him when it sees the angel ahead.
\nSuch a children\u2019s picture suggests that animals have not only a language of their own, but are also perfectly capable of human speech. Most of the time, they just let human beings get on with their lives, however silly they may seem to a wise animal. But sometimes even human beings need to be warned, and that is when an animal is forced to break its customary silence and speak. That, at least, is how we might understand the story of Balaam\u2019s donkey, if we only read about it as children and only have that picture in our memory.
\nBut what if we read the biblical story itself as adults? Clearly, we have to cope with our own scepticism about talking animals. If we are told we have to take everything in the Bible as being literally true, then we may find ourselves in trouble at this point. Neither talking animals nor golden-winged angels are part of our normal everyday experience today. In the Middle Ages, Moses Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher, faced the same problem. As a rationalist, he solved the difficulty by assuming that everything that happened to Balaam occurred in a prophetic vision. If the donkey actually talked, it only did so in Balaam\u2019s imagination. But is that really what the Bible intended?
\nIf we look more carefully at the way the story develops, we find an even more serious difficulty. There is a major internal contradiction within it about the way that God behaves towards Balaam.
\nKing Balak of Moab is worried about the dangers posed by the arrival of the Israelites in his territory. So he sends a delegation to Balaam, famed as a sorcerer who has the power of the word. Whoever Balaam blesses is blessed, and whoever he curses is truly cursed. Balak asks him to curse the Israelites and destroy them. Balaam seems perfectly willing to do so, but needs to consult first with God. But God tells him in no uncertain terms: \u2018Don\u2019t go with these people, and don\u2019t curse Israel, for they are blessed.\u2019 (Num. 22:12). Balaam is now in trouble. His reputation as a reliable professional sorcerer is at stake. So when he speaks to Balak\u2019s envoys, he quotes only the first part of God\u2019s words and simply says: \u2018God does not give me permission to go with you!\u2019 (v. 13).
\nThe envoys return to King Balak. Having failed in a royal mission, they have to protect themselves and so they too are careful about what they tell the king. So they give a slightly different version of Balaam\u2019s answer. They say nothing about God but simply explain: \u2018Balaam refused to come with us!\u2019 (v. 14). King Balak is obviously a practical man and rather cynical about business affairs. This is surely only a negotiating ploy by Balaam to get a better deal! So he sends a second delegation, more honourable than the first, and with a better offer.
\nThis must have been Balaam\u2019s worst nightmare. He is caught between an important commission from a major client and a God who is spoiling his chances. So he tells the envoys he will consult with God again, even though he knows, as he will later say, that God is not someone who changes his mind. But when he speaks to God again that night, God says: \u2018If the men have come to fetch you, get up and go with them, but only say the words that I tell you!\u2019 (v. 20). It is an astonishing change of mind by God, but Balaam takes the opportunity, and off he goes with the delegation on his trusty donkey. At which point, God gets angry and sends the angel with the sword. When the donkey sees it and turns aside, Balaam strikes it. The second time it does so, Balaam bangs his leg against the wall and strikes again. The third time the donkey has nowhere to go, stops and speaks.
\nHow do we explain the fact that God, who \u2018never changes his mind\u2019, seems to change it twice in this story: telling Balaam not to go, then letting him go, then trying to kill him because he has gone?! A possible answer was given by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, when they were working on their monumental German translation of the Hebrew Bible. They discovered that in biblical stories, certain significant words tended to be repeated. This pointed to a theme under the surface of the story, linked by these words, which helped explain what was really happening. They noticed one such word in the Balaam story, the Hebrew word \u2018yosef\u2019, meaning \u2018to add\u2019 or \u2018to do something again\u2019. It first appears when the second delegation visits Balaam and he says he will \u2018again\u2019 ask God\u2019s opinion. From then on the word \u2018again\u2019 reappears as the angel \u2018again\u2019 and again\u2019 moves to intercept Balaam, and Balaam \u2018again\u2019 strikes his donkey.
\nFor Buber and Rosenzweig, this repetition suggests that from the moment Balaam went \u2018again\u2019 to God, even though he knew God would not change his mind, he lost touch with reality. His desire to work for King Balak and to curse Israel led him to convince himself that he had God\u2019s permission. Since the Bible almost never describes things in a psychological way, but only refers to outer events, this is the nearest it comes to depicting an inner state of mind.
\nWhether we understand the story literally or as a vision, Balaam\u2019s story raises an interesting question. How do we know when our journey is going wrong, when our desires or ambitions have led us on a path that might prove to be self-destructive? Balaam should have seen the signs, when the donkey he trusted all his life started behaving in an unusual way. Even more so, from the moment he began to hit it, he should have noticed that his own behaviour was wrong. Finally, when he damaged his leg, he should have realized how self-destructive his journey was becoming. These were the warning signs of a collision up ahead.
\nSadly, it is often only when it is too late, when we have already hurt other people or damaged ourselves or crashed into the angel with the sword, that our eyes are opened and we see what it is we have been doing. So whether Balaam\u2019s donkey belongs to a prophetic vision, or is our own subconscious warning us, or is even an actual talking donkey, we need to pay attention to its voice.
\n31
\nCoping with Fanatics
\nNumbers 25:10\u201330:1
\nThis reading from the Torah is named after someone who is mentioned in the opening verses, Pinchas son of Eliezer son of Aaron. He is singled out for special attention because of an event described at the end of the previous chapter.
\nThe Israelites had settled in a place called Shittim on their journey towards the land of Canaan. There the Israelite men were seduced by the local women and began to worship their god, Baal Peor. In anger, God commanded Moses to hang all the tribal leaders. Presumably, this is meant to emphasize their responsibility for the behaviour of the people. But the next verse informs us that Moses commands the judges to condemn to death those who had linked themselves to Baal Peor. It is not clear whether this was as well as hanging the leaders of the tribes or instead of doing so. Was Moses being more zealous than God, or instead was he insisting on the rule of law? Even God could not behave in this arbitrary way. People were responsible for their actions under the covenant, and only the guilty should be punished.
\nIn defiance of Moses, one man, later named as Zimri son of Salu, a prince of the tribe of Simeon, publicly took to his bed one of the Midianite women. This symbolic act would have created a permanent link between the two peoples and their gods. Moses and the leaders of the people stood by helpless. Perhaps this is already a sign that Moses\u2019 days as leader are coming to an end. He is unable to take decisive action in this crisis.
\nWhen there is a power vacuum, other forces, often more violent, break through. In this case, it is Pinchas, the priest who acted. He took a spear and ran the couple through as they lay together. This action stopped a plague from God that had broken out. At the beginning of the reading God says that by his passion for God, Pinchas has removed God\u2019s anger. Moreover, because of his concern for God\u2019s honour, he is to be rewarded. He and his descendants will be priests forever. In addition God makes with Pinchas a brit shalom, a \u2018covenant of peace\u2019.
\nThere are any number of problems with this story. From the point of view of the Bible, it seems that Pinchas\u2019 action is justified. The couple who were killed were deliberately and publicly denying the authority of Israel\u2019s God. This was something that the new Israelite society in the making could not tolerate. The helplessness of Moses and the leadership is clearly disastrous when so much is at stake. But Pinchas\u2019 action of murdering the couple in public is just as problematic. He is portrayed as a fanatic, acting alone. But if such behaviour is shown to be acceptable to God, it opens the door to other such violent actions in the future. To murder people in the name of God is an ever-recurring event in the history of religions, down to our own day. Such a text gives biblical justification for it.
\nIs there any other way to understand what is happening? One recent explanation brings an ironic twist to the story. It recognizes that fanatics are always likely to appear and some strategy needs to be devised to control them. God\u2019s answer is to put Pinchas as a priest in charge of the sacrificial cult for all eternity. His fanaticism is to be dedicated to all the details of animal sacrifice. He must oversee the inspection of every single animal that was slaughtered, looking for faults or physical blemishes that would mean it could not be used. He would have to ensure that the slaughter was done properly, the appropriate parts of the animal were offered, or discarded. Then he would have to be certain that all the accompanying rituals were performed with meticulous care and attention to every detail. How better channel such energy and zeal into a relatively harmless activity. Someone with exactly the right qualities would now be in charge of the cult. God\u2019s anger need never again break out because of mistakes made during sacrifices. For Pinchas it must have seemed like a divine gift for himself and his descendants. Others may have been relieved that he was effectively prevented from mixing in more sensitive matters.
\nYet perhaps there is another dimension to this story. God makes with Pinchas a \u2018covenant of peace\u2019. It is not at all clear what this means, but perhaps he has been given a special responsibility for the creation and maintenance of peace. All his energy, his passion, his fanaticism, should be turned away from violence, and instead be directed to the quest for peace and harmony.
\nNice though such explanations may be, the core problem of Pinchas\u2019 action remains, with its potential for justifying such violent behaviour in the future. But it is not only our modern sensitivities that see a problem here. The rabbinic tradition was also concerned about the behaviour of Pinchas, and we can see this directly in two ways. Since the story of Pinchas is part of Holy Scripture, the rabbis could not simply remove it from the Bible. But they could indicate how it should be read. First, as we have already noted, they split the story into two parts. The tale of Pinchas\u2019 actions is told in the first nine verses of Chapter 25 of the Book of Numbers. But the rabbis ensured that the section we read begins with verse 10 of that chapter. The emphasis in this section that bears his name is not on what Pinchas\u2019 actually did but on God\u2019s response. So we simply read that God makes with him a \u2018covenant of peace\u2019 and that Pinchas and his family are to be priests forever. We are encouraged to focus on the positive aspects and not on the violence.
\nOf equal significance is the choice of the Haftarah, the prophetic reading. The rabbis chose Chapter 19 of the First Book of Kings, which tells of a crisis in the life of the prophet Elijah. The rabbis often identified Pinchas with Elijah, as both were passionate in their service of God and both likely to take sudden dramatic actions and use violence in the name of God. But in this chapter, when Elijah complains that he alone is zealous for God, God tells him to stand upon a mountain. A great wind comes, one that can break mountains and shatter rocks, but God was not in the wind. Then came an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. Then came a fire, but God was not in the fire. But after the fire came \u2018a still small voice\u2019. God was not to be identified with these violent elements, but with the quiet, questioning voice.
\nThe passage in the Book of Kings criticizes Elijah for thinking that he alone is passionate for God, and that he alone knows how to act. The violence of the wind, earthquake and fire are not what God wishes to see acted out by human beings. In this way, the rabbis challenge the story of Pinchas, not by removing it, but by giving it a critical interpretation.
\nBut what about the previous section that ends with Pinchas\u2019 actions? Here too the rabbis chose a Haftarah that would force us to question what Pinchas did. It is a text from the prophet Micah, Chapter 6, which ends with the words: \u2018It has been told to you, O man, and what God wants from you, only to do justice, to love mercy and walk humbly with your God.\u2019
\n32
\nLetting Go of Power
\nNumbers 25:10\u201330:1
\nThe major part of this Torah reading is taken up by two long descriptions. At the beginning is a census of the new generation of Israelites taken in the wilderness at the end of the 40 years of wandering. At the end of our section is an equally long description of the sacrifices to be given at each of the annual festivals. Yet sandwiched between them is a powerful narrative about the approaching end of Moses\u2019 leadership. At a moment of crisis in the encampment, Moses and the elders seemed incapable of acting and stood weeping before the Tent of Meeting. Instead a zealous priest called Pinchas intervened, killed the offending people and his action seems to have averted the crisis.
\nBut something is clearly wrong for Moses to have had so little control over events. So it is no surprise that within this section God reminds Moses that though he can see the land promised to his people, he will not live to enter it. Either because of his own recent weakness as a leader or his awareness of his approaching death, Moses realizes that it is time to hand over leadership to someone else. He prays to God for help.
\nLet the Eternal, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation, who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in; so that the community of the Eternal may not be as sheep which have no shepherd. (Num. 27:16\u201317)
\nIn response, God instructs Moses to appoint Joshua bin Nun as his successor in a public ceremony.
\nIn Moses\u2019 prayer to God are a number of interesting phrases. He appeals to God as \u2018the God of the spirits of all flesh\u2019. This is a phrase that Moses has used only once before but in very different circumstances. During the most serious rebellion against Moses\u2019 leadership, led by his cousin Korach, God has threatened to destroy the entire community. Moses and Aaron pray to God with the same words:
\nO God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and will You be angry with all the community? (Num. 16:22)
\nGod accepts Moses\u2019 words and allows the people to stand back from Korach and his rebels so that the people are not destroyed with them. In both these situations, Moses appeals to God\u2019s unique knowledge of each individual person, though with a different emphasis in each situation. In the case of the rebellion, God is asked to act against one person alone and not harm the rest of the community. It is a powerful plea for recognizing individual responsibility. In the passage, Moses asks God to find the one person who has the inner qualities to take on the leadership at this crucial stage in the life of the people. Only \u2018the God of the spirits of all flesh\u2019 can see into the heart of each individual and make such a choice. Whoever succeeds Moses, whatever his qualities, will not be Moses, and only God can judge what he will need to bring to this task.
\nWhen nominating Joshua as the person, God speaks of him as \u2018a man who has the spirit in him\u2019. This leads the rabbis to suggest that a true leader is also someone who is able to understand the individual needs of all the very different kinds of people that he has to lead.
\nBut our passage also describes what the task of this leader is to be: he is to \u2018go out before the people and come in before them\u2019. Most commentators assume that this phrase is a military one. A good military leader will lead his troops from the front and not simply sit comfortably at the rear and watch his men do the fighting. For most of his life King David was just such a leader. It was only when he stayed at home and did not join his troops that he got into trouble, taking the married women Bathsheba to his bed! But there are other passages in the Bible that distinguish between the purely military role of the leader and the broader tasks he has to undertake, as judge and in public affairs (compare 1 Kings 3:7, 9 and Josh. 14:11).
\nA politician who was active in Jewish affairs once said: \u2018The role of the leader is to lead the Jewish people from the front\u2014in the direction in which they wish to go.\u2019 He meant this as a positive quality but sometimes a leader has to take his or her people in the direction in which they need to go, whether they wish it or not! But perhaps that simply reflects two different types of leader\u2014the one who works by consensus, compromise and agreement, and the one who is prepared to risk exploring new directions and bring others along afterwards. But the second part of the phrase, \u2018to come in before them\u2019, is a reminder that no leader will be effective if he goes so far in front of his people that he leaves them behind and cannot find his way back! Ultimately, leadership does mean bringing people along to follow a particular direction or vision, however difficult it may be. It is no easy task that Moses bequeaths to his successor.
