All Your Beis

Thoughts on Vayeshev

2011-12-17T19:31:00.001+02:00

Thus says Hashem: For three transgressions of Israel, yea, for four, I will not reverse it: because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes... (Amos 2:6)

It is commonly assumed that the Vayeshev haftarah (previously discussed here) is chosen because of this verse, which is taken to refer to the sale of Yosef.

Just today I thought of a compelling reason why Yosef’s sale CANNOT be what Amos had in mind when he said this prophecy. That does not mean the haftarah is a bad choice: Yosef WAS a righteous person (at least after the sale, from what we see), who WAS sold for silver, and it WAS a transgression, and it is fitting to recall this after reading the story of what happened to Yosef. But at the same time, if we want to understand Amos, we should be aware that this is not what Amos had in mind.

To see why, let us look at a selection of the verses
in Amos preceding the haftarah:

"For thus says Hashem: For three transgressions of Damascus, yea, for four, I will not reverse it...
Thus says Hashem: For three transgressions of Gaza, yea, for four, I will not reverse it…
Thus says Hashem: For three transgressions of Tyre, yea, for four, I will not reverse it…
Thus says Hashem: For three transgressions of Edom, yea, for four, I will not reverse it…
Thus says Hashem: For three transgressions of the children of Ammon, yea, for four, I will not reverse it…
Thus says Hashem: For three transgressions of Moab, yea, for four, I will not reverse it…
Thus says Hashem: For three transgressions of Judah, yea, for four, I will not reverse it…"

This is a list of lots of different ancient Middle Eastern nations. After each one, it lists a few "war crimes" or other various sins that the nations are known to have committed, and then describes the punishment God will visit upon them as a result.

The last two nations in this list are Judah and Israel. Amos lived in the period of the divided kingdom, when "Judah" consisted of the tribes of Judah, Binyamin, Shimon, and perhaps part of Dan.

Meanwhile "Israel" consisted of the remaining tribes in the north. This meant the tribes of Gad and Reuven near the Dead Sea; the tribes of Zevulun, Yissachar, Naftali, Dan, and Asher in the Galilee; and Efraim and Menashe taking up the whole coastal plain, Shomron, and almost all of Transjordan. The Galilee tribes generally did an incomplete job of conquering the Canaanites, while Gad and Reuven were small and peripheral. Efraim and Menashe took up about half the area of the whole kingdom – moreover, the more central, secure, and powerful half of the kingdom. It is no surprise that the entire northern kingdom is sometimes referred to poetically as "Efraim" (as in "Haben yakir li efraim"), or as "Yosef" (Yechezkel 37) – Yosef of course being the father of both Efraim and Menasheh.

When the prophet Amos, in our haftarah, criticized the nation of "Israel" for selling the righteous, we may assume he was foremost referring to Efraim and Menasheh, who dominated the kingdom of Israel. But it would be quite strange to blame the sale of Yosef on the tribes of Efraim and Menasheh, who were themselves descendants of Yosef. That would mean blaming the victim (or his descendants) rather than the perpetrators, which I think is unreasonable, so Amos must be talking about a crime or crimes involving someone else.

Thoughts on Vayishlach

2011-12-10T22:50:00.000+02:00

Shall our sister be treated like a prostitute? (34:31)

A prostitute is generally understood to be someone who takes money in return for sex. True, the word "znut" can refer to promiscuity in general, but one might still wonder why "zonah" was the most appropriate word to use for an unwilling rape victim.

But if we look closer at the proposal the city offered to Yaakov's family, perhaps we can understand why Dina's case was in fact similar to prostitution, and why the rhetorical question was not just imprecise rhetoric by angry young men.

The proposal goes as follows: "Please give [Dina] to [Shechem] as a wife. And marry among us: your daughters will be given to us and our daughters you will take for yourselves. And dwell with us: the land will be before you, dwell and do business and take hold of it." (34:8-10)

Besides the part about marrying together, this proposal contains two parts: Shechem gets Dina, and Yaakov's family gets the opportunity to do business.

A trade of Dina for business opportunities does look exactly like prostitution. No wonder, then, why Yaakov's sons reply so viciously to the deal, and why they killed the entire male population, not just Shechem. They were reacting to the proposal just as much as the act of rape itself.

This logic does not mean the mass killing was necessarily correct - for one thing, Yaakov objects to it (and at the end of his life, apparently not only on practical grounds) - but it does allow us to understand where the motivation for the killing came from.

Yaakov said to his household and all who were with him: "Remove the foreign gods that are among you." (35:2)
They gave to Yaakov all the foreign gods that were in their hands, and the earrings that were in their ears, and Yaakov buried them.... (35:4)

These verses raise two questions with me. 1) Why would Yaakov's household, which one would assume to be monotheistic, be in possession of idols? 2) Yaakov asked for the destruction of idols; why did the group give up their earrings as well, which Yaakov apparently did not ask for?

I think there is a common answer to both questions. It flows from the fact that at this point, Yaakov's sons had just conquered the city of Shechem, and (34:27) taken its plunder. One would expect that that plunder included any valuable objects in the city - and idols, often made out of precious metals, would certainly seem worth taking.

The Torah's attitude toward this, though, is not approving. Speaking of the later conquest by the Israelites, the Torah says: "The idols of their gods you shall burn in fire. You shall not desire gold and silver upon them and take for yourself, lest you be ensnared in it, for it is an abomination of Hashem your God." (Devarim 7:25) One might be tempted to take gold and silver idols in order to use the gold and silver, but the Torah later prohibits this.

Perhaps, then, Yaakov's sons took whatever idols they found in Shechem. As members of a third-generation monotheistic family, it would have been obvious to them that idols were not for worshipping, but not so obvious that idols could not be melted down and used for other purposes. Perhaps, of the idols they found, they took a few of them and fashioned their gold or silver into earrings, while holding onto the remaining idols until a good use for them could be found.

Yaakov may not have known what jewelry his family wore or where it came from. But when his family was implicitly told that not only worship but use of idols was forbidden, they realized that their jewelry had to be given up along with the intact idols.

Mitzvot for the deaf and blind

2011-11-27T19:15:00.005+02:00

Physical disability, in general, does not affect a person's obligation to keep mitzvot. Someone who must use a wheelchair, for example, is obligated in all 613 mitzvot. However, there are three kinds of disability regarding which the sources suggest that a person was not obligated in mitzvot at all.

The first category is the "shoteh" - an "insane" or otherwise mentally impaired individual who is unable to comprehend the concept of Divine commandment or understand the actions he must perform. Such a person cannot be said to be "commanded", since no command was ever made to him in a way he could understand.

The second category is the "heresh", or mute person, who is mentioned alongside the "shoteh" and children as people not obligated in mitzvot. This equation is hard to understand nowadays, but once it made sense. Typically, a person was mute as a consequence of being deaf. The deaf could not learn anything from others except by reading, and reading materials were rare before the printing press was invented. Similarly, there were no speech therapists, no sign language, and no teaching of lip reading. So deaf people, too, was not "commanded", since they had no way of hearing Divine commands. (The Biblical idiom for to "obey" is to "listen to the voice of". The deaf literally could not "listen to the voice".) Nowadays, when we do have effective ways of communicating with and teaching the deaf, I believe halachic authorities generally view the deaf as having equal obligations to hearing Jews.

The third category is the blind. According to the accepted opinion, blind Jews have exactly the same halachic obligations as everyone else (except for a few mitzvot which explicitly involve seeing). However, there are minority opinions which suggest that this might not be the case. The most interesting opinion is that of the Pri Megadim (intro to Orach Chaim part 3), who holds that according to one opinion in the gemara, the blind are obligated in negative mitzvot, but not positive mitzvot.

What is the logic behind this distinction? One possibility (see here) is that the blind do not really need to do mitzvot, but they do need to be distinguishably Jewish. And violating a negative mitzvah does more to show that one is not Jewish: if I see you eat pork then I know you violate halacha, but if I do not see you praying it is possible that you will pray at some other time in the day.

The difficulty with this understanding is that it assumes the blind are like the deaf and insane - people to whom the concept of mitzvot cannot apply, since they do not have mental capacity. But a blind person does have mental capability, can communicate normally with other people, and can learn all of the Oral Torah at the very least. So it seems easier to me to say that the blind are inherently commanded and obligated in mitzvot but exempted from some, rather than that they are inherently exempt but have a special obligation in some.

Thus I want to explain as follows. Blind people have no limitations to their mental ability. Thus, they should be obligated in mitzvot. But they do have significant limitation on their actions. For example, wherever they go they are liable to stumble on things and injure themselves. And they have difficulty locating objects in order to perform actions using those objects.

Another class of people - women - also has limitations on the set of mitzvot they must do. At certain times, due to pregnancy and raising children, women are busy and unable to spend time on other commitments. Thus, women are exempt from positive time-related mitzvot. I suggest that since blind people face larger and more constant restrictions on their actions than do women, they have a larger mitzvah exemption. Rather than being exempt from positive time-related mitzvot, perhap they should be exempt from all positive mitzvot. Meanwhile, the limitations on blind people's actions do not impair their ability to uphold negative mitzvot, since by sitting and doing nothing they do not violate any negative mitzvah. Thus, they should be obligated in negative but not positive mitzvot. That is the exact combination which the Pri Megadim suggests.

Holidays and the Temple

2011-10-19T14:13:00.001+02:00

Jewish holidays are generally distinguished by their focus on the Temple. Pesach, Sukkot, and Shavuot are occasions of obligatory pilgrimage and sacrifice, while Yom Kippur focuses on the day's special Temple service. Each holiday has special communal sacrifices, and on these days we are commanded to blow trumpets in the Temple. The holiday prayer "yaale veyavo" is recited only in those blessings - Retzeh (prayer) and Boneh Yerushalayim (birkat hamazon) - whose subject is the Temple. And so on and so on.

What, then, are we to do these days, when the Temple is destroyed? Instead of being occasions of celebration, should not holidays become days of pain, when we are directly confronted with what we have lost? Tisha Beav - now a day of mourning - will turn into a festive day once the Temple is rebuilt; wouldn't it be appropriate for holidays to be commemorated the same way?

My answer to this is no, and the explanation comes in two parts. First, to explain what the purpose of holidays is, beyond the particular rituals we can no longer perform. And second, to explain how that purpose is still fulfilled today.

First: Holidays were an opportunity for closeness with God. Of course, God is "found" in every place, and there are many opportunities for closeness unrelated to Temple. But the atmosphere of holidays, the prohibition on work, the physical closeness to "God's house", and the special rituals and celebrations, made holidays especially good opportunities for individuals to approach God. Moreover, as the entire nation celebrated together, holidays became occasions of national closeness to God.

Second: Despite the loss of the Temple, I believe we can still achieve this special holiday closeness. In the Temple, Divine closeness was achieved through certain rituals, like the Yom Kippur sacrifice with precipitated the forgiveness of our sins. Those rituals were a commandment, and the resulting closeness was the reward. We (the religious community) still want to perform these rituals, but we are prevented by circumstances from doing so. Halachically, this situation is defined as a situation of "oness". In such a situation, having done everything we are capable of doing, we are still entitled to the reward.

One may argue that this is not a situation of complete "oness", since the Temple's destruction is caused by our sins, and by repenting we could cause it to be rebuilt. This is true on one level, but false on another. The process of returning to Israel, appointing a king, rebuilding the Temple, and offering sacrifices takes a certain amount of time. We mourn all year for the Temple, because we have this time yet are not using it appropriately in order to speed up redemption. But once the holiday has begun, it is no longer possible to do all the tasks needed to rebuild the Temple. Regarding that particular holiday, we are truly in a state of "oness". We still perform whatever rituals we are capable of, and God still rewards us with His closeness as if we had performed all the other rituals as well.

Vahashevota el levavecha

2011-09-27T22:18:00.001+03:00

The phrase in the title appears, I believe, just twice in Tanach. Literally it means to "return [something] to your heart". "Heart" in Tanach typically refers to your personality/identity/self - including both emotions, which our culture identifies with the heart, and thoughts. Since thoughts and emotions normally come out from the heart, to "return them to the heart" means to remind and convince yourself of them - to internalize them. Perhaps a more poetic translation would be "to take them to heart".

This meaning is clear from the first occurrence of the phrase, in Devarim 4:39-40, which is well known to us from the Aleinu prayer:
וידעת היום, והשבת אל לבבך, כי ה' הוא האלקים בשמים ממעל ועל הארץ מתחת, אין עוד. ושמרת את חקיו ואת מצותיו, אשר אנכי מצוך היום, אשר ייטב לך...
We are supposed to internalize the fact that our God is the only god, and this knowledge will motivate us to keep the commandments.

The second occurrence (Devarim 30:1-2) is harder to understand.
והיה כי יבאו עליך כל-הדברים האלה, הברכה והקללה אשר נתתי לפניך, והשבת אל-לבבך, בכל-הגוים אשר הדיחך ה' אלהיך שמה. ושבת עד ה' אלקיך, ושמעת בקלו...
When the blessing (of reward when we obey God) and curse (of punishment when we disobey) come to pass, we should take to heart... what? The verse does not say what we should take to heart!

I think the answer is that we should take "it" to heart - with "it" being the content of the previous phrase. We should take THE COMING TO PASS OF THE BLESSINGS AND CURSES to heart. We realize that God in fact rewards and punishes, and that is a motivation for us to repent.

If that is the meaning, then how does the grammar work out?

Perhaps the phrase is intentionally incomplete for reasons of conciseness. It should say "take ____ to heart", but because here the phrase "____" is so long, it is omitted and the listener is supposed to figure it out and insert it mentally.

Or perhaps "take to heart", without a subject, means to take to heart whatever is natural to take to heart in the circumstances. If at some point in your life, you are confronted by direct evidence of God's control of the world, that awareness can be enough to drastically reorient a life which has been based on the proposition that God is irrelevant to the world's functioning and to our behavior.

No conversations in shul

2011-08-20T22:03:00.000+03:00

Many synagogues have a sign saying "No talking in shul", or some variation thereof.

But really, the fact is you are required to talk in shul! The signs should really say "No conversations in shul, except with God".

Perhaps people would refrain from talking to their neighbors, if they realized the impoliteness of repeatedly interrupting one conversation in order to engage in others.

Lulav

2011-07-25T22:51:00.003+03:00

I have two questions about the mitzvah of the four species.

1) The species involved are weird. One would expect that they include species common to the land of Israel, like grapes or olives. But none of the "seven species" appears in the four species. In fact, the four species have very little importance in Tanach in any context except for this mitzvah.

2) Chazal say that the four species represent four types of people who must be united for the mitzvah to be performed. What is the source for this midrash?

To answer these questions, we must look at where each of the species grows.

The lulav is part of the palm tree, which grows in the desert.
The etrog is a citrus fruit, which grows in the coastal plain (like the Jaffa orange).
The arava grows in valleys ("arvei nachal").
The hadas grow in mountainous regions.

We see that each of the species grows in a different part of the land of Israel. A person living in Ein Gedi, for example, would have plenty of palm trees around, but no etrog trees. Meanwhile, a person living in Kfar Sava would have plenty of etrogs but no lulavs. When everyone gathered to Jerusalem for Sukkot, the Kfar Sava people would have to swap their etrogs for the Ein Gedi people's lulavs, so that each group would have both lulavs and etrogs. Similarly, they would have to find people from the mountains (Hevron?) and valleys (Afula?) in order to obtain hadasim and aravot.

It seems that the four species is a mitzvah that no individual could perform on their own. Only one of the four species would grow in their hometown, and the others would have to be obtained from people living in other parts of Israel. Thus, it was a mitzvah that had to be performed by the entire people, working together, coming together to Jerusalem.

After the exile, Jews no longer lived in each part of the land of Israel, and they would not all gather to Jerusalem on the holidays. Thus, it no longer made sense to talk about the mitzvah as uniting people from different geographic regions. Instead, Chazal said that each species represented a person of a differing type of piety - and people of all such types can be found in any place.

(Source)

Falling on your face

2011-07-17T17:15:00.000+03:00

For an interesting explanation of Moshe and Aharon's falling on their faces, which happens a number of times in Sefer Bamidbar for unclear reasons, see here.
In short: People fall on their faces when they notice a Divine revelation, lest they see God and thus die. Moshe often falls on his face when no revelation has yet occurred. He does this as preparation for a revelation he hopes will then happen, because such a revelation would be an effective answer to the complainers or rebels he is confronting.

Kol Isha

2011-07-12T16:30:00.003+03:00

"A woman's voice is nakedness" (Brachot 24a)

The justification of this statement is not obvious to everyone today. Sure, many people go to concerts in order to swoon over the performer of the opposite sex, but there good looks and suggestive dancing are at least as much an attraction as a good voice. And those performers are generally required to have relatively good voices. For the rest of us, with our often ugly voices, the attraction is clearly much weaker. Yet Chazal called that voice "nakedness", and prohibited listening to it in the same line in which they prohibited staring at a woman's leg!

To me, this is best understood by reference to Greek mythology. Measures of sexual attractiveness are influenced by one's culture, and the Greeks and Romans whom Chazal lived among found the female voice to be very seductive. I am thinking of the myth of Odysseus and the Sirens. There are, it is told, sea-dwelling creatures which sing in a woman's voice, whose song is so seductive that any man who hears them will have an irresistible urge to abandon ship and swim to them, only to be killed. Unlike the mermaids of other cultures, who often had beautiful bodies, the sirens were attractive only because of their voices. The rabbinic decree of kol isha responded to what, at the time, was apparently a very strong temptation, as hinted to by the myth of the sirens.

Ruth and the Shoftim

2011-06-10T18:28:00.001+03:00

Naomi stood alone and abandoned at the beginning of Megillat Ruth. Her husband and sons were dead, and she was stranded in the land of Moav.

Yet by the end of the megillah, Naomi had regained both home and offspring. Ruth married Boaz, and their son was regarded like one of Naomi's own children (4:17). At the same time, Naomi returned to her very own ancestral plot of land, which was purchased by Boaz at the same time he married Ruth. (4:9-10).

What happened in between the beginning of the megillah, when Naomi was deprived of everything, and the end when she had received everything back?

The difference is the acts of kindness and love performed by Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz. Ruth insisted in accompanying Naomi despite Naomi's foreign culture and old age; Naomi arranged an advantageous marriage for Ruth; while Boaz protected Ruth in his field and agreed to marry her and to redeem the family's land.

These acts of kindness are especially striking when set against the historical circumstances of the period – as the megillah carefully indicates to us. The story is introduced as being "during the rule of the judges". Anyone who has read the book of Judges knows that this was not a period of love and kindness among the Jewish people. The defining event from this period was the story of pilegesh begivah (Shoftim 19-21). There, a traveler visited Givah, in the tribe of Binyamin. Some of the city's less responsible men demanded to "get to know" the traveler, similar to what had once happened in Sodom. His host refused, but the traveler agreed to let the men take his concubine (he was probably willing to do this because, as we previously learn, the concubine had recently cheated on him). The men raped and abused the concubine, and by the next morning she was dead. The traveler cut the concubine's corpse into 12 pieces, and delivered one to each tribe in Israel. The tribes, enraged, came and killed nearly the whole tribe of Binyamin in revenge.

These are the circumstances in which Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz showed their great kindness to each other. The time period was similar and Boaz and Naomi, like the traveler, came from Beit Lechem. Yet the actions in the megillah are quite the reverse of those in Shoftim. The concubine's unfaithfulness to the traveler (and then, vice versa) contrasts with Ruth's faithfulness to Naomi. Boaz's hospitality to Ruth contrasts with the inhospitality the traveler encountered in Givah. The arranged kidnapping of Israelite women in order to provide wives for the remaining Binyaminites contrasts with Boaz's refusal to sleep with Ruth until they were properly married.

While the love and kindness in the megillah were rewarded by offspring and inheritance of the land, the hatred and insensitivity of Shoftim were punished by the loss of offspring and the land. Almost the entire tribe of Binyamin, and thousands of soldiers from the other side, were killed in the Givah war. And the entire Shoftim period was characterized by a loss of land, as the disunified tribes were progressively overcome by the Philistines and other neighboring peoples.

Sefer Shoftim ends with the following verdict: "In those days there was no king in Israel, and each person would do whatever was right in their eyes." The usual interpretation of this is that a king could suppress and prevent evil behavior. But it can be equally understood as referring to internal dissension: without a king people would not unite against external enemies, and would even take up arms against each other.

It is no coincidence that the first successful king – David – was a descendant of Ruth and Boaz. He came to power in a period of civil war between Binyamin and Yehudah. But he managed to reconcile the two sides by showing friendship to Shaul's family and the rest of Binyamin, and by choosing a capitol (Jerusalem) which was on the border between the two tribes. During his reign the Jewish kingdom expanded to its widest extent ever, and grew to be numbered "like the stars of the sky" (Divrei Hayamim Alef 27:23). Just as Ruth's family succeeded in reversing their personal punishments by the practice of love and kindness, their descendant David succeeded in doing the same for the entire nation.

Thoughts on Emor

2011-05-02T19:33:00.003+03:00

A kohen is allowed to make himself impure only when one of four categories of people dies: 1) his parent 2) his child 3) his brother 4) his unmarried sister. Why these four exceptions, and no more and no less?

Let us start by suggesting why a kohen may not become impure in general. It seems to me that this is because he must always be ready to serve in the Temple. If he touches a corpse, he makes himself impure and unable to serve for at least seven days. He must avoid this, in case he is needed to perform Temple service.

But when certain family members die, the prohibition on becoming impure is suspended. Which factors can be strong enough to override our interest in having the kohen always ready for service?

One natural guess would be that due to the emotional bonds a person feels to their immediate family, it would be cruel to exclude them from the burial and mourning process. But a person can mourn without actually approaching the corpse and making themselves impure. And it is not obvious why one's bonds to a married sister would be so much weaker than to an unmarried sister or a brother.

A variation of this approach is to note that the Temple is intrinsically a place of happiness ("usmachtem lifnei hashem elokechem") and life (the tablets in the Temple, like the tree in the Garden of Eden, are an "etz chaim" guarded by keruvim). (In fact, this may be the source for the entire prohibition on ritual impurity, which typically comes from death, in the Temple.) Perhaps a kohen will be so distressed by a death in the family that he will not be able to carry out his service with the properly happy attitude. But here, too, it is not clear why the Torah should differentiate between married and unmarried sisters.

When thinking up this post on the bus today, I came up with a third possible reason for the prohibition. I couldn't rule it out, but now I've forgotten it. So as I now present a fourth reason, keep in mind that I'm not 100% sure it's correct.

The fourth possible reason is that the kohen was needed for the actual work of carrying out the burial. Let us assume that the burial process necessarily involved men, if only because certain parts of it required heavy physical labor. We can see that the relatives for whom a kohen may become impure are exactly those who would likely not have another man available to bury them. For this purpose, imagine now that I am a kohen and one of my relatives has died.

- If my father dies, he may not have any brothers, and his father is probably dead by now (or at least too old for physical labor). If my mother dies, there is a good chance that my father has already died and the situation is the same. Thus, the task is left to me.

- If my child dies, he or she may not have a brother who can bury them - leaving the task to me.

- If my brother or sister dies, I may be the only brother, and our father may be dead or too old - leaving the task to me.

But there is an exception to the last rule: if my sister is married. Then, her husband can perform the burial, so there is no reason for me to do it and become impure.

This reasoning explains each of the categories listed in the Torah. The only exception is a married daughter, who by this logic should be buried by her husband, not by her father. But we may suggest that in general a man's daughter, unlike his sister, would not get married until after he lost his life or physical vigor.

Having concluded that the law here is based on a balance between the need for Temple service and the need to carry out the burial, let us now look at the case of the kohen gadol, who was not allowed to impurify himself for any relative.

We could justify this law by adjusting the balance from either of its ends. We could say that the kohen gadol's need to serve was greater - he was expected to offer at least one sacrifice every single day ("minchat chavitin"), unlike the normal kohen who might be called on to serve only on rare occasions. (Of course, the fact that even these rare occasions necessitate a constant avoidance of impurity indicates how important Temple service actually is.) Alternatively, we could say that his need to bury was lesser - he necessarily lived near the Temple, and plenty of other people were around to do the burial for him.

There is one circumstance where, perhaps, we can test which of these alternatives is true. If even the kohen gadol encountered a "met mitzvah" - a corpse with nobody to bury it - he was required to bury it, despite the resulting impurity. Does this prove that the kohen gadol could not bury his relatives only because other people were around to do it, so in a case where by definition nobody was around, he was required to bury?

It is tempting logic, but I don't think we need to throw out the consideration of the kohen gadol's daily sacrifice. That is one mitzvah, but burying a corpse is another mitzvah. For the kohen gadol who has just encountered the corpse, perhaps we can say that the more immediate mitzvah of burial took precedence over the mitzvah which would only have been performed later that day.

Persian empire

2011-03-21T11:46:00.000+02:00

The Persian Empire, around the time of Ahashverosh, contained the highest fraction of world population of any empire ever.

Interesting

2011-03-09T12:54:00.000+02:00

"Working AI is not even remotely on the horizon, it is still completely unknown how it could be done. And this also means it is completely unknown whether a working AI would have issues like motivation, etc.. What is also completely unknown is whether an AI would actually be as smart as a human being and how much computing power it would need to even get to human average level. There is some indication that when you look at interconnect, the human brain is within one order or magnitude of what is possible in this universe. Get larger, and you get slower because of longer ways. Get smaller, and you cannot fit in as many interconnects."