\nAs well as going out before the people, Moses asks that this new leader should \u2018lead the people out and lead them in\u2019. One rabbinic explanation picks up on the image of the leader as a shepherd with responsibility to ensure the safety of his flock. They said, let him not be like a military commander who leads his soldiers out to war in their thousands, but brings the survivors back only in their hundreds!
\nWas Moses happy with the choice of Joshua? Possibly, but like so many leaders Moses found it hard to let go of his role, despite knowing how essential it was to do so. There are many rabbinic stories about Moses\u2019 unwillingness to die and how he struggled against it. In one of them, he asks God a favour, to let Joshua take his place but to allow Moses to carry on living and become Joshua\u2019s disciple, just as Joshua had been Moses\u2019 disciple. God agrees, and Moses went to listen while Joshua taught the Torah to the people. When the people saw Moses standing there, they said to him: \u2018Moses, our teacher, teach us Torah.\u2019 He replied: \u2018I no longer have the authority.\u2019 They said: \u2018We will not leave you.\u2019 But a voice came from heaven saying: \u2018Be willing to learn from Joshua\u2019, and the people agreed and sat at the feet of Joshua. At that moment the tradition of wisdom was taken from Moses and given to Joshua. When the people left, Moses walked with Joshua to the Tent of Meeting where Moses used to hear the word of God. But when they entered, a pillar of cloud came down and made a partition between them. Afterwards, Moses asked Joshua what God had said to him, and Joshua answered: \u2018When God used to reveal the word to you, did I know what was said to you?\u2019 That was too much for Moses and he cried out in anguish: \u2018I\u2019d rather die a hundred times than put up with this awful feeling of envy! Master of the universe, until now I wanted to stay alive\u2014but now I surrender my soul to you\u2019 (based on The Book of Legends, Sefer Ha-Aggadah).
\nThat suggests yet another explanation of the phrase we have been considering. A true leader knows when to accept his leadership role and \u2018go out before the people\u2019, but also knows when it is time to relinquish the task and to come back in.
\nThe beginning of this reading tells of the census that was to determine the size of the tribes of this new generation, born in freedom during 40 years wandering in the wilderness. The end of it looks towards the sacrifices that will one day be made in the land once they have entered it. Both of them look towards the future, and Moses has to recognize that it will be a future without him. There is great dignity in the way he accepts this new reality. God commands him to take Joshua and lay his hand upon him and make him stand before Elazar the priest and the entire community and commission him in their sight. The Bible records:
\nAnd Moses did as the Eternal commanded him; he took Joshua and made him stand before Elazar the priest and the entire community and he laid his hands upon him and commissioned him as the Eternal spoke through Moses. (Num. 27:22\u201323)
\nBut there was one slight change in the way Moses carried out God\u2019s instructions. Perhaps out of respect for Moses\u2019 feelings God told him to lay only one of his hands on Joshua\u2019s head, as if to say that only part of Moses\u2019 authority was to be passed over to his successor. But Moses realized the need both to hand over power and to give Joshua his complete support in the difficult task ahead. Instead of laying one hand on him as God had commanded, Moses laid both hands on the head of the one who was soon to take his place.
\n33
\nThe Daughters of Zelophehad
\nNumbers 30\u201336
\nAt the end of this reading from the Torah, we complete the Book of Numbers. We also complete a sequence of biblical books that explore the journeys of the Children of Israel. In the Book of Exodus, they escape from Egypt and journey to Mount Sinai for their meeting with God. In Numbers, they journey from Sinai on their 40 years of wandering through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. Between these two books about journeying, stands Leviticus which focuses on the religious centre of the community, the sanctuary. It explores what it means that this people is to become a holy nation. It is the still centre around which unfold the social and political dramas of the formation of a distinctive people.
\nAt the end of the Book of Numbers, we are poised to enter the Promised Land. So how does the Book end? What is the final message we must contemplate before the new phase begins?
\nAt first glance, it is a rather disappointing message. It is a ruling about a legal problem. It poses a question that has arisen before in the same Book and which seemed at the time to have been satisfactorily resolved. According to the laws of the Ancient Near East, when a man died, his property was inherited by his oldest son. But what if the man had no sons, or indeed, only daughters? This was the question posed to Moses in Chapter 27 by the daughters of a man called Zelophehad. So important and so well argued is their question that the five women are named: Machlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milkah and Tirzah. Not only are they named in full here, but in three other places in the Bible as well, an exceptional mark of respect.
\nThey point out to Moses that their father died during the 40 years in the wilderness. Because of this, his name was not included when the land was divided up according to the various families of his tribe. Moreover, he had not joined the rebellion against Moses led by Korach, so there should be no impediment to his receiving his portion. The problem was that he had no son to inherit, but only daughters, so his name and his portion of land had been left out. Why could the daughters not inherit the land instead and so preserve the name of their father? Moses had to consult God before he could bring an answer\u2014a positive one in their favour. These five daughters were right to argue as they did. They could inherit the portion of land that would have gone to their father had he lived. Moses then makes a general law out of this particular instance, granting daughters the right to inherit in the absence of a son.
\nGiven the male-dominated nature of the cultural background to the Bible, this is a major contribution to women\u2019s rights and the five daughters are rightly honoured.
\nBut in Chapter 36, the last in the Book, someone spots a snag! If the daughters marry men from another tribe, the inheritance of land would be passed on to a son who would belong to that other tribe. This is the problem raised by members of Zelophehad\u2019s tribe who could see some of their tribal land being lost because of this. This time, Moses does not even have to consult with God, but himself comes up with a solution. The daughters of Zelophehad can indeed marry the person of their choice, but they have to choose someone from within their own tribe. It is an elegant solution, though it could all fall apart if the daughters were not prepared to abide by it. Fortunately, all five of them do. They marry within their own tribe, and their father\u2019s portion of the land, and his name, are preserved.
\nWe may not be so comfortable today with Moses\u2019 solution. And the daughters of Zelophehad, if they lived today, might also find it problematic. In the biblical period and until quite recently in the West, people felt themselves bound by their responsibility to their family or community. If there was a conflict between someone\u2019s individual desires and his or her duty to the community, duty would come first whatever the price in personal happiness. But that has changed today, and the balance is overwhelmingly on the side of personal choice, certainly in matters like whom you marry. Yet, life throws up any number of situations where communities have to make decisions about some aspect of their nature and not all members may find themselves in agreement. The Jewish community is almost proud of the number of issues on which we have disagreed in the past and continue to disagree today! So it is very encouraging to read in the Bible of at least one potentially divisive problem that was solved.
\nWhen we complete the reading of a biblical book in synagogue, the community calls out in Hebrew: \u2018Chazak chazak v\u2019nitchazek.\u2019 It means: \u2018Be strong! Be strong! And let us strengthen one another!\u2019 This call has a special meaning at the end of this Book. Life in community is always a delicate balance between individual interests and the needs of the community as a whole. For the community to survive, all parties have to accept a certain limitation on their wishes and come to some sort of compromise. In the heat of the argument, this can be very difficult and people may take extreme positions. We have seen throughout the Book of Numbers examples of this kind of extremism which leads to conflict and destructiveness. So it is encouraging to find at the very end of the Book a serious dispute that is resolved by a legal process and a compromise that works for all parties. However, in order to make a compromise we need an inner strength and security that allows us to yield our position just enough for a solution to be found. And there are any number of internal Jewish conflicts today, where just this kind of courage is needed.
\nThat is one way to understand the strength we ask for each other at the end of our Torah reading, \u2018chazak chazak\u2019. We wish each side of any dispute the inner strength to find an acceptable middle ground or compromise. For only then can we say, \u2018v\u2019nitchazek\u2019, we are all of us strengthened!
\n34
\nNew Rituals for Women
\nDeuteronomy 7:12\u201311:25
\nI attended recently an interfaith conference and met again a woman pastor, someone I have known for many years. We had a few minutes free from the busy conference programme, and she said that she wanted to tell me something.
\nShe reminded me of a conversation we had had a couple of years before. At that time, she was recovering from a recent miscarriage, late in her pregnancy. It was particularly disappointing, as she and her husband had been trying for a long time to have a child. She had still been recovering from the shock and the sense of loss, when we had talked. At the time, I had asked her a question based on my experience in Britain. There are now a growing number of women rabbis, graduates of the Leo Baeck College, who have raised our awareness about many issues that particularly affect women. Sometimes, women members of their congregations bring to them problems that they would never have brought to a man, problems that have not been properly addressed in Jewish tradition. When talking to the pastor about her situation, I remembered one such problem. So the question I asked was: had she found any kind of religious ritual or worship service to help her come to terms with the loss of the unborn child?
\nIt is a question I might never have asked, or even dared to ask, had it not been something discussed by my women colleagues. They have encouraged all of us, men and women alike, to broaden our awareness of, and sensitivity to, such important events in our personal lives. I had learnt from them that in this particular situation, Jewish tradition was not very helpful.
\nJewish law has a very detailed system of mourning after the death of someone in our family. For the first seven days after the funeral, the mourner remains at home, is visited by family and friends, who take care of all practical needs, and special prayers are recited daily. The second period extends to 30 days, during which the mourner is gradually brought back into daily life. For the next eleven months, the mourner recites daily a special prayer, the Kaddish. After that period, the formal mourning time is ended, but the Kaddish continues to be recited on the anniversary of the death. This is a complex but powerful process in which the loss suffered by the mourner is recognized by the community, support is offered and the transition is gradually made back to normal life. But the end of that first year, when the daily recital of the Kaddish comes to an end is also very important. It provides a formal closure to that first intense period. It helps the mourner make the adjustment to the tasks and responsibilities of a life that now has to be lived without the one who has died. The process, when it works, shows a deep respect both for the one who has died and for those who survive and must carry on with their life.
\nBut there is one exception to this practice. According to Jewish tradition, when a child dies within 30 days of its birth, there is no formal period of mourning or any of the rituals that accompany death. Presumably, this ruling arose in a world where child mortality was high. The underlying philosophy would seem to be that it was best to forget as soon as possible what had happened, to carry on with life and try again to become pregnant. Fertility and a large number of children were seen in the time of the Bible and the later rabbinic tradition as evidence of God\u2019s blessing.
\nHowever, it must be pointed out that this approach, that ignores the need to mourn, comes out of a tradition largely created by men. However well intentioned they may have been, theirs was not the experience of pregnancy, of feeling the child grow and move within them. Men and women led very separate lives in the past, especially in such intimate areas. If the baby miscarried, was stillborn or died shortly after birth, the rabbis might simply not have understood the depth of the suffering involved. For many women, such a loss could not simply be forgotten. It could affect her as much as the loss of any older child or adult who was an intimate part of her life. As I learnt from my women rabbi colleagues, this loss also needs to be acknowledged, both personally and publicly, and the emotional impact worked through.
\nOut of an awareness of this lack of support in Jewish tradition, women rabbis have begun to devise religious rituals to enable women to come to terms with their experience of loss and begin the process of mourning that was so essential. When one of my women colleagues in Britain advertised for the first time that her synagogue was going to hold a religious service for women who had suffered such a loss, she was surprised by the number of women who came to participate. Some of them had experienced a miscarriage or the loss of a newborn baby many years previously. For them, the absence of a formal process of mourning within the tradition at the time when they needed it made them feel particularly unsupported and isolated. Since no one seemed able to understand what that loss meant for them, they still carried the burden of their pain and anger and other unresolved feelings years later.
\nApparently I had mentioned all of this to the pastor after she had told me about her miscarriage. That was when I asked her the question about what religious support and comfort she had received. Now that we had met again, she told me that my words had been very important to her. Not only had she taken my suggestion seriously for herself, but she had organized a religious service for women in her parish who had also suffered the experience of losing a child before or immediately after birth. She had worked with another woman pastor and two therapists as advisers in preparing an appropriate form of service. They soon learnt that all four of them had themselves experienced miscarriages at some time in their married life and had similar feelings about the lack of acknowledgement of what that loss had meant to them. During this preparatory work, they discovered that miscarriages were very common. But women were often unaware of this fact and felt isolated in their situation, because they thought that their feelings and suffering were unique. Those preparing the service realized how important it had been for them to have shared their experience and decided to include such an opportunity within the service itself.
\nJust as it had been for the woman rabbi, but this time in a Christian community, the invitation to such a service produced a large response. The women who took part found it to be very important, and some of them continued to meet regularly afterwards.
\nI was very moved by what she told me. It is always nice when some help one has offered bears fruit. But it was also a classical example of mutual support across religious boundaries. In this case, the work of women rabbis had found an echo with a Christian pastor, because certain shared problems led to similar responses. This is also a good example of how a modern religious initiative can fill a gap in traditional religious life.
\nThis brings me finally to the Torah reading, which addresses this issue but in a very problematic way. The passage from Deuteronomy speaks of God\u2019s promise. If the Israelites obey God\u2019s laws, God would love, bless and multiply them. In particular God would \u2018bless the fruit of your body\u2019 (Deut. 7:13). Later, the text reinforces this idea with the claim that no woman among the Israelites would be barren (Deut. 7:14).
\nSuch verses must be deeply troubling for women in this situation. They suggest that things like fertility depend on good behaviour, and so a miscarriage would have to be seen as a punishment from God for something they had done wrong. Such situations need a very different kind of religious message, one that supports people in their loss and gives them the strength to carry on with their lives. Sometimes we have to look hard to find the blessing hidden in a passage from the Hebrew Bible. And sometimes we have to turn the biblical text inside out and create a very different kind of blessing for ourselves despite what has happened. That is when we need the support we can give each other. That is when we need the kind of worship service where we are free to give our pain, and sorrow and our anger back into the hands of God.
\n35
\nCause and Effect
\nDeuteronomy 7:12\u201311:25
\nTowards the end of this Torah reading (Deut. 11:13\u201321) comes a passage that is very familiar to anyone who prays in a Jewish service on a regular basis. It is known in the Jewish liturgy as the \u2018second paragraph of the Shema\u2019 and is usually read silently by the community. The \u2018Shema\u2019 is the affirmation of the unity of God, \u2018Hear, O Israel, the Eternal our God, the Eternal is One\u2019, which is found in Deuteronomy 6:4, and, together with the following biblical verses, plays an essential role in Jewish liturgy and life.
\nThe reason why Deuteronomy 11:13\u201321 is included in the service is because of some of the words that it contains which are identical with those in the Shema itself. Both passages say that we should talk about the teachings of God, \u2018when you lie down and when you rise up\u2019. This is understood to mean that we should recite in the morning and evening services the Shema itself.