Bears and Avos

2011-03-08T10:59:00.001+02:00

Yes, the debate over this video ended long ago, but I wanted to say something about it anyway.

From the video: "Is it your mesorah to pick only the most fantastical, irrational sources from the vastness of Jewish tradition and call anything else kefirah?"

I do think there is a tendency in the charedi world to see things this way. And the logic behind this approach is easy to understand.

In the last couple hundred years, Western civilization has accomplished a great deal by use of reason. At the same time, one cannot help noticing, religion has retreated in many different realms. Understandably, one can see this as a zero-sum game. Many charedim believe they are choosing religion at the inevitable expense of reason. Thus, all other things being equal, they tend to prefer the irrational and anti-humanistic over the rational and humanistic. They feel that the further an idea is from rationality, the further it is likely to be from rational atheism.

It is sometimes hard to determine what the Torah desires from you – particularly, which of the diverse and occasionally mutually exclusive approaches in the sources you should follow. When there is no other way of deciding between the sources, an understandable first step is to eliminate those which are associated – even if you can't fully clarify how – with atheism.

The seven Mishkan commands

2011-01-30T17:43:00.002+02:00

1. Punctuation

Like any book, the Torah is easier to read when fully punctuated. Unfortunately, no common chumash or translation includes all the punctuation. In particular, you will never find a full set of quotation marks.

This is because quotes in the Torah can be very long: the longest one spans 22 chapters of Sefer Devarim. It is little use putting a begin-quote when the end-quote is so far away. But if you want to seriously study the Torah, you must figure out where each quote begins and ends. That is the only way to know who is speaking, and what the context and content of the quote is.

2. The seven speeches

Parshat Terumah begins with the verse "And God spoke to Moshe, saying:". Clearly this verse should be followed by a begin-quote, as what follows is something spoken by God. Where is the end-quote? Look all the way through parshat Terumah and Tetzaveh, and you will not find it. Only at the very beginning of Ki Tisa will you find "And God spoke to Moshe, saying:" again, indicating that we are no longer within the quote. The end-quote should apparently be placed right before this, ending a two-parsha-long speech by God.

This first verse of Ki Tisa, of course, begins another speech. But this one is much shorter. Just one paragraph later we find "And God spoke to Moshe, saying:" again, indicating the end of the second speech and the beginning of a third. The next paragraph begins with "And God spoke to Moshe, saying:", ending the third speech and beginning a fourth. And so on and so on. Check it out yourself. From the beginning of parshat Terumah to the golden calf episode in the middle of Ki Tisa, there are no physical events whatsoever. The only thing that happens is that God repeatedly gives messages to Moshe.

If you count it all up, God speaks to Moshe exactly seven times. The subjects of these seven speeches are as follows:

1) All of parshat Terumah and Tetzaveh (concerning the Mishkan) 2) The half-shekel gift 3) Hand washing basin 4) Anointing oil 5) Incense 6) Betzalel chosen to build the Mishkan 7) Shabbat

Note how there are 6 speeches regarding the Mishkan (the half-shekels collected were used for building and upkeep of the Mishkan), followed by 1 speech about Shabbat. Clearly, this is an important source for the "melacha on shabbat=tasks done in building the mishkan" idea. You build the mishkan for six days, and on the seventh day you rest.

3. The division of speeches

The whole section (all 7 speeches) consists of 20 paragraphs of instructions about the Mishkan, plus one about Shabbat. There is no obvious difference in material among the 6 speeches dealing with the Mishkan. So why divide them into 6 speeches, one immediately following the other? If the speeches were in fact said consecutively without pauses in between, couldn't they be equally well described as one speech?

Perhaps, then, there is really no distinction between the speeches. They were really one long speech, and the last 6 paragraphs were arbitrarily introduced with "And God spoke to Moshe, saying:", so that the 7-speech/7-day pattern would exist.

That is one possibility, but not the only one. There could in fact be a difference between the material in each speech. But what that difference might be is not obvious. At first glance, the long first speech seems to be about the physical aspects of the Mishkan, while the other speeches are about more peripheral matters. But why then is the hand washing basin in the 3rd speech, and why the animal offering in the middle of the 1st speech? That seems to indicate that our "first glance" is wrong.

4. Precautions

There is, however, one common thread between the last few speeches, despite their dissimilar subjects. The half shekel, hand washing basin, anointing oil, incense, and Shabbat speech all mention "karet" or death (two comparable punishments) as a result of neglecting them.

Half shekel: "Each man shall give atonement for his soul to Hashem when they are counted, and there will not be a plague among them when they are counted." (30:12)
Basin: "When they come to the Tent of Meeting, they shall wash in water, and not die." (30:20)
Oil: "One who mixes anything like it, or one who puts any of it on a stranger [non-priest], shall be cut off from his people." (30:33)
Incense: "One who makes like it in order to smell it shall be cut off from his people." (30:38)
Shabbat: "Whoever desecrates it shall be put to death, for whoever does work on it shall be cut off from his people." (31:14)

The remaining command, the appointing of Betzalel, does not include a penalty for non-performance. Perhaps we may suggest that a person who builds ritual vessels, like Betzalel but without a Divine command, also receives the penalty of "karet". This would be similar to the oil and incense, which similarly incur "karet" if produced for improper reasons. (This command also includes open-ended permission for "wise-hearted" people to participate in the work. But perhaps that is really a repeat of the appointment of the "wise-hearted" in verse 28:3; the only relevant part here the innovative part: Betzalel's role.)

We may suggest that the above five commands, perhaps including the sixth of Betzalel, are not considered to be part of the actual "blueprint" of the Mishkan. They are necessarily precautions so that the Mishkan be built and operated correctly – so that one of the possible punishments listed will not be incurred. Since they are not part of the Mishkan, they are not listed in the Mishkan speech. And since each of them helps us avoid a different and unrelated punishment, each of them merits a separate speech of its own.

5. Priestly garments

Besides the above punishments, two punishments are mentioned in the long speech about the Mishkan itself. These concern the priest's clothing: he must wear pants (28:43), and have bells on his "me'il" (28:35), or else he receives the death penalty.

We suggested above that the warnings regarding the Mishkan were separated off into separate speeches, since they were not part of its basic "blueprint". But these two warnings are part of the much longer description of the clothing. The clothing does seem to contribute to the Mishkan "blueprint": it provides "honor and splendor" (28:2) which was an important quality of the Mishkan. Since the whole clothing section had to be included in the main Mishkan speech, the two warnings related to clothing were included along with it.

Much or all of Section 2 is based on a shiur by R' Menachem Leibtag.

The frog midrash

2010-12-31T14:02:00.001+02:00

In this post, "Parshablog" notes the great similarity between several midrashim on frogs and verses in Shemot which describe the Israelite's experience in Egypt. As one possible explanation, he suggests that the rabbis in the midrash wanted us to see the plague of frogs as punishment for the oppression of Israel. Thus, they told various additional stories about the plague, which were not historically accurate, but serve to highlight the thematic connection they were drawing.

But where else do we see midrashim intended as literary parables, in which the authors make clear that the events in them did not actually happen? My impression is that's rare to nonexistent, much as it would make understanding midrash easier for lazy people like me.

Rather, let us note the pshat basis for saying that the frogs were punishment for earlier sins. The Egyptians tried to prevent being overrun by the Israelites' growth ("vayishretzu"), and they were punished by being overrun by frogs ("vesharatz"). They tried to throw the swarming Israelites into the Nile, and as punishment frogs swarmed out of the Nile and overwhelmed them. On a pshat level, the Egyptians were likely supposed to look at the content of the plague, and realize that it was a measure-for-measure punishment.

If so, then all the midrash adds is the assumption that the measure-for-measure-ness was complete and exact. With that assumption, it takes every available piece of information about Israel's experience, and concludes that the exact same thing must have happened regarding the frogs.

Why make this assumption?

Both modern and medieval Jews are often forced into a corner somewhat regarding our religious beliefs. The Rambam, based on his understanding of philosophy, was forced to say that many stories in the Torah (i.e. Bilaam's donkey talking) were allegorical. We are forced to say that the world was not actually created in six days. Pashtanim in general are forced to say that sometimes Tanach was grammatically irregular or imprecise. In all these cases, outside factors override what seemed to be the Torah's position, but we are willing to compromise since we believe that enough of the "core" issues remain unaffected.

Perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of midrash is that it is never willing to make such a compromise.* It is never willing to admit that a verse (or letter) of the Torah cannot be understood and thus is invalid as a source for halacha. Similarly, it is never willing to limit the number of miracles in a story based on considerations of reasonableness. Thus, once it decides upon an interpretation such as "the plague of frogs was a punishment for the attempts at population control, and the punishment should fit the crime", it proceeds to insert every single detail of the crime into the punishment. Once we have decided that the Torah's message is that the crime and punishment are related, how can any external factors impede or limit what the Torah is trying to convey?
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*By the way, I think it's too simplistic to say that charedim today follow this approach. It might be more accurate to say that Chazal claimed to know everything, we claim to know something, and charedim claim know to nothing and thus repeat the Chazal's statements without making a pretense of understanding them.

Pharoah's punishment

2010-12-28T18:07:00.000+02:00

The question is often asked: How could God harden Pharaoh's heart, denying Pharaoh the right to repent and thereby avoid punishment? It is usually explained that in the first five plagues Pharaoh hardens his own heart, and only from the sixth plague onwards is his heart hardened by God. So in fact he had many chances to repent, but eventually the sin became so ingrained in him that it was not realistic to talk of his repentance.

While not incorrect, I find this to be a weak formulation of the real answer. For it was not only during the plagues that Pharaoh had things to repent for, and chances to repent. Were the plagues a punishment for not letting them go worship God in the desert right now, as Moshe requested? Is that the only thing Pharaoh did wrong? What about the slavery, the killing of babies, and so on?

It may be that the content of the plagues hints that they were punishments for these earlier and greater sins. One wonders if the Egyptians, confronted with a bloody Nile, remembered the babies they had thrown in it. Or when their food supply was destroyed by locusts and hail and they probably had to buy food from neighboring countries, if they thought of their ingratitude towards Yosef's descendants. These plagues seem like "measure for measure" punishment for injustices that reach back centuries.

After the plagues, letting the Jews go celebrate a holiday would not have been repentance, but rather self-preservation. God hardened Pharaoh's heart to prevent such an escape from punishment. But there was no need to harden his heart to prevent repentance for the earlier deeds, because Pharaoh never considered real repentance for them. Even before his heart was repeatedly hardened, he never offered to end the slavery, only to let the people leave for a few days and then return.

Esther's ethnicity

2010-12-26T13:47:00.000+02:00

(This is an incomplete summary of a shiur from R' David Fohrman which I thought interesting. His book on Breishit is interesting as well.)

Three things are mentioned about the appearance Vashti was supposed to make at Ahashverosh's party. 1) She was to show off her beauty. 2) She was to wear a crown. 3) The audience was the assembled princes of the empire.

This strange request can be understood as follows. Vashti was a living symbol of the Persian empire - like the Statue of Liberty is nowadays for the US. Like in modern advertising where beautiful women are displayed to market cars or soft drinks, Vashti wearing a crown was shown off to market the beauty of the crown and the Persian empire. When she refused to do this, she implied that the empire had no beauty to show off. Thus Ahashverosh became so angry at her.

Vashti's replacement was supposed to fix her flaw, and successfully represent Persia. For this purpose, the replacement had to be identifiable as Persian. Mordechai asked Esther not to mention her origin. Precisely because she had no discernable non-Persian identity, unlike residents of the other 127 provinces, Ahashverosh was able to choose her as representative of the kingdom.

When Haman's decree became know, Esther was presented with a dilemma. If she spoke up on behalf of her people, she would lose the "non-ethnic" quality which was why she became queen in the first place. Thus, she did not directly request this, even when Ahashverosh promised her "up to half the kingdom". Instead, she attempted to trap Haman, and thus to get both him and his decree removed.

She was half-successful in this. Haman was discovered on her bed, but was immediately killed, before Esther could ask for any decrees associated with him to be revoked. Now Esther's only option was to ask directly for the decree to be revoked.

At this point, for the only time in the Megillah, she fell at Ahashverosh's feet and cried and begged. Despite this display of emotion, Ahashverosh refused! He did not divorce Esther for declaring her identity, but neither did he grant her request. He only allowed for a parallel decree to be issued allowing the Jews to defend themselves. Luckily this was enough, and the Jews lived happily ever after.

Yad Vashem

2010-12-25T22:36:00.001+02:00

...ונתתי להם בביתי ובחומתי יד ושם...
Thus says Hashem to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, and choose what I desire, and uphold by covenant: I shall give them, in my house and my walls, a hand and a name, better than sons and daughters. (Yeshayahu 56:5)

I don't know if this post is more pshat or vort, but it sounds nice, so I'll say it.

The above verse is repetitive and hard to understand. What is the point of mentioning "wall" after mentioning "house"? And what is the relevance of a "hand" here?

Elsewhere, as in the Gemara, the word "yad" refers to a "handle", an implement by which an object is grasped. Perhaps that is the same meaning here: a "yad" is some sort of useful object. This is in contrast to a "shem", which conveys a message rather than being being used as a tool toward some objective. Thus, this phrase first talks about something practical ("yad"), and then something symbolic ("shem").

If so, then this phrase is parallel to the previous phrase: "my house and my walls". A useful object ("yad") is contained in your house, while a symbol ("shem") is posted on the walls of your house for everyone to see. The verse promises that the person who is loyal to God will receive both.

Similarly, when we want to memorialize someone, there are two things we must do. We must make a "shem" - by speaking of them and keeping their memory alive. And we must make a "yad" - by carrying out their intended mission in the world.

Shifrah and Puah

2010-12-22T14:08:00.001+02:00

Were Shifrah and Puah the only two midwives at the time of Pharaoh's decree? If not, why are only they mentioned?

Let us assume the Jewish people grew from 70 to 600000 males over the course of about 200 years. To make this biologically possible, you have to assume roughly constant (and large, of course) family size throughout the period, which means exponential growth.

Let us assume the midwives' refusal happened midway through the 200 years - that is, 100 years before the end. It must have been at least 80 years before the end, since Moshe was born after the decree was instituted.

By the laws of exponential growth, at that time there were sqrt(70*600000)=6481 Jewish males, and a roughly equal number of females.

Let us assume that each woman alive at that time had 10 kids in her lifespan. That means 64810 births. Assuming a lifespan of 40 years (it was the ancient world), and 365 days per year, it follows that on average 64810/40/365=4.4 births occurred each day.

Would two midwives be able to handle 4.4 births a day? With that birthrate, I think I'd prefer to have maybe 5 to 10 midwives. But as physicists say, the answer has the correct "order of magnitude". We made several big assumptions in this calculation, and nevertheless, the results are not far from what we expected. Anyway, if there was a moderate shortage of midwives, no wonder births often occured before the midwives managed to arrive (Shemot 1:19).

In conclusion, it's within the realm of possibility that there were only two midwives at the time.

Shemot chapter 1

2010-12-21T16:45:00.000+02:00

Every year, upon beginning parshat Shemot, I am struck by the same thing. The first few lines repeat things we already know from Sefer Breishit. But the style is different - extremely concise and abrupt relative to the original story. Here are four examples.

1)
"Yaakov, him and his household came." (Shemot 1:1)

"They took their cattle, and their property which they acquired in the land of Canaan, and came to Egypt: Yaakov and all his offspring with him. His sons and grandsons, daughters and granddaughters and all his offspring, he brought with him to Egypt." (Breishit 46:6-7)

2)
"These are the names of the sons of Israel, who came to Egypt: [...] Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehudah, Yissachar, Zevulun, Binyamin, Dan, Naftali, Gad, Asher. All those who came out from Yaakov's loins were seventy people, and Yosef was in Egypt." (Shemot 1:1-5)

Breishit 46:8-27 lists every son and grandson, categorizes them by mother, counts them up, and eventually reaches the total of 70 people. This whole process takes 20 verses.

3)
"Yosef and his brothers and all that generation died." (Shemot 1:6)

Breishit describes Yosef's death, mummification, burial, and the oath his brothers made to eventually return his body to the land of Canaan. That, and the death/burial of Yaakov which is not even mentioned here, essentially fill a whole chapter (Breishit 50).

(It's interesting, by the way, that the Egyptians mourned Yaakov for 70 days, but not Yosef. Presumably they mourned Yaakov out of fear of Yosef. But when Yosef died there was nobody to fear. And since Yosef took their land, they weren't genuinely upset by his passing.)

4)
"A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Yosef." (Shemot 1:8)

From the one word "Yosef", we are supposed to have in mind all the events of parshat Miketz and Vayigash. The verse does not even say something like "the doings of Yosef", but just "Yosef".

(Actually, you could argue that "yada" implies a relationship rather than factual knowledge, so "the doings of Yosef" is not appropriate here. But that just begs the question of why Pharoah chose to reject the relationship so dramatically - a question which is answered nowhere.)

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Why this incredible conciseness? I think its purpose is to indicate to us that we now telling the story of a nation rather than of individual people. Occasionally (as with Moshe in chapter 2) an individual's story is of crucial relevance to the nation. But when that is not the case, the narrative has no patience for individual stories. So it minimizes them or omits them entirely, and makes clear to us that it is doing so.

18th generation Yerushalmi

2010-12-18T19:52:00.000+02:00

Some people like to identify themselves as 6th-generation Yerushalmim, or 7th-generation Yerushalmim. I've never met such a person, but sometimes I read about them.

As a 0th-generation Yerushamli (I don't live there) I am not especially tolerant of this pretentiousness. If I ever met a person who introduced themselves that way, I think I would answer this way. "So what? Tzidkiyahu Hamelech was an 18th generation Yerushalmi, and look how evil he was. You think you're any better than he was?"

Ben Gurion story

2010-12-15T23:08:00.000+02:00

A young American rabbi, maybe age 30, with no real beard and not looking rabbinic at all, was having trouble with the airport security. The conversation went as follows.

Guard: What's your job?
Rabbi: I'm a congregational rabbi in the US.
Guard: Really? You don't look like one.
Rabbi: אל תסתכל בקנקן אלא במה שיש בו.
Guard: Hmm, OK, have a nice trip.

Yaakov's sons' sibling marriages

2010-12-13T00:47:00.001+02:00

Note: All verse quotations are from Breishit unless otherwise specified.

1. Introduction

R' Yehudah says: Twin sisters were born with each tribe, and they married them. R' Nechemiah says: They [the wives] were Canaanites, and what does "his daughters" mean? His daughters-in-law, as a person does not refrain from referring to his daughters-in-law as his daughters. (Rashi, 37:35).

R' Yehudah brings a well known, but rather strange and disturbing, midrash. What could have motivated him to say it?

It seems the midrash was primarily developed as a response to the following textual problem.

At least two verses in Breishit mention Yaakov having multiple daughters: "And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him" (37:35), "...his sons, and his sons' sons with him, his daughters, and his sons' daughters, and all his seed he brought with him into Egypt" (46:7). But just one daughter (Dinah) appears in the list of 70 family members who went down to Egypt, in Breishit 46:8-27. How can only one daughter be listed, if more than one was alive at the time?

2. Pshat resolutions

Various ways have been suggested to resolve this contradiction using pshat. Here are several possibilities.

1) Rashi (46:7) assumes that the word "daughter" can also apply to other female relatives (the encounter between Yaakov and Lavan in Gilad is an example where terms for family members are used in this imprecise manner). Thus, Rashi says that in 46:7 "daughters" refers to one daughter (Dinah) and one granddaughter (Serach bat Asher). As quoted above R' Nechemiah in the midrash takes a very similar approach.

2) Ibn Ezra (46:7) suggests that "daughters" refers to Dinah's maidservants - women who grew up in Yaakov's house. (Similarly, in modern Hebrew "bat" means "girl" as well as "daughter". Perhaps Yaakov's household had one "daughter" but many "girls".)

3) Ramban (46:7) says that the plural word "daughters" can be used even if only one daughter is being discussed.

4) R' Elchanan Samet (shiurim on parshat hashavua, vol. 2, Vayigash) suggests that other actual daughters were present, but were not considered to be members of Yaakov's household, since once they got married they became members of other mens' households. This approach is especially attractive because it explains why one daughter (Dinah) IS mentioned. Quite likely she never got married, because most men wouldn't have wanted to marry a woman who had been raped.

But the midrash has clear reasons for rejecting all of these resolutions. Of the four resolutions I just mentioned, the first three
are all variations of "Nu, sometimes the Torah is a bit imprecise because that's how people naturally talked, just deal with it". Clearly the midrash, which makes a drasha from every extra vav in a verse, cannot accept such an answer. The fourth explanation seems to work more cleanly with the text. But it implies that Yaakov's daughters irrevocably assimilated into their husbands' pagan Canaanite or Egyptian families, which is obviously a potential source for discomfort.

3. The midrashic resolution

If none of these answers is acceptable, then how can the midrash resolve the contradiction? There is one remaining "out" which the midrash uses. According to 46:26, the list of 70 people in Yaakov's family excludes "the wives of Yaakov's sons". If Yaakov's daughters were ALSO his sons' wives, then we have a straightforward explanation for why the daughters are not listed. This answer implies exactly what the midrash says: that the sons (at least some of them) married their sisters.

How do we know that these sisters were twins of the brothers, and not born at some other time? I think the best explanation for this follows from the following chronological considerations.

Just 14 years passed between Leah's marriage and Yaakov's leaving Haran. For much of that time Leah was successively pregnant with the 7 children mentioned in the verses, and for some more of the time she was barren (29:35). She could have born additional daughters after leaving Haran, but not for too long after, because these daughters had to become old enough themselves to marry and have several kids before moving to Egypt. In short, the number of daughter/wives Leah could have mothered from additional pregnancies is limited. As for the other wives, they are unlikely to have had many more pregnancies. Rachel was almost continuously barren, and it is not clear that Yaakov slept with Bilhah and Zilpah except when the real wives requested it. In summary, the extra daughters the midrash requires could not have been born from twelve additional pregnancies. Rather, they must have been twins (or triplets, etc.) of each other, and/or of the previously mentioned sons.

To solve the above textual problems, it's sufficient to say that just one of Yaakov's sons had a twin daughter who married her brother. That daughter, plus Dinah, make up the plural "daughters" in 46:7. But the midrash says that there were 12 twin daughters who married their brothers. By saying this, this midrash avoids another difficulty: how did Yaakov's sons marry Canaanites, if Yitzchak and Yaakov had been forbidden to do this, and there is no hint that the 12 sons returned to Haran to find wives? As things now stand, the brothers married nice frum Jewish girls from an upstanding family, not idolatrous foreigners.

Of course, we have not succeeded in explaining every detail of the midrash. The above problems would all be explained if one brother had two twin sisters, the next brother had no twins, and so on. Here the midrash makes an assumption with no basis in the pshat: that each of the pregnancies was exactly the same, one son and one daughter. But that assumption is quite minor, given how much of the midrash has already been explained using logical considerations.

4. Incest

My guess is that people are troubled by this midrash less due to its implausibility than due to the implication of incest. I think our discomfort can be minimized if we assume that each brother married a sister from a different mother - that is, a half-sister. Elsewhere (20:12), Avraham explicitly told Avimelech that he married his half-sister. Either Avraham told the truth here and righteous people like him did marry their half-sisters, or if he lied, presumably he claimed a family relationship that Avimelech would consider permissible. Based on this verse, the gemara rules that Noahides are permitted to marry their half-siblings, but not their full sisters (Sanhedrin 58a). Perhaps Yaakov's sons made a point of marrying only half-sisters as well.

If so, we now have an interesting explanation for another midrash. Rashi to 30:21 says that Dinah was originally destined to be born as a son, but Leah prayed to God and the male fetus was miraculously changed into a female one. Rashi says Leah's motivation was to spare Rachel the humiliation of having fewer sons (one) than either of the midwives (two), since only 12 sons were to be born overall. We can suggest that Leah had a different motivation, one which is absolutely necessary given the halacha and the assumption of 12 twins. If more than 6 out of 12 pairs of twins were from one mother, then not all sons would be able to marry a daughter who was a half-sister rather than a full sister.

This understanding does contradict a different midrash. Rashi on 46:10 says that the sister whom Shimon married was Dinah. However, Shimon and Dinah were full siblings! Perhaps we can say that this midrash views Shimon and Dinah as evil people - Shimon as shown by what he did to Yosef (he and Levi were likely the ringleaders in capturing Yosef, see here) and the city of Shechem, and Dinah as shown by Rashi's comments on 34:1. Shimon and Dinah did violate the Noahide prohibition on incest, but due to their evil characters, they didn't care. For a slightly different approach to how Shimon and Dinah married each other, see here.

Negel wasser

2010-12-08T00:20:00.001+02:00

The Mishna Brura (Orach Chaim 4:1,4:8) gives several different possible reasons for the three-time hand washing we perform each morning upon awaking. It does not decide which reason is correct, but says that we are careful to keep the stringencies that would be implied by each of the three reasons.

The reasons are:

1. Your hands move around at night. They may have touched dirty parts of the body and become dirty themselves. If that happened, they must be washed before praying or saying blessings.

2. Sleep is associated with death ("one sixtieth part of death" according to Brachot 57b). Death is associated with an "evil spirit" ("ruach raah") which supposedly can harm you if it enters your body (generally through an orifice). You must wash your hands each morning to remove the evil spirit that has descended upon your hands. If you touch a bodily orifice before washing your hands in the morning, the evil spirit will enter your body and harm you. If you touch food before washing your hands, whoever eats the food will suffer the same consequences.

This idea of evil spirits is an interesting parallel to the modern idea of infectious diseases, which could be contracted by touching a diseased corpse, and which hand washing would defend against.

3. Sleep is associated with death, and upon awaking one is effectively reborn.

This last reason has interesting parallels in other areas of halacha. 1) A convert must immerse upon being "reborn" as a Jew. 2) A woman must immerse when a new egg appears in her reproductive system, before having relations with her husband and converting that egg into a new living being.

Astrology

2010-12-08T00:10:00.002+02:00

"Ein mazal leyisrael" – "There is no constellation determining the fate of Israel" (Shabbat 156a)

This quote implies that the destinies of non-Jews ARE in fact determined by alignments of the stars and planets. This is just one of many places where Chazal display a belief in astrology. This belief carried on to many of the later rabbis – not only those who insisted on taking every word of aggadta as scientific truth, but also many of those who did not (for one example, see Ibn Ezra on Devarim 4:19). Rambam is a conspicuous exception (see here), but he is the exception that proves the rule.

The question arises: how are we supposed to respect religious authorities who believed something which is so clearly illogical, superstitious, and compatible with idolatry and rejection of Divine providence?

I think the answer is to argue that astrology was unsuccessful science, not pseudo-science. Astrology started with correct observation of some situations, and extrapolated to other, similar, situations. The data and conclusions were lacking, but the method was correct even by modern standards.

For the fact is that certain heavenly bodies do strongly influence events on earth. The best example is the sun. On a daily basis the sun's position determines the temperature and the amount of light we see. Over the course of months, as the sun's position in the ecliptic varies, other changes take place. Not only is weather affected, but in particular seasons plants grow, flower, and bear fruit, and in springtime most animals give birth. The moon affects the world as well, through the tides. Given all this evidence, can we not extrapolate and say that other, smaller heavenly bodies should have more subtle effects on earthly events? Particularly as those bodies (planets) have complicated and non-regular (as seen from earth) orbits, which correspond to the irregularity of life as we experience it?

Of course, modern science has found more precise theories to explain those situations. The sun releases radiation due to its high temperature, which warms air and water to create weather, and various life forms have adapted their life cycle to the regular changes in sunlight and weather. And any sufficiently large body has the power to create tides: if "Yo Mama" (the technical term for an extremely overweight person) were to go to the beach, the tide would rush up to meet her. Modern science allows that Jupiter and the Great Dipper have some influence on us, due to their gravity and radiation. But of course, practically speaking, that influence is completely negligible.

Nowadays, since we possess better scientific explanations, astrology is taken seriously only by idiots and frauds. But it's not fair to say the same about people who lived before the time of Isaac Newton, more or less. Until then, astrology provided the only plausible explanation for many natural phenomena, and there is nothing strange about its being almost universally believed and accepted.

Carmel fire

2010-12-02T23:19:00.005+02:00

One night a couple years ago, I was riding a bus on the Haifa-Tel Aviv freeway, when I encountered one of the most awe-inspiring things I've ever seen. Looking out the window towards the Carmel mountain range, I saw an entire hill being overrun by a forest fire. The flame was several hundred meters across, and almost as tall as it was wide. No lives were lost, and I could not find even a mention of it in the news the next day.

As I write this, a much larger fire is burning in almost exactly the same place. Already 40 lives have been lost, and thousands of people evacuated from their homes.

Along with my shock at the number of casualties, and concern over what may happen in the next few days, the following thoughts have crossed my mind.

1) The first rain in Israel normally falls a short time after Sukkot. Typically, by December, several heavy rainstorms have occurred. But so far this winter, just two small drizzles have occurred. Effectively, there has been no rain since March or April. As the sources suggest, the chief rabbinate has declared two fast days in the last couple weeks, and a special prayer for rain has been added to "Shomea Tefila" of each weekday shemoneh esreh.

There is an impulse nowadays to say that we don't need rain like we did in the past. After all, few people nowadays are farmers, and several large desalination plants are now operating. It's true that a drought will not cause widespread starvation like it once would have. But this fire is a good example of how the lack of rainfall can have consequences that are not easily forseen. A significant rainfall in the days before the fire would have kept it from spreading so fast (or at all). Nobody praying for rain had the possibility of forest fires in mind, yet this fire has killed more Israelis than any other single event in a number of years.

2) For many decades Jews have planted trees throughout Israel. Some even say the "green line" is so called because it separates green Israel from its non-green neighbors. Arabs - opponents of Zionism and people whose culture formed in the desert - have understandably opposed this greening of the land. Israel's landscape is susceptible to forest fires, but a high proportion of fires in recent years have been attributed to arson by those with "nationalist" motivations. If this is another such case, then it may effectively be the worst terrorist attack to occur in many years.

3) At the Chanukah party I was at tonight, the planned music was canceled. The dvar torah was about how fire is both a constructive force, enabling civilization to arise, and a destructive one. Tonight and tomorrow, let us pray that our constructive forces outweigh the forces of destruction, and that the damage caused by this fire be limited.

Chazal, science, and daas torah

2010-11-21T22:45:00.000+02:00

The sages of Israel say: By day the sun travels below the heaven, and by night above the heaven. The sages of the nations of the world say: By day the sun travels below the heaven, and by night below the earth. Rebbi said: Their words seem more logical than ours, since by day springs are cool, and by night [they are] warm. (Pesachim 94b)

In recent years there has been a debate, most publicly regarding R' Natan Slifkin's books, regarding what degree of scientific knowledge was possessed by the ancient Jewish sages. We see from the above quote that Chazal themselves did not think they possessed the perfect scientific knowledge that some people nowadays credit them with. Rebbi, the author of the mishna, rejected the scientific opinion of the Jewish sages (חכמי ישראל) because the scientific evidence seemed to be against it.

Why do the charedim insist on holding a position about Chazal that is against the above gemara, as well as against common sense?

Perhaps the answer is as follows. The "Chazal knew science" school is often associated with belief in "daas torah", or the infallibility of the greatest modern rabbis. It seems to me that saying Chazal erred about science is a threat to the belief in daas torah. If Chazal could err, then so can modern rabbis, who are clearly not as great as Chazal. And if modern rabbis can err, then statements of theirs may be rejected if not accompanied by a sufficiently persuasive justification. For the charedim, at least, that is unacceptable. Due to the perceived social need for daas torah, they are forced into a corner when it comes to discussing Chazal's knowledge as well.

Kippah size

2010-11-15T13:35:00.003+02:00

"Sometimes a small head gives the impression of a big yarmulke."
-DSF

(And when translated into Hebrew, this line has a extra twist [read the definition there, since the translation is rather inaccurate].)

R' Nachman and doubt

2010-11-10T13:27:00.001+02:00

"When a Jew falls away from his faith, heaven forbid, there certainly remains some 'dot' of faith within him. The very fact that he feels pain at having fallen away from faith, and seeks good advice on how to restore and strengthen his faith, this in itself is an act of faith. For in the innermost parts of his heart, he truly believes in God and in the holy zaddikim. However, he does not feel this faith openly and fully, for to him faith is in the category of smallness and brokenness. That is why advice will be effective for him, because as soon as he is offered a good suggestion for the enhancement of his faith, he grabs hold of it as if it were a precious stone, for a bit of faith still exists deep within him, and he truly yearns to perfect and elevate his fallen, broken faith. Therefore he can gather several good bits from the broken fragments of his faith and thereby make it whole. This is the equivalent of 'the tablets and the broken remnants of the tablets lay together in the ark' (Brachot 8b). By the very fact that he sees his broken faith as corresponding to the category of the broken tablets, by this alone is it restored."
-R' Nachman of Breslov, Emet Vatzedek, Emunah #40, quoted in N. Lamm, "The religious thought of Hasidism: text and commentary", p. 93.

According to R' Nachman, someone with religious doubts is like an ark containing "broken" or "cracked" tablets from Sinai. This damaged faith is certainly is not as good as unblemished faith, but is still holy. And under the right circumstances, it may someday be mended into the "whole tablets" of complete faith once again. In fact, by simply recognizing that a person's partial faith is real and valuable even if not complete, it can become a sufficient basis for much of his religious life.

(This is certainly not the only passage in which R' Nachman speaks about religious doubt, but it was new to me...)

The name Hava

2010-11-09T19:59:00.000+02:00

Adam called the name of his wife Hava, for she was the mother of all the living. (Breishit 3:20)

Two observations on this.

1) One instinctively connects the name Hava (חוה) to the last word of the verse (חי). The problem with this is clear: Hava is not all living beings, she is simply the MOTHER of all living beings (well, the human ones). Shouldn't her name suggest that she's the mother, rather than implying that she's simply one of those living things herself?

For this reason, I think her name must come from a different source. It is a derivation not of חי, but of חיה. Haya is a similar-looking word with a different meaning (though clearly, they are related). As explained by the Rashbam on Breishit 18:10 (any guesses who I'm doing for shnaim mikra this year?) חיה refers to a woman who has recently given birth, similar to יולדת.

If so, then the verse is much more easily understood: “Adam called the name of his wife 'Birthing Mother', for she was the mother of all the living.”

2) Why then is her name Hava, not Haya?

The name Hava sounds a lot like a more familiar name – that of God, YKVK. By examining that name, we can understand Hava's as well.

The meaning of YKVK is best explained through another name of God – “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” (Shemot 3:14). I once heard a suggestion that this name is of the form “Bond, James Bond” and it proves that God's first name is Asher! But more seriously, Ibn Ezra (3:14) explains that “Ehyeh” is God's name (thus the introduction “Ehyeh sent me to you” that appears later in the verse), and “Asher Ehyeh” is an attached explanation (“Who is always existing/present*”). Of course, the Hebrew word Ehyeh is in the first person – appropriate for when God is talking about himself. When humans talk about God in the third person, the appropriate form would be Yihyeh. This is almost the same as the well-known name YKVK, and Rashbam and Hizkuni (3:15) argues that this is how the name YKVK was formed.

The only difference between Yihyeh and YKVK is that the yud in the middle is replaced with a vav. Thus the word no longer takes a grammatically correct form, and it is clear that it represents a unique name, rather than just being a verb. I suspect that God's name is not the only name with this yud-to-vav transformation. It seems to have also occurred in the formation of Hava's name, transforming it from the dictionary word חיה to the name חוה.

-----------
* For a full discussion of the verb "lihyot", its primary meaning of "appearance" rather than "being", and the implications regarding God's name and role in Tanach, see R' Yoel Bin Nun, "Active and existential being in the Bible: a linguistic interpretation of the name Hashem", Megadim 5:7-23. As an aside, I once heard or read R' Yaakov Medan discuss the implications of this meaning for our relationship with God: it is encouraging that we are guaranteed Divine presence in the world, but also more threatening, in the event that we sin.

The OU is haredi?

2010-11-09T13:47:00.001+02:00

Purchased at the local makolet, with an "explanation" regarding the unfamiliar American hechsher...

Tzimtzum

2010-11-03T13:33:00.003+02:00

God contracted [tzimtzem] His pure light, as it were, just as a father diminishes [metzamtzem] his intelligence and prattles for the sake of his young son. All sorts of other childish qualities are generated in the father, who loves these childish qualities, so that the son may enjoy them, and this is a source of joy to him.

-The Maggid of Mezrich, "Maggid devarav leyaakov" no.1, quoted in N. Lamm, "The religious thought of Hasidism: text and commentary", p. 44.

R' Lamm says the "prattling" refers to prophetic revelation. I thought it meant the simple fact of existing in and experiencing a physical world.

Moshe's view

2010-11-03T13:23:00.004+02:00

Last year in September I flew from the US to Israel. For some reason, the plane took an unusual flight path, which let me see a huge part of Israel from "above". Unable to photograph the view, I later recreated it in Google Earth.

This experience reminded me of several verses (Devarim 34:1-4) in parshat Vezot Habracha:

Moshe went up from the plains of Moav to Mount Nevo, the top of the peak which is above Jericho, and Hashem showed him the whole land: the Gilead up to Dan; all of Naftali; the land of Efraim and Menashe; all the land of Yehudah, up to the Mediterranean Sea; the Negev; and the plain, the valley of Jericho, the city of palms, up to Tzoar. Hashem said to him: "This is the land I promised to Avraham Yitzchak and Yaakov saying 'To your offspring I shall give it'; I have shown it to your eye, but you shall not go there."

The areas listed here trace a rough counterclockwise circle, tracing the mountains which surround the Jordan River valley:

It is as if Moshe was scanning his eyes across the incredible view from Mount Nevo, trying to imprint it all into his mind in this last opportunity before he died.

It is the same thing I did from the airplane. The difference being that shortly afterwards, I landed in Israel and have been here ever since. It should be humbling to realize that while I was shown the land just like Moshe was, unlike Moshe I had the opportunity to enter it.

The flight also brought me to more philosophical thinking. From the airplane, I could see everything that happened in Israel, limited only by roofs and the focusing ability of my eyes. And a person on the ground, unless armed with modern weaponry, could not do anything to harm me. It seemed clear to me that the common idea of God being "above" us, in the “heavens”, is in large part a visualization of the ideas of omniscience and omnipotence.

Of course, there was one difference between my "omniscience", in the airplane, and God's. There are skyscrapers in Tel Aviv that when you see them from the ground, even from a distance, they never fail to impress you. From the plane, though, the same skyscrapers barely stood out from their surroundings. This seems like an inherent problem with such "omniscience": the more I saw, the less I was able to examine each thing I saw. God, being infinite, has no such limitation to his omniscience. God is no more impressed by the skyscrapers than I was, but having better "eyesight", is still capable of discerning all of their details.

Someone blew that interview

2010-11-02T13:40:00.001+02:00

I had a job interview scheduled for 1 PM yesterday with a manager named Tzvi (name changed). I arrived at 12:45, announced myself the receptionist, and waited. At 1:05, I heard the receptionist in a bitter phone argument with Tzvi. Apparently the receptionist expected Tzvi to arrive at 1, while Tzvi expected the receptionist to call once I arrived. The phone argument continued for five solid minutes, until 1:10, and at 1:15 Tzvi finally arrived to interview me. He apologized for the delay, and at the end of the interview, he apologized again. “It's annoying,” my potential future boss said, “when people much lower than you try to cause you problems.”

While Tzvi asked several technical questions that I couldn't remember the answers to, I don't think I'm the one who blew this interview.

Thoughts on Chayei Sarah

2010-10-31T08:47:00.001+02:00

In the story of Avraham's burial of Sarah, one word appears over and over. I'm not thinking of "cave", "field", or "Hittite" - words are that obviously necessary to the story - but of the word "vayakam", which appears four different times, having a different meaning almost every time.

ויקם אברהם מעל פני מתו
Here "vayakam" means that Avraham ended an activity - the mourning of Sarah.
ויקם אברהם וישתחו לעם הארץ לבני חת
Hear "vayakam" means that Avraham began an activity - bowing down.
ויקם שדה עפרון אשר במכפלה אשר לפני ממרא, השדה והמערה אשר בו, וכל העץ אשר בשדה אשר בכל גבלו סביב, לאברהם למקנה לעיני בני-חת
Here "vayakam" means that a financial transaction took place.
ויקם השדה והמערה אשר בו לאברהם לאחזת קבר מאת בני חת
Here "vayakam" means that the field was in Avraham's control and use from this moment on.

Throughout the story the word "vayakam" is used to refer to Avraham. It seems that this conveys the characteristic quality of Avraham - that he is active and motivated, that he "gets up" and accomplishes things.

The opposite of "getting up" is "sitting down". Interestingly, the word for sitting appears once in the chapter:
ועפרון ישב בתוך בני חת

While Avraham is known for standing up, Efron is known for sitting. Avraham is active while Efron is passive. The same word that twice describes Avraham standing is then used twice to describe Avraham's success in purchasing the cave. Through motivation and effort, Avraham purchases his first foothold in the land of Israel; through his passivity, Efron loses his share in the land.

The same is true of us: if we are motivated to keep the Torah and defend ourselves, we will succeed in inheriting the land of Israel; if we are lazy and apathetic, we will lose it.

The Yom Kippur Mussaf Avodah and the Universalized Divine

2010-10-24T20:09:00.002+02:00

This is an edited version of a paper I wrote for Prof. David Stern in a U. of P. class a number years ago.

1. Introduction

What is striking about the Yom Kippur service is its almost complete lack of reference to Egypt, the Exodus, Sinai, or the subsequent conquest of the land of Canaan – the events seen as being responsible for defining the Jewish people’s existence and religious mission. With the exception of Moses’ pleas for forgiveness after the Golden Calf episode, this crucial section of the Jewish historical narrative is almost entirely ignored. Instead, we find references to creation, the patriarchs, the Temple service, and God’s anticipated absolute kingship at the end of time. All these elements are combined in the Amitz Koach prayer of Mussaf. Amitz Koach’s three sections – the creation of the world, the Yom Kippur Temple service, and the celebration following the service – together present a unified view of history in which the Yom Kippur service occupies a central role. Amitz Koach describes a universalized Divine-human intimacy present in Creation and in the messianic future, a closeness which was lost through early sin and which can only be regained through proper performance of the Yom Kippur service.

The earliest known Mussaf Avodah text dates from around the third century and is little more than an edited version of the Mishnah, tractate Yoma. Later versions of the Avodah were more innovative. The Avodah genre came to include details such as accounts of creation and of Aaron’s selection as the first High Priest, before continuing with a highly poeticized description of the Temple service. Our current text, Amitz Koach, consists of three distinct sections: 1) a history of the world from creation through Adam, Noah, and the Patriarchs; 2) an intricate description of the Yom Kippur service, still recognizable as being drawn from Mishnah Yoma; 3) and an account of the celebration following the High Priest’s completion of the service. This paper will refer to the three sections by the names Creation, Service, and Celebration.

2. Creation

Creation begins with the formation of heaven and earth, followed by the first light, separation of heaven and sea, and so on – recalling events from almost every day of the Genesis story. Adam is commanded not to eat from the Tree of Life; he disobeys and is punished. Cain and Abel sacrifice to God; Cain kills Abel out of jealousy and receives a Divine mark to protect him from revenge. One third of the generation of Enosh is wiped out by a flood for their idolatry, while Noah’s generation is also drowned for their sins. Those who suggested building a tower of Babel are swept away by “seething whirlwinds,” whereas Abraham recognizes God and offers his son Isaac as a sacrifice. The Creation passage concludes as Jacob and Levi are chosen by God, Jacob to form the Jewish people and Levi to serve in the Temple.

This passage closely parallels the book of Genesis in its basic structure, but differs in a number of details. Unlike Genesis, which covers twenty generations of humanity in its first sixth and uses the remaining space to detail the lives of the Patriarchs, Amitz Koach describes the creation and the first generations after it in great detail, while devoting just one line to each Patriarch. Indeed, it seems that the main reason the Patriarchs appear here at all is to provide the logic for Levi’s choice as the priestly tribe. Their role as ancestors or members of the Jewish people is not deemed worthy of any mention.

The focus is instead on the first generations after Creation. The individuals mentioned early in Genesis have unique relationships with God (though not always positive ones) which demand God’s full attention whenever they encounter the Divine. This special relationship is what the Yom Kippur service tried to recreate. The Avodah tells us little about these early humans except that each of them (or their generation) sinned in some way and was punished – both physically and through a progressive breakdown of their relationship to God. By Abraham’s time the relationship had been entirely lost, but as the first Jew Abraham was once again granted access to God. Abraham’s unique relationship was continued through Isaac, Jacob, and eventually through the priestly tribe. While the Temple stood, only the High Priest, only on Yom Kippur, could attract the complete attention of God. His divine relationship was qualitatively different from that of every other Jew, and it was responsible for the singular measure of atonement which the Yom Kippur service provided.

There is a huge chronological gap between the life of Levi and the time of the Temple Yom Kippur service. This gap is filled by the projection of the priesthood onto Levi. The last verses of the Creation section telescope his being chosen with the choice of a High Priest from his descendants to perform the Temple service:

To serve you, you chose Levi, fervent man of yours, dividing from his stock one hallowed to the Holiest of Holy chambers, one to bind the diadem of priesthood and to wear the breastplate lights, to dwell inside the House of Glory seven days.

“Division from the stock” is a constant theme in this part of the Avodah. Abraham is separated from the rest of humanity, Isaac and Jacob from their brothers, Levi from the Jewish people, and the High Priest from the other Levites. All of early history, then, is a winnowing process with the High Priest’s Temple service as its ultimate goal. Also, this “division from the stock” and mention of seven days of dwelling in the Temple alludes to the first words of the Service section, which immediately follow: “Loyal attendants for a week before the tenth day, separate the high priest as the Law prescribes.” This parallel creates a smooth transition between the two passages.

The Creation section itself makes constant reference to the Temple service to which it is a prologue. The Garden of Eden is said to have been created expressly for God’s “worshippers,” while Cain and Abel each offer a sacrifice to God. Abraham’s offering of Isaac as a sacrifice is recorded along with a statement that Isaac is “the child of his old-age passion.” The mention of passion here parallels the mention of passion when Eve gave birth (fifteen lines prior), implying that all humans are somehow linked to the merit of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice. Finally, Jacob and his children are described in sacrificial terms:

Like a faultless lamb, a perfect man was chosen, Jacob… You brought forth from his loins well-formed and handsome children, all of them the seed of Truth, in whom no defect lay.

Here also, we are reminded of the Yom Kippur animal sacrifices, which could be disqualified by certain blemishes or defects in the animal.

3. Service

The second and by far the longest portion of Amitz Koach is the Service section. Despite Amitz Koach’s highly stylized form, we can still connect nearly every phrase of this section with a sentence in Mishna Yoma. The reverse is not true, though; many of the more tangential or tedious paragraphs in Yoma are omitted entirely. Nevertheless, every major event in Yoma is still present and substantial portions of that tractate, most importantly the High Priest’s confessions, are word-for-word the same. One can confidently say that Yoma and the Avodah are describing exactly the same service.

There are, however, important thematic differences between the texts. Most importantly, the character of the High Priest is treated very differently between the Tractate Yoma, and the Avodah, and the Biblical account on which both of those are fundamentally based. In Leviticus 16, the High Priest performs the lengthy Temple service single-handedly. Yoma, on the other hand, assumes the High Priest may be a Zadokite and requires the rabbis to direct the High Priest at every step, lest he ignorantly or maliciously ruin the ceremony. Amitz Koach more than restores the High Priest’s active and honored role in the events. For example, Yoma requires that High Priest read the laws of Yom Kippur in the days before the holiday. The Avodah repeats this requirement, but omits the stated reason for the recitation: “Perhaps you [the High Priest] have forgotten or perhaps you have never learned.” Similarly, where Yoma requires the High Priest to watch a procession of bulls, sheep, and rams, “that he should recognize them and be familiar with the service,” the Avodah omits the reason again, and changes the tone of the passage so that the procession sounds like a ceremonial parade with the High Priest in a position of honor. In other places, the Avodah changes the text of the Mishnah in order to emphasize the High Priest’s enthusiasm for the service. Thus, he is portrayed several times as running to the next ritual, and each time he confesses his or the nation’s sins, he goes beyond the minimum requirement and “conceal[s] nothing in his heart.” Also, Amitz Koach emphasizes the beauty and expense of the priest’s clothing. Other versions of the Avodah go farther and call attention to his bodily strength. The overall effect is what Swartz called the “valorization of the priesthood,” quite in contrast to the dubious picture implied by the Mishnah. Only a righteous, knowledgeable, and physically capable priest would be suitable to approach God in the special manner which only took place on Yom Kippur.

4. Celebration

The last section of the Avodah, which I called “Celebration,” immediately follows (chronologically and in the text) the conclusion of the High Priest’s Temple rituals, so that one might have considered it a continuation of that section.

However, its style is so suddenly different that they cannot possibly be seen as one unit. The overwhelming detail of the Service passage is suddenly replaced by an equally overwhelming measure of imprecision and hyperbole. “Now [the Priest’s] face is like the rising of a brilliant sun,” exclaims the very first line of this section. This might be seen simply as an expression of emotion – except that the passage rapidly proceeds into discussion of outright miracles, events that could only happen in a messianic age. As the High Priest returns home, clouds gather and a blessed rain begins to fall (an allusion to the rainy season in Israel, which begins each year shortly after Yom Kippur). Harvests are peaceful and plentiful. God’s justice is proclaimed by voice and instrument throughout the land. Moreover, even the Jews’ souls become perfectly clean and pure. “From their uncleanness they are washed, from the taint of their wrongdoing they are purified … declaring that their Purifier is a fount of living waters, Hope of Israel, Israel’s ritual bath whose waters never fail.” In the end, they are even “drawn up to the gates on high in ecstasy, seized up by joy and happiness forever…”

Clearly this does not literally refer to any Yom Kippur that ever happened, or else the next one would have been unnecessary. The last sentences of Leviticus 16 and the last chapter of Tractate Yoma discuss the personal obligations of fasting and repentance, and perhaps the Avodah means to imply that if those obligations were as scrupulously fulfilled as the Temple rituals, then the ecstatic celebration describe here would become reality as well.

5. The overall thematic structure

More interestingly, the Avodah’s messianic imagery does not begin in the Celebration section; that imagery is instead implicit from the beginning of the Creation passage. The Garden of Eden was created “to delight [God’s] worshippers,” not Adam and Eve but the righteous Jews who would arrive there in the world to come. The marine Leviathan was created “to feast the righteous in the World to Come.” And Levi is chosen from Jacob’s children so that one of his descendants might perform the final Yom Kippur service, the one that results in Israel’s merging with the Divine in the Celebration section described above.