\nBut this particular paragraph has another dimension as well. Jewish tradition teaches us that when we recite the first paragraph of the Shema, we take upon ourselves the \u2018ol malkhut shamayim\u2019, the \u2018yoke of the kingdom of heaven\u2019. That is to say, we accept that our lives are given over to the service of God. By reciting the second paragraph, we are said to submit ourselves to the \u2018ol ha-mitzvot\u2019, the \u2018yoke of the commandments\u2019, we accept the commandments of God as binding upon ourselves.
\nNevertheless, there are problems with the paragraph itself. It says, in effect, if you obey my commandments, I will bring the rain to the land, and everything will go well. But if you do not obey, then I will withhold the rain, the land will not give up its produce, and you will perish swiftly from off the good land I have given you.
\nIt is a very tidy theology. Obedience to God brings reward, disobedience brings punishment. It assumes a system that works mechanically and efficiently. But the reality of human experience is nothing like this. In fact, much of the Hebrew Bible is asking questions about this very problem: why is it that good people are not always rewarded? In fact they may suffer tragically in their lives. Conversely, there are many bad people walking about on the earth who seem to live charmed lives; certainly no divine punishment falls upon them. The prophet Jeremiah challenges God on this score. Some of the Psalms ask pointed questions about the same problem. The entire Book of Job is a challenge to this kind of simple reward and punishment view of the universe. None of them come to a fully satisfactory solution. Job concludes that the workings of God are greater and more mysterious than we can fathom. God can be challenged, must be challenged, but our final response can only be resignation and humility. This may be the answer for some but when faced with events of the magnitude of the Shoah (the Holocaust), even such deeply felt answers feel inadequate.
\nBut is our text in Deuteronomy really as simplistic as it appears at first glance? There is one oddity about the text that needs to be looked at. Most of the passage is expressed in the plural form\u2014Israel as a whole is addressed. However, from time to time the verbs change into the singular form. The individual is addressed.
\nOur section begins in the plural, for the whole of Israel is being spoken to.
\nIf you will surely listen to My commandments which I command you this day, to love the Eternal your God and to serve God with all your heart and with all your soul, then I shall give the rain of your land in its season, the former and the latter rain \u2026 (Deut. 11:13\u201314a)
\nAt this point the person being addressed becomes the single individual.
\nAnd thou shalt gather thy grain and thy wine and thy oil. And I will give grass in thy fields for thy cattle, and thou shalt eat and be full. (Deut. 11:14b\u201315)
\nIf all of Israel is obedient to the will of God then blessings will be given to every single household. But immediately after this, the text switches back to the plural form again. This is the part which includes the warnings that disobedience to God will lead to the rain being withheld and the land not yielding its fruit, so that the people is destroyed. It should be pointed out that the commands we are to obey include those about caring for the land itself, for example, letting it lie fallow every seven years and not destroying trees. So there is also an ecological basis to this warning.
\nOur text now returns to the positive command to make God\u2019s words a central part of our lives. We are still in the plural, at least for the opening words:
\nYou shall put these words upon your heart and upon your soul and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hands and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes, and you shall teach them to your children to speak of them \u2026 (Deut. 11:18\u201319a)
\nAt this point once again the text returns to the singular form, and in fact picks up the exact version that is so familiar from the first paragraph of the Shema.
\nwhen thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up, and thou shalt write them as a sign upon the doorposts of thy house and at thy gates. (Deut. 11:19b\u201320)
\nWhat is the purpose of this change of language? It may simply be a wish to repeat the exact same words in the same form as appeared earlier in the Shema paragraph so that they become more deeply embedded in our hearts and minds. Perhaps it is also to reinforce the idea that these general principles are to apply to each and every individual. It is you who is meant, you who are to teach your own children, to speak of these things in your own personal home and to keep a tangible sign of them on your own personal doorpost.
\nBut perhaps it is also a way of acknowledging that our individual fate is not so easily described or explained. If all of Israel does wrong or right, then maybe we can literally affect the climate, change the seasons to bring rain or prevent it. But even if it were possible to measure the good or bad of a society in such terms, our own individual story cannot simply be fitted into some such general pattern. We can be the victims of the failings of our society\u2014but we each contribute to the forces that make that society what it is. Our passage does make a general statement about reward and punishment, but recognizes the reality of our individual fate and our individual choice.
\nThe story is told of a young man who went away from his home to undertake Jewish studies for seven years. When he returned his father asked him what he had learned? He answered, \u2018I learned that you should love your neighbour as yourself.\u2019 \u2018You needed seven years to learn that?\u2019 exclaimed his father. \u2018Everyone knows that. You even knew it before you went away!\u2019 \u2018Yes,\u2019 said his son, \u2018but now I know that it means that I should love my neighbour as myself.\u2019
\n36
\nOfficers
\nThis Torah reading begins with Moses\u2019 instruction to the people to appoint \u2018shofetimv\u2019shoterim\u2019. It is clear that shofetim are judges, and their task is immediately spelled out, as well as warnings against misusing their power. This echoes similar material in Deuteronomy 1, where again the two groups, shofetim and shoterim, are associated:
\nSo I took your tribal leaders, wise and experienced men, and appointed them heads over you: chiefs of thousands, chiefs of hundreds, chiefs of fifties, and chiefs of tens and shoterim, \u2018officials\u2019, for your tribes. And I commanded your shofetim, judges \u2026 (Deut. 1:15\u201316)
\nWho are the shoterim and what is their task?
\nOn this passage, Rashi quotes a disturbing explanation from the midrash collection, Sifre: \u2018these are they who bind and flog with the lash at the bidding of the judges\u2019. Presumably in the absence of custodial sentences, fines and lashes would have been standard punishments available for crimes. Even if this is only a later interpretation it reflects their biblical role as adjuncts to the legal system.
\nNevertheless, the association with violence actually goes back to a much earlier reference to this term, for the shoterim were the Hebrew overseers or foremen of the work gangs of Hebrew slaves, appointed by the Egyptian taskmasters (Exod. 5:6, 10, 14). The term \u2018kapo\u2019 conjures up the ambiguity of such a role: Hebrews appointed to supervise other Hebrews and ensure the completion of the work. The position would probably have entailed certain privileges, but at the price of potentially oppressing their fellow Hebrews, and hence estranging them from their own people. On one level, this would have worked as a system of divide and conquer (a technique of which Pharaoh was a master) but also effectively placed a buffer between the slaves and their real masters, the Egyptians. The shoterim were the visible representatives of the power of the state that the slaves might attack, if the system broke down. From the Egyptian perspective, they were disposable and replaceable if they gave the Egyptians any trouble. Pharaoh exploited precisely this system in response to Moses\u2019 initial challenge when he forced the Hebrews to forage for straw while still keeping up the same quota of bricks. When they failed to do so, the shoterim were blamed and physically beaten (Exod. 5:14). The shoterim then blamed the Hebrew slaves who in turn blamed Moses. Nevertheless, the Bible records no actual abuse of their power in this circumstance, and Rashi quotes the midrash (Exodus Rabba 5), which regards the shoterim as selflessly accepting the beating and not passing it on. Rashi concludes that for this reason they were listed among the 70 elders upon whom God promised to place some of Moses\u2019 \u2018spirit\u2019 (Num. 11:16\u201317). However, in the event Moses gathers the elders, but the shoterim are not mentioned (Num. 11:24). Why the omission? Perhaps Moses was less convinced than God about the wisdom of giving that particular group special powers.
\nGiven this background of violence, it is no surprise that when they next appear it is in the context of war. In Joshua (1:10; 3:1\u20134), they will marshal the people for the crossing of the Jordan river. But before that, in Deuteronomy (20:5\u20137), they will work with the priest appointed for warfare, in informing the people about who may be exempt from the fighting: those who have built a house and not dedicated it, planted a vineyard and have not yet been able to enjoy the fruit, become engaged but not yet married. These examples emphasize the importance of giving simple human values and tasks greater priority than warfare. But the shoterim, seemingly at their own initiative, add a fourth separate category (20:8): exempting anyone whose fearfulness might affect the resolve of his comrades in arms. Here the shoterim are not acting out of compassion for such a person but are simply aware of the military need to maintain morale. Who better than those who understand something of violence to ensure that people who cannot cope with it are not allowed to endanger others.
\nTheir final appearance is in the service of the judges and the king in First and Second Chronicles (1 Chr. 27:1; 2 Chr. 19:11, 34:12).
\nThe questions remain about who they were; how they were appointed; were they salaried employees of the state; did they belong to a specific class or was the term simply used for any kind of middle ranking official with specific functions in particular contexts. Certainly, on the basis of the texts we have seen, they would have ensured that the priests and judges could remain physically distanced from direct engagement with the more unpleasant aspects of their roles. So it is tempting to recognize in them people charged professionally with getting things done, and tackling the difficult and sometimes even brutal tasks needed to ensure the effective working of a complex society: sometimes policemen, sometimes enforcers, sometimes \u2018sergeant majors\u2019.
\nThese references serve as a reminder of a strand of toughness and practical competence within the Israelite and Jewish people, which should not be overlooked or denied. Maybe it was part of Moses\u2019 wisdom to find a responsible, contained and supervised role for those in Israelite society whose aptitude for violence might otherwise have found more destructive outlets.
\n37
\nWhen Tradition is Wrong
\nDeuteronomy 21:18\u201321
\nThis reading from the Torah presents us with a challenging law that seems to be completely out of place in the Hebrew Bible. It is found amidst a number of miscellaneous laws in the Book of Deuteronomy. It is known in Jewish tradition as the law about the \u2018stubborn and rebellious son\u2019.
\nThe text reads:
\nIf a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and though they chastise him, he will not give heed to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, \u2018This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.\u2019 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. (Deut. 21:18\u201321)
\nThis hardly accords with current views on child-rearing. Moreover, it provides plenty of ammunition for those who think of the Old Testament God as cruel or of the biblical world as primitive and uncivilized. The fact that there is no recorded incident in the Bible of such an event ever happening does not really help. The argument from silence is never very persuasive. Moreover, the law is there as part of Holy Scripture and cannot simply be ignored.
\nThere is one redeeming feature in the law itself. In the biblical period, it would seem that the father did have the power of life and death over his children. The Bible records the ongoing struggle against the prevailing custom of child sacrifice. But in this case the power of the parents is actually severely limited. They have to bring the matter before the elders, and it is the elders who are the ones to sit in judgement, not the parents themselves. In this way, the potential arbitrariness and the possible abuse of power by the parents are controlled.
\nIn the Ancient Near East, disobedience to the father was a very serious offence, as it undermined the entire authority structure of the tribal society. But if we are to judge the law by modern standards, we can only condemn it. So how was it seen in earlier periods? This is an important question, because the way that the early rabbis treated it helps us understand their values. It also offers an insight into the way they managed to deal with difficult laws that they themselves found unacceptable. Such laws were given by God, so they could not simply be ignored or set aside. But precisely because they were the word of God every detail had to be scrutinized to see what God was trying to teach us through them. And here was the paradox. However problematic the law might appear to be, in their understanding God could only be acting according to the highest moral values. So if this was not obvious at first glance, then it was up to the rabbis to dig deeper into the text and interpret it in line with such moral values. Indeed, this law became a classic example of how the art of interpretation could radically change something that the rabbis found to be morally unacceptable. Their way of dealing with it can be found in the earliest strand of rabbinic writings, in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 8.1\u20135), the collection of oral traditions edited by the rabbis in the second century ce.
\nThe biblical text refers to a \u2018stubborn and rebellious son\u2019, so, the rabbis taught, this clearly excludes a daughter. Moreover, since it refers to a son, the rabbis try to define this term. It cannot refer to a minor, someone under the age of 13, since he cannot be held responsible under the law. Moreover, once the boy has shown signs of puberty, he is no longer considered a boy, so the law could not apply to him either. This dramatically reduces the number of people who could be affected by the law.
\nThe son is accused of being a glutton and drunkard, so the rabbis set about defining how much food or drink he must have consumed so as to qualify as a glutton or drunkard. Moreover, they set limits on the kinds of food that he might have eaten and the circumstances in which he might have eaten them. In addition, the law only comes into effect if he eats the food in his parents\u2019 home.
\nSince both parents are mentioned in the law, both have to be alive at the time, and if only one of them is prepared to accuse him, then the law cannot apply. Since it also says that his mother and father shall \u2018lay hold of him\u2019, then neither of them should be physically handicapped. They are to speak to the elders, so if either has a speech defect, once again the law does not apply. In the same way, the rabbis found other elements in the text that would disqualify the parents.
\nIf these limitations were not enough to make the law impossible to apply, the rabbis also established the series of courts that would have to decide on such a case. It had to be tried the first time in a court of three judges, and 23 judges had to preside at the court that finally condemned him! In short, the rabbis did absolutely everything to make sure that the death penalty could never be invoked. In fact, they seem to have treated this law as a textbook example of how to exercise their ingenuity for finding ways of abolishing an impossible law. Nevertheless, all of this was achieved by strictly adhering to the methods of legal interpretation they had developed as part of their religious tradition.
\nHowever odd this example may be, it points to a deeper issue that faces all religious communities that have to live with a revealed scripture. For whatever the commandment may be that comes from God, it can only be applied in the way that those who have authority to interpret it wish it to be applied. Whatever the scripture may say, it is still human interpreters who have the responsibility of understanding it and applying it. They may feel themselves partly bound by the decisions of previous generations, but ultimately real power lies in their hands.
\nThere are any number of biblical laws that have been amended or made to disappear because rabbinic authorities of a later period felt them to be too problematic. For example, the Bible forbids adultery in no uncertain terms and provides a penalty of death by stoning for both the man and woman. Though the rabbis condemned adultery, nevertheless they hedged this law in with so many conditions that the death penalty could never be applied. (For example, the adulterous act has to take place in the presence of two witnesses who have formally warned the man in advance of the penalty he will incur. This is guaranteed to prevent an effective performance.)
\nThis kind of human flexibility is in stark contrast to another kind of attitude that is so often sold in the name of religion. Religious fanaticism, often in the service of political goals, has become one of the scourges of our time. Once again, we are in a period when people are appealing to \u2018the word of God\u2019 to justify actions that by any humane or moral standard are totally unacceptable. Yet, there is always a scriptural verse available to justify such actions. This narrow approach has been labelled by Father Gordian Marshall as \u2018selective literalism\u2019. It focuses on one idea or text and ignores the enormous diversity of teachings to be found in the same religious tradition. This deliberately limited view may be used to justify a kind of wilful insensitivity that makes human life secondary to the particular ideology or cause. Whenever people assert that only one meaning of scripture is possible, that which happens to fit their own religious or political agenda, then it is important to remember the law of \u2018the stubborn and rebellious son\u2019. We should consider how the rabbis in the name of God struggled with the word of God so as to save a human life. They had the courage to insist that scripture can yield many meanings and not only one. They saw it as our responsibility to seek out and apply those interpretations that do not harm life or diminish life, but rather those that enhance life and celebrate life.
\n38
\nJudges
\nDeuteronomy 26:1\u201329:8
\nThis reading offers a good example of how a few extra words in a biblical sentence have opened the way to some important ideas. At the beginning of our reading from Deuteronomy 26, the Israelites are instructed to take some of the first fruit of the harvest and bring it to a central place of worship in the land of Israel and give it to the priest. But the sentence adds to the priest the phrase: \u2018who shall be in those days\u2019. The common sense meaning of these extra words is quite simple. The speaker is Moses and he is looking forward to a future time when the Israelites will have entered the Promised Land. The Israelites are to bring the fruit to the priest, who will be there at that time in the future.
\nBut since it is common sense that you can only bring the fruit to the priest who is there at the time, the phrase \u2018who shall be in those days\u2019 seems to be superfluous. Since the rabbis assumed that no word of Torah could be without particular meaning, the door is now open to looking for a deeper interpretation of these extra words. The same extra phrase has already appeared in an earlier verse in the Book of Deuteronomy. This passage concerns a legal procedure and the text says:
\nYou shall come to the levitical priests and to the judge who shall be in those days and ask, and they shall tell you the words of judgement. (Deut. 17:9)
\nAgain the question arises\u2014to what judge can you go except to the one who will be there \u2018in those days\u2019?
\nThe rabbinic explanation is powerful and has considerable consequences. They understood it as follows: even though the judge in your own days is not like the judges that have been there in previous times, you have to accept the judgement he gives, because he is the competent person in your time and place (Rosh Hashanah 25b). To illustrate their point, the Rabbis compare the judge Jephthah, whose story is told in the Book of Judges, with the great judge and prophet Samuel. Jephthah was a successful military leader. but he so wanted to win a particular battle that he vowed to sacrifice to God the first creature to come and greet him on his successful return. It happened to be his daughter who came out, and Jephthah kept his vow. Clearly, Jephthah is not the best example of how a judge should behave! Nevertheless, the rabbis made the point that \u2018Jephthah in his generation was equivalent to Samuel in his generation\u2019. In one sense it may mean that each generation gets the leadership it deserves! But it points to the need to accept and respect the authority of those you place in leadership positions in your own time.
\nThe problem is that this attitude is contradicted by an equally strong tendency in Judaism to assert that the leaders of previous generations were far greater than we could ever be in our generation. So how could we presume to offer our own opinions, if they differ from those of the past. Who are we to dare to change what they have decided in their greater wisdom?! Such respect for the past must have its proper place, but it may also paralyse our own creativity and our ability to address new situations.
\nThe passage we just read referred to judges, the legal and political authorities of the time. But our passage speaks about the priest who shall be \u2018in those days\u2019, the spiritual leader of the Israelite community. So in matters of contemporary religious issues we also have to recognize the authority of the spiritual leaders we appoint in our own times. New times, new circumstances may need new religious answers, even if they contradict those that we venerate from the past.
\nSo should we simply preserve the traditions inherited from past leaders or should we follow instead the innovations of the leaders of today? The answer, of course, is that either option can be followed depending on the circumstances. But who is to decide which line to follow at any given time?
\nThe answer to this question also lies in the texts we have read, for there is a third party present in both of them\u2014the people to whom Moses is speaking. We are the ones who are spoken to; we are the ones who are to go to the judge or priest of our own days, because we are the ones who give them authority to decide on our behalf. So these texts contain another kind of challenge. We also have to take full responsibility for the election of our leadership, political and religious. But our responsibility does not stop there. We have to ensure that they are publicly accountable for their actions. Everything we give into the hands of our leadership must be open to inspection and made transparent\u2014from financial matters to decisions of religious practice. A community that does not take such responsibility for its appointed representatives and functionaries invites corruption. If we do not monitor their actions and question their decisions, we are unfair to them as well, because we open the door to temptation, whether it be financial misuse or the abuse of the power they have over others. We are held responsible for the things that they do in our name. We too have to face a judgement.
\n39
\nPromised Lands
\nDeuteronomy 26:1\u201329:8
\nThis reading from the Torah looks forward to the arrival of the Israelites in the land of Canaan and the celebration of the first harvest. It begins: \u2018When you come into the land which the Eternal your God gives you as an inheritance.\u2019 For almost two millennia, Jews have dreamed of returning to that \u2018inheritance\u2019, to that \u2018promised land\u2019. Instead we lived in other lands where we or our ancestors had been allowed to settle.
\nI began to think about which land one considers home during my three months living in W\u00fcrzburg in Southern Germany as the Schalom ben Chorin Professor of Jewish Studies. While wandering through the town, I became increasingly aware of the small brass plaques inserted into the pavement giving the names of Jewish families who had lived in the nearby house and who had been deported to their deaths in one of the concentration camps. I always find these stolpersteine, \u2018stones you stumble over\u2019, deeply moving. They give a personal human face to the tragic history of so many millions of Jews who were killed. But seeing them alerted me also to the history of the Jews in W\u00fcrzburg and to look for other public witnesses to that former Jewish life.
\nOne afternoon, I went to hear an outdoor music concert and found that it was located in a community centre named after Felix Fechenbach. I had known nothing about him and was fascinated to learn his history. He was a journalist, poet, writer of children\u2019s stories and above all a political activist. He was so influential that he was arrested in March 1933 for his anti-fascist activities and was shot in August that year, while on his way to Dachau Concentration Camp. This community centre and a professional school in Detmold with his name bear witness to someone who fought and died to preserve the political integrity of the land of his \u2018inheritance\u2019.
\nOn a wall in another part of town I noticed a plaque with the name of Norbert Glanzberg. Born in Galicia, his family moved to W\u00fcrzburg. A composer of film music, he was identified by Goebbels as a \u2018degenerate Jewish artist\u2019, and in 1933 went into exile in Paris. He fought in the French resistance and survived the war thanks to the intervention of friends in the music profession. He composed songs for artists like Edith Piaf (including Padam Padam Padam) and for Yves Montand, as well as film music, a song cycle based on Yiddish poems and classical pieces. In the years before his death in 2001, he performed concerts in W\u00fcrzburg. He had lost the land of his \u2018inheritance\u2019, but found in France a land of refuge and a home.
\nBut the greatest surprise occurred one day on leaving my apartment in the university guest house. The street in front of the building is divided by a wide strip of trees and parkland. A small road cuts through the park and I suddenly noticed that it was named after Yehudah Amichai, the most celebrated Israeli poet of modern times. Born in 1924 in W\u00fcrzburg, he emigrated to Palestine with his family in 1934. He fought as a soldier in many of Israel\u2019s wars and became an advocate for peace and reconciliation in the region. Here was another W\u00fcrzburger, who had been forced to leave the land of his birth, but unlike the others he was able to settle in the \u2018promised land\u2019 of the Bible. He gave to the Hebrew language a new richness, and personally found in the land of Israel the \u2018inheritance\u2019 of which our Torah reading speaks.
\n40
\nFrom Holy to Profane
\nDeuteronomy 26:1\u201311
\nAt the beginning of this Torah reading, Moses gives instructions about a ritual the children of Israel are to perform when they are settled in the Promised Land. They are to dedicate the first fruits of the harvest to God by bringing them to the priest at the central sanctuary. They are also to recite a formula thanking God for rescuing them from slavery in Egypt and bringing them to the land (Deut. 26:1\u201311).
\nThis is to happen each year at the beginning of the harvest. But there are also regulations in the Bible about what to do when they first plant fruit trees. According to the Book of Leviticus, for the first three years after the planting they are not to take any of the fruit that grows. In the fourth year, they are to consider it as holy and dedicated to God, so it is still not available to them. Only in the fifth year and afterwards may they begin to eat it as part of their regular supply of food (Lev. 19:23\u20135).
\nBehind this law may be some agricultural knowledge about how to ensure the best growth of newly planted fruit trees. But for the Bible, the law seems to be based on a principle that is mentioned elsewhere in the Book of Leviticus. In Chapter 25 there are a number of laws about obligations to the land itself. For six years, the Israelites are allowed to sow and harvest the land, but in the seventh year, it is not to be worked at all. Instead it is to lie fallow. Just like the rest that is to take place on the seventh day of the week, the Shabbat, the land too is to have a rest on every seventh year. Again, this may have its origins in agricultural knowledge about the best way to ensure that the land is not overworked. But the reason given for this and for other laws in the chapter is to remind us that the land belongs not to us but to God. As the text expresses it, we are just temporary residents on the land; we are God\u2019s tenants (Lev. 25:23). If the land belongs to God, then so does everything that grows on it. We should not take for granted either the fertility of the land, our ownership of its produce or our right to exploit the land in any way that we wish.
\nAs tenants, we may eat the fruit, but only if we acknowledge the source from which that fruit and all other nourishment comes. How is this acknowledgement to be made? The restrictions on the use of the produce in the first years after planting and the annual dedication of the first fruits are ways of reminding us that what we have comes from God. These dedication rituals are a kind of symbolic transfer of ownership of the produce of the land from God to us so that we may have the benefit.
\nThis principle became expressed in a tradition developed by the rabbis after the biblical period. Before a meal, when we are about to eat bread, we recite a blessing: \u2018Blessed are You, our Living God, Sovereign of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.\u2019 Similarly before we drink wine, especially on Shabbat and Festivals, we recite: \u2018Blessed are You, our Living God, Sovereign of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.\u2019 It may seem at first glance that reciting the blessing over bread and wine makes them holy and special. But within the rabbinic understanding it is actually the opposite that is intended. By reciting the blessing, by acknowledging that what we are about to eat or drink is a gift from God, we are taking it out of the divine domain and making it available for human use. The change in the status of the food brought about by the blessing is not from the ordinary to the holy, but from the holy to the ordinary.
\nIn the biblical world, it was easy for people to recognize and understand the direct relationship between the land, its produce and God. In an agrarian society, most people would have been involved at some stage in the growing and gathering of food. They would have been acutely aware of how dependent they were on the rainfall to ensure the success of their harvests. In the Book of Deuteronomy, God makes the arrival of the rain each year dependent on the behaviour of the people and their obedience to God\u2019s laws. Some of these laws do indeed deal directly with agriculture. But intended here are all the laws that have been given to the people. These are to ensure that food is made available to everyone, including the poorest and weakest in society, so that no one goes hungry. We are to be God\u2019s agents to ensure that food is available for all. At the heart of such laws are the ethical values and the moral behaviour of the society as a whole.
\nThese connections between the land and the food we eat are not so obvious to us today if we live in urban societies. We are personally several stages removed from the production to food itself. We have lost our sense of the change of seasons because we are able to enjoy seasonal fruits all the year round simply by importing them from elsewhere. Indeed, what was once a special treat or surprise, like having fresh strawberries available in the winter, is now something we take for granted. What we eat often comes to us standardized, preselected and pre-packaged, so that we have even less sense of the earth out of which it came or the tree from which it was plucked. Moreover, we are largely protected from the direct experience of drought and famine that devastate large parts of the world.
\nIn Deuteronomy, when God says to the Israelites that \u2018all the land is mine\u2019, the word for land \u2018eretz\u2019 refers to the land of Canaan. Yet, eretz can equally mean \u2018the earth\u2019 itself. On this basis, God is saying \u2018all the earth is mine\u2019 so that everywhere that we live upon the earth we are God\u2019s tenants. The produce of the earth is available to us, but only on condition that we guard and protect the earth and acknowledge the laws that are needed to ensure that it continues to provide for us and for all people.
\nIn our largely secular age, the recital of a blessing before eating may feel uncomfortable or anachronistic. We do not experience a direct relationship between God and the earth and the production of food. Moreover, science can explain many of the connections much better than our religious traditions and can advise us on what we need to do to preserve the earth as a habitable place. Nevertheless, we have increasingly come to recognize the biblical view that our behaviour has consequences for the natural world around us. We need to find ways of reinforcing our understanding of this and of accepting our individual and collective responsibilities to the earth as tenants. Perhaps, the reciting of a blessing before eating, like the elaborate rituals of the biblical period, can serve as a reminder of that wider task.
\nAs the rabbis expressed it, if we derive benefit from this world without reciting a blessing, it is as if we had stolen it from God.
\n41
\nIn a Culture of Fear
\nDeuteronomy 28
\nSome of the most disturbing passages in the Hebrew Bible occur in the verses that we read from the end of the Book of Deuteronomy. The basis of the relationship between the Israelites and their God is the covenant, the Hebrew term \u2018brit\u2019. A covenant is at one level a legal contract between two partners. So the obligations of the two partners have to be detailed, but also the penalties that will apply if these obligations are not met. In two places in the Torah, a series of increasingly more severe penalties are spelled out if Israel fails to live up to its obligations. We find them at the end of the Book of Leviticus and also here at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy. All that the Israelites own, their homes, their crops, their families, will be damaged or destroyed or taken from them with violence. As the final blow they will be sent into exile from their land. What happens to them in exile is described in Leviticus 26:36\u201337:
\nAs for those of you who are left, I will send faintness into their heart in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a driven leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as one flees from the sword; and they shall fall when no one is pursuing them. And they shall stumble, each person over his brother, as if before the sword, when there is no one pursuing; and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
\nIn Deuteronomy 28:66 a further dimension is added:
\nAnd your life will hang there before you, and you will fear night and day, and have no trust in your life. In the morning you will say, if only it were evening, and in the evening you will say, if only it were morning, because of the fear in your heart that you fear, and because of the vision before your eyes that you see.
\nThis picture of a debilitating fear that makes life unbearable and positive action impossible has been at times the fate of the Jewish people in their experience of exile among the nations of the world. But it has also universal resonance. Throughout history and throughout the world today, because of government suppression or civil war, political extremism or urban brutality, private vendettas or family violence, people know only too well the terrors described in these verses: the fear of the threat of violence even when it is not actually present; the dread of the horrors that the next day may bring. To those kinds of fear we now witness, on a growing scale, a new element: the random murders and maiming of innocent people by terrorists. At one time, this seemed remote from Western Europe, but now it is also a feature of our reality, in part imported, but increasingly likely to be home-grown.
\nThe threat of terror works on many levels beginning with the fear of sudden death or injury with which we are confronted. But there are also effects produced by fighting against terrorists, the danger that the legislation that is brought in may curtail our hard-won freedoms and target innocent people. Worse still, politicians play on this fear, and even exaggerate it, so as to ensure that legislation is passed; the media feed on it because sensationalism sells their product. Deuteronomy speaks of the \u2018fear of the fear in your heart\u2019. This seems to be the same warning that President Roosevelt gave in his inaugural address in 1933 during the depths of the Depression in America: \u2018the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.\u2019 Beyond the rational level of concern that terrorist actions cause, terrorism feeds on deeper levels of irrational anxiety within our society.