Just as creation is expressed in terms of the eschatological purpose of the created being, the messianic experience is expressed in language reminiscent of creation. The celebrating Jews “emit [cries] of joy; they call to one another” and “frolic in God’s presence” like animals. The High Priest has a face “like the rising of a brilliant sun,” while his people “bea[m] their light forth like the breaking dawn.” The Jews are even likened to “the angels of the morning” and the overall effect is to portray people as animals and other natural beings or forces. The animal allusions are especially powerful because animal slaughter is so important an aspect of the sacrificial service that would have brought Israel to this point.

More generally, though, the primeval references in Celebration and the eschatological references in Creation serve to link these sections together. Just after creation, the Avodah sees Adam and Eve as coexisting intimately with God in a garden world, naked like animals and in control of the Garden as the celestial bodies seem to control our world. God is even pictured as asking Adam’s consent before taking his rib to form Eve, indicating what the Avodah sees as the closeness of their relationship. However, the cumulative errors of Adam, Eve, Cain, Enosh’s generation, and Noah’s generation are seen as causing a progressive breakdown of the Divine-human relationship. In the aftermath of a successful Yom Kippur service, the Avodah expects that decline to be reversed as mankind returns to its original, exalted, animal-like level. The vehicle for that return, of course, would be the animal sacrifices offered in the Temple.

Nowhere in this theological construct do we require Israel’s primacy over the other nations. Indeed, since Biblical times the Temple had been regarded as a universal institution. The Avodah passes over the Exodus, the giving of the Torah, and even the establishment of the original Tabernacle without a word, central though they are to Israel’s relationship with God, since they have little meaning for the remainder of humanity that will also be redeemed. Just as the Divine-human connection of Adam and Eve (and their immediate descendants) involved all mankind, the future union of God and humanity is independent of the major events of Jewish history. In the current, sinful, intermediate stage, though, a Jewish people is needed to preserve a spark of holiness with which to kindle the final redemption. In recognition of this, the Patriarchs are briefly introduced into the end of the Creation passage.

The one constant image throughout the Creation and Celebration sections is that of water. The first act of creation recounted in the Avodah is God’s division of the primordial waters into heaven and sea. The first animals created are fish, along with the marine Leviathan, which will be eaten in the World to Come and is in a sense the LAST animal of creation. The Behemoth, another gigantic animal that will be eaten by the righteous, is described as dwelling “in the water willows;” other sources see it as a land animal, but the Avodah tries hard to link it with water. Water also (violently) separates Enosh and Noah from the sinful worlds around them. After the successful Yom Kippur service rain begins to fall, filling the furrows of the fields with water and ensuring a plentiful harvest. And of course, God is the “fount of living waters, Hope of Israel, Israel’s ritual bath whose waters never fail.” The world begins as water and history ends with God’s ritual cleansing of Israel.

In between is the spiritual dryness that the Yom Kippur service is seen as extricating us from. [The scapegoat, which was sent to the desert, is a physical symbol of this dryness.] Of course, the High Priest’s five immersions and ten hand-washings are an important part of the Yom Kippur Temple service, hinting again that the Yom Kippur service is the method through which ultimate redemption will arrive.

The Ten Martyrs

2010-09-29T03:36:00.003+02:00

This post has been removed in preparation for publication elsewhere.

Ata bechartanu

2010-09-13T11:49:00.000+02:00

1. Introduction

You chose us from the all nations; you loved us and were satisfied [ratzita] by us; you elevated us [romamtanu] from all the peoples; you sanctified us [kidashtanu] with your commandments; you brought us close [keravtanu] to your service...

This prayer, recited on every holiday mentioned in the Torah, troubles some people because of its seeming "we're so great" message. It seems imply that we Jews are better than other human beings, and therefore deserve everything and are responsible for nothing.

But our unease with that idea should disappear when we look more closely and see that the passage is in fact troublesome due to quite the opposite idea.

Most of the verbs in the above passage are well known from the Temple service:
ratzita - ritzui, God's acceptance of a sacrifice
romamtanu - terumah, a gift of part of something to the Temple or priests
kidashtanu - hekdesh, property which has been donated to the Temple
keravtanu - korban, a sacrifice

This series of allusions implicitly compares the Jewish nation to a Temple sacrifice.

Taken literally, this seems like a troubling glorification of death as a religious experience. It reminds one the deviant theology which says that the Holocaust had positive value, because it was mankind's special opportunity to offer a "sacrifice" to God in the form of the Jewish people. (The very word "holocaust", which originally meant an animal sacrifice, reflects this interpretation.)

In fact, I think Ata Bechartanu's comparison of Israel to a sacrifice means no such thing. The concept of "korban", i.e. "sacrifice", does not necessarily imply death or suffering at all. Here is why.

2. Sacrifice

I think the basic conception of "sacrifice" (in Tanach and Jewish tradition) is not that the object of sacrifice is killed, but simply that the object is committed and transferred to God. The word "sacrifice" is in fact somewhat inappropriate; the equivalent Hebrew words "korban" and "lehakriv" literally meant "to bring close". Once the object has been transferred to God's domain, the act of sacrifice is over; what happens next depends on what the object is best suited for. If the object is an animal, then it is killed (the word “hikriv” in the Torah is often followed by “shachat”). If the object is a person, then the person becomes committed to serving in the Temple.

Therefore, what we call "human sacrifice" is problematic, not because of the "korban" aspect, but because AFTER the "korban" the person is killed instead of performing one of the meaningful tasks that people are capable of performing. It is an example of giving a gift, which is good, but then using the gift in a way the recipient would not like.

This understanding is evident in the following commandment, one of the first in the Torah regarding sacrifices:

"You shall give your firstborn sons to Me. Thus you shall also do to your ox and sheep: seven days it shall be with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to Me." (Shemot 22:28-9)

Thus the firstborns are "given" to God. Given the context (the animals in the next verse are killed as sacrifices), you might think this means the firstborns become human sacrifices. Whatever its meaning, the command is later overridden, as the firstborns are replaced by Levites:

"Behold, I have taken the Levites from the children of Israel - in place of the firstborn of each womb among the children of Israel - and the Levites are now Mine." (Bamidbar 3:12)

What is the fate of the Levites? Will they now become human sacrifices in place of the firstborn? The answer appears shortly afterwards:

"God spoke to Moshe saying: ... 'Aharon shall offer the Levites before Hashem as a wave-offering from the children of Israel, that they may be in the service of Hashem.' ... Aharon waved [the Levites] as a wave-offering ... Afterwards the Levites entered to perform their service in the Tent of Meeting before Aharon." (Bamidbar 8:1-22)

So the Levites DO become "sacrifices", but not in the expected sense of the term. They are called a "wave-offering" (elsewhere in the Torah "wave-offering" refers to ceremonially lifting a just-sacrificed animal) even though they aren't actually killed, just consecrated to their future task. Evidently, this was the original intention with regard to the firstborns, and this is what was meant by "giving" them to God.

We see the same meaning in Shmuel 1:1:11, where Hannah prays that "If You give Your servant a male child, I will give him to Hashem all the day of his life". Her words resemble and perhaps intentionally allude to Shemot 22:28 ("You shall give your firstborn sons to Me"). And when her firstborn son Shmuel is born, "giving" him to God does not mean killing him. Rather, once he is old enough he serves in the Mishkan, and eventually he becomes an important prophet and religious leader.

Probably the clearest example of this understanding appears in the Torah verses discussing the actual appointment of priests and Levites:
"You shall hakrev to you Aharon your brother and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, to be priests to me." (Shemot 28:1)
"Hakrev the tribe of Levi, and have him stand before Aharon the priest, and serve him." (Bamidbar 3:6)

In all these verses we see that consistently, the language is that of sacrifices, but the action is that of consecration for Temple service.

Regarding a couple other Biblical passages that seem to allude to child sacrifice:
1) Chazal describe Yitzchak after the Akedah as an "olah temimah", a uniquely holy individual not allowed to leave Israel (unlike Avraham or Yaakov). What is the point of this interpretation? I think Chazal wanted to preserve the idea that the Akedah was unique, and thus that a uniquely important sacrifice (not just a ram) was performed there. One way of doing this was to say (like some midrashim) that Yitzchak was killed and then resurrected. Another way was to describe Yitzchak as a "sacrifice" even while alive. As we have seen, human "sacrifice" typically means consecration for Temple service. Thus Yitzchak is portrayed as taking a holy, priest-like role for the rest of his life. And halacha* prohibits priests from leaving the land of Israel.
2) Yiftach's killing his daughter does not disprove our idea. He vowed to bring a "burnt-offering" rather than a generic "sacrifice".

3. Ata Bechartanu and the priesthood

According to this theory, when a person is brought as an “offering” to God, it in fact means that they are committed to service of God in the Temple. Let us apply this to Ata Bechartanu, which speaks of the people as a whole as if they were sacrifices. The implication is that they must all serve in a priestly role. This role, of course, is well known and most clearly indicated by Shemot 19:6, which describes the Jewish people as a "kingdom of priests, a holy people".

We can see how apt this description is by looking broadly at Torah's guidelines for kohanim, Israelites, and non-Jews. All human beings must behave morally, but Jews must additionally observe a number of rituals and prohibitions. Similarly, all Jews must keep the Torah, but kohanim must observe several rituals and prohibitions unique to them. Kohanim have the additional task of teaching and inspiring the people of Israel (see Devarim 33:10), and in the broad picture, Jews have the same task when it comes to non-Jews. Jews truly are the priests of the human race – with the tasks, status, and material sacrifices that that role entails.

On Shalosh Regalim, all Jews come to the Temple and directly act out their role as priests. It is no accident that on these days we recite Ata Bechartanu, the prayer that most directly alludes to our priestly role.

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* Ask your rabbi regarding practical applications of this.

Love, fear, and Tishrei

2010-09-06T10:25:00.003+03:00

1. Two kinds of repentance

The gemara (Yoma 86) tells us that there are two types of repentance – from love and from fear. It further explains that the effect of repentance from love is greater than repentance from fear: through repentance from love, intentional sins are transformed into merits, not just into unintentional sins.

While this source is well known, it is not so clear what it actually means. Does repentance from fear mean from fear of punishment, or from awe at God's greatness (“yirat haromemut”)? Does repentance from love mean from enjoying the performance of mitzvot, or from recognizing them as intrinsically worth doing? And what is the link between these terms and the repentance's resulting effect on your sin? And which explanation actually corresponds to what you experience while repenting?

Literally, teshuva means to “return” - to move from one place to a certain other place (where one has previously been). The “places” in this context refer to states of moral behavior. You start out as a person who commits a certain sin, and hopefully end up in a different state, of being a person who does not commit that sin. The process of teshuva is therefore that of becoming a person who will not commit the sin.

There are two ways, I think, in which this may be accomplished. You may decide not to commit the sin, and through constant self-control prevent the sin from repeating itself. Or else, you may lose the motivation to commit the sin. In my opinion, “repentance from fear” refers to the first type of change, and “repentance from love” to the second.

Based on this explanation, the gemara in Yoma 86 is easy to understand. A person is judged based on their character at the time of judgment. According to our explanation, if you repent out of “fear”, then the part of your mind which decided to sin no longer exists. So you are judged as if you sinned without deciding to sin: “intentional sins are transformed to unintentional sins”. But if you repent out of “love”, the original desire or urge which led you to sin no longer exists. Your character is that of a person who does good, and you are judged based on this: “intentional sins are transformed into merits”.

2. Two parts of Tishrei

This explanation of repentance may help us to answer several questions which arise regarding the holidays in Tishrei.

1. Of the two kinds of repentance (from love and from fear), which of them are we doing in Tishrei? Which type of repentance is the atmosphere of Yom Kippur, for example, designed to encourage?

2. The holidays in the Torah fall into two categories: 1) The pilgrimage holidays: Pesach, Sukkot, and Shavuot. 2) The holidays of Tishrei: Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Shemini Atzeret. These three are each one day long, are spaced about 10 days apart from each other, and all have the same set of musaf offerings, which is not offered on any other day of the year. These technical similarities suggest that the three Tishrei holidays (as well as Sukkot, which may be viewed as belonging to BOTH the categories of pilgrimage and Tishrei holidays) share a common purpose. But what is it? The commonalities between RH and YK are obvious. But what do Shemini Atzeret and Sukkot have in common with them?

3. The Mishna (Rosh Hashana 1:2) says we are judged regarding water on Sukkot. Thus Hoshana Rabbah is considered to be a solemn day of judgment, and we say special, very solemn prayers for rain on Shemini Atzeret. But doesn't all this solemnity contradict the idea that Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret are “zman simchatenu”?

Let us now try to answer these questions.

1,2. I think that in Tishrei we do both types of repentance – from love and fear – but on different days. On RH and YK and during selichot, the theme is repentance “from fear”. As explained previously, this means we make the decision not to sin. We search for negative character traits in ourselves, which manifest themselves in certain situations. We resolve to avoid those situations when they can be avoided, and restrain ourselves through self-control and increased motivation when they cannot. The major factors motivating this resolve include fear of punishment (and other fears, such as of not having lived a meaningful life, or of losing one's Jewish identity) – which is why this is called “repentance from fear”.

On Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret we also repent – but “from love”, not fear. Having just gone through RH and YK, we now have an exceptional degree of self-control and are avoiding many our the sins from the past year. But human nature is weak. We developed this self-control in response to the crisis of YK. But once the crisis passes, we very often relax and revert somewhat to our previous behavior. (For this reason, many people question the value of the repentance they do around YK – how can it be real repentance if the next year they'll be trying to repent for exactly the same thing?) To avoid this regression, on Sukkot we must “repent out of love” – that is, develop the good character traits which ensure that even in our “lazy” state we have no desire to sin.

The main tool we use for this is positive reinforcement. Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret are described in the prayers (unlike any other holidays) as “zman simchatenu”, and the celebration of Simchat Torah is scheduled for these days. Just after Yom Kippur, before our behavior has declined too much from its peak, we provide ourselves with as many happy experiences as possible. The goal is that we begin to associate our new, good behavior with these positive experiences. If we succeed at this, then our natural urge will be to do what is moral and correct, because it makes us happy. Even if our discipline level slips during the remainder of the year, we will still manage to avoid sin, because we no longer desire it.

This change can be illustrated with a metaphor. Behavioral decisions are like paths through high grass. If one path is commonly taken, it becomes worn down and more convenient to take in the future. To start on a new path, you must be willing to leave the old path and fight your way through the bushes. But each time you take the new path it becomes easier, and as you neglect the old path it becomes overgrown again. After Yom Kippur, having chosen a new path, we take these first few difficult trips through the bushes. The encouraging atmosphere of Sukkot gives us strength to continue with this, until the new path becomes more worn-down and convenient than the old one.

This “repentance through love”, through positive reinforcement, can only be performed after Yom Kippur. If we began the special repentance period with the happiness of Sukkot, then we would never get around to fully repenting. Certain necessary parts of the repentance process – for example, confession – are just not fun to do. Once we have gone through a traumatic period in which we take these steps and make these changes, we can take more pleasant steps which ensure that the changes become permanent.

3. The above analysis suggests that Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret are days of “repentance from love”, days of happiness, “zman simchatenu”. But this is not incompatible with their being days of judgment.

We normally associate judgment with beating one's chest, crying, and other unpleasant experiences. This is because judgment implies a deadline, before which we must make ourselves worthy of a positive judgment. Thus there is urgency and crisis. Unhappiness is a great stimulator of change, and with judgment approaching, we need change immediately.

But on Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret, we take a different approach to judgment. Yom Kippur is so recent that we (hopefully) are still on a spiritual high. In the short term, we cannot realistically hope to improve ourselves much more than we did in Yom Kippur. So the best strategy is not to begin an ambitious new repentance program, but to continue the path we decided for ourselves on Yom Kippur. And the most effective way to do this is to be happy, not sad.

Of course, judgment is still a time for seriousness, not frivolity. But a thoughtful person with self-control is capable of being both serious and happy simultaneously. (See
here for an argument that the difference between desirable happiness [“simcha”] and undesirable frivolity [“schok”] is the presence of composure and self-control.) By the end of Yom Kippur we have hopefully developed the qualities of thoughtfulness and self-control. In these circumstances, happiness on Sukkot contributes to our worthiness in judgment, rather than detracting from it.

At first glance the Shemini Atzeret prayer for rain, with its Yamim Noraim tune, appears not just serious but mournful. This fits so badly with the happiness of Sukkot that I suspect most of us either tune the prayer out, or pretend for a minute that it's Yom Kippur again. But if we see the prayers as both serious and happy simultaneously, there is no need for this cognitive dissonance. The prayer for rain is the moment at which we most directly confront the purpose of Sukkot (see Zechariah 14:16-17). If we are truly happy on Sukkot and not just frivolous, we should not see the prayer's serious tune (or content) as inappropriate for the emotions of the day.

3. One more implication

At the end of Musaf on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, in the middle of the Sim Shalom blessing, we sing an alphabetical song which goes "Hayom ta'amtzenu, Hayom tevarchenu..." and so on, with an "amen" said after each phrase.

The first line of this song seems out of place to me. Translated, it means something like "May You give us courage/strength today". Why are we asking for this at the END of Musaf? The climax of the prayer service has passed and we are about to either eat lunch or take a two-hour snooze, depending on the day. Is this the moment at which we need courage and strength? Wouldn't this request be more intelligible at the beginning of Musaf, say, along with the chazzan's prayer before Kaddish?

This question arises from the assumption that when we finish RH and YK, we are finished with repentance. My suggestion is that at this point, we are only finished with ONE TYPE of repentance. As we finish this type, we begin another type. Along with a sense of accomplishment at having committed ourselves to a better way of life, we must understand the challenge of implementing our decision and making sure we live up to it. As we begin this equally large task, we ask God for help. The decisions we make ourselves; the implementation is mostly likely to succeed if God creates the correct circumstances for it.

Selichot and Shabbat

2010-09-03T16:57:00.001+03:00

On the Saturday night before Rosh Hashana (or the previous Saturday night), we begin saying selichot. But on that night, we wait until after midnight to say selichot, "due to the holiness of Shabbat" (Shaarei Teshuva 581:1).

The question arises: After saying havdalah, we are permitted to do all melacha. But at the same time, we are not supposed to say selichot. Melacha is apparently a much more serious violation of Shabbat than saying selichot, so why should its prohibition after Shabbat end sooner?

The answer may be that selichot do not interfere with the holiness of Shabbat. Rather, Shabbat interferes with the atmosphere of selichot.

On Shabbat we reach, and accurately feel, a higher level of spiritual inspiration than during the week. In contrast, the starting point of selichot is "kedalim ukerashim dafaknu delatecha" - that we are worthless and without spiritual accomplishments. We must feel that we are at a low point in order to motivate ourselves to strive for a higher point. Only after the special atmosphere of Shabbat has dissipated is it possible to feel this.

(Inspired by R' Amital zt"l, Alon Shevut Bogrim 4:55-59.)

Vidui Maaser

2010-08-28T22:51:00.003+03:00

When you have finished tithing every tithe of your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you shall give to the Levite, to the proselyte, to the orphan, and to the widow, and they shall eat in your cities and be satisfied. Then you shall say before Hashem your God, "I have removed the holy things from the house, and I also have given it to the Levite, to the stranger, to the orphan, and to the widow, according to all the commandment you commanded me; I have not transgressed any of Your commandments, and I have not forgotten. I have not eaten of it in my mourning, I did not consume it in a state of contamination, and I did not give of it for the needs of the dead; I have listened to the voice of Hashem my God; I have acted accordingly to everything You commanded me. May you look down from Your holy abode, from the heavens, and bless your people Israel, and the land you gave us as you swore to our ancestors, a land flowing with milk and honey". (Devarim 26:12-15)

This passage is known by Chazal as "Vidui Maaser", the maaser "confession". Normally a "confession" means to admit something you've done wrong. But in this passage, you mentions the various things you've done RIGHT! So why is it called a "confession"?

I think the answer is as follows. There is a principle in the Torah of "lo yerau panai reikam" (Shemot 23:15) - you are not allowed to visit the Temple empty-handed. The direct application of this principle is that when you visit Jerusalem on holidays you must bring a sacrifice (see Hagigah 7a). But it could work as a general principle: your visit cannot be selfish, you must perform some act of recognition and gratitude to God when you come.

In general, one must take two tithes from one's agricultural produce, the first going to Levites. In normal years (1,2,4,5 of the shemita cycle), the second tithe is called "maaser sheni", and must be eaten in Jerusalem while one is pure, almost like a sacrifice. Every third year (3 and 6 in the cycle), "maaser ani" takes the place of "maaser sheni". This tithe must be given to the poor rather than eaten by you, and the poor may eat it outside Jerusalem ("in your cities").

When you visit the Temple in a "maaser ani" year, you come WITHOUT the "maaser sheni" you normally bring. You breach the expected protocol for a Temple visit, and for this you must apologize. Of course, it seems strange to apologize to God for doing what God commanded you to do. But presumably the point of "lo yerau panai reikam" is give to you the right attitude on your Temple visits. If you cannot get that attitude by bringing a gift, you must get that attitude by noting and explaining the absence of a gift.

As a parallel, imagine that upon visiting someone for Shabbat you were expected to bring some kind of gift, like flowers or a bottle of wine. (Well, you are, but imagine that it was extremely rather than moderately impolite to not do so.) Imagine that you visited someone several times, but once you showed up without the expected gift. You explained this as follows: "I'm sorry I didn't bring you anything. I was actually planning on bringing a bottle of this delicious wine I just learned about, but on the way here I ran into a poor person who couldn't afford to purchase wine for this Shabbat, so I gave it to him instead. Hopefully you'll understand."

If the hosts were good people, they'd understand. So does God, if you shown up at the Temple without the wine and other food you'd normally bring as "maaser sheni". But in both cases, while you have a good excuse for not fulfilling your normal obligation, you still need to ask forgiveness for it.

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Most of the passage is written using the word "I": I have done this, I have not done that. One would expect that since "I" performed all the good deeds mentioned in the passage, now "I" have the right to ask for a reward for "myself".

But the passage does not say that. It asks God to "bless YOUR PEOPLE ISRAEL, and the land you gave US". The person making the declaration is asking not only for himself, but for the entire people, even though he may be the only person who performed mitzvot and deserves a reward.

Not only is this a generally good model for prayer, but it is especially fitting for this particular mitzvah. The whole significance of "maaser ani" is that your wealth is shared with other people who need it. In your declaration, you ask that God's blessing similarly be shared with other people who need it.

In effect, you are pointing out that YOU were willing to share your wealth, so GOD should be willing to share HIS wealth as well. Surely, you say, God cannot be any less generous than you have been. How could such a request possibly be turned down?

A nice aggadta in Taanit

2010-08-09T21:02:00.001+03:00

...Rav Berachya said: The Jewish people, also, made an inappropriate request, and God answered them appropriately. The verse says, "Let us know, let us strive to know God; His going forth is as sure as dawn, and He will come to us like rain." God said to them: "My daughter, you ask for something [rain] which is sometimes desirable and sometimes undesirable. But I will be for you something which is always desirable." As the verse says: "I will be like dew to Israel."
[The Jewish people] made another inappropriate request. They said before him: "Master of the world, 'Place me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm.' " He said to them: "My daughter, you ask for something which is sometimes seen and sometimes not seen. But I will make you into something which is always seen, as the verse says, 'Behold, I have engraved you on [my] hands.' "
(Taanit 4a)

I think there are two deep metaphors in this passage, well beyond the word game (building a story around minor differences between Biblical verses) which superficially looks like its basis.

About the first half of the passage:
One cannot help noting that while dew is always a good thing, unlike rain, dew is much LESS of a good thing than rain can be. Rain is the usual means of growing crops, and it is hard to impossible for crops to survive based on dew alone. I think the metaphor is that we asked for God's presence to be obvious, but God preferred that it be subtle. We wanted continous large-scale miracles through which God would provide for our material needs, like rain does. But as the Torah and Neviim Rishonim show, this method does not always produce good results. Instead, God preferred to reveal Himself to us in a manner more like dew. God is always present, but in a subtle manner, easy to miss, and not providing miracles to guarantee that our food and material needs are always met.

About the second half of the passage:
Many people, especially in recent decades, take a "buffet" style approach to religion. They are happy to perform the rituals they enjoy or find meaning in. But when it comes to something uncomfortable, or which they don't understand, they ignore the religious requirement and revert to a secular lifestyle. Their religiousness is sometimes seen, sometimes not, like a seal on one's arm. This approach is clearly enticing, and it's no wonder the Jewish people requested it. But God did not allow this. If there is to be a connection between man and God, it must be permanent. We cannot take off our kippot and become secular whenever we get the temptation to momentarily break halacha. Our religiousness must be "on God's hands", always visible, with no conditionality or opportunity for abandonment.

Rav Berachya, I just have to say, you are brilliant.

Pesukei DeZimra

2010-07-27T18:40:00.002+03:00

Why do we say Pesukei DeZimra ("PDZ") each morning before shacharit?

To answer this, let us look at the psalms we say in PDZ. We will examine them by order of importance as given in Shulchan Aruch OC 52:1. (The practical implication of this importance: If you are behind schedule, and have to skip part of PDZ to say Shema and Shemone Esreh with everyone else, the “least important” psalms are the first to be skipped.)