\nBut there is a further effect of terrorism that is potentially even worse in the long run. It insinuates into our daily lives suspicion and fear of \u2018the other\u2019. Anyone who is different, not \u2018one of us\u2019, seems to present us with a potential threat. As Leviticus expressed it, because of this kind of fear, \u2018they shall stumble, each person, over his brother\u2019. Fear itself will undermine the normal relationship of trust and mutual respect that exists, or should exist, between people who know each other. If that is the case among those whom the Bible calls \u2018brothers\u2019, those who are close to us, how much more problematic must the effect of this fear be as regards strangers.
\nWe saw in Britain the results of this phenomenon following the bombings in London in July 2005. Despite the condemnation of the bombings by leading members of the Muslim community, the numbers of assaults on individual Muslims and attacks on Muslim property increased alarmingly. Such events add to the feelings of isolation, insecurity and even alienation, felt by some within the Muslim community. The effect can only be to provide a potential breeding ground for future candidates for radical movements. But this climate of fear also serves to reinforce the prejudices against minorities within society, and encourage further acts of violence or vandalism against them.
\nHow do we break out of this cycle of fear and over-reaction? There are no simple solutions. Clearly all kinds of appropriate steps have to be taken to protect the public and relevant legal safeguards put in place. But these do not address the fear that comes from ignorance of the others who share our society with us. What is needed is a consistent attempt to build bridges between the different communities within our society.
\nOne approach is through interfaith dialogue. This activity developed considerably in Europe after the Second World War, especially between Christians and Jews. It was once seen as an interesting but peripheral activity for a few interested people, often on the margins of their own religious tradition. Today, as a growing movement, it has to be recognized as an essential tool in the safeguarding of civil society. It works alongside other activities that encourage people to meet across boundaries at a deeper level of understanding and respect.
\nSuch activities will not remove the threat of terrorism. But by promoting and extending this kind of dialogue we prevent ourselves becoming the psychological victims of terror, too paralysed to do anything at all. Moreover, through the activities and encounters themselves, we broaden our horizons. We come to see who are our true \u2018brothers\u2019 and \u2018sisters\u2019 in the pluralist societies that are emerging in Europe. The warnings in Leviticus and Deuteronomy of a society disintegrating out of anxiety then cease to be just a threat to be feared. Instead they become a challenge to be overcome.
\n42
\nFacing Jerusalem
\nDeuteronomy 29:9\u201330:20
\nThis Torah reading from Deuteronomy 29\u201330 is the last before the end of the Jewish year. So we approach the passage from the Torah and also the traditional reading from the prophets, the Haftarah, with certain hopes and expectations. Can they help us make sense of the year that has passed\u2014and give us some guidance for the one that lies ahead?
\nAs so often the case at this time, Jewish life tends to be overshadowed by events in the Middle East. It seems that we are doomed always to be looking back on a year of pain and suffering for Israelis and Palestinians alike, a year of shattered hopes and bitter, personal tragedies. People on both sides of the conflict have strong opinions about why this continues and allot responsibility, usually blaming the other side. Not surprisingly any such one-sided convictions, accusations and retaliations do not stop the bloodshed, change attitudes or offer hope.
\nWith feelings of helplessness in the face of such violence and political complexity we turn to our texts. The Torah reading from Deuteronomy 29 is a passage that moves me every year. Moses calls the entire people together for a final message. He begins: \u2018Attem nitzavim ha-yom\u2019, \u2018You are standing here today.\u2019 But the Hebrew word for \u2018standing\u2019, \u2018nitzavim\u2019, has many dimensions. It means standing for a purpose, taking a position, somehow committed and ready for whatever lies ahead.
\nMoses specifies who is present: men, women and children, leaders of the people but also outsiders, members of other nations who have aligned themselves with the fate of the children of Israel and share their journey. Moses draws on an even wider circle of people. At this moment, they are entering a covenant with their God that is binding not only on those who are present but also those who are not physically present. Perhaps the text itself simply means people who were unwell or otherwise prevented from attending on that day. But Jewish tradition looks into the distant future and binds the souls of all those destined to be born into this covenant, a people united with their God across time and space. It is an awesome commitment that is demanded here. And it is somehow realized at this season, the one time of the year when Jews of whatever personal belief or tradition, or of none at all, are drawn to the synagogue.
\nWhen we turn to the prophetic reading from the latter part of the Book of Isaiah, the tragedy of our current situation becomes overwhelming. It is the last of a series of prophetic readings, all from this part of the Book of Isaiah, leading up to the New Year. Each of them offers hope and consolation, promising an end to exile and the return to the land of Israel. In this one, the climax of the series, the speaker calls urgently for Zion and Jerusalem to be restored.
\nFor Zion\u2019s sake I will not keep silent
\nand for Jerusalem\u2019s sake I will not rest,
\nuntil her righteousness goes forth as brightness
\nand her salvation as a burning torch.
\nThe nations shall see your righteousness
\nand all the kings your glory,
\nand you shall be called by a new name
\nwhich the mouth of the Eternal will give. (Isa. 62:1\u20132)
\nOne key term is at the heart of this passage, \u2018tzedakah\u2019, \u2018righteousness\u2019. It was the absence of righteousness that led to Jerusalem\u2019s destruction, according to the earlier writings in this same Book of Isaiah. When righteousness is restored it will shine out from Jerusalem like a lamp, and nations will see and recognize it.
\nBut what does this restoration of Jerusalem mean? For the prophet\u2019s audience two and a half thousand years ago, and for generations of Jews since then, it can only have meant the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and their capital city. Whether Isaiah speaks of Zion, the religious centre of the society, or Jerusalem, the political capital of the nation, his audience is his own people. But is that the whole of the matter? For in the closing chapters of the same book of Isaiah, the prophet speaks of a new heaven and a new earth. In this changed world, the nations will themselves bring the Jews back to the land, and some from these nations will be called upon to act as priests in this new religious centre, where \u2018all humanity shall come to worship before God\u2019.
\nBut that has always been the paradox of Jerusalem. When Solomon dedicated the Temple he welcomed the nations of the world to come and worship there and called on God to answer their prayers. Isaiah himself had a vision of the nations streaming to Jerusalem so as to learn the Torah from God. But other passages in the Hebrew Bible attest to another political reality, that of nations surrounding Jerusalem and waging war against it, fighting and killing so as to own and control it. That same city has been ruled at different times from Babylon, Susa, Thebes, Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, Byzantium, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Aleppo, Constantinople, London and Amman. At the heart of today\u2019s struggle lies the same issue, who owns Jerusalem. What greater irony, what greater tragedy, than to shed blood over a city called \u2018Yerushalayim\u2019, the city of \u2018shalom\u2019, of peace.
\nOur Torah reading speaks of the unity of the Jewish people over time and space. Yet Moses, at this most intimate moment, could include in his vision other peoples who shared a life with Israel. The different voices that make up the Book of Isaiah, from their different historical periods, could likewise see a Jerusalem intimately part of the Israelite nation, yet also open to the nations of the world. But the problem, one that has never been resolved, is how to make such a vision possible, a unity and a sharing, at one and the same time. One clue to the solution must lie in the word \u2018tzedakah\u2019, the \u2018righteousness\u2019 that is to be the basis of such a society, a respect for the rights of all who wish to live there. That is the righteousness that is to shine out of Zion and Jerusalem. Justice and generosity of spirit have to be at the heart of Jerusalem, if it is to deserve the title \u2018holy\u2019. How that is to come about is the challenge for all directly engaged in conflict over Jerusalem and for all who care about it. But the quest for righteousness does at least offer a higher aim than national aspirations alone and a greater hope.
\nThe Isaiah of our Haftarah in his own time was also deeply troubled. He offered a challenge to his contemporaries, to Israel and the other nations, but also to God. His was a call not only to prayer and hope, but also to action, to help bring about this vision of what Jerusalem could and should be:
\nUpon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen;
\nall the day and all the night they shall never be silent.
\nYou who keep the Eternal in remembrance, take no rest.
\nAnd give God no rest until He establishes,
\nuntil He makes Jerusalem a praise throughout the earth.
\n(Isa. 62:6\u20137)
\n43
\nAnticipating Purim
\nThis readingis for the first of four special Sabbaths that remind us that two Jewish religious festivals are rapidly approaching: Purim and Pesach (Passover). These special Sabbaths help us to prepare for the festivals and reflect on their meaning. This is particularly important in the case of Purim, because during the festival itself, there is almost no opportunity to think too deeply about it. On the contrary, all the normal rules are turned on their head. It is a time for pageants and fancy dress parties, for giving and receiving gifts, and for extraordinary behaviour in the synagogue, when we read Megillat Esther, the Scroll of the Book of Esther. It records an event in the Persian Empire when the king\u2019s vizier Haman sought to destroy the Jewish people in an act of genocide, only to be prevented by the actions of Queen Esther and her guardian Mordechai. During the reading, whenever we mention the name of \u2018wicked Haman\u2019, out come the noise makers and chaos erupts, as we try to drown out his name. At Purim, we are traditionally encouraged to drink alcohol without restraint. Indeed we should become so confused that we cannot distinguish between saying, \u2018Blessed be Mordechai and cursed be Haman\u2019!
\nSo when we read the Book of Esther at Purim, we do everything in our power to make sure that we do not pay close attention to its message. This is understandable, because the Book of Esther is very disturbing. It speaks directly to the reality of Jewish life in exile, in the Diaspora. The story tells of the Jewish community comfortably settled and assimilated in the land of Persia. Even the names of Mordechai and Esther are probably popular local names related to the god Marduk and the goddess Astarte. But in this world of exile, their fate is in the hands of forces over which they have no control. King Ahasuerus can appoint as a minister, a man like Haman. It just takes the refusal of Mordechai to bow down to Haman, to honour him in public, for Haman to unleash a murderous attack on the entire Jewish population. In charge of \u2018homeland security\u2019, Haman reports to the king that there is a people scattered throughout his empire who are a threat to the king, and so they must be destroyed. He even offers to pay a large sum of money to offset any budget deficit caused by the potential loss of revenue from the Jews. Seemingly without a second thought the king agrees. In this world of exile, life or death, success or catastrophe, are dependent on the arbitrary moods of those in power.
\nEven more disturbing is the complete absence of God from the Book of Esther. There is a suggestion that when Mordechai tells Esther that perhaps help will come from \u2018another place\u2019, this refers to God. But even this only reinforces the divine silence. Instead, that same random chance that puts Haman in power, puts Esther on the throne, with enough beauty and cunning to counteract the threat to her people. At the end of the book, she has won her victory, Mordechai is promoted to the place of Haman, and the danger is past. But we know that this is only a temporary reprieve. For like other \u2018Court Jews\u2019, Mordechai\u2019s position is only as secure as the next change of policy or struggle for power in the Court. We laugh at the \u2018thousand and one nights\u2019 quality of the writing of the Book of Esther, we marvel at the exciting twists and turns of the plot, but our laughter is hollow at this gallows humour.
\nPerhaps it is precisely for this reason that we go to such lengths at Purim to drown out this reality. For just one day, we escape into a kind of forgetfulness, to celebrate a fantasy of triumph. Perhaps that is why the Shabbat immediately before Purim, the second of our special Sabbaths, is called Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of remembrance. There we read of Amalek, the arch enemy of Israel from the time of the wandering in the wilderness, the figure of evil, with whom we are destined to struggle till the end of time. Now at least, in these special Sabbaths, is the time to be serious. So that when Purim comes, we can briefly forget, and lose ourselves in a joyous release.
\n44
\nPassover Past
\nWe are in the middle of the Festival of Pesach, Passover, the one time in the year when Jewish families come together to share a religious home celebration, the Seder. So it is also a time for memories of past years, of family events and stories linked to that evening. Yet, when I look back, I remember little of the Seder celebrations of my childhood. There is a memory of my father conducting the prayers in Hebrew, which no one understood, and seemingly at great speed. Indeed, the speed increased as the evening wore on and people grew more and more impatient to finish. Nor do I recall the faces of those who sat around the table, and that is a source of great sadness. Was I less curious as a child or too withdrawn to pay much attention? What does remain is the taste of the chicken soup that we ate, and not even the soup itself, but the taste and texture of the kneidlach, the doughy balls made of matzah meal, the unleavened bread that is central to the festival. It was only later that I discovered that this seemingly unique Jewish contribution to cooking was well known in Germany as a kn\u00f6del, dumpling, though the German variety never has quite the same taste or texture as the ones that I remember. Perhaps it was the chicken soup that made the difference.
\nIf the Seders of my childhood have not stayed with me, then those I learnt to conduct myself as an adult remain. It is only when you have your own home celebration that you begin to realize what an enormous amount of work goes into the preparation. In traditional households, it amounts to a major exercise in spring cleaning as every last bit of bread or related products has to be discovered and removed. But even beyond this extraordinary household upheaval, the preparation of the meal for the Seder is a major undertaking that has traditionally fallen on the women of the house. Since dozens of family members or friends may participate, the sheer volume of cooking and preparation is enormous. An essential part of the teaching of Pesach is freedom, so all who are seated around the table are supposed to lean comfortably on cushions throughout to symbolize this privilege. If anything shows the patriarchal nature of Judaism at its most traditional, it is the picture of the women slaving away in the kitchen long before and during the Seder evening, while the \u2018master of the house\u2019 and the guests can relax. There is always a hidden cost that someone has to pay for freedom. Today, of course, more egalitarian arrangements are made in many households.
\nBut reminiscing about the Seder reminds me of two extraordinary ones that I conducted far away from home. I had the unusual opportunity to be the technical adviser on a biblical movie about the life of King David. Much of the filming was done in Matera, in southern Italy, where they had built a replica of biblical Jerusalem. The real Jerusalem had too many television aerials and other modern aspects to be available. We were filming in the spring, and it turned out to be the coldest and wettest spring for decades, which played havoc with the schedule. But Pesach fell in the middle of the filming, and the producer generously invited my wife and children to fly over and join us on the set. We arranged a Seder for the Jewish members of the cast and crew. My wife spent hours with the Italian chef hired to feed the leading actors, and we sat down to a magnificent Seder meal on the film set in pseudo-Jerusalem. Though the Jewish members of the crew were invited to attend, none of them actually came. Instead we celebrated with the producer and director and the leading actor in the movie, Richard Gere, who used the ceremonial to feel his way emotionally into the part of King David. Alas my son, then aged five, had a tummy bug and was violently sick. This is a not unknown happening at a Seder, when children get over excited. It added a touch of authenticity to the occasion.