The most important paragraph of PDZ is Ashrei (Psalm 145). According to Brachot 4b, we recite every day because it contains the entire alphabet as well as the verse "Poteach et yadecha". The point of covering the entire alphabet is apparently to indicate that every possible praise is appropriate for God. "Poteach et yadecha" teaches that God's oversight extends to every single creature - implying that nobody is exempt from giving praise.

The second most important paragraph is Psalm 150, הללויה, הללו אל בקדשו. It calls on us to praise God with shofar, harp, drum, and a bunch of other musical instruments. The purpose of this appears to be similar to that of Ashrei: we are supposed to praise God in every possible way.

The third most important paragraph is Psalm 148, הללויה, הללו את השם מן השמים. It gives a list of the things we should praise God for creating: sun, moon, stars, sky, animals, weather, topography, trees, and all human beings. In short: everything in the world.

On the fourth most important level are Psalms 146, 147, and 149, which I'm guessing we say just in order to have read all of Psalms 145-150 without skipping. Vayvarech David, Hodu, Mizmor Letodah, and so on are on even lower levels.

It seems that the focus of PDZ is on Psalms 145, 148, and 150. The common element of these paragraphs is comprehensiveness - in who should praise God (everyone), what they should give praise for (everything), and how (in every way). Mentioning "who" impresses on us that we must praise God (not someone else), and "how" teaches that we must do it now (not wait for a "better" opportunity). The point of "what" is apparently to supply the content of our praise.

Alternatively, a different motivation for mention "what" comes from the Rambam (Hilchot Yesodei Hatorah 2:1-2):

What is the way to loving and fearing Him? When a person contemplates his actions, and sees the great wonders and perceives in his wisdom that they have no set value or limit, he immediately loves and praises and glorifies, and develops a great desire to know [God's] great name, as David said "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God". And when he thinks of these things, he immediately recoils and fears, and knows that he is a small lowly dark creation, standing with [his] small and limited mind before the Perfect Mind. As David said: "When I see your heavens... what is man, that You should take account of him?" Accordingly, I [will now] explain the main principles of [God's] creation...

The idea here is that upon realizing the wondrousness of God's creation, a person will be filled with awe and impelled to praise God for the creation. The point of mentioning "what", then, is to inspire us to give praise.

The upshot of all this is that PDZ consists not so much of actual praise, but of verses discussing praise. (Hence the name - PDZ, not just "zimra".) PDZ is not directed at God - it's directed at you. Its point is to motivate you to give the actual praise that which is the main content of the Shema blessings.

One practical implication of this is the assumption in many halachic texts that PDZ is said at home, not in synagogue. Since it is not actually part of the prayer, you can technically say it anywhere. But it must be said as close as possible to the prayer, so that the prayer is inspired by it.

(Mostly based on this.)

Hok and Hukah

2010-07-27T12:41:00.001+03:00

The word "hok" or "hukah" appears regularly in Tanach and later writings. Often, the word clearly means regularity/constancy/periodicity, as in birkat halevana: חק וזמן נתן להם, שלא ישנו את תפקידם.

Chazal, discussing Parah Adumah, have a very different understanding of the word. According to them, a "hok" is a commandment whose rationale we do not understand, unlike many other commandments (i.e. murder, theft) for which the justification is clear.

How can we reconcile the idea that "hok" means regularity with Chazal's idea that "hok" means arbitrariness?

This question occurred to me upon reading Onkelus on Bamidbar 27:11. Onkelus translates "hukat mishpat" there as "gzerat din". Is this a literal translation? It's clear that "mishpat" and "din" mean pretty much the same thing. But "hukah" and "gzerah" sound like different things. "Gzerah" sounds like a royal DECREE, a perhaps arbitrary new requirement instituted by the king. In contrast, "hukah" sounds like a normal LAW, a timeless and socially necessary feature of the legal system. But Onkelus equates the two. In this, Onkelus is following Chazal's position that "hok" means arbitrariness – similar to the word "gzerah". But what about the sources in which "hok" clearly means regularity, not arbitrariness?

After pondering this a little, I came up with a linguistic theory which justifies Onkelus' translation and reconciles the two understandings of the word "hok". The words "hok" and "gzerah" may be based on roots with the same meaning. "Gzerah" comes from the root g.z.r, meaning "to cut". Similarly, "hok" and "hukah" may come from the root h.k.k, meaning "to inscribe". Both words testify to how ancient kings instituted new laws: they would inscribe them on large stone tablets and place them in public areas. Eventually, it seems, the verb "to cut/inscribe" was extended to mean "to institute a law" in both Hebrew and Aramaic. The law being instituted could be quite arbitrary, like in Chazal's understanding of a "hok".

In the end, it seems there are two different meanings to the work "hok" or "hukah". One meaning, usually represented by "hukah", means the same thing as "gzerah", like in Onkelus and Chazal. Linguistically, this derives from the fact that historically royal decrees were inscribed on stone tablets. The other meaning, usually represented by "hok", means something periodic and regular. This meaning derives from the fact that things "inscribed in stone" are predictable and not susceptible to change. Those qualities apply to planetary movement (birkat halevana), and to certain periodic customs and rituals.

In summary, the action of inscription in stone is an appropriate metaphor for two very different kinds of situations. Confusion occurs if we assume that the word "hok" in a verse is a metaphor for one of the two situations, when it's actually a metaphor for the other situation.

Tribal ordering and Eretz Yisrael

2010-07-14T14:19:00.004+03:00

1. Bamidbar 34

In parshat Matot/Masei, Israel makes some of its final preparations for the entry to the land of Israel. Bamidbar 34:16-29 lists the princes who will represent each tribe in apportioning the land to be conquered. The list goes as follows:

Yehudah
Shimon
Binyamin
Dan
Menashe
Efraim
Zevulun
Yisachar
Asher
Naftali

The ordering of this list is unexpected. It does not follow either of the two normal ways by which the tribes are ordered – by the order of birth of Yaakov's sons, or the order of marching in the desert. Why did the Torah choose to order the tribes this way?

Looking at a rough map of tribal territories, the answer becomes clear. The order of tribes here is the same as the geographic order of tribal inheritance, from south to north.

Yehudah inherited everything south of Jerusalem.
Shimon's territory was considered to be part of Yehudah's territory (Yehoshua 19:9). As such it is mentioned after Yehudah, even though it was in the more southern part of Yehudah.
Binyamin's territory was just north of Jerusalem.
Dan's territory was roughly the Tel Aviv area.
Efraim and Menashe inherited the northern West Bank. (Efraim's territory was south of Menashe - this seems to be the only real deviation in the list from geographic order. Perhaps it can be explained by saying that Efraim and Menashe, being brothers, were listed together, and Menashe as the elder came first. This explanation gains credence because both are listed here as being a subset of Yosef, and only secondarily as independent tribes.)
Yissachar and Zevulun's territories bordered Menashe, in the southern Galil. The territories were roughly adjacent to one another - Zevulun to the west, Yissachar to the east. (On the map above they forgot to label Yissachar! It was surprisingly hard to find a suitable map online!)
Asher and Naftali were the northernmost tribes, Asher to the west, Naftali to the east.

2. Similar lists

The Torah records two other lists of the tribes dating to the 40th year in the desert. These too seem to be ordered by future territory from south to north.

One list is in parshat Vezot Habracha (Devarim 33:6-24). The setting (the conquest of Canaan is about to begin) and the many references to the land make it clear that that's a main theme in Moshe's blessings. The order of blessings is:
Reuven, Yehudah, Levi, Binyamin, Yosef, Zevulun, Yissachar, Gad, Dan, Naftali, Asher
This is the same order as Bamidbar 34, except for the following deviations.
1) Reuven, Gad, and Levi appear. Reuven and Gad are omitted from Bamidbar 34 because they already received land on the east bank, Levi because they would not receive land at all. Nevertheless, they all deserve to be blessed here. Reuven and Gad are included in roughly geographic order. So is Levi, if you take Jerusalem as their eventual inheritance.
2) Shimon disappears. Presumably their blessing is shared with Yehudah, the tribe they eventually assimilated into.
3) Yissachar switches with Zevulun, and Asher with Naftali. Yissachar was east of Zevulun, not north or south, and Naftali was east of Asher. So it is equally logical to have either one before the other. The fact that these particular tribes switch places, while other tribes stay in the same order, strengthens the thesis that the ordering is geographical, south-to-north.
4) Dan moves towards the end of the list. In the end, Dan was unable to conquer its land in the south and went to conquer land in the north. Bamidbar 34 reflects the planned southern inheritance; the order of Devarim 33 is presumably a prophetic reference to the eventual northern inheritance.

The final list is Devarim 27:11-13, which explains the ceremony that will take place in Shechem, with 6 tribes standing on one mountain and 6 on the other. These are:
Yehudah, Shimon, Levi, Binyamin, Yosef, Yisachar stand on Mt. Gerizim (towards the south), while
Reuven, Zevulun, Gad, Dan, Naftali, Asher stand on Mt. Eval (towards the north).

Here, except for Reuven and Gad, it once again appears that southern tribes are listed before northern tribes. The explanation of Reuven and Gad may be that Mt. Gerizim was somewhat to the southwest rather than due south, and Mt. Eval northeast rather than due north. So the "north" mountain is really "northeast", and the eastern tribes Reuven and Gad fit there just as well as in the south.

(Note: I have changed the order of the tribes on each mountain from the list in Devarim 27, to make the similarity to the other lists clearer. I think the ordering in Devarim 27 is for literary reasons: each list of 6 tribes splits into two lists of 3 tribes, and each list of 3 tribes has the tribe with the shortest name in the middle. Presumably it sounds nicest that way.)

3. An implication

One implication of this list is that the tribal locations were decided upon before the conquest took place. This helps us explain many different verses in the Torah. For example:

1) In Breishit 38 Yehudah apparently settles in Adulam (a city near Beit Shemesh, in the tribe of Yehudah's future territory.) Perhaps this was no coincidence, and Yehudah intended to colonize land which he expected would eventually belong to him. (Similarly, Shimon and Levi may have expected to receive Shechem, hence their zealotry there. But as punishment, they lost their right to inherit as independent tribes. If so then Yehudah, Shimon, and Levi – three of the four oldest sons – would have received the most central inheritances, later given to Yehudah, Efraim, and Menashe. Perhaps the oldest son Reuven also would have received a valuable inheritance, but he too was disinherited.)
2) Yaakov promised Yosef “Shechem echad al achecha” (Breishit 48:22). This refers to the double inheritance of Menashe and Efraim. But it may also allude to the city Shechem itself – which was in Yosef's future territory.
3) The names of some Israelites are also the names of cities in the tribal territory each individual would later live in. For example: Shechem, Hefer, and Tirtzah from the tribe of Menashe, and Hetzron from Yehudah. Perhaps, these Israelites' parents gave them the names with the expectation that the kid or his descendants would later control that city. (However, the fact that the best examples of this are from Menashe suggests a different explanation: that these individuals lived in the territory of Menashe rather than leaving Egypt with Moshe, a thesis discussed here.)
4) Moshe's viewing of the land from Mt. Nevo (Devarim 34:1-2) mentions the names of five tribal territories in their correct locations, even though the tribes had not inherited yet. Similarly, Breishit 14:14 mentions the city of Dan, which had a different name (Laish) until long after the inheritance – a seeming anachronism.

Each of these verses can be understood clearly through the idea that the tribal locations were known before the conquest.

If so, then the “casting of lots” used to apportion territory (see Yehoshua 14:2,15:1,etc., and Bamidbar 26:55) must have served either to define the exact boundaries between tribes (which had never been precisely specified), or else simply to give a Divine stamp of approval to the previously agreed-upon division.

4. Why south before north?

Why does the ordering of tribes go from south to north, and not in some other direction? An east-to-west ordering makes little sense, since the land of Israel is longest in the north-south direction. But why south to north, not north to south?

I think this is easy to explain. Nowadays we have north at the top of our maps, but in the ancient Middle East, east was at the top. (As a result, the country Yemen was on the right side of the map. This is reflected in its name, which comes from the Hebrew word "yamin", meaning "right". Similarly the word "kedem", meaning "forward", also means "east" in Tanach.) A Hebrew speaker, who read writing from right to left, would naturally read the map from right to left - that is to say, from south to north, the same order we see here.

The same logic explains why the "blessing" of Gerizim and Eval was on the southern mountain, Gerizim. (You might expect the opposite, since the south is drier and less fertile in Israel). A person's right hand is stronger and has higher status than their left hand. In this symbolic ceremony, the mountain on the right is privileged as well.

New blog

2010-07-13T22:32:00.002+03:00

Well, not really, but the "Open Minded Torah" blog is new to me. And it has some very interesting posts, for example here and here.

Torah and science

2010-06-28T17:31:00.003+03:00

"Our restricted minds see two realms, natural laws and man-made laws, the universe of physics and the universe of morals. But to God there is no distinction and both universes are one, because creation is an expression of divine chessed, an ethical performance. Since the world was created to share His existence with others, in essence a moral activity, the laws governing the cosmic processes are not just neutral laws; they rather express the absolute moral law. To deny this, and postulate two realms, would cause the whole monotheistic structure to crumble." -R' Soloveitchik, "The Rav Thinking Aloud", 87-88.

If asked, I would have said almost the opposite of this quote. But it makes a certain sense. It looks like I need to think more deeply about the subject.

Another interesting quote from the book:

"If you want to know what lashon hara is, whatever you enjoy when you talk about someone: that is lashon hara."

The incense column

2010-06-24T11:26:00.005+03:00

"These are remembered negatively... the house of Avtinas, who did not want to teach about the incense. The Rabbis taught: The house of Avtinas was skilled in the preparing of incense, but its members were unwilling to teach [their method]. The Sages sent for workers from Alexandria [to replace them]. These [workers] could prepare the incense, but could not make it so that the smoke would not bend [as it rose]. The smoke of the incense prepared by the house of Avtinas rose straight, like a rod, and the smoke of the others' incense bent this way and that." (Yoma 38a)

"The ‘ma’aleh ashan’ [herb?] would [cause the smoke from the burning incense] to rise straight up like a staff…" (Yoma 53a).

These sources discuss the smoke issuing from incense burning in the Temple. We see from both sources that the smoke was supposed to rise in a perfectly straight column.

This incense column is NOT the same smoke that Pirkei Avot 5:5 says was miraculously never dispersed by the wind. That smoke was from animal sacrifices burning on the large outdoor altar. We are talking about smoke from incense burned inside the Temple, where there was no wind. There is no need to assume that the vertical rising of incense smoke is miraculous. In fact, I will now provide a purely natural explanation for it.

Examine the following photograph of burning incense. At first, the smoke rises in a smooth vertical column. Then, past a certain point, the column collapses into a bunch of turbulent swirls. This is a common phenomenon, which I have seen with incense sticks and cigarettes, as well as in this picture.

It seems to me that the gemara is talking about this kind of smoke column and swirls. Smoke naturally begins as a straight column, and past a certain point becomes turbulent. Depending on the type of incense, the turbulence could begin sooner or later. The rabbis desired incense whose turbulence was delayed, so that the smoke column remained vertical for as long as possible.

I asked my father, a physics professor, to explain why this phenomenon occurs. Here is his response, (with the "bottom line" highlighted, in case you don't have patience for the technical details).

The rising column of hot air is unstable to shear instability (the simplest shear instability is Kelvin-Helmholtz instability that occurs between two half-spaces with relative velocity parallel to their boundary) that develops into turbulence. This can be stabilized by viscosity or density stratification (the latter is relevant to Kelvin-Helmholtz in the atmosphere, ocean, etc., but not to a rising column of hot air).

If the rise is slow and the column thin, viscosity will be more effective in stabilizing the flow. Very slow burning will then tend to produce a steady column. The burning rate will depend on how finely the incense is ground, what it is made of, moisture content, degree of packing, etc. The trick is to slow the burning without making it extinguish itself.

So there you go. Now you, too, know how to make perfectly rising incense, like the house of Avtinas did. Well, at least you know which factors to experiment with until by luck or skill you get it right. As I learned when my roommate did a class project on gas engine combustion chamber designs, the precise analysis of burning is very complicated and sometimes not fully predictable even by modern science.

Why was it desired that the smoke column rise straight upward? Possible reasons include: 1) It was simply more aesthetically pleasing. 2) It was cleaner – smoke concentrated at the ceiling rather than filling the entire room. 3) It was symbolic of the incense going directly to God and not getting "stuck" on the way there. 4) The rabbis noticed the link between vertical rising and slow burning; wanting the incense to last longer, they wanted to see vertical rising as an indication of this.

Whatever the reason, it seems this goal was not trivial to achieve. According to the gemara, a particular substance ("ma'aleh ashan") had to be mixed into the incense. But just the presence of that substance was not sufficient, and expert preparation was needed as well. The House of Avtinas were the experts, and the rabbis tried unsuccessfully to break their monopoly on the correct method.

One final word on the column of smoke from the outdoor altar. Pirkei Avot says that this smoke rose vertically as well, miraculously, despite the wind. What was the point of this vertical rising? Explanations 1), 2) and 3) from the incense column would also seem to apply here, with minor changes. 1) A vertical column of smoke would be more attractive, and like a skyscraper more visible to people far from the Temple. (Compare this to Akedat Yitzchak, where in the midrash Avraham saw a cloud over Mt. Moriah before arriving. Maybe he was prophetically envisioning smoke from sacrifices there?) 2) Anyone who has made a bonfire knows how annoying it is to stand downwind from the fire and get smoke blown in your face. With a vertical column that would not happen. 3) The burning sacrifices are supposed to provide a pleasing odor" to God (Bamidbar 28:1 and other verses). If the smoke is blown horizontally, then it never goes up to the heavens, giving the impression that God is literally pushing the sacrifice to the side and rejecting it.

Hilchot Mundial

2010-06-17T21:37:00.002+03:00

הלכות מונדיאל
גיל סלוביק

1. נהגו אומות העולם להיאבק זו בזו מדי ד' שנים בכיבוש שערים עד אשר יימצא זה אשר הגביע בידו, כדכתיב: ובשנה הרביעית יהיה לכדור קודש הילולים למונדיאל. וכיוון שהכיבוש משחית הוא, נוהגים ישראל להחמיר ולא לכבוש שערים כלל, ותחת להתחרות במונדיאל, מסתפקים בצפייה בו, בבחינת אותו תראה ושמה לא תשחק.

2. מצוות הצפייה במונדיאל מצוות עשה שהזמן גרמא היא, ועל כן נוהגת בגברים בלבד, וטוב שיתכוון הגבר להוציא אשתו מהבית בזמן המשחק.

3. יש לצאת בכל תוקף כנגד אותן נשים שעושות עצמן כמתעניינות בכדורגל, ותחת להניח לנפשם של הגברים, מציקות הן בקושיות סבוכות על חוקי המשחק בדיוק כשמסי פורץ לרחבה, וידוע מאמר חז"ל כי המלמד את אשתו כדורגל כאילו מלמדה תיפלות, שהוא מלמדה פרק בהלכות נבדל והיא שואלתו על שום מה נבדלים צבעי מדי הנבחרות אלה מאלה, ואינה מכירה בין תכלת של ארגנטינה ללבן של אנגליה.

4. נתייחדה מצוות הצפייה במונדיאל, שעל אף שמצוות עשה היא, יש בה משום שב ואל תעשה, שדי לו לאדם שירבץ בכורסתו אל מול המסך כדי לקיים המצווה. וכיוון שחביבות מצוות על ישראל נהגו להוסיף למצוות הרביצה גם פיצוח גרעינים קליות ואגוזים, לגימת בירה ומתן הוראות לשחקנים, ומתפללים שייעשה להם נס וישמעו השחקנים את הוראותיהם דרך המסך.

5. אין צופין במונדיאל אלא בחבורה, וממנים את הקטן שביניהם לסינג'ור והוא המוציא והמביא להם בירות מן המקרר, ומי שצופה לבדו אין לו חלק לעולם הבא וסופו שמפספס כל הגולים כשמביא בעצמו הבירה. בשעת הדחק יש להתיר לצפות ביחיד, אולם העושה כן יקפיד להתקשר מדי ח"י רגעים לחבריו כדי לשאול: "ראית את זה???".

6. מאימתי צופין? משלב הבתים ועד לגמר. ויש אומרים: משלב הבתים ועד שלב הרס הבתים, כשנוטשת אשתו את הבית ועוברת לגור אצל אמה. במקצת קהילות נהגו לצפות במשחקי הנוקאאוט בלבד, ולא טוב הם עושים, שככל שמתקדם המונדיאל הולכים ומשתעממים משחקיו, שרעדה אוחזת ברגלי השחקנים ותחת להיות כגיבורים הכובשים את גוליהם, עומדים הם כחומה בצורה ואין מבקיעין כלל (בונקער בלע"ז).

7. אין צופין במונדיאל לא מתוך שחוק ולא מתוך קלות ראש אלא מתוך כורסה של מצווה, וטוב שיכוון ליבו למשחק, יבטל עצמו כליל, ולא יתיק עיניו מהמסך לא ימין ולא שמאל, שאם לא כן עובר ב"לא תתורו". הנצרך לנקביו באמצע משחק טוב שיתאפק וימתין למחצית עת מלהגגים הפרשנים במילתא דבדיחותא וזורקים זה לזה קלישאות קלישאות חבוטות חבוטות.

8. משנתרתקו הגברים לכורסאותיהם ואינם נעים ואינם זעים מהן, יוצאות הנשים לפזז ולכרכר בקעניונים, בלא גברים שידחקו בהן לסיים השופינג, ומנהג זה הוא בבחינת זה נהנה שאשתו לא בבית וזה חסר בחשבון הבנק. ומכל מקום טוב שתקפיד האשה על קיום הלכות שופינג בכל דקדוקיהן ופרטיהן ותרי"ג שקיות התלויות בהן.

9. תחילה נהגו ישראל להתחלק בין אוהדי ברזיל, אנגליה והולנד (אחינו הכתומים). משנתמרמרו כל צבועי העולם על המרמריס, ונמצאו כל אומות העולם שונאות לישראל, אין זה חשוב את מי יאהד, ובלבד שינקוט צד מבעוד מועד וידבק בו, שלא יהיה כפוסח על שתי הסעיפים מדי משחק.

10. ר' כילי אומר: כל המסכים כשרים לצפייה, אפילו מסך שפופרת יד' אינץ' מתקופת האנטימחיקון התחתון. ר' סקאל אומר: לא יפחת ממסך מהודר עשוי פלעזמה בגודל לב' אינץ', שאותיות HD כסופות חקוקות בחזיתו. מנהג המפרסמים ליפות סחורתם ולהכתירה בשלל תכונות הכתובות בצופן עשויה צירופי אותיות משונים, ובמיוחד נהגו להרבות במספר היציאות שבגב המסך, כדכתיב: יציאות המסך שתיים שהן ארבע. ועוד נהגו לפרסם את ניגודיות המסך, ולא ידעתי עניין הניגודיות מהו עד שהתנגדה אשתי שאקנה המסך.

11. שלושים יום לפני המונדיאל מעלין את מחירי כורסאות הטלוויזיה, המסכים, ושאר תשמישי הקדושה של המונדיאל, ברמ"ח אחוזים, כדי להורידם לאחר מכן במבצע של "עד 50%". מנהג נאה נהגו לכתוב את ה "50%" באותיות קידוש לבנה בגודל 42 אינץ', ואת ה"עד" באותיות טל ומטר בגודל מחצית האינץ' בלבד. ייזהר הציבור מאוד מרכישת אותם מסכים המפארים עצמם כ"מותג מוכר" ונמכרים במחצית מדמיהם של מסכים בעלי יחוס, שחזקה היא שאם היה המותג מוכר למישהו מלבד לזה המוכרו, הרי שהיו מפרסמים את שמו.

12. שבת הקודמת לפרוץ המונדיאל היא שבת הגדול, ונהגו לפרסם בה מוספי ספורט מגודלים הסוקרים כל אחד ואחד מאחד-עשר כוכביא של נבחרות העולם, ועושין מי שברך לפצועים. גדולי פרשני הדור עוסקים במלאכת הניחוש, וכל נבחרות העולם עוברות לפניהם כבני מרון, וכותבים את גזר דינן: מי תעלה ומי תודח, מי בנגיחה ומי בבעיטה, מי בפנדלים ומי בשער זהב, וסופם שנמצאים ניחושיהם כחרס הנשבר וכצל עובר וכחלום בלהות יעוף.

13. מצווה מן המובחר שלא לשחק במונדיאל בכדור שרגילין לשחק בו בשאר ימות השנה, אלא לייחד מבעוד מועד
כדור חדש שלא עלה עליו עול, ורגל אדם לא בעטה בו, בבחינת וישן מפני חדש תוציאו. על כן נהגו גדולי ישיבת ההנהלה של אדידעס לברוא מדי מונדיאל, יש מאין, כדור חדש בתכלית החידוש (ג'אבולעני בלע"ז), ובכל מקום שדבר הכדור החדש מגיע אבל גדול לכדורגלנים ומתבכיינים בקול גדול, וטוענים שגדולי אדידעס שמים עליהם שלושה פסים.