\nAt the end of the Seder, the closing words express the hope that the exile of the Jewish people will end soon, and we will return to the \u2018promised land\u2019. Reciting \u2018l\u2019shanah ha-ba\u2019ah birushalayim\u2019, \u2018next year in Jerusalem\u2019, in a fibre-glass reproduction of Jerusalem on the top of an Italian mountain was an appropriately bizarre conclusion to a bizarre evening.
\nFar more authentic was a secret Seder I conducted in Moscow a few years before the fall of the Soviet Union. During those years, it was possible for Jews to apply to leave Russia for Israel. But the price for doing so was to lose their citizenship and to live out their lives in a kind of limbo, until given the opportunity to leave. They were called refuseniks, and there was a major campaign by Jewish communities in the West to support them. So my wife and I, with our baby son, found ourselves one cold March morning in Moscow. We had been given a telephone number to call at exactly 8.45 am with instructions to use a call-box and not the hotel. We rang and rang for 15 minutes only to get an engaged tone. One minute after 9.00 we got through and a voice said: \u2018This number is no longer in operation!\u2019, and put down the receiver. It was a chilling moment. Between fears of being followed by the KGB and of having our hotel room bugged, we felt that we had wandered into a spy movie. In fact nothing serious happened to us. We were contacted and taken to a small apartment where the Seder was to take place.
\nMany of those present were relatives of well-known refuseniks. The only people in the room who had ever experienced a Seder before were the elderly ones, who had known it as a child. For 70 years, in the Soviet Union all Jewish religious activities had been controlled or prohibited so celebrations like the Seder were completely unknown for many who were present. My explanations were translated and well received. We read in turn around the table from the Haggadah, the order of service, either in Hebrew or Russian. Then came the meal. Afterwards, there is a major concluding part of the service that has to be read\u2014the part my father used to go through at breakneck speed. But when we sat down to complete this part of the evening, most of the participants had disappeared into another room. There was nothing mysterious about this. It was clearly time for a cigarette, and as far as they were concerned with the completion of the meal, the important part of the ceremony was over. Only the older people, remembering the Seders of their childhood, stayed on to sing the songs that come at the end. I couldn\u2019t help teasing the people who had disappeared into the other room, since this is often what happens in family gatherings in the West as well. We joked about it. How did they know that Jews often skip the last part of the service? Was it built into their genes? Was it a secret tradition passed down in their family for the past 70 years? Just as some are casual about such things, there are always those willing to stay on to make sure the service is completed properly. That both skipping and staying happen is what makes the Seder a true family event. That both things happen is what makes Judaism a very human religious tradition.
\n45
\nThe Wilderness Journey
\nLeviticus 23
\nA special period in the Jewish year is the seven weeks between the festival of Pesach, Passover, which commemorates the exodus from Egypt, and Shavuot, Pentecost, which commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, when the children of Israel entered a covenant with God. This period is known as the Counting of the Omer and the roots of it can be traced back to the time when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. Passover coincided with the barley harvest and as part of the ceremony to mark this occasion, a measure of barley, an omer, was waved at the altar by the priest. This law is mentioned in the Torah reading (Lev. 23:10\u201311):
\nWhen you come into the land which I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest; and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, that you may find acceptance; on the morrow after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.
\nWhen the Temple was destroyed, this ceremony stopped, but the tradition arose of counting the 49 days of the grain harvest, ending with the festival of Shavuot, which marked the beginning of the wheat harvest.
\nThough the harvest theme lies behind the tradition, other ideas have been read into it as well. For example, the great medieval philosopher Maimonides, offers a nice analogy. When you are looking forward to meeting a special friend, you count the days and hours until you meet. In the same way, Israel looks forward to the encounter with God on Shavuot and counts the days. Another suggestion points out that at this period of the year, we have not yet received the Torah, the teaching, from God, so we are somehow incomplete as a people, waiting eagerly for the word of God to come into our lives.
\nSince the second century, the Omer period has been observed as a period of semi-mourning. It became associated with the tragic history of the Bar Kochba rebellion against Rome which led to a disastrous loss of life. So the traditional practice has been to avoid any kind of celebration during this period, including weddings. The one exception is the thirty-third day of the counting, lag ba\u2019omer, when all such restrictions are removed. The reason is again tied to a legend that on this day a plague that had affected the students of Rabbi Akiva stopped. So this day has also become known as the \u2018scholar\u2019s festival\u2019.
\nSuch a period of time, that is counted daily, lends itself to any number of special interpretations. Since we are approaching the giving of the Torah, mystical traditions associate each day with the raising of our spiritual consciousness by contemplating aspects of the divine\u2014such as love, power, pride, beauty, authority. In another tradition, some Jews link each week with particular biblical figures and try to imitate the special characteristics associated with them. So the first week would be devoted to Abraham, famed for his hospitality. The second week is linked with Isaac, remembered for his trust in God. Jacob is the subject of the third week, known for his simplicity. In the fourth week, Moses would be the figure, and this would focus on the study of Torah. His brother Aaron, the priest, is the subject of the fifth week, famed as someone who tried to make peace between people. The sixth week would focus on Joseph, someone who resisted worldly temptations. In the seventh week, the figure would be King David, who brings with him the thought of the kingdom of God on earth.
\nYet another way is to recognize that the period also commemorates a physical journey\u2014from Egypt through the desert to Mount Sinai. This journey is also an exploration of the experience of freedom from slavery and the testing out of what that freedom might mean. If that is the case, can we imagine what the stages of such a journey might have been? In the first week, there would have been the simple euphoria and excitement of freedom, of release from the fear and destructiveness of slavery. In the biblical story, it included the crossing of the Sea of Reeds, and the parting of the waters is a kind of symbolic birth of the people. A new life has begun.
\nBut by the second week, the first realization must come that freedom has a price. Slavery offered a certain kind of security. However bad it was, one did at least know what to expect, and life was organized around certain routines and rituals. Here in the desert, nothing could be taken for granted, from the finding of food to the relationship with other former slaves. Who had authority in this new situation? Who could be trusted? How do we relate to people who had taken advantage of the former situation for their own good and even done harm to their own people? Creating a new society is no easy matter when past experiences and old abuses can haunt the attempt to create something new.
\nPerhaps that is why in the third week we may lose our way. The desert has no signposts, or rather we have to learn how to read and understand a new landscape. Conflicts will arise over leadership and the direction to take. Roads that seem to lead in the right direction may turn out to be dead ends. We may even have to retrace our steps and start again in what we hope will be the right direction. Some will become nostalgic for the good old days of slavery. Some may even propose that we give up the entire enterprise and return to Egypt. At least as slaves we knew who we were and what was our place. This is a difficult period of doubt and anger. It is the time when the whole enterprise could fail and the people break apart. The children of Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness, and it was only when a new generation arose, one born in freedom, that they were ready to leave it.
\nBy the fourth week, the journey itself has become the whole of reality. The practicalities of the march, of supplies and water, of life on the move will have become routine. Questions of a final destination will have slipped into the background, for what matters now is simply the fact of moving on. Each new obstacle must simply be faced and overcome. Perhaps someone knows where we are going. We must simply take it on trust and continue.
\nThe fifth week brings a new kind of energy and strength. Perhaps it is a \u2018second wind\u2019, the emergence of a kind of resistance to despair. We are too far from Egypt to wish to turn back any more. We have learnt how to survive in this unknown territory. We recognize our achievements and the skills we have acquired. Something like anticipation arises, and hopes for a different kind of future.
\nIn the sixth week, we may even come to realize that the wilderness has become a kind of home. Its landscapes are familiar, and more than that, we begin to see their beauty and purity. Their emptiness had once been too much to bear, and we had to fill the space somehow. So we projected upon it our fears. The emptiness outside mirrored the emptiness within us. The slavery that defined us in the past was gone. Would there be anything to replace it? Who were we? But now we could understand what it meant simply to be open, to welcome into ourselves whatever it was that came to us. The wilderness became our teacher and its emptiness a challenge to our imagination and creativity.
\nSo by the seventh week, we are ready to come to Sinai. This was not to be the end of our journey. Rather it would be a moment of self-definition and of acceptance of who we had become. We were a people with a purpose and a destiny. Our journey out of slavery had taught us what a society should be that was the opposite of slavery. Mutual respect among us, shared responsibility for the people as a whole, caring for one another and especially for those in need\u2014all these were waiting to be formulated and clarified when we met with our God on the slopes of the mountain. We could accept the covenant that was handed down to us, because in the course of our journey through the wilderness, we had come to understand it from our own experience. We were no longer slaves, now we had to take upon ourselves the responsibilities of freedom.
\nAnd every year we will have to undergo the same journey once again. In case we should forget the slavery from which we have come. In case we should forget the place to which we journey.
\n46
\nThe Black Fast (Tisha b\u2019Av)
\nSome years ago I spent a summer in Jerusalem. On Tisha b\u2019Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, in the middle of the summer, a group of us went to the Western Wall to commemorate in the traditional way the tragic destructions associated with this day. The fast of Tisha b\u2019Av recalls some of the darkest moments in Jewish history, especially the destruction of the First and Second Temples, both of which signalled the beginning of exile from the land of Israel. Throughout Jewish history, other tragic events have become associated with the day, such as the slaughter of Jews during the Crusades and the expulsion from Spain. But the rabbis located the first tragic Tisha b\u2019Av even earlier in Jewish history. While in the wilderness, shortly after the Exodus from Egypt, the Israelites sent spies into the land to learn about it. But they brought back such a negative report about the power of the inhabitants of the land and the impossibility of conquering it that the people rebelled against Moses and even wanted to return to Egypt. This so angered God that the Israelites were forced to wander for 40 years in the wilderness, till a new generation was born. The day on which this catastrophe occurred, so the rabbis taught, was also Tisha b\u2019Av! So the exile from the land even preceded their first entry into it. Tisha b\u2019Av and the experience of exile are bound to one another.
\nOn this occasion in Jerusalem when we reached the Kotel, the Western Wall, we found a scene of utter chaos. Some people were following the traditional practice: sitting on the ground in mourning and reading or chanting Eicha, the Book of Lamentations, and kinot, dirges. But around them were others who were very deliberately partying and celebrating. Their argument was that Tisha b\u2019Av belonged to the time of exile only. Today, the Jews were back in their land, Jerusalem was now reunited and unified, there was a new reality and this ancient fast day should be abolished.
\nIt was a dramatic example of Jewish tradition clashing with changed circumstances. But even the question of whether or not to fast at such a time of return and restoration is not altogether new. It was asked already in the biblical period by those who came back after the 70 years of exile in Babylon. Some elders approached the prophet Zechariah with the question: \u2018Shall we weep and practice abstinence during the fifth month (the month of Av), as we have been doing all these years?\u2019 (Zech. 7:3). The answer of the prophet is somewhat enigmatic. He asks the counter question in God\u2019s name: \u2018When you fasted all these 70 years, did you fast for my benefit? And when you eat and drink, who but you does the eating and drinking?\u2019 (Zech. 7:5\u20136).
\nWhat the prophet seems to be saying in the name of God is: if you were fasting, because you were unhappy about the experience of exile; if your fasting, like your eating and drinking, was purely for your own sake, then it makes sense to stop the fasting now that you are back. But if you have been fasting out of regret that your previous behaviour was offensive to God, so that you were punished by being sent into exile, then your fasting is really about re-establishing that broken relationship with God and ensuring that such a failure never happens again. Your fasting is then not just for your own sake but is truly \u2018for God\u2019s sake\u2019, and you should continue to do it.
\nThe prophet then goes on to list their previous failings: defrauding the widow, the orphan, the stranger and the poor; plotting against one another. It was these actions that had led to God punishing them. So the message was: if you understand the true nature of the fast, it will remind you each year of your responsibilities to the underprivileged in society who come under God\u2019s special protection. If that is the goal of the fasting, then it should be continued as it enhances the quality of the life of your society today.
\nThe prophet will later offer the hope that the time will come, when all the mourning of those fast days that commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple will be turned into days of celebration and joy. But until that time comes, our Jewish liturgy offers us some consolation for the present. The Shabbat after Tisha b\u2019Av is called Shabbat nachamu, the Shabbat of consolation and comfort, when we read Isaiah 40, beginning: \u2018Comfort, comfort my people.\u2019 It is followed by six Shabbats, when the prophetic readings promise restoration, leading up to Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and a new beginning to our spiritual life. In order to appreciate the consolation that comes to us, we have to have first experienced the depths of sorrow and trouble that the Jewish people have known. So our tradition, by emphasizing both the sadness of Tisha b\u2019Av and the consolation that follows it, takes us on a spiritual journey in our imagination on the roller-coaster ride that is Jewish history and destiny.
\n47
\nNames of the New Year
\nThe beginning of the most serious season of the Jewish spiritual calendar is the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. In the following ten days we are called upon to consider all our activities of the past year, to examine them in the light of the highest values of our tradition and form a judgement on our behaviour. Where we can recognize things that we have done, which are wrong in any way, we must seek to correct them. Where we have hurt another human being, we must seek to make amends and become reconciled. We are called upon to repair whatever we can, so as to make this New Year a fresh beginning to our lives. At the end of these ten days, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we ask God to accept the work of repentance we have done, to \u2018cover over\u2019 the sins of the past, and support us in this new year before us.
\nThat at least is the theory behind this period. It is not an easy task. A recent American book indicates how unprepared we often are to undertake it. It is called: This is Reality, and you are not ready for it! A Guide to the High Holydays.
\nMany Jews have little experience of Jewish religious life today. Often, they lack a basic Jewish education that helps them to understand the significance and potential value of our festivals. The New Year simply arrives as a date in a calendar. It may be ignored, or remembered as some kind of family event or obligation. Indeed the New Year is often a time when families come together. However, it is not like the Passover, which we celebrate around the family table in the home and focus on the history of our people. The New Year rituals are based on the synagogue and are more focused on the individual, so there is not the same intensity of meeting together.
\nThe themes of the New Year period are bound up with religious language and for many this is not familiar or comfortable in our secular society. We may accept that we do wrong things from time to time or even hurt other people. However, words like \u2018sin\u2019, \u2018repentance\u2019 and \u2018atonement\u2019 belong to a very special kind of understanding of a life lived in relation to God. If God is not present in our lives, at least not the God of our religious tradition, then much of the meaning of this language simply disappears or even alienates us. Nevertheless, the underlying ideas and teachings of the New Year period can offer us something, if we examine them more closely.