14. מודים אנו לקב"ה ששם חלקנו מהבועטים נעלי הבית כשיושבין על הכורסא ולא שם חלקנו מבועטי קרנות. שאנו משכימים לצפות במשחק של צפון הונדורס נגד דרום ניגריה, והם משכימים לעוד אימון כושר, אנו רצים למקרר להביא עוד בירה, והם רצים כמשוגעים אחר הכדור, אנו עמלים לפצח הפיסטוקים והם עמלים לפצח ההגנה של היריב.

15. מייד כשיסתיים משחק הגמר, יכבה את הפלעזמה, יקום מכורסתו, ינער היטב קליפות הפיסטוקים, ויאמר: יהי רצון שכשם שזכינו לצפות במונדיאל זה, כן נזכה לשחק במונדיאל הבא בכדור מעורו של לוייתן.

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Soccer

2010-06-15T23:54:00.003+03:00

I once went to a Maccabi Haifa soccer game with a couple friends. (It was the infamous one where the Beitar fans cheered Yitzchak Rabin's assassination.) I expected the game to be boring - in 90 minutes of kicking the ball back and forth, a soccer game contains only a handful of scoring chances. But it was actually quite interesting to see the struggles for control of the ball, and the strategies for advancing it.

That said, I saw one big problem with that game - and with soccer in general. It often happens that one team clearly dominates the game from start to finish. But due to the extremely low scoring of soccer, chances are good that they don't actually score. And if the other team gets one lucky shot, or else a penalty shot, then the better team can easily end up losing 1-0.

A variation of that possibility has caused much controversy in the ongoing World Cup. A single momentary mistake by a "keeper" (apparently that's what they call goaltenders) results in a goal, dramatically changing the game and the team's entire fortunes in the World Cup. In the recent England-USA game, for example, from what I hear England clearly played better overall. But on one weak USA shot, the ball took an unusual bounce off the English keeper's hands and into the goal. (Some blame the bounce on problems with the ball.) Just like that, USA turned a predictable loss into a "stunning" tie against a much stronger team. A similar sequence occurred in the Slovenia-Algeria game. What is the value of 90 minutes of intense play when the game is really decided by half a second of random luck?

In other sports, it is certainly possible for luck to affect the outcome. Indeed, the two worst referee decisions in history went against teams from my home state. Each resulted in a win for the opposing team, which went on to win the national championship that year.

But as outrageous as these incidents were, they do not compare in impact to similar incidents occurring at soccer games. In both baseball and American football, it is normal for each team to score 5 or 6 times in a game. A bad call is unlikely to result in more than one undeserved score. If that score was enough to change the outcome, then the game was already quite close. If your team was clearly deserving of victory, it would not have failed in its previous chances to create a large lead that no single error could eliminate.

In soccer, that is not the case. One goal is all a team normally scores, and it is also the margin of error caused by unluckly circumstances such as referee mistakes. Thus, it is much more likely that undeserved circumstances will decide the outcome of the game. That cheapens the effort put forth by the players throughout the game. In my mind, this characteristic makes soccer a less compelling sport than many of its competitors.

Husband, wife, and shechina

2010-06-09T15:12:00.001+03:00

"Husband and wife – if they merit, God's presence is found between them." (Sota 17a)

I can recall my parents occasionally having arguments, sometimes bitter, with each other when I was growing up. But personally, I almost never get into arguments with anyone. How is this? Am I really a better person than they are?

The more I learn about life, the clearer it is that the answer is not a quick and satisfying “yes”. The reason I do not argue is simple, and reflects my circumstances more than my character.

It is often hard to know what a single person is thinking. People have many reasons to keep their thoughts private. But in a marriage, much more so than any other relationship between individuals, thoughts do not remain private. They are shared verbally with one's partner.

The arguments which I occasionally witnessed in my family, and which are probably present in every family, are the result of frustration and anger. I certainly do experience these emotions sometimes. But I generally keep them to myself. If I were married, things would be different. I would much more readily express negative emotions to my wife than to other people. She might respond negatively, again more readily, and I might reciprocate. And just like that, we would get into a fight. The negative character traits which caused this fight were always part of each of us. But only when we were together would they express themselves in words and actions, immediately visible to anyone around us. Right now, I do easily not get into arguments and fights. But once I'm married (or in a sufficiently serious relationship), I can expect to do so more often.

What is true for negative character traits, like selfishness and cruelty, is also true for positive ones. With one's spouse, these positive traits too will be expressed more openly, and visibly to people other than the married couple.

In my opinion, this is the basis of the gemara saying that God's presence dwells between the husband and wife.

Apparently there is some set of Godly actions and attitudes – love, generosity, kindness, and so on – that wherever they are present, we say that the Divine presence is there as well. Each person, living by themselves, may possess these character traits, and thus we call them a holy or Godly person. But this Divine presence is private, as the character traits generally are. When husband and wife with these character traits are together, the traits are most strongly and visibly expressed, and the holiness become shared and evident between them.

There is a famous Romantic poem entitled “She walks in beauty”. It is not obvious whether a woman's beauty is part of her, or part of the mind of the man gazing at her. Either way, surely the beauty is present whenever he sees her. Therefore, he may speak of her walking “in” the beauty, it being part of the fabric of the situation in which they meet. We may speak the same way of God's presence dwelling between a married couple. When they interact with each other, treating each other with kindness and respect, the situation is one of Divine attributes and Divine presence. We cannot say that God is physically located anywhere, but when husband and wife treat each other this way, Godliness is surely an element of their interaction.

How much is a pruta?

2010-06-09T13:29:00.004+03:00

The halachic pruta is equivalent to the value of 0.022 grams of silver. (0.025 grams according to a different opinion). (Source)

0.022 grams = 0.000776 ounces (Source)

0.000776 ounces silver = 5.5 agorot (Source)
0.000776 ounces silver = 1.4 cents (Source)

The price of silver, and thus the value of a pruta, may change with time. You should always be able to re-click the last two links to get an updated figure.

This was on my mind because of its relevance for maaser sheni.

The Gaza boat incident

2010-06-01T23:29:00.005+03:00

Some thoughts:

1) Every IDF soldier should have a video camera mounted on their helmet. EVERY scene of conflict must be recorded, and immediately prepared and (if useful) released for publication by a PR crew on duty 24/7. (UPDATE: Apparently this kind of mechanism exists and just wasn't used.)

2) Right now Israel has "peace" (i.e. diplomatic relations) with several Muslim countries, including Egypt and Turkey. At the same time, both Egypt and Turkey are knowingly aiding military action against Israel. Egypt chooses not to stop arms smuggling into Gaza, and Turkey allowed boats containing weapons and hostile personnel to set out for Gaza. Once upon a time, before all the "peace" agreements, we could prevent this kind of action by threatening or using military force, both retaliatory and preventive. Now we can't. "Peace" means that we cannot do anything to prevent actual war which is being conducted against us. Perhaps we would be better off ending these "peace" agreements.

3) As isolated as Israel is now, historically it was much more isolated. The UN "Zionism is racism" resolution, for example, was only repealed in 1991. Israel has always been a pariah state, except from about 1991-2008. One important reason for this is obvious. The US, the only country ever willing to admit to being an Israeli ally, was the unchallenged single superpower during this period. Before 1991 it was balanced by the Soviet Union; now it is increasingly balanced by China and the rest of "BRIC". Israeli isolation is natural, since its existence is opposed by 60+ Muslim states who control the world's oil. So regardless of its policy choices, Israel will have to get used to being isolated. It survived isolation beforehand, and will again.

4) As usual, the IDF operation was labeled "disproportionate". That term is actually not a bad first reaction to the events. After all, when we killed 10 of them and they killed zero of us, isn't it obvious we were more aggressive? Shouldn't we have stopped and claimed victory once the body count was 8-0 or 9-0? We reply that the 10th casualty (like the 9th and 8th) was still a lethal threat to IDF soldiers, and could not be stopped in any other way. But that argument relies on facts, many of them unverifiable, which our enemies simply deny.

Another necessary approach may be to question the whole idea of disproportionality. Perhaps such an argument goes as follows. Supposedly a 10-0 body count is wrong because it is "disproportionate". If so, then if the body count were 10-10, the IDF would be morally justified. Effectively, the only way for IDF soldiers to be morally justified in their actions is to die. The only moral Israeli is a dead Israeli. The doctrine of disproportionality inherently leads to that conclusion, and a doctrine that implies obviously wrong conclusions cannot in itself be correct. This argument is emotional as well as logical, and must be presented as such. Hearing the rhetorical question "Must Israelis die in order for Israel to be considered moral?" from an Israeli leader could do a lot to reframe the debate in a more sensible direction.

5) As for general Israeli policy, this article presents my exact position, more elegantly than I could have.

Communication

2010-05-30T00:46:00.001+03:00

To send a message to someone, you must often speak twice.

The first time, you open their heart, making them receptive to what you are saying. Only after can you successfully communicate to them the content of your message.

-R' Amital

Azrieli

2010-05-29T21:17:00.001+03:00

Azrieli triangle, meet your Los Angeles equivalent.

Timtum halev

2010-05-23T01:56:00.001+03:00

Do not make yourselves disgusting through all the swarming creatures, and do not make yourself impure through them, venitmetem (ונטמתם) through them. (Vayikra 11:43)

What does “venitmetem” mean? The most obvious explanation is that it means “and you shall become impure”, being derived from the word “tamei”. That fits well with the theme of impurity which is a central aspect of the kosher-animal chapter, though it does seem redundant, since impurity was already mentioned in the previous phrase. (The problem with this explanation is that “tamei” has the letter alef in it, and “venitmetem” does not. However, there are cases in Tanach where an alef disappears from the spelling of a word, since it is not pronounced. This could be another such case.)

Ibn Ezra on the verse cites the above explanation, but then brings an alternative. “Some say they [tamei, venitmetem] are two different roots, as in [נטמינו בעיניכם], its meaning being, like a person who does not have wisdom.” If so, then the verse should be translated: “...and do not make yourself impure through them, and become foolish through them.”

This grammatical understanding may be the “pshat” basis for the idea of “timtum halev”. As for what the idea actually means, well, that's beyond the scope of this post. But you can find an interesting discussion here.

Yom Yerushalayim

2010-05-11T21:53:00.002+03:00

"They spoke of thousands of deaths; there were no bomb shelters. Calls came from the diaspora to send abroad the women and children. On the 8th of Iyar, the entire army was mobilized and there were two weeks of waiting. There were throngs of prayers by Jews of every kind and variety. My daughter told me that in school they did not learn a thing - they only recited tehilim. On Friday night, after the meal, people gathered in the synagogue to say tehilim. There was discomfort and apprehension that are difficult to describe. The danger was felt. ... There was a feeling of Erev Yom Kippur. People looked at each other with love and affection. And then the redemption came."

(Source)

Virginia lacrosse

2010-05-09T00:22:00.001+03:00

The gemara says that the law of ben sorer umoreh was never applied and never will be. That is unfortunate, because at least one person seems to have deserved it.

(This incident also makes it easier to understand the Torah's death penalty for hitting/cursing parents.)

Attention Google Maps

2010-05-07T13:06:00.000+03:00

This caption is weird/creepy. Please change it.

Zachor and Shamor

2010-04-25T03:13:00.002+03:00

The Ten Commandments appear twice in the Torah, in Shemot and Devarim. One of the most notable differences between the two appearances is in the 4th command, regarding Shabbat. In Shemot the command is introduced by the word Zachor ("Remember the Sabbath"), while in Devarim it is introduced by Shamor ("Guard the Sabbath").

Why do these two different verbs appear in what one would expect to be identical texts? Ibn Ezra (in Shemot) provides one, rather radical answer. He says that the Torah's text is reliable in terms of its ideas, but not in its wording. He also says that the words "zachor" and "shamor" have the same meaning. (After all, what does it mean to "remember", other than to "guard" a thought in your mind?) Thus, it doesn't matter which of the two words the Torah uses. One of the words is "wrong" in that God didn't actually say that word at Sinai. But because the written Torah only cares about meaning and not wording, that discrepancy is unimportant.

That is quite an interesting theory, but it is not the mainstream one taken by Chazal and later Jewish thought. The mainstream approach, immortalized in the song Lecha Dodi, is "Shamor vezachor bedibur echad". That is, the words Shamor and Zachor convey different meanings, and somehow both meanings were conveyed at Sinai. Furthermore, the meaning of each word can be identified. Zachor refers to the positive mitzvot of Shabbat, while Shamor refers to the negative ones.

I think we can explain clearly the reasons for this identification, as follows.

How do we know that Zachor refers to positive mitzvot? I suspect we can derive this by looking at cases in which the verb "lizkor" is used regarding God. For example, God remembers a covenant, remembers a barren woman, and so on. If a person remembers something, it is because they previously forgotten it. We cannot use the same interpretation regarding God. Rather, God was always conscious of the covenant and the barren woman. But only at this moment did God take action regarding them. Thus, to "remember" implies action, and by extension, the performance of positive commandments.

How do we know that Shamor refers to negative mitzvot? The answer comes from Vayikra 18:30, which states regarding the sexual prohibitions: "You shall guard my guard, to not do the abominable practices that were done [by the people living in Canaan] before you, and you shall not become impure through them, I am Hashem your God." Thus, to "guard the guard" means to "not do" - to avoid certain actions. In effect it means to guard yourself, to prevent yourself from doing certain things. This usage is extended to "Shamor et yom hashabbat", implying that one not do the actions which are prohibited on Shabbat.

Two Yudim

2010-04-25T00:26:00.001+03:00

Last shabbat I heard the following dvar torah (from Y.C., age approx. 12), apparently in connection to the mitzva in last week's parsha of "veahavta lereacha kamocha".

A certain chasidic rebbe told the story of how he learned to read when he was a kid. In his school, or "cheder", they taught him to read from a chumash. He read correctly until he came to two letters yud, one next to the other. He pronounced this literally - at which point the teacher corrected him. "Whenever there are two yuds like that, it means to say the name of God." The kid did so, and kept reading.

Then, he got to the end of a verse. It was punctuated with a colon - two vertical dots, which looked like yuds. So he said the name of God again. And the teacher corrected him. "No, that's not the name of God. That's the end of the verse."

From this exchange, the kid learned a moral lesson. Whenever there are two yudim (=Yehudim) on the same level as each other, God's name is present in the world. Whenever there are two yudim, one above the other, it is like the end.

Yeshivat Shem VeEver

2010-04-24T23:52:00.005+03:00

Rashi on Breishit 28:9 says that Yaakov spent 14 years in the yeshiva of Shem and Ever. I want to explain this Rashi and its implications, and also explain briefly how we can understand Breishit without adopting this Rashi.

According to Breishit 28:9, Esav married Machalat, "daughter of Yishmael son of Avraham, sister of Nevayot". Why does the verse mention both Machalat's father and brother?

The midrash's answer is that Yishmael died right around the time of Machalat's marriage. Thus, immediately beforehand she was part of the family run by Yishmael, and immediately afterwards she was part of the family run by Yishmael's oldest son, Nevayot. Thus she is mentioned in relation to both Yishmael and Nevayot.

If so, then Esav's marriage took place at the same time as Yishmael's death. It seems from chapter 28 that Esav's marriage took place shortly after Yaakov stole the blessings and fled home. How old was Yaakov when this happened? Yishmael died at age 137. Yitzchak, who was 14 years younger than Yishmael (they were born to Avraham at ages 86 and 100), was age 123 at the time. Yitzchak fathered Yaakov at age 60, thus Yaakov was age 63 when he left home.

How old was Yaakov when he arrived in Haran? When Yaakov arrived in Egypt he was 130 years old. Yosef was 39 years old at the time (30 years old when Pharaoh promoted him, 7 years of plenty, 2 years of famine.) Thus Yaakov was 91 when Yosef was born. Yosef was born right about the time Yaakov finished his 14 years of service to Lavan. Thus Yaakov was 77 when he arrived in Haran.

According to the above logic, 14 years (77-63) are missing between when Yaakov left and when he arrived. What did Yaakov do for this period? The logical choice for an "ish tam yoshev ohalim", one who dwelt in the tents of Torah as Chazal understand it, would be to learn in yeshiva for this period.

How do we know that the yeshiva was run by Shem and Ever? The assumption here seems to be that some holy tradition, let us call it "Torah", was passed down through the generations prior to Avraham. Noach passed the tradition to his (most righteous?) son Shem. When Shem died, his oldest living descendent was Ever. When Yaakov went to Haran, Ever was still alive (Shem had recently died). If Yaakov wanted to learn this tradition, he would do best to go to Ever, who himself had learned from Shem. Thus, the midrash refers to the yeshiva of Shem and Ever.

If you think the whole idea of 14 missing, unmentioned years does violence to the pshat of Sefer Breishit, there is hope for you. One can think of other explanations of the Yishmael/Nevayot verbosity, in which Yaakov went directly to Haran, and Yishmael died 14 years before Esav's marriage. Here are two possibilities:

Since Yishmael was dead, Nevayot is mentioned because he is the one who married off Machalat. (Yishmael is mentioned to indicate the family relation. Nevayot is an obscure character, and mentioning him would not make the relation clear enough.)
Yishmael had multiple wives, and verse 28:9 wanted to emphasize that Esav's wife came from the highest-status branch of Yishmael's family. (Verse 21:21 mentions only one wife of Yishmael [an Egyptian woman]. But the point is likely to illustrate Yishmael's distancing from Avraham's family, rather than to provide a complete description of his family life.)

Rashi did not use one of these explanations. But unless I am missing something, they work at least as well in terms of explaining the verses themselves. Rashi's midrash will always remain one possible understanding of how Yaakov's life progressed. But one who sees value in pshat should know that an alternative approach exists and may be preferable.

250 plagues at the sea

2010-04-11T01:35:00.006+03:00

        R' Yose Haglili says: How do we know that the Egyptians suffered 10 plagues in Egypt and on the see they suffered 50 plagues? In Egypt what does it say? “The magicians said to Pharaoh: It is the finger of God.” (Shemot 8:15) On the sea what does it say? “Israel saw the great hand which Hashem did to Egypt, and the people feared Hashem, and believed in Hashem and in Moshe His servant.” (14:31) How many did they suffer in Egypt? 10 plagues. Say thus: In Egypt they suffered 10 plagues; on the see they suffered 50 plagues.
        R' Eliezer says: How do we know that each plague that the Holy One (Blessed be He) brought on the Egyptians in Egypt consisted of four plagues? It says “He sent among them the fierceness of His anger: wrath, and indignation, and trouble, a sending of messengers of evil.” – wrath (1), indignation (2), trouble (3), sending of evil messengers (4). Therefore say: In Egypt they suffered 40 plagues, on the see they suffered 200 plagues.
        R' Akiva says: How do we know that each plague that the Holy One (Blessed be He) brought on the Egyptians in Egypt consisted of five plagues? It says “He sent among them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, a sending of messengers of evil.” – fierceness of his anger (1), wrath (2), indignation (3), trouble (4), sending of evil messengers (5). Therefore say: In Egypt they suffered 50 plagues, on the see they suffered 250 plagues.

This midrash, which we say each Pesach in the Haggadah, seems hard to accept. When did all these additional plagues take place, what did they consist of, and why are they not mentioned in the Torah? In this post I will try to analyze the meaning of this midrash.

From 10 to 50

The 10 plagues (or at least one of them) are referred to as "the finger of God" (8:15), while the splitting of the sea is called "the great 'hand' which Hashem did" (14:31). Each hand has five fingers, so the Haggadah concludes that the splitting of the sea was five times as great as the 10 plagues, i.e. 50 plagues.

The problem with this analysis is that the metaphor of God's hand is also used to describe the 10 plagues. The best-known example is in reference to the 5th plague: "Behold, the hand of Hashem is among your cattle in the field" (9:3). God's hand also refers to the 10 plagues in verses 3:20, 6:1, and 13:9. If the 10 plagues are a "hand" and the splitting of the sea also a "hand", shouldn't the latter be considered as 10 plagues rather than 50?

For this reason, I think the discussion of fingers and hands is simply a memory tool for an idea which actually derives from deeper, thematic reasons. Specifically, many of the 10 plagues were not especially miraculous. The splitting of the sea, on the other hand, was clearly miraculous. Therefore it is considered greater, and thus equal to many more plagues.

Proposed “natural” explanations for many of the plagues are well known. Here are some examples. Perhaps, the "bloody" Nile was caused by an abnormal growth of algae (a "crimson tide"). Frogs were forced to leave the algae-infested river, and many ended up in human habitations. When the frogs died (far from their natural habitat), the insects and animals feeding on their corpses made up the next two plagues. All the decaying flesh led to diseases which killed the cattle and then attacked humans. Hail and locusts are natural phenomena, and perhaps the darkness "which could be felt" refers to an intense sandstorm.

(Sometimes these explanations are brought in an attempt to show that God was not really involved in the Exodus. That conclusion is untenable. Certain aspects of the plagues – for example, the timing, and complete sparing of the Israelites – cannot be explained by any natural phenomenon. And even if they could, there is no way that Moshe could reliably predict them. Anyway, the fact that undeniable miracles occurred later on is sufficient evidence of Divine involvement. Unless you simply reject the truthfulness of the Biblical text, there is no way of avoiding God's role and intentions in the Exodus. Therefore, we should feel free to consider “natural” explanations of the plagues, without feeling that they may undermine our faith.)

Moreover, the Egyptians' reaction shows that the plagues were not so miraculous. The Egyptian magicians were able to duplicate the first few plagues (albeit on a smaller scale). Partly based on this, Pharaoh decided to ignore Moshe and Aharon's demands. Even later on, the complaint to Pharaoh is "Do you not yet know that Egypt is destroyed?" (10:7) rather than something like "Do you not yet know that Hashem is God and therefore worth listening to?" Perhaps the purpose of the non-miraculous plagues was to preserve Egyptian free will. If the plagues were obviously miraculous, nobody could avoid learning the desired lessons from them. With less miraculous plagues, stubborn and selfish Egyptians who did not want to lose their Israelite slaves would find some rationalization for ignoring the plagues.

After the Israelites left Egypt, this reason no longer applied. It was no longer necessary that the Egyptians have free will, so no limits were placed on the miraculousness of the ensuing events. This is most evident at the splitting of the sea. No natural phenomenon could conceivable cause the water to form “a wall for them, on their right and on their left”. That was a visible, ongoing, and dramatic violation of the law of gravity.

The magicians call one plague "the finger of God", yet the Haggadah refers to all 10 plagues as a single finger, rather than 10 fingers. Perhaps this implies that the "number of fingers" refers not to the count of miraculous events, but to the degree of miraculousness of whatever is taking place. That fits well with the splitting of the sea, which was one event rather than 50, but was certainly several times as miraculous as anything that preceded it.

From 50 to 200 or 250

How then do we understand the second part of the midrash, in which the number of plagues is multiplied once again by a factor of 4 or 5? To answer this we must provide the relevant verse in its full context (Tehilim 78:42-51):

They remembered not His hand, nor the day when He redeemed them from the adversary.
How He set His signs in Egypt, and His wonders in the field of Zoan;
And turned their rivers into blood, so that they could not drink their streams.
He sent among them 'arov', which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them.
He gave also their increase unto the caterpillar, and their labor unto the locust.
He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycamore-trees with frost.
He gave over their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to fiery bolts.
He sent among them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, a sending of messengers of evil.
He leveled a path for His anger; He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence;
And smote all the first-born in Egypt, the first-fruits of their strength in the tents of Ham.

In total 7 out of 10 plagues are mentioned in this passage (plagues 3,6,9 are omitted, perhaps because they were the only plagues not announced to Pharaoh – see here). Alongside the relatively straightforward descriptions of the plagues, there is one verse which discusses no plague in particular. This verse, shown in bold above, is the same one used by the Haggadah.

If this verse is not a mention of one plague, perhaps it is a general description of what happened in each of the plagues. If so, then “fierceness of His anger; wrath; indignation; trouble; sending of messengers of evil” are five aspects of each plague. Thus the 10 plagues become 50, and the 50 plagues at the sea 250. That is the basis of R' Akiva's opinion.

According to R' Eliezer, though, “fierceness of his anger” is a general description of the other four aspects, rather than being an aspect of its own. (Presumably he says this because “fierceness of his anger” is not followed by the word “and”, implying that it is a prefix to the list of aspects, rather than part of the list. R' Akiva would reply that use of the word “and” in Tanach is not always consistent – see Ibn Ezra to Shemot 1:4. Note how my translations of the verse at the top of this post reflect each rabbi's interpretation.) Thus, according to R' Eliezer, each plague has only four aspects, and the numbers of plagues become 40 and 200 respectively.

You may object to this analysis, in that a plague remains one plague even if there is more than one aspect to it. Perhaps, but as we saw with the splitting of the sea, in this midrash numbers of plagues do not really refer to the number of events. Rather, they refer to how wonderful the plague was. And the whole point of these “multiplication tables” is to recognize the greatness of the existing plagues, not to introduce new plagues that were not mentioned in the text.

Women's names

2010-04-07T22:14:00.005+03:00

In the charedi world, the idea has recently been popularized that it is immodest to mention a woman's name in public. Thus, on wedding invitations, the couples' parents are listed as “Aharon and his wife Cohen” (אהרן ורעיתו כהן), rather than “Aharon and Elisheva Cohen” (or, chas veshalom, “Elisheva and Aharon Cohen”). Omitting the bride's name is not yet common, but surely that is only a matter of time.

Now most us are probably wondering: what can possibly be wrong with mentioning a name? Are we now going to edit the Torah to remove the names of beautiful women like Sarah and Rivkah? After all, who knows how many men have been tempted into sexual fantasies by the mention of their names? Such an approach is just absurd.

Unfortunately, we cannot end this discussion here. Because we should not immediately dismiss even an apparent “absurdity” when it receives support from a gemara – in this case, Megilah 15a. There it says that Rahav the prostitute (from Sefer Yehoshua) was one of the most beautiful women ever to live. The gemara continues as follows:

R' Yitzchak said: Whoever says "Rahav, Rahav" immediately experiences a seminal emission.
R' Nachman said to him: I said "Rahav, Rahav" and it didn't affect me.
He [R' Yitzchak] said to him: What I said refers to a person who knows and recognizes her.

According to this gemara, saying a woman's name can be enough to send a man far, far into the realm of forbidden sexual thoughts!

Additional evidence for the charedi position comes from a source that they themselves would absolutely never consider looking at (I suspect that the best evidence for charedi positions is often from such sources). That source is Mambo No. 5, a popular song from 1999. It describes a bunch of women's names and what the singer does which each of them. The descriptions of these relationships are absolutely tame – Shir Hashirim is more explicit. But the fact that there are so many of them gives the impression that we're in the middle of a giant binge of orgiastic womanizing. A name represents a personality and thus a potential relationship to you. So mentioning each of the names helps us to imagine their relationships, much more so than would a simple running count (1, 2, 3... 56, 57) of how many women the singer has conquered.

By now, we can discern two contradictory approaches. On one hand, refusing to mention women's names feels absurd, and in fact even the Torah doesn't do it. On the other hand, there is some evidence that names can be sufficient to cause sexual thoughts. How do we reconcile our two hands with each other?

The only possible resolution is to say that the prohibition on sexual thoughts is not absolute. If we were really “serious” about avoiding sexual thoughts, we would prohibit one sex from ever stepping out into the street. (I'd suggest men, since women have to go to work each day, whereas men can learn Torah equally well at home.) The stimulation of seeing a physical person is surely greater than that of seeing a name in writing. Yet nowhere, not even in Mea Shearim, does anyone propose such a standard. The logical conclusion is that we do not aim to eliminate sexual thoughts, only to keep them below a certain threshold, which is high enough that we still have the freedom to pursue our other goals in life. And practically speaking, the mention of names is well beneath any conceivable practical threshold. On the contrary, in modern society the refusal to mention names is immodest, in that in it forces us to consider sexuality, in a context where otherwise you wouldn't have thought of it.

There may also be an simple explanation for the gemara in Megilah, in which the degree of sexual thoughts caused by mentioning a name is well above any threshold we'd consider setting. R' Yitzchak said that the person who ejaculates upon saying “Rahav, Rahav” is one who “knows and recognizes” her. The phrase “knows and recognizes” here is redundant. Perhaps “knows” (or else “recognizes”) is meant in the Biblical sense – to have had intercourse with her. If such a person says “Rahav, Rahav” – repeating her name over and over, not just saying it once – one can imagine it leading to vivid fantasies. That is hardly comparable to reading, once, the name of someone you've never had intercourse with and often have never met.

Paradise Lost

2010-04-07T12:08:00.001+03:00

R' Aharon Lichtenstein is reported to have said that he envies anyone who has not yet had the experience of reading “Paradise Lost”. That is quite an endorsement, and I could not resist borrowing the book from a friend a couple months back.

It took me until recently to finish reading the book, so presumably R' Lichtenstein's envy is limited to people more intelligent and "literary" than myself. Because while I could understand a bit of the book's 300 pages of carefully crafted poetry, I could not really enjoy it, and there were certainly times when I got stuck and abandoned the book until the next Saturday night when I might have time and energy to read a bit further.

That said, there were certainly parts of the book that I appreciated. The descriptions of Satan in the first third of the book were quite powerful. My favorite moment was when Satan, flying to Earth to tempt mankind, momentarily considered repenting for the rebellion that had landed him in a newly-created Hell. But he rejected that possibility, with the argument that after repenting he would inevitably sin again with the same motivation, thus there was no reason for him to ask forgiveness, or for God to grant it. I saw this as a poignant description of how we all rationalize decisions that were actually made for improper emotional reasons.

But more than that, I enjoyed the second half of the book. Here the story closely followed the verses in Breishit – with, of course, long inserts and elaborations. The parts that copied Breishit served to pace me and give me a sense of structure, while the inserts gave me plenty of food for though. Here are a few of the ideas that Milton added in his elaboration of Breishit:

- How was the snake able to talk, which contradicts the laws of nature? The snake told Eve that he himself had eaten the fruit, and not only had he not died, but he gained this special “knowledge” of how to speak. Confronted with clear evidence that the fruit was beneficial rather than harmful, Eve was then tempted into eating it.
- Adam ate the fruit not in ignorance, but because he knew Eve had already eaten and was going to die, and he was so infatuated with her that he preferred dying with her to living without her. (An angel had previously told him not to lose his head over her, but that warning wasn't sufficient.)
- The "sons of God" who married the "daughters of man" (Breishit 6:1-4) were righteous people (thus "sons of God") who were tempted into marrying attractive but dissolute women. Enoch's "walking with God" meant to walk in heaven, after leaving the world.
- Noach's three sons had four wives. (Perhaps this detail is intended to prefigure Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and their wives? Through Noach, like through the Avot, the world was rescued from universal sin?)

These are all interpretations that are not in the Biblical text, but serve to explain it better or highlight ideas arising from it. Normally, we learn our "parshanut" in a highly analytical form. We read a commentary which cites some background, formulates a question, proposes a solution, and finally explores the implications of that solution. Paradise Lost accomplishes the exact same thing, but in a totally different format. As a person familiar with Breishit, I would read the parallel passage in Paradise Lost, note which details were duplicated from Breishit and which were NOT in Breishit, and think about the reasons for and implications of these additions. In short, I learned the same kind of thing I might have from a traditional commentary. And while I must admit to occasionally finding the book boring (I blame this on the 17th-century vocabulary, or else on my 21st-century attention span), overall the format does seem more interesting than an equivalent "analytical" commentary would be.

If the format of Paradise Lost seems familiar, it is because we have a Jewish parallel in the form of Midrash. The typical midrash in a text like Midrash Rabbah is only a few lines long, without sources, concise, and lacking in literary embellishments. I don't think midrash was originally like that. Presumably, a Talmudic rabbi would get up in front of his congregation or beit midrash, and give a long and vivid story which was an elaboration of something that happened in Tanach. What we have in Midrash Rabbah is a concise summary, omitting most of the literary devices of the original. You might think from the place of midrash in kindergartens today that such elaboration cannot be done intelligently. But Paradise Lost shows that it can, and in the case of the original midrash, presumably it was.

Bedikat chametz

2010-03-29T12:26:00.004+03:00

The mitzvah of checking for chametz occurs on the evening before Pesach. I can't find the source now (erev Pesach and I'm in a hurry), but my recollection is that the reason for checking at night by candlelight, rather than during the day, is that it is easier to find chametz at night than during the day.

This seems totally counterintuitive. Obviously, you would think, you can see better during the day so checking should be done then. Isn't it totally backwards to think you could see better at night?

I think the reasoning goes as follows. Nowadays we have two things that ancient people did not: modern building techniques and electricity. Once upon a time most people lived in closely spaced stone huts with small if any windows. Thus, most of their indoor areas were necessarily rather dark. Without electricity, the only way of lighting these areas was with candles.

So checking for chametz by candlelight made perfect sense: it meant using the most efficient possible indoor lighting. But why at nighttime? If most indoor areas received little light from outside, daylight would do little to help the checking. But it would interfere with checking, for the following reason. People's eyesight adjusts to the amount of light they perceive, and even a person who did bedikat chametz inside would probably go outside the building every so often. Upon reentering the home, everything would appear dark even with the available indoor lighting. But at night, it would be just as dark outside as inside. People could check the corners of their houses in the most effective way – with all the available indoor lighting (candles), and with the sensitivity in vision that was unavailable during the day.

Obama

2010-03-25T23:08:00.000+02:00

This is why I voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary, and McCain in the general election.

That's despite the fact that I support most of his domestic policies, including the recently passed health care bill.

Brit Milah and reproduction

2010-03-14T21:20:00.001+02:00

(Disclaimer: For a blog that supposedly represents the “beis”, this blog contains very frequent references to sex. It is tempting to ascribe this to the fact that I'm a single male, and thus think about these things all the time (Kiddushin 29b). But I prefer to ascribe this to the fact that sex, in the right circumstances, is an unavoidably important part of life. Most of the stories in Tanach are about sex or death, because those situations bring out the strongest emotions and present us with the hardest moral choices. It is natural, then, that many of the divrei Torah worth writing about should involve sex as well. The topic must of course be addressed with sufficient decency and reserve, but I try to do that, and hopefully I succeed.)

“I am El Shaddai: walk before me and be wholesome. I shall place my covenant between me and you, and I will make you very very numerous. As for me, behold my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of many nations. Your name shall no longer be called Avram; your name shall be Avraham, for I have made you the father of many nations. I shall make you very very fruitful, and make you into peoples, and kings will descend from you. I shall uphold my covenant between me and you and your offspring forever after you, as an eternal covenant – to be God to you and your offspring after you. I shall give you and your offspring after you the land of your dwelling, all the land of Canaan, as an eternal inheritance, and I shall be their God.” (Breishit 17:1-8)

In these verses, the introduction to the covenant of “brit milah” which God makes with Avraham, the main focus is on offspring – how many there will be and how many nations they will become. To make this more concrete, the birth of Yitzchak (the first such offspring) is foretold. Later on, it is stated that the punishment for breaking the covenant (by not being circumcised) is “karet” - being “cut off” from your people. According to one prominent explanation, this means the end of one's family tree due to lack of descendants. If so, this is a fitting punishment, the exact reversal of the reward of having many descendants.

Why is circumcision the sign of this covenant? The obvious answer is that circumcision involves the sexual organ, and thus represents the covenant's focus on reproduction. But this answer is insufficient. Surely there are other, less violent, ways of symbolizing reproduction. Why must the symbolism be achieved by cutting off part of the body, even a useless part?

Perhaps the following comparison will help illustrate why. Circumcision consists of the removal of a piece of skin or a membrane from the surface of the male genitals. Women, too, possess a membrane on the surface of their genitals. It too is removed at some point in their lives, stereotypically, when they begin married life. The removal is a necessary condition for them to become pregnant and have children. Perhaps male circumcision is meant to parallel this change in the woman's body. Just as the woman's genitals must be exposed before a couple can have offspring, so too the man's genitals be exposed.

Of course, there is a difference between the modifications. Rupture of the hymen is a natural process, and is a physical prerequisite for pregnancy and birth. Circumcision, in contrast, does not benefit for the reproductive process (on the contrary, it somewhat resembles castration, which prevents reproduction). But for a believing Jew circumcision is equally a prerequisite to birth, since in return for it God rewards us with offspring. The foreskin is a spiritual “impediment” to birth, just like the physical impediment in the woman's body. Removing both “impediments” demonstrates our faith in God's control of the world: that it is run by reward and punishment, not only by deterministic natural processes.

Midrash Tanhuma (Tazria) tells the story of a Roman who asked Rabbi Akiva whether circumcision did not contradict the idea that things made by God are perfect, and thus in no need of human improvement. R' Akiva replied with the example of bread: a loaf of bread is surely superior to wheat kernels, but God only made the kernels, and left us to finish the job by grinding flour and baking bread. Similarly, God made the human body, but left the final job of perfecting the body to us.

The midrash speaks of the male body, but its message applies equally to the female body. When human beings have children, we participate in creation just as God originally did. This is one of the most significant and Godly moments of our lives. As the Torah views it, both male and female bodies need perfecting before this can occur.

Thoughts on Ki Tisa

2010-03-07T12:29:00.002+02:00

[God] gave to Moses, when He had finished speaking with him on mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. (31:18)

What is the point of the tablets? Israel had already heard the Ten Commandments as well as all the mitzvot in parshat Mishpatim. What is the point in getting the Ten Commandments again, this time in written form?

I think that the answer is that written tablets signify a more serious and formal commitment than the verbal statements (19:5, 19:8, 24:3, 24:7) that God and Israel had previously made to each other. It is often said that Sinai was like a marriage between Israel and God. More precisely, we can say that the verbal statements were like an engagement, and the actions that followed like a marriage. In halachic terminology, the tablets were a “shtar kidushin” (and the two keruvim hovering over them in the Mishkan, like “edei kidushin”). When Moshe took the tablets to Israel, he was effectively delivering the marriage document (or, in modern terms, the wedding ring) to the Jewish people. Once it was delivered, the marriage would be formalized.

The Mishkan, whose description dominates Sefer Shemot after the giving of the Torah, is the “home” in which God and Israel would dwell after their marriage. God's command in parshat Terumah begins by saying “They shall make me a mikdash, and I shall dwell among them.” (25:8) R' Yaakov Medan shows that the word “mikdash” technically refers to the tablets, not to the sanctuary as a whole. Thus, God's dwelling among us is a result of our possession of the tablets. Once we receive the “wedding ring”, we can then move into our shared home with God.

At that very moment when Moshe came down with the tablets, Israel chose to betray God by worshiping the Golden Calf. The midrash (Shabbat 88b) likens this to a bride who cheats on her husband(-to-be?) while under the chuppah. This midrash receives a much stronger basis when we consider the role of the tablets. Moshe broke the tablets upon realizing he could no longer bring them to the Jewish people. The “ring” could not be delivered while the bride was consorting with someone other than the groom. After forgiveness was obtained for the Golden Calf, a new “ring” had to be forged (the second tablets), and a brand new wedding ceremony performed.

[God] said: “You may not see my face, for a person may not see my face and live.” (33:20)

If we take this verse literally, we run into two problems: we do not want to say that God has a body (and face); and it's not clear why seeing such a face should entail death. But what basis do we have for taking it non-literally, and if we do take it non-literally, what exactly does it mean?

I think the answer comes from Vayikra 20:5: “And I shall put my face against that man (ושמתי את פני באיש ההוא) and his family, and I shall cut off him and all who stray after him, to stray after the Molech, from among their people.” There, having God's “face” opposite you means to be fully exposed to God and His intervention in the world.

Perhaps the same is true regarding Moshe here. A major theme of the Golden Calf episode is that Israel had to be separated somewhat from God, because otherwise Israel's occasional sins would lead to punishments that Israel could not bear. “You are a stiff-necked people; if for one moment I would go up in your midst, then I would [be forced to] destroy you.” (33:5) Something similar appears to happen here with Moshe himself. Even he could not survive the most extreme level of closeness to, and scrutiny by, God. Thus he was limited to seeing God's “backside” - that is to say, an encounter in which God was not “looking at” him, or scrutinizing his actions.

Here and elsewhere Moshe is said to speak to God “face to face”. We are forced to say that this encounter was less intense than “seeing” face to face. Perhaps “speaking” face to face simply means a normal dialog in which both sides can say what they want to say. (Since prophecy is often described in Tanach as a physically overwhelming trance-like experience, such a dialog by Moshe would be quite unusual and impressive). Meanwhile, “seeing” God means something much more intense. God is often physically represented in Tanach by something like a fire or tornado. To “be seen by” either of those, that is to sense their proximity to you, is physically dangerous, So is “being seen by” God.

[God said:] “...for I will not go up in the your midst; for you are a stiff-necked people; lest I consume you on the way.” When the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned; and no man put on his ornaments. Hashem said to Moshe: “Say to the children of Israel: You are a stiff-necked people; if I go up in your midst for one moment, I shall consume you. Therefore now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.” And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mt. Horev onward. (33:4-6)

In these verses, there are three separate mentions of the Israelites' “ornaments”. They go as follows: (A) Israel does not put on their ornaments, (B) God tells them to take off their ornaments, (C) From then on Israel does not wear ornaments.

Part (B) is hard to understand. Why is God telling them to remove ornaments that have already been removed? Here are two possible, and complementary, answers.

1) As part of their mourning, Israel chose not to wear ornaments. But that was temporary: when the mourning ended, as it naturally would, they would resume wearing ornaments. God in effect commanded that they never again put on ornaments. The next verse tells us that they obeyed the command, and from then on ornaments were never worn.

2) Different words are used in each of the three mentions of ornaments. In (A), Israel does not put on (“lo shatu”) ornaments. In (B), God tells them to take off (“hored”) ornaments. In (C), Israel does not wear (“vayinatzlu”) ornaments. Perhaps, as part of the mourning, Israelites did not put on additional ornaments, but kept on the ones they were already wearing. God then told them to go a step further, to take off the ones they were currently wearing. From that point on, Israel neither put on nor kept wearing ornaments – they were entirely “stripped” of ornaments.

Why this distinction between putting on and keeping on ornaments? Perhaps, the reasons for not putting them on and not keeping them on are distinct. Mourning, presumably, means you should be indifferent to your appearance. Thus it's inappropriate to spend time beautifying yourself by putting on ornaments. But precisely because you are indifferent to your appearance, you do not bother to think about ornaments you're already wearing, so the fact that you're wearing them is not a problem. (This is even more true if, as is possible, the ornaments already being worn were part of normal and expected dress and had little “ornamental” value.) Thus, mourning is perfectly consistent with the Israelites' not taking off the ornaments they were already wearing.

When God told Israel to take off even those ornaments (or, according to the other explanation, keep all ornaments off permanently), He had a different purpose in mind. Remember that the Golden Calf was made from Israelite earrings (Shemot 32:3). Thus ornaments were potentially dangerous raw materials for idolatry. God told the people to stop wearing ornaments completely. Perhaps this reduced the risk that another Golden Calf would someday be made, and it certainly provided a constant reminder of the sin and a warning that it not be repeated.

Thus, God's command was not a reflection of mourning, but of distancing from idolatry. The people's not putting on ornaments was selfish in a way – a result of their distress at the recently announced punishment. Their removal of ornaments was selfless – a way of promoting moral behavior. God noticed their response to the punishment, and had them “tweak” it slightly. By this slight change, the people's actions were channeled in a more moral direction.

This moral improvement was held in their favor just a few days later. The people received forgiveness for the Golden Calf, not only because Moshe asked for it, but because the people began to deserve it. It is a sign of God's kindness and love for us that He initiated the very change that was later used as justification for our forgiveness.

One might think that by forgiving the people, God chose the path of mercy over strict justice. But in truth, there was no deficiency of justice in God's decision. Rather, the attribute of mercy was used to changed the situation, until the “merciful” conclusion became truly just.

On-time flights

2010-03-02T15:25:00.002+02:00

As described here, many US airlines have been increasing the scheduled durations of their flights. The point is that a higher fraction of actual flights will arrive within the scheduled time, increasing the airline's "on-time" ratio and thus improving its standing with consumers. This is deceptive since, contrary to customers' expectations, on-time ratio changes while the flights themselves all take exactly the same time.

I think the best way to avoid this problem is to calculate on-time ratio in a different way. Flight time should not be compared to an arbitrary scheduled time. Rather, the FAA should take all flights between a given pair of airports in a year, and calculate the average physical time it took to fly between them (or, perhaps more usefully, the 75th percentile of flight times – the time that 75% of flights between these airports were faster than). If a given flight beats this average, it is considered "on-time". Thus, a totally objective on-time ratio can be developed.

Some tweaks may be needed to make such a formula fair, for example, comparing flights only to other flights with the same plane model or at the same time of day. But in an age when everyone and their sister are coming up with new sabermetric measurements, the difficulty of number crunching should not be an issue.

The color red

2010-02-18T20:23:00.001+02:00

The color red provokes a stronger emotional reaction in people than any other color. Things designed to attract attention – like stop signs, warning signs, and the cape waved in front of a bull – are very often colored red. Why red, and not a different color?

I think the reason is as follows. The three primary colors are red, green and blue. Green and blue are very common in nature – they are the colors of plants and the sky, respectively. Red, in contrast, is rare. Since red is the only primary color we don't see all the time, it is effective at attracting our attention.

Demographics

2010-02-08T11:22:00.001+02:00

Some notes from a trip to the CIA World Factbook.

Comparing the growth rates of India and China, it seems that within 5 years India will surpass China to become the world's most populous country.

Also, a look at fertility rates shows that world population growth is concentrated in Africa and the Indian subcontinent. The rest of the world has, or can expect, a low rate of population growth (a few small countries are exceptions though).

And Iran has the world's lowest fertility rate (births per mother) except for Europe, four East Asian countries, and several small island countries. Perhaps indicating that despite (or because of) the fundamentalist government policies, the population has become quite secular.

Metaphysical dualism

2010-02-06T23:52:00.011+02:00

The title of this post is a philosophical term, so profound-sounding that when I learned it in high school philosophy class I thought it was incredibly cool. It refers to a theory first popularized by the ancient Greeks, most notably Plato. According to this theory (see here), the world consists of two kinds of things: physical matter, and intellectual ideas or “forms”. To take an example, the chair I'm sitting on consists of an arbitrary collection of carbon and hydrogen atoms, and also approximates the “form” describing what a “chair” is in its ideal nature. These “forms” are considered to be part of reality, and in fact the most important part of reality, despite their lack of physical presence in the world.

As is typical with this kind of philosophical idea, dualism cannot be proven not “right” or “wrong”. At most, it can be considered useful or non-useful depending on how much it helps simplify complicated philosophical problems. In any case, dualism has had an immense influence on succeeding thought. Early Christians, medieval scholastics, and early modern philosophers like Descartes in turn adapted it as a central part of their philosophies. Perhaps the most basic idea distinguishing Christianity from Judaism is dualist: that the material world is inherently corrupt, and should be abandoned in favor of spiritual quests and declarations of faith. Since modern intellectual culture in large part descends from Christianity, even non-Christians today (at least in Western cultures) will find it hard to avoid thinking in dualistic terms.

The goal of this post is to point out one error that results from dualistic thinking. The critical point is that Biblical Hebrew dates to before Plato's time, and thus does not share the assumptions of dualistic thought. In particular, a verb in Biblical Hebrew frequently refers to both a thought and an action. In dualism, thoughts and actions are as different as any two things in the world can be, and it's inappropriate to use the same word for both. But in the Bible's non-dualistic language, thoughts and actions that typically go together share a word, and the meaning is inferred from context. Not realizing this leads to many incorrect translations.

In the following table I have listed several Hebrew verbs. For each, I list what it means as a thought, and as an action. Finally, I give examples of Biblical verses, translated in the usual way, for which I think the other of the two meanings would make much more sense.

Verb	Thought	Action	Mistranslated verses
YDA	know	experience, acknowledge	Tree of knowledge of good and evil Adam knew his wife
ZChR	remember	address, implement	God remembered his covenant Please remember and strengthen me [Shimshon]
AMR	intend	say	Do you [Moshe] speak in order to kill me?
ShMA	obey	hear	We will do and we will hear.
DAG	worry	take care of, ensure
SMKh	be happy	celebrate	You shall celebrate on your holiday (Chazal: "'Celebration' means meat and wine")

I'm guessing there are other such verbs – feel free to suggest in the comments.

Vayaaminu bashem uvemoshe avdo

2010-02-03T18:43:00.002+02:00

Bnei Yisrael "believed" at the very moment they became permanently free from Egyptian oppression.

Once they saw that there really was justice in the world, they were capable of belief in God.

(From here)

Egyptian clothing

2010-01-27T16:51:00.001+02:00

"Each woman shall request from her neighbor and housemate, silver and gold vessels and garments, and you shall place them on your sons and your daughters..." (Shemot 3:22)

Ancient Egypt was known for its immoral behavior (see Vayikra 18). If so, and given the hot desert climate, Egyptian clothing was likely quite immodest. Why then would God command the Israelites to take, and presumably wear, the Egyptian clothing?

Looking carefully at the verse, we can see the answer to the problem. The Jewish women requested clothing not so that they could wear it, but so that their children could wear it. An Egyptian miniskirt (or whatever other garment), while very revealing when worn by an Egyptian woman, would be completely modest and acceptable when worn by a young Jewish girl.

(Source: R' Mordechai Eliyahu)

:-)

Game theory

2010-01-21T21:51:00.001+02:00

Some notes from a lecture on “Game theory and policy” given by Prof. Robert Aumann at my university a few weeks back. Much of the lecture focused on specific political issues and was not worth writing about, but here are some interesting things I heard.

1) A "game" is any situation where you try to ensure that the other person's choices serve your interests.
2) It is rare for both sides to have absolutely opposite goals; for example, rentor and landlord both want a contract to be signed on SOME terms.
3) Israel's enemies are not irrational, rather, their rationality is what makes them dangerous.

First date

2010-01-19T21:58:00.003+02:00

(From here. The translation could probably use some work.)

We walked together at night and it was dark. There was no moon, and the stars provided little light.

We walked and you were silent; we continued to walk...

And you were still silent. It was hard, but I had to give this a chance. Because you are like a princess, introverted and modest. What does your voice sound like?

After five hours of walking and thunderous silence, I almost gave up.

When I lay down at your feet, I heard the commander summarize: "End of night navigation! Welcome to the camp! You navigated 12 km in difficult terrain, without light, while carrying a heavy load on your backs. Six hours from now, we will resume travelling."

I put down the backpack and sighed. Then I heard your voice, so clear and pleasant, a voice still full of longing, "The land of Israel is acquired through suffering." You whispered bitterly, "You heard my silence for five hours, but I heard your silence for two thousand years." I felt embarrassed. Why was I thinking about myself the whole time, how did I not sense your pain? I was ashamed.