\nRosh Hashanah itself has a number of different titles that reflect the different ideas within it. It is first Yom Ha-zikaron, the Day of Remembrance. We are to remember the year that is past and reflect upon all that has happened, and how we have responded to the challenges it has brought. We are called upon to be serious and consistent in our remembering because the things we forget, or do not wish to remember, God certainly remembers. So this encourages a kind of honesty and integrity that helps us recognize and accept both the good and the bad things of the past year. We recall the faces of those who have been significant in our lives, and especially those who have died in the past year and the empty space they leave. We begin to see how we are bound up with one another and the importance of these relationships. Certainly we can see where we have lost friendships or missed opportunities. We cannot know what the future will bring and how long we have to enjoy the company of those who have a place in our lives. Remembering in this way is an impetus to make the fullest use of the precious time we have together with friends and those we love.
\nBut Rosh Hashanah is also Yom Ha-din, the Day of Judgement, when God examines all of humanity and all of creation. This theme challenges us to look beyond ourselves at the world around us and our wider responsibilities. It is very easy to feel powerless in the face of the great movements and issues in the world. We are daily reminded of the injustices, the wars, the hunger and poverty that are everywhere around us. Yet, a day of self-judgement forces us to ask the question: What difference will my own life have made to the world? If I cannot affect things on a global scale, at least in my own immediate society I have a role to play and a responsibility. The gifts that I have been given by God, whether material or spiritual, are really only on loan. They become mine to the extent that I use them wisely and share them with others.
\nWe have moved from looking inward through the act of remembering, to looking outward through the theme of judgement. The third idea associated with the New Year takes us a stage further. For in the Jewish view, this day is also the anniversary of and a celebration of the creation of the world. One of the poems recited on this day begins: \u2018Ha-yomharatolam\u2019, \u2018This day is the birthday of the world\u2019. So Rosh Hashanah and the following period offer the possibility for rebirth and renewal. They remind us that the universe is larger than our own limited view of it and that humanity as a whole, is only a small part of the extraordinary beauty and complexity of life. The cycle of our individual lives, birth, growth, maturity and death, are only a tiny part of a process of continual change that affects everything about us. So how do we find the right perspective on our life?
\nAn old rabbinic teaching suggests that we should carry two pieces of paper with us. Whenever we feel ourselves to be too important and self-satisfied, we should take out the paper on which is written the words: \u2018I am but dust and ashes.\u2019 But when we feel ourselves to be insignificant or unworthy, we should take out the paper on which is written the words: \u2018For my sake the world was created.\u2019
\nRosh Hashanah, the Ten Days of Penitence that follow it and Yom Kippur, offer an extraordinary opportunity to stand back from the pressures and demands of our everyday lives. We can look with a different kind of objectivity at all that we do, our hopes and the reality of what our life is about. Yom Kippur itself is a day of fasting. It is as if we cut ourselves off from the familiar routines of daily life and can devote time to ourselves alone. The tradition is to wear a white garment, the kittel, which will one day serve as the shroud in which we are buried. So we are freed on this day to look upon our life as if from the grave, summing up its achievements and failures. We write our own obituary. But we also know that there will be a day after Yom Kippur, so that we can act on what we have discovered about ourselves, recast our lives, begin again as a new creation.
\n48
\nThe Sin of Scapegoating
\nApproaching the Jewish New Year is a time for sustained reflection on our lives, as individuals, as part of the Jewish community and as members of the wider society. We use this time to look back on the past year. But we do so with a critical view of our behaviour: the things that we did that were wrong and those that we failed to do which we should have done. This serious attempt at self-criticism is the legacy of the biblical prophets. Their primary task was not to look into the future. Instead they looked into the present, trying to see it through God\u2019s eyes. Only then could the behaviour of the nation change, and this would itself change the future. That activity and hope remain part of the task of the High Holydays that are before us.
\nWhen I began to look back on this past year, I found myself remembering a particular incident. I had the privilege of attending the Evangelische Kirchentag in Cologne and giving lectures on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible at the J\u00fcdische Lehrhaus. But I also took part in a couple of interfaith panels which focused on Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue.
\nDuring my time in Cologne I had been impressed by a number of initiatives that have been undertaken there to promote greater understanding between the three faiths. Opposite the Cathedral is a centre where people can drop in, meet one another and learn about the three religious communities.
\nA programme under the umbrella of the Mayor, and sponsored by representative bodies of the three faiths, is called \u2018Wei\u03b2t Du, werich bin?\u2019, \u2018Do you know who I am?\u2019 It invites communities to meet one another and provides a well-documented set of materials of information about the three faiths, but also of methods for ensuring the best results from the encounter.
\nAnother new initiative is called \u2018Make your picture of Abraham\u2019. It encourages people to find and photograph evidence of the influence of Abraham around the city itself, because he is seen as the common ancestor of all three faiths. These and other local initiatives are important small steps towards creating mutual understanding and respect.
\nBut the incident that concerned me showed just how difficult this important work is within our society at this time. Following the presentations of the three panellists, the session was opened up for discussion. Almost all the questions were addressed to the Muslim speaker. This is understandable on one level, as Islam is the least familiar of the religions represented, despite the extraordinary contribution of Islam to our European society. But what was worrying was the tone of the questions. There was about them an aggressiveness that was painful to hear. Effectively, the Muslim speaker was being put on trial on the assumption that all Muslims were to be held responsible for the actions of a few. Moreover Islam itself was being labelled as a religion of violence\u2014which was in complete contrast to the tone and actions and indeed the record of the speaker himself. He was simply dismissed as the exception that proves the rule. It reminded me of the old line about how stubborn people can sometimes be: \u2018I\u2019ve made up my mind, don\u2019t confuse me with facts!\u2019
\nIt made me remember something very similar I experienced on a lecture tour of America a few years ago. I have been helping to organize an annual Jewish-Christian-Muslim student conference for more than 30 years in Germany. All the student rabbis at Leo Baeck College attend as part of their training. The intention is that the future spiritual leaders of the three faiths will come to know each other in their student days and bring this experience into their later work.
\nBecause of this, I am often invited to speak about my experience in this area. In America after 9\/11 the fears, suspicions and opinions about Islam and Muslims accompanied me throughout my visit. The commonest attack was from people who asked where was the Muslim condemnation of 9\/11, where were the Muslim voices in protest? I had my answer in the book I was carrying with me published in England by the Muslim community. It documented the condemnations of the atrocity by important Muslim spiritual leaders and organizations from all over the world. But it was clear that not only were these voices not heard, it was almost as if there was a desire not to hear them or believe them. It was as if we preferred to see the Muslim world in plain black and white terms. We did not want to hear voices of moderation because they complicated the single message we were feeding ourselves through the media. I even know of an occasion where a Muslim speaker due to appear on a television discussion was cancelled, because it was felt he was not extreme enough in his views to make good drama.
\nOf course, we all know this. We know that our popular media will always present extreme dramatic stories. Good news is boring. Bad news sells papers. But despite knowing this, we constantly allow it to colour our judgement.
\nClearly we have to be on guard against the threat of terrorist activity.
\nMoreover it is also clear that much of that activity is carried out by groups acting under what they consider to be an Islamic justification, even if the vast majority of Muslims are horrified by their violence.
\nBut as great as the danger posed by terrorist incidents is the danger of the damage done to our society and its values by our responses. For we are constantly demonizing one particular minority group within our society. The potential sequence is all too familiar and disturbing. By labelling an entire group of people as different, and then as threatening, it is only a short step to scapegoating them collectively which justifies mistreating them, either individually or collectively.
\nIt is a process that Jews experienced in the last century, and we know the ultimate consequences. Any person with authority within society who speaks in generalities about \u2018the Muslims\u2019, has fallen into that trap, and needs to be challenged. The issue is not simply about demanding a response from Muslims, but of ensuring that their voices are heard because we in the wider society support them.
\nWhat is the alternative to the climate of fear that we are helping to cultivate by our own silence? It can only be a commitment to building a climate of understanding and respect across our different communities.
\nAnd such a climate only comes from active engagement with one another, from building relationships with people across and beyond our comfortable borders. Some within the faith communities are already involved in such activities with meetings among churches, mosques and synagogues, like the examples in Cologne. Schools are beginning to invite speakers, sometimes with representative of all three communities together, to demonstrate the reality of cooperation and mutual respect. But there remains much more to do, including taking individual responsibility for questioning and challenging the simplistic message we feed ourselves every day through the media.
\nIf we have a new sin to confess when the Jewish New Year comes, it will be that we allowed ourselves to go along with the popular demonization of Islam and of Muslims; that we contributed to the climate of mistrust and fear instead of helping build the personal relationships of mutual respect and trust that offer an alternative vision and hope for the future.
\n49
\nThe Day of Atonement and Sacrifice
\nEach Yom Kippur during the Musaf Service, we remember the traditions that belonged to this day at the time when the Temple stood. Particularly striking is the ritual involving two goats whose fate is decided by lot. One is selected to be a sin-offering to God, the other is led into the wilderness and there set free.
\nThe biblical description of this ceremony appears in Leviticus Chapter 16. However, it is preceded at the beginning of the chapter by a sentence that gives the section its name as one of the weekly Torah portions, \u2018acharei mot\u2019, \u2018after the death\u2019: \u2018God spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew near to the presence of God\u2019 (Lev. 16:1).
\nWhat is the link between this story and the information about the Yom Kippur ritual that follows?
\nThe Torah provides it by explaining that Aaron must take certain precautions when he enters the presence of God lest he also die. This then leads into the detailed description of the Yom Kippur ceremony.
\nThe story about Aaron\u2019s sons, Nadav and Avihu, is first told in Leviticus 10. They took their censers, put fire in them and incense, \u2018and brought before God strange fire that God had not commanded them\u2019. Fire came down from heaven and consumed them. In Chapter 16, no mention is made of this \u2018strange\u2019 fire, just that they drew near to God.
\nIt is a curious story, and even stranger to be reminded of it as an introduction to the ceremony of Yom Kippur. Yet, perhaps there is a deeper connection to be discerned.
\nNadav and Avihu have already appeared in the Bible in a particular context. When the Israelites stood at Mount Sinai and entered into the covenant with God, the ceremony was formally completed with a ritual sacrifice. But when this was over, in one of the most mysterious passages in the Torah, Moses and Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and 70 elders of Israel, climbed the mountain \u2018and they saw the God of Israel. Under God\u2019s feet, there was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity. But God did nothing to them. They saw God and ate and drank\u2019 (Exod. 24:9\u201311).
\nIt is not hard to imagine the effect of this extraordinary experience on those who were there. Elsewhere we are told that none may see God\u2019s face and live, yet these were privileged to do so and survived this deepest of mystical experiences, unique in the Torah. Perhaps for Nadav and Avihu this transformed their role as priests and potential successors to their father Aaron into something much more deeply intense, spiritual and ultimately all-consuming. To serve God with their whole heart ceased to be simply an intellectual or emotional commitment and became the burning desire that was central to their very existence. It was religious zeal to serve God with their whole being that led them into the sanctuary without permission or the proper precautions.
\nTheir story is narrated immediately after the account of the setting up of the sanctuary itself and the first sacrifices made upon the altar. These were consumed by a fire that descended from heaven, to show God\u2019s acceptance of the sacrificial system. So it seems that Nadav and Avihu were consumed at that very moment by that same heavenly fire that took the first sacrifice on the newly dedicated altar. Because of the inner fire of their mystical devotion to God, they were consumed by that same flame. They became themselves, what they actually wished to be, sacrifices to God out of their overwhelming love of God.
\nSo why are we reminded of that tragic event at the beginning of the account of the Yom Kippur ceremony?
\nTwo very different types of religious piety meet at this moment: the deeply mystical, that is ecstatic, passionate, individualistic, but may become fanatical and self-destructive; and the disciplined, collective, ritualized and formalized religion associated with Aaron and the priesthood, a religion designed to regulate the normal everyday collective life of a society.
\nThe experience of the two sons of Aaron represents the former. The symbolic ritual of Yom Kippur represents the latter.
\nThe drawing of lots that determines the fate of the two goats speaks to a particular human reality: that we cannot ever know what awaits us from moment to moment in our lives. We may understand what we encounter as mere chance or, instead, as our own special destiny; as purely random or as part of a pattern of divine care and purpose. Yom Kippur reminds us that what we encounter in life may seem to be a kind of lottery, but what we do with it is our particular responsibility and opportunity.
\nLike the sons of Aaron, one of the goats will become a sacrifice, consumed in an instant. But the other one is not killed but goes into the wilderness, its natural habitat, and must fend for itself in a place of unknown dangers and possibilities.
\nAll the preparatory work on ourselves that we do for Yom Kippur, in attempting to correct things that we have done wrong and mend broken relationships, gives us the inner resources to survive and flourish in the unknown world that awaits us at every moment. On this the most deeply religious day of the Jewish year we remember briefly the mystical dimension, but focus instead on the solid basis of a life lived in community that Judaism offers us.
\n50
\nThe Day of Atonement and Fasting
\nIf you ask the average Jew, or even a well-informed non-Jew, what they know about Yom Kippur, the first thing that is likely to come to mind is the fasting. The unofficial greeting among friends in the time leading up to Yom Kippur, is \u2018well over the fast\u2019. The centrality of this theme is obvious. That is why it is rather shocking to look at the texts selected by the rabbinic tradition to read on this day.
\nFor the morning service, we read from Isaiah 57:14\u201358:14. Scholars debate the background to this part of the Book of Isaiah. It is clearly later than the first 39 chapters that are set in Jerusalem a century before its fall to the Babylonians. From Chapter 40, the author addresses those in exile in Babylon, but Chapter 56 onward seems to relate to an even later period, when the author feels able to criticize his re-established society. But in doing so he obviously takes a certain pleasure in playing with the Hebrew language itself.
\nFrom the beginning of Chapter 58, he attacks what he calls the rebellious sins of his people, and his first target is their hypocrisy.
\nIndeed they seek Me day after day, and yearn to know My ways, like a nation that does what is right and never abandoned the Law of its God. They ask Me for righteous laws and yearn to be close to God.
\nOne of my teachers suggested that this desire to be \u2018close to God\u2019 really meant that they wanted a seat of honour near the front of the Synagogue!
\nWhen Isaiah says, \u2018they yearn\u2019, the verb is chafatz, and he will play with this shortly.
\nBut they in turn have a complaint to God:
\n\u2018Why have we fasted if You do not see? Why afflict our souls if You pay no heed?\u2019
\n\u2018To afflict our souls\u2019 is the very language of the Torah about what we are expected to do on Yom Kippur, with fasting being a significant element. But Isaiah now hits them with his message, in a series of word-plays on the Hebrew term for fasting, \u2018tzom\u2019. He challenges them: \u2018b\u2019yom tzom\u2019chem timtz\u2019u cheifetz\u2019, \u2018on the day of your fasting you find business\u2019. He takes the word \u2018tzom\u2019, fast, and turns it around to make \u2018matza\u2019, to find. Their very fasting is \u2018inside out\u2019. And their \u2018yearning\u2019, \u2018chafatz\u2019, to be near God is revealed instead as their true \u2018yearning\u2019, to carry on with their \u2018business\u2019, \u2018cheifetz\u2019. It reminds me of the old rabbinic complaint: \u2018I don\u2019t mind if they talk about their business in synagogue, if only they would talk about God in their business!\u2019
\nBut Isaiah has not finished with his word play. In verse three he complains that they only fast for quarrel and strife, and \u2018strife\u2019, here \u2018matzah\u2019, is yet another play on \u2018tzom\u2019. He goes on to condemn fasting that is just an outer show, what God wants is that they \u2018let the oppressed go free, share their food with the hungry, bring the homeless into their homes, clothe the naked\u2019. It is a \u2018fasting\u2019 from self-indulgence and from ignoring their responsibilities to others in their society. That is the kind of sacrifice God expects by their fast.
\nIt is a very powerful attack, and surely those he was targeting knew exactly whom he had in mind. It is this kind of risky activity that led the rabbis to suggest that in order to survive the prophets had to be independently wealthy!
\nThe point of choosing precisely this Haftarah for Yom Kippur is now obvious. It totally subverts our understanding of the day. It is not the fact of fasting that is important, but the renewal of our commitment to the needs of others that is at stake.
\nThe Haftarah for the afternoon service is the Book of Jonah, which contains a myriad of lessons for this day, delivered to us with great irony. But a central idea comes in the third chapter. When the people of Nineveh realize that destruction is coming, they put on sackcloth and ashes, the conventional signs of mourning that are meant to appease the angry god. The king of Nineveh does the same, but then adds a dimension that explodes out of the text. It is part of the irony of the book that his words are actually taken from the Book of Jeremiah and placed in the mouth of this pagan king.
\n\u2018And let every man turn from his evil way and from the violence in his hands.\u2019 As the rabbis noted, God responds positively to the words of the king, but totally ignores the fasting and mourning: \u2018And God saw their actions, how they turned from their evil ways, and God relented of the evil He had said He would do to them, and did not do it.\u2019 Once again it is actions that count, a change in behaviour, not simply the mechanical act of fasting.
\nBy choosing these two Haftarot, the rabbis are in fact following exactly in the footsteps of Isaiah and Jonah, subverting the obvious symbol of repentance, fasting, and saying it is not enough. Yom Kippur is a call to change, to acknowledge the things we do that damage others and stop, and to take greater responsibility for the world around us. \u2018This is the fast I have chosen.\u2019
\n51
\nLessons of Sukkot (Tabernacles)
\nWe begin to celebrate the festival of Sukkot, Tabernacles. Like all Jewish festivals it contains many layers of ideas, ideas which are reinforced by the different symbols and activities of the festival.
\nAt one level, Sukkot celebrates the autumn harvest, the time of year when fruits are ripe and gathered in. In the biblical period it meant that there was a brief moment when it was possible to relax and celebrate the successful close of the agricultural year. But like the other agricultural festivals in the Jewish calendar, Pesach (Passover) and Shavuot (Pentecost), additional historical ideas were grafted onto this agricultural basis. So Pesach celebrates the exodus from Egypt, Shavuot the encounter with God at Sinai, and Sukkot the wandering in the wilderness for 40 years on the way to the Promised Land.
\nWhether Jews actually work the land or live in cities, at Sukkot we construct outside our house or synagogue a sukkah, a temporary structure covered with branches, decorated with fruit and vegetables, open to the sky. This frail shelter represents those that the Israelites lived in on their 40-year journey through the wilderness. But there is something puzzling about this particular structure. Because, according to the biblical account, the Israelites on their wanderings actually lived in tents. The frail lean-to huts with open roofs, the \u2018booths\u2019 of Sukkot, seem to be modelled instead on the temporary shelters built in the fields during harvest time to provide shade from the heat of the sun. They belong to people living and working in the fields of their own land, not people travelling for 40 years through a desert.
\nSo is the sukkah a symbol to help us re-enact the experience of the Exodus from Egypt and the wilderness period? Or, instead, does it reflect a later period when the people of Israel felt at home and rooted in their own land? This twofold nature of the symbol itself is echoed in the teachings and tensions within the festival. For the sukkah reminds us of the repeated situation of the Jewish people throughout most of our history. We have lived in many places as a tolerated minority for a while, only to be expelled when political or religious circumstances changed, and forced to wander the world in search of yet another new home. Ours has been a nomadic history lived in a private \u2018No-man\u2019s land\u2019 on the margins of other societies and civilizations.
\nBy living for a week in the sukkah we symbolically re-enact that history. We leave the safety and security of our physical homes to expose ourselves to the vagaries of the weather. Through that physical act we acknowledge that security does not come only from buildings of brick and mortar. We identify with the often tragic experience of the victims of floods, fires or the disruption of war. Instead of trusting in the world of outer things we try to understand what it means to find an inner security, one that comes through the support offered to us throughout our life by our trust in God.
\nIt is painful and disturbing to remember the wilderness stories in the Bible because of the images they evoke. They tell of the constant search for food and water and the fear of death for us and our children if sustenance cannot be found. They speak of the frightened and hostile reactions of neighbouring peoples, the Moabites and Edomites, when the Israelites came near. Some refused the Israelites access to their territory, even simply to pass through, even if they paid a heavy toll for the privilege. Some peoples even sent their army to the borders to keep the Israelites out. Sukkot takes us into the heart of the experience of refugees of all times and places and calls us to identify with and help those who come to us today seeking refuge.
\nPerhaps the people of Moab or Edom in the biblical period had the same discussions about the Israelites that have become all too familiar to us today in Europe. Their leaders would have asked the question: did the Israelites really need to leave Egypt and come here to us? The debate would have run as follows: On the one hand the Israelites clearly faced the threat of genocide at the hands of Pharaoh who was killing all the male children. That would make the Israelites genuine political refugees, eligible for asylum on humanitarian grounds and under international law. But perhaps many of the Israelites left Egypt because they were simply tired of being slaves and wanted to improve their financial and social circumstances by moving to Moab or Edom or the land of Canaan. That would make them economic refugees, and therefore not really in need of asylum. At the end of the discussion, the decisive argument for keeping the Israelites out would probably be of a very different order. There were bound to be Moabite politicians who said that the Israelites would need welfare and become a drain on the economy, while others feared that they might pose a threat to the local job market by providing cheap labour and putting their own people out of work. On the whole it would be better simply to keep them all out.
\nWe have made a large jump from a religious festival celebrated in a little lean-to hut in a suburban garden to the global problem of refugees in our world. But Sukkot belongs to a great annual meditation on the nature of human society and our mutual responsibility to one another that lie at the heart of our Jewish festivals. It begins at Pesach with the celebration of the exodus from Egypt, and the question of the nature of human freedom. At Shavuot, we look at our mutual responsibility to one another as we formally create a human community through our covenant with God. At Sukkot, we visit our sukkah, often beautifully decorated with fruit and enjoy the gifts of nature, but at the same time feel on our bodies the cooler wind of autumn warning of a winter to come and we recognize the fragility of all human striving and success.
\nOf course, it is no great hardship for a week to visit our sukkah for meals, going indoors as soon as it rains. But it is very different to be a refugee who may have lost home, language, a sense of self-worth and even the bare elements essential for physical survival. Sukkot calls us to exercise our imagination and extend our compassion. It sends a shiver of discomfort through our complacency and reminds us in a gentle way of our own mortality.
\nBut Sukkot also asserts that we can find the inner resources and mutual support from each other to face the challenges that life brings. That hope is expressed in the words of the novelist Natalia Ginzburg, writing as a survivor putting her life together again after the Second World War. She wrote: \u2018we are forced to go on discovering an inner calm that is not born of carpets and vases of flowers \u2026\u2019 The search for that \u2018inner calm\u2019 also belongs to the message of Sukkot, for it tells us in its symbolic way that all of our life is actually spent in a frail shelter open to the sky.
\n52
\nProphet and Profit
\nWe tend to have rather stereotyped images of the biblical prophets. One is certainly that of hairy men dressed in loincloths standing in the market place shouting words of condemnation at their fellow citizens. There is a further assumption that the word \u2018prophet\u2019 itself implies the ability to foretell events that will come about and that this is the basis of their activities. Among the many figures described as \u2018prophets\u2019 in the Hebrew Bible there are certainly some who would conform to these images, but the title and the role contains many other dimensions and subtleties.
\nA number of Hebrew terms are used to describe the same phenomenon; of people who felt that they had received a direct word from God and who sought to convey it to their contemporaries. They may be described as a \u2018seer\u2019 or a \u2018visionary\u2019, possibly reflecting how they attained the divine message, but others are simply called \u2018a man of God\u2019 or most commonly a \u2018navee\u2019, perhaps meaning \u2018messenger\u2019. Some, like Elijah and Elisha had supernatural powers; others seem to be better understood as social critics who saw in their society the violation of the \u2018covenant\u2019, the religious constitution that bound the people of Israel to their God. They set about warning of the potential consequences of the way that society was operating. Their vision of the future was based upon a critical reading of the present and painting possible future scenarios, using powerful poetic or rhetorical language. Some of them paid with their lives for the message they felt forced to deliver to authorities that did not wish to hear them or allow them to be heard by the populace.
\nPerhaps the first thing to recognize is that the biblical prophets whose records have come down to us were to a large extent \u2018professionals\u2019. They underwent some kind of apprenticeship or training with other prophets that gave them a title and a role as interpreters of the will of God to their society. They were employed, for example, by the court to predict the outcome of policy decisions, often simply saying \u2018yes\u2019 to whatever was the wish of the powers of the day. Others might be asked by individuals seeking divine guidance for personal needs. It is out of the ranks of these professionals that there emerged the particular prophets whose stories or words were recorded by the biblical tradition, largely because their commitment to truth, preserved by their own disciples, was vindicated by history. Yet, one of them, Amos, even insisted that he was not a professional (neither a prophet nor the \u2018son\u2019), but probably apprentice of a prophet. God had called him and who could not but answer. They utilized a particular vocabulary (\u2018Thus says the Lord\u2019, \u2018an oracle of the Lord\u2019, the \u2018burden of the Lord\u2019\u2014this latter referring to prophecies against other nations) as a mark of their status and the authority of their words.
\nNevertheless, the Hebrew Bible, in its customary self-critical mode, records the problem that even a prophet could not always distinguish between the word of God he was to transmit and his own personal opinion. Thus Samuel is reprimanded for choosing the wrong son of Jesse to be king, before choosing David, because he was over-impressed with the appearance of the first one he saw. The struggle between the \u2018true\u2019 prophets and the \u2018false\u2019 prophets is frequently addressed, the latter often implying those who simply blessed the status quo and never looked more deeply into the ills and injustices of society. The narrative about Micaiah ben Imlah (1 Kings 22) illustrates the conflict between one individual and 400 court prophets. It has been suggested that one prophet may or may not have the correct opinion\u2014but when 400 prophets say the same thing, this is not prophecy but hysteria! Ultimately the question of determining the truth or otherwise of a prophet\u2019s words remains the responsibility of his audience, particularly when prophets of seemingly equal authority simply disagree (see, for example the public debate between \u2018Jeremiah the prophet\u2019 and \u2018Hananiah the prophet\u2019 (Jer. 28)).
\nThere is another way of looking at the biblical prophets, or rather at their role in the economy of power within biblical society. The prophet Samuel, the last of the \u2018judges\u2019, political leaders, before the institution of the monarchy under King Saul, had three roles: political leader, prophet and priest. Saul, the first king, attempted to fulfil the same three roles, and effectively failed in each\u2014he \u2018prophesied\u2019 but no message came, he failed in an attempt to offer sacrifices, and his leadership was flawed. His successor King David clearly undertook the role of political leadership alone, but was always accompanied by a priest and a court prophet, one who was prepared to criticize his actions. Here in embryo is a tripartite division of authority that in different ways characterized a biblical and later rabbinic theory of governance. The three domains, each accorded equal power, were designated in rabbinic parlance as the \u2018crown of kingship\u2019, the political leadership; the \u2018crown of priesthood\u2019, responsible for the maintenance of the regular worship and service of God through the cult and prayer; and the \u2018crown of Torah\u2019, the conveying of the will of God, earlier the prophetic role, casting an eye on society from the divine perspective.
\nWhen the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Romans, and what we know today as rabbinic Judaism emerged, the rabbis taught that prophecy ceased at that moment, and was handed over to children and to fools! The word of God was to be found from then on through interpreting the texts in the Hebrew Bible, in line with the best of contemporary knowledge and values. For this newly emerging society, the anarchic power of individual prophets, claiming to speak directly in the name of God, needed to be contained at a time of crisis when the essential landmarks of previous Jewish existence, the Temple, the land of Israel and the monarchy, had all been destroyed. The self-critical role of the prophets, whose words the rabbis preserved and studied, was undertaken by the rabbis themselves through their internal debates and the democracy of learning and study that characterized their leadership of the people.
\nGiven this, albeit brief, overview of a Jewish understanding of prophecy, the question inevitably arises as to who fulfils such a role today, and indeed whether such a role could ever again be institutionalized. Politically, the \u2018loyal opposition\u2019 of democratic institutions and societies may play such a critical role in secular terms. But the relegation of religion to the private sphere has limited its prophetic role, with a few notable exceptions. Today\u2019s re-emergence of politically engaged religious movements, often with a conservative or \u2018fundamentalist\u2019 agenda, may appear at first glance to herald a return of the prophetic voice; at least that may be the rhetoric that accompanies such movements. But their role is often more akin to that of the priesthood, seeking to preserve real or imagined past norms and values, rather than opening people to broader concerns and needs of society as a whole. Time alone will tell how to recognize and assess the true prophetic voices of our time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction In theory, rabbis don\u2019t give \u2018sermons\u2019! Though, truth to tell, we have been influenced by the forms and terms of the wider society\u2014including some of the worst aspects: A late-arriving congregant asks another who is just departing: \u2018Has the rabbi finished his sermon?\u2019 \u2018Yes,\u2019 comes the answer, \u2018but he is still talking!\u2019 Instead of … <\/p>\n