Suddenly you appeared in all your beauty, exquisite, bedecked in a wonderful flower dress. On your neck, Kiryat Shmonah was emplaced like a stunning diamond necklace. I wish I could remember more, but I placed my head on your shoulder and only the next morning did I wake up. And travelled.

The end of a night navigation with the patrol division...

The new year of the trees

2010-01-16T21:57:00.007+02:00

Today was Rosh Chodesh Shvat. This means that Tu Bishevat, the new year of the trees, is coming soon.

In fact, though, there is a disagreement as to which day the new year of the trees falls on: the 15th of Shvat, like we say, or the first of Shvat. This disagreement is brought in the Mishna, Rosh Hashana 1:1:

There are four new years.
The first of Nisan is the new year for kings and holidays.
The first of Elul is the new year for animal tithes. R' Elazar and R' Shimon say: The first of Tishrei.
The first of Tishrei is the new year for years, sabbaticals, and jubilee years, for planting and vegetables.
The first of Shvat is the new year for the tree, says Beit Shammai. Beit Hillel says: The 15th [of Shvat].

What is the basis of the disagreement between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel about the date of the final new year?

Beit Shammai's reasoning appears to be simplest. The other three new years in the Mishna all fall on the first of the month. Logically, it seems months should be subsets of years, so that a month should not be split between different years, and years should begin on the first of the month. We know that's the case for three out of the Mishna's four new years, and it makes sense to say the same for the fourth new year.

Beit Shammai, therefore, seems to have a strong argument for their date. Why does Beit Hillel reject this argument and choose a different date?

It seems to me that Beit Hillel sees the new year for trees as primarily being in the category of holidays, not new years. The 15th of the month brings up associations of the holidays Pesach and Sukkot, which also begin on that date. Perhaps Tu Bishvat should be seen as a holiday as well.

(Why are holidays so often on the 15th? Here's my guess. Holidays are times of communal events and interaction. On the 15th, when there is a full moon, people can get together at night as well as during the day.)

In addition to their dates, Pesach and Sukkot are similar in that they each last 7 days and are dates of aliyah leregel. Furthermore, they take place in the 1st and 7th months of the year. This places them exactly 6 months – half a year – apart from one another.

Interestingly enough, there is also a holiday exactly 6 months away from Tu Bishvat: Tu BeAv. Even more interestingly, its basic theme may be about trees, just like Tu Bishvat. The Gemara (Taanit 30b-31a) brings several explanations for why Tu Beav was celebrated. The explanation about the tribe of Binyamin is best known, but the final explanation given is that on Tu Beav they would stop cutting down trees to be used as firewood on the altar. After Tu Beav, the dry heat of summer was not sufficient to prevent worms from infesting the wood and making it invalid for Temple usage.

The holidays of Pesach and Sukkot are closely tied to the grain harvest. Around Pesach time the grain is growing to maturity, and the harvest does not begin until after Pesach (the law of hadash). Sukkot is called “the holiday of gathering” (Shemot 23:16) and corresponds to the gathering in of wheat stalks which had been left all summer to dry in the field. Thus Pesach marks the beginning of the agricultural year for grain, while Sukkot marks the end of that year.

It is possible that Tu Bishvat and Tu Beav have a similar function, for trees rather than grain. Tu Bishvat, as we know, marks the beginning of the new growth of trees. Tu Beav, according to the explanation we brought, marks the end of the period in which trees are cut down. Just like Pesach and Sukkot delimit the agricultural year for grain, Tu Bishvat and Tu Beav delimit it for trees.

In Devarim 8:8, the blessedness of the land of Israel is described in terms of the seven species which grow in it: “A land of wheat and barley, and grapes and figs and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and [date] honey”. The first two species are grains, while the remaining five are trees. Both grains and trees are responsible for the agricultural bounty we enjoy when living in the land. It seems that likewise, both grains and trees are linked to pairs of holidays, whose dates serve to define the produce's respective growing seasons.

-----------
Partly drawn from here, and some source I can't now locate which made the 15th->holiday connection. It's also my 500th post on this blog, mazal tov!

Interesting views

2010-01-16T21:34:00.004+02:00

"The most effective barrier to fundamental delegitimization [of Israel] is personal relationships. In every major country, Israel and its supporters must develop and sustain personal connections with the entire elite in business, politics, arts and culture, science and academia." (Haaretz)

It's a net positive that the secular Israeli media ignores (relative to other Israelis) the deaths of settlers at the hands of Arabs, because it decreases the motivation of Arabs to attack, as there is less apparent impact on Israeli society. (Arutz Sheva)

Moshe's leadership qualifications

2010-01-16T21:26:00.002+02:00

The Rambam (Hilchot Melachim 4:10) says that "one does not appoint a king except to perform judgment and war".

Moshe did two things before being forced to flee Egypt. He killed the Egyptian, thereby protecting the Jew who was under attack. The next day, he tried to resolve a conflict which had developed between two Jews.

By fighting back against Egyptian oppression, and trying to obtain justice between Jews, Moshe performed both of the tasks expected of Jewish kings. No wonder he was chosen as Israel's future leader.

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Source: R' Yuval Sherlo in Tzohar LeShabat for this week, parshat Vaera

Pritzus

2010-01-13T20:30:00.001+02:00

A person who dresses immodestly in public is trying to attract people's attention.

If you get upset about their inappropriate dress, then congratulations, they have succeeded in getting your attention. You are now thinking about their sexuality. Which is exactly what they intended.

They are trying to make a scene - in the most literal sense. Your best response, as is usually the case when people make scenes, is to make a point of just ignoring it.

Airport profiling

2010-01-06T09:03:00.004+02:00

Since the attempted "underwear bombing" a few days ago by a Nigerian Muslim, it has suggested more than ever that the US begin using some form of passenger profiling, rather that absurd levels of checkpoint screening and behavioral restrictions, to prevent future attacks. The model is Israel's security system, which despite the presumed high motivation of terrorists has not suffered a successful attack in decades (since the current system was set up).

I generally think that it's worth preserving the lives of many people even at the cost of the convenience or feelings of a few people, and thus, you would expect that that I would support the use of a profiling system in the US. But there are two reasons why I hesitate.

First, the Israeli airport security checkers ask passengers a variety of questions, and try to ascertain from a person's emotional responses whether they have hostile intentions or something to hide. Such a determination must take a lot of intelligence and training to be done accurately. TSA personnel in the US do not have a reputation for this kind of competence, and to hire or train people to do this for all US passengers (many more than in Israel) would be incredibly expensive.

Second, in addition to the psychological methods, I'm sure Israel also profiles people based on their origin. I occasionally hear reports of Arabs who say they have been questioned for hours in an aggressive and humiliating manner at Ben Gurion airport. While the reliability of any single report may be doubted, I am sure Arabs in general get more heavily scrutinized than Jews. Anyway, this method works because there are really only two, relatively homogeneous populations in Israel: Jews and Arabs. The US has much more diverse populations of both "suspicious" people (i.e. Europeans or blacks who converted to Islam) and "non-suspicious" people (i.e. Hindus or Sikhs). So profiling (which can be ineffective if done wrong) would be harder in the US than Israel. Not useless, but significantly harder.

In short, I don't think it will be easy for the US to design a system that works as well as Israel's. That said, some easy things can be done, like not aggressively checking grandmothers and babies. I don't think a terror attack has ever been committed by an old lady in a wheelchair and, in all honesty, there's no reason to think that such attacks would start now.

Blessings in the Torah

2010-01-05T12:58:00.005+02:00

This post has been removed in preparation for publication elsewhere.
--------------
Thanks to M.K. for teaching me part of this and motivating me to think of the rest.

Altneuland

2010-01-04T18:56:00.002+02:00

I skimmed through Theodor Herzl's book “Altneuland” (available here), published in 1902, curious to see how it corresponded to Israel today. I skipped the parts describing the Jewish state's mostly socialist political arrangements, and focused on descriptions of the landscape and infrastructure.

In general, the correspondence to modern Israel was quite good. I most identified with the following paragraph:

The serpentine road opened wider and wider prospects. Now the city and harbor of Haifa lay before the entranced eyes of the travelers. On the near side the broad bay with its zone of gardens; beyond, Acco with its background of mountains. They were on the summit of the northern ridge of the Carmel. To the right and to the left, to the north and to the south, a magnificent expanse lay spread out before them. The sea glittered blue and gold into an infinite horizon. White-capped waves fluttered over it like gulls toward the light brown strand. David ordered the driver to stop the car so that they might enjoy the unique view. As they alighted, he turned to Freidrich. "See, Dr. Loewenberg, this is the land of our fathers."

This, of course, exactly describes the view from the apartment I lived in last year. (And “serpentine” is definitely a good description of the roads here.) The only difference between Herzl's vision and the modern view is that “the broad bay” between Haifa and Akko now consists of factories and suburbs, not a large park.

Features such as Haifa Bay and the Dead Sea Works, both predicted in the book, have turned out exactly as described. Other projects mentioned, such as a canal to the Dead Sea, are still on the drawing board. The book's focus on Haifa is a result not only of the early Zionist emphasis on settling the North, but on the fact that airplanes had not yet been invented, making Haifa's port the main place of entry to the country. The modern city of Tel Aviv was only founded a few years later, in 1909.

Despite Herzl's generally prescient vision for the Jewish state, there is one detail I cannot forgive him for. In one place, he described a train line going through Tzfat. Anyone who has ever been on the windy mountain roads to Tzfat knows that it's the absolute last place in Israel that a train line would ever be built to.

Thoughts on Miketz

2009-12-18T12:19:00.001+02:00

Reuven spoke to his father, saying: "You may kill my two sons if I do not bring him [Binyamin] to you. Deliver him to my hand, and I will bring him back to you. (42:37)

Yehudah said to Yisrael his father: "Send the youth with me, and let us rise and go, and we will live and not die, us and you and our children. I will be the guarantor for him [Binyamin], from my hand you may demand him, and if I do not bring him before you and display him before you, then I will be guilty before you forever." (43:8-9)

Yaakov rejects Reuven's offer, but accepts Yehudah's. What difference between the offers justifies Yaakov's differing reactions? Here are three possibilities. Only the first is well known, but the second and especially the third may be equally important.

1. What they said: There is much room for (speculative) analysis here, and I will just give one idea.

At first glance, Reuven's offer might seem better than Yehudah's. It is measure for measure: as punishment for losing his father's son, he will have to lose his own sons. His offer of two sons in return for Binyamin recalls the Torah's double punishment for theft, or else, alludes to Rachel's loss of two sons. All of this is evidence of Reuven's sensitivity and willingness to take on responsibility.

But Reuven's proposal also contains fatal flaws. Killing his sons would clearly be a case of two wrongs not equaling a right - Yaakov will hardly be appeased about the loss of a son by also losing grandsons. And, of course, the killing would be unjust because Reuven's sons have done nothing to deserve death. (Reuven could not offer that he himself be killed, because that would deprive Yaakov of yet another son - exactly what the offer is trying to avoid.) Capital punishment is appropriate in certain situations, but in return for losing Binyamin it is morally unacceptable. Reuven tries hard, but his offer severely misjudges the moral issues of the situation.

In contrast, Yehudah offers an moral consequence for losing Binyamin - that he be considered guilty, but that nobody should be killed as a result.
Perhaps Yehudah is alluding to Reuven's offer when he says "we will live and not die, us and you and our children". Unlike Reuven, he says, he does not contemplate any of Yaakov's grandsons ("our children") dying as a result of failure on the trip to Egypt. Having specifically rejected the problematic aspect of Reuven's offer, it's no wonder his own offer is accepted.

2. Who said it. When Reuven disgraced himself with his father's wife Bilhah (35:22), he likely lost not only his birthright, but his father's trust as well. Yehudah had no comparable scandal (the Tamar case was likely less serious, and anyway Yehudah took full responsibility for it in the end). So Yaakov was more willing to rely on Yehudah for such an important mission.

3. When they said it. When Reuven made his proposal, the brothers had just come back from Egypt and had plenty of food. Yaakov's rejection may have just meant that he intended to wait for as long as possible before returning to Egypt. Perhaps the famine would end and no trip would be necessary? But by the time Yehudah made his proposal, all the food had been eaten (43:2), and Yaakov had no alternative but to let the brothers go.

Stupid dvar torah of the week

2009-12-15T22:22:00.001+02:00

Yosef, in this week's parsha, is like Jonathan Pollard. Both are righteous people who get falsely accused by an evil, anti-Semitic government and placed in prison. Hopefully the US will realize the wisdom of listening to Pollard before they are punished with famine, suffering and destruction, like Egypt was.

Potifar's wife

2009-12-13T11:03:00.001+02:00

Why was Potifar's wife attracted to Yosef? Obvious reasons include the fact that Yosef was beautiful, and that through his success running the household he must have demonstrated intelligence and people skills.

There is one more possible reason which is often overlooked. Sefer Breishit describes Potifar as a “saris” (37:36,39:1). Literally, this word means “eunuch”. Now, it could be that since royal servants were often castrated, the term “saris” came to be used even for those who weren't. But it's also possible that Potifar was in fact a eunuch, and he married his wife due to social expectations , not out of sexual desire.

If so, then it's perfectly understandable why Potifar's wife would be unsatisfied with her husband and looking for someone to have an affair with.

Etrog in honey

2009-12-08T20:41:00.003+02:00

My roommate suggests the following post-Sukkot etrog recipe, which he says actually tastes good (unlike the others I've experienced).

Cut into cubes. Put in water and bring to boil. Add honey and lots of sugar. Cook for 1-3 hours, it takes a really long time to cook through.

Hostage situations

2009-12-07T09:37:00.003+02:00

Today, Israeli soldiers killed an Israeli to prevent him from entering the Gaza Strip. Army policy is to kill Israelis in this situation, on the assumption that if they end up being held hostage, the resulting exchange of hostage for terrorists will result in the deaths of many more Israelis.

Now, I wonder: why exactly does this logic apply to anonymous Israelis, but suddenly disappear when Gilad Shalit is concerned?

Thoughts on Vayeshev

2009-12-06T14:15:00.002+02:00

They took him [Yosef], and threw him in the pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it. (37:24)

Why does the verse say that the pit was empty, and also that there was no water in it? Isn't this redundant?

Rashi's answer is that “there was no water” implies that there WAS something else in it: snakes and scorpions.

The weaknesses of this explanation include: 1) there is no clear source that it was snakes and scorpions, not some other animal or object, 2) the presence of snakes and scorpions would be irrelevant to the rest of the story. So I want to take a different approach, which is closer to the pshat.

I think the “pit” under discussion was a cistern, a large hewn underground tank meant to hold water. (In many of the more obscure archeology sites across Israel you can see such cisterns.) Such a pit would fill with water during the winter rains, and the water would be preserved and used through the summer. As far as Yosef was concerned, there were three possible states for such a pit. It could be: 1) Mostly or totally full, in which case he would drown upon being thrown in, 2) Empty except for a little water remaining at the bottom, in which case he could live for a long time, drinking the water, and maybe be rescued, 3) Totally empty and dry, in which case he would soon die of thirst.

I think the repetition in the verse is needed to specify exactly what state the pit was in. “The pit was empty” rules out state 1, while “there was no water in it” rules out state 2. Thus, we know that the pit was in state 3, which also best fits the brothers' intentions regarding Yosef.

There is external evidence suggesting that the pit was in state 3. The brothers, who lived in Hebron, had gone to Shechem and from there to Dotan (near modern Jenin) to herd their sheep. What made them travel so far away from home? The answer is likely that it was a very dry year, and they had trouble finding plants for their flocks to eat. Thus, they went further and further north (north is wetter in Israel) until they were able to sufficiently graze their flocks. If the weather was so dry, then the cisterns would almost certainly be dry, as we have assumed.

(As is often the case, thanks to my havruta D.L., for pushing me on the question of this redundancy until I was forced to come up with an answer.)

Thoughts on Vayishlach

2009-12-05T21:22:00.005+02:00

God said to Yaakov: “Rise and go up to Beit El and dwell there, and make there an altar to the God who appeared to you when you fled Esav your brother.”
Yaakov said to his household: “Remove the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your clothes.” (35:1-2)

How is it possible that among Yaakov's family some people chose to have idols? That Yaakov suspected or knew about them previously, but only now told his family to discard them? That he did not express any anger at the thought his family members might be worshiping idols?

(These are theological problems, but are equally textual problems, since in other places the text presents Yaakov as exclusively devoted to God, and the examples of Avraham and Yitzchak suggest that Yaakov would not tolerate such deviation in his family.)

I think the answers can be found by looking at Parshat Matot.

There, the Jewish people sends an army to fight Midyan. They kill a bunch of people, and return with spoils – both human and material. Moshe then commands them as follows:

“Park yourselves outside the camp seven days, whoever killed a person and whoever touched a corpse, and purify yourselves on the third and seventh days – you and your captives. And every garment, and every leather garment, and every goat fabric, and every wood utensil – you shall purify.” (Bamidbar 31:19-20)

The story there includes the following elements (among others):
1) A bloody war
2) The taking of spoils
3) Purification of people
4) Purification of clothing

Now looking at Yaakov's story, it includes the same four elements:
1) A bloody war – Yaakov's command is right after the Shechem/Dina slaughter (Breishit 34)
2) The taking of spoils: “That which was in the city, and that which was in the field, they [Yaakov's sons] took.” (34:28)
3) Purification of people: “purify yourselves” (35:2)
4) Purification of clothing: “and change your clothes (35:2)

It seems that the whole purification thing was simply the same purification that Moshe's warriors underwent after the war (maybe the technical details differed, since the Torah wasn't given yet). Similarly, it seems there is an obvious and non-controversial source for the idols. If Yaakov's sons really took everything from the city as spoils, as the verse seems to say, surely idols were among the spoils. There is no need to assume that Yaakov's family possessed idols before the war.

The Torah later commands that we destroy captured idols:

“The idols of their gods you shall burn in fire. You shall not appropriate silver and gold from them, and take for yourself – lest you be ensnared by it [by worshiping them]” (Devarim 7:25)

It warns specifically against silver and gold idols, since people will naturally want to hold on to that wealth, even if they don't plan to worship the idols. Yaakov didn't fault his sons too much for wanting the gold and silver. But because the presence of idols is incompatible with building an altar in Beit-El and worshiping God there, Yaakov still had to tell his sons to get rid of the idols.

Parsha joke

2009-12-05T20:50:00.003+02:00

Q: How do we know Yaakov Avinu was an environmentalist?

A:
"[Yaakov] took his two wives, his two handmaids, and his eleven sons and he crossed the ford of Yabbok. And he took them and brought them across the stream, and brought across that which was his. [But afterwards] Yaakov was left alone..." (Genesis 32:23-25)

"—[Why did Yaakov stay behind?] He forgot PACHIM KETANIM and returned to pick them up" (Rashi)

"Pachim" means "cans" in modern Hebrew, so clearly was picking up the trash he had left behind the first time!

The two-minute quarterback

2009-11-30T10:27:00.001+02:00

Have you ever seen a football game (NFL or college) that was low scoring, with the teams punting the ball back and forth, but in the last few minutes each team managed to score quickly and repeatedly, making for a very exciting finish? The Patriots-Giants Super Bowl a few years ago was one such game. In my experience, there are many others. Is it just chance that the games end this way so often? Do the teams just choose to stop trying on defense, or is there a better explanation for why this occurs?

I think this is because of the teams' choice of play calls. Each team has a few offensive plays, or sequences of plays, which they developed and which they think are especially effective and unlikely to be anticipated by the defense. If they use these plays at some unimportant point of the game, their effect is wasted. So they are saved for the closing minutes of close games. At this point, both teams run all their special plays, which do tend to be more effective than normal plays. Thus, both teams often manage to score quickly. The defenses are trying just as hard as they have all game, but their task is harder and they tend not to do as well.

One consequence of this theory is to diminish the value of the “two-minute drive quarterback”. Not only is it easier to score at that point with all the special plays at hand, but the choice of plays is likely to have been substantially planned ahead of time. In the middle of the game, when there is no such planning, running an offense may be more difficult, not less.

Yaakov's sister marriage

2009-11-28T23:06:00.003+02:00

If Yaakov Avinu kept the entire Torah, how could he have married two sisters, which the Torah forbids?

There are at least three explanations:

1) Hizkuni: When each sister married Yaakov they converted to "Judaism", and a convert is no longer considered to be part of his/her immediate family for these purposes.

2) Ramban: There are two reasons why to keep mitzvot. In general, we do so because God commanded us (the "rationalist" explanation). In the land of Israel (but only there, says the Ramban) we keep mitzvot because they have a special impact on the world (the "mystical" explanation). Before Sinai, God had not commanded anything. So only the second reason applied - and only in Israel. Therefore, Yaakov was free to break the Torah outside Israel, for example, by marrying Rachel. But once he returned to Israel this excuse ceased to apply - and Rachel died soon afterwards, in childbirth.

3) Since Yaakov was not commanded, but saw value in the mitzvot, he chose to keep them as a "chumra". But in Rachel's case, this chumra conflicted with a greater obligation. Rachel had waited seven years with the expectation of marrying Yaakov. To not marry her now would be a betrayal of her trust. Yaakov's "chumra" of not marrying two sisters was overridden by his preexisting obligation to Rachel. From this we learn that one may not take on chumras when they are at someone else's expense.

Some difficulties with this last explanation: 1) The halacha of marrying two sisters was likely instituted for the benefit of the sisters, so they not fight each other. So marrying Rachel now would actually not be in her interest. 2) In that society Rachel's marriage may have been Lavan's concern, not Rachel's, and perhaps Yaakov did not have the standing to insert himself into the other family's considerations.

...Still, the message is good.

Aliyah to India

2009-11-28T22:08:00.002+02:00

Aliyah to India

Shem

2009-11-28T19:43:00.006+02:00

There is a family of American olim I know called the Mendelsohns (name changed). Long ago they decided they didn't want their kids to ever return to the US, and their kids' names should ensure that that never happens.

Each kid has a normal Hebrew name, but their English name – never used except on their US passport – is absolutely bizarre. For example, one kid is named “Mendelsohn Mendelsohn”. Another can truthfully say that “Danger is my middle name”. A third is named “Just Mendelsohn”. So when people ask his name, and he says “Mendelsohn”, and they respond “No, your full name”, confusion ensues.

I've thought of some more names that they should give their next couple kids, if they have any more. First of all, “Who Mendelsohn”. That way they could reproduce ”Who's on First”.

Second of all, “Name Mendelsohn”. Then people would ask “What's your name”, and he would respond “Name”. And the asker would think that the kid misunderstood the question.

If you like this second idea, though, I shouldn't get the credit. Wasn't one of Noach's sons named “Shem”?

Jerusalem and birkat hamazon

2009-11-19T11:48:00.002+02:00

אמר רב יוסף תדע דהטוב והמטיב לאו דאורייתא שהרי פועלים עוקרים אותה

R' Yosef says (Brachot 46a) that the fourth blessing of birkat hamazon, “Hatov vehametiv”, must be rabbinic rather than required by the Torah. His argument is that all-day workers (who must not waste time while “on the clock”) omit this blessing from after their meals, and if the Torah required it, it could not be omitted even in this situation. After this, the gemara brings several other, similar, proofs why “Hatov vehametiv” is rabbinic.

The implication of all this is that all three of the previous blessings are from the Torah. This is hard to understand. In particular, the third blessing is about the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Jerusalem did not become the site of the Temple or national capital until hundreds of years after the Torah was given. For most of the interim period, the city Shiloh played the role we associate with Jerusalem. So how can the Torah require us to recite the blessing this way?

Let us look at the Torah's source for birkat hamazon, and see where each of the three blessings can possibly come from.

“You shall eat, and be sated, and bless Hashem you God for the good land which He has given you.” (Devarim 8:10)

The second blessing is easiest to justify. It is about the land, and we are explicitly told to thank God for the land.

The first blessing is about food. We are not told explicitly to bless about food. But the context of birkat hamazon is surely relevant. If we thank God for the land, but only after eating, then why is the land important to us? Clearly, it is important in that it provides us with food. And thus, we have a separate blessing which thanks God for food. Could this thanks not have been included in the “land” blessing? It could, and (according to some opinions) the bracha me'ein shalosh we say after eating cake is exactly such a “combined” blessing. But for birkat hamazon, the accepted text has the topics separated into multiple blessings.

Now to the third blessing. Where in Devarim 8:10 is there any hint of Jerusalem?

I think the answer is in the last few words of the verse, “which He has given you”. The second blessing thanks God for the land, the third blessing thanks God for our control of it. Only when we control the land can we enjoy its produce; if we are exiled or oppressed, we are not benefiting from it. Jerusalem is simply the current symbol of that control. Once God “has mercy on Israel... Jerusalem... Zion... the kingdom of the house of David... the Temple” (to quote the blessing), then we will be returned from exile, living peacefully with the land of Israel under our control.

The “kingdom of the house of David”, which seems to be the most peripheral item on the list I just quoted, may actually be the most important. According to the Shulchan Aruch, if you forget the phrase “kingdom of the house of David”, your entire birkat hamazon is invalid. Similarly, the Yemenite text of birkat hamazon has a very different third blessing from ours, which puts even more emphasis on the “kingdom of the house of David” than we do. I think we can explain this emphasis by saying that the blessing's basic theme is our control over the land, and if we leave this out the purpose of the blessing is not accomplished.

Now, for almost 2000 years we did not have control over the land of Israel. So, technically speaking, it was impossible to thank God for control. Instead, we have offered a prayer that control be returned to us. We still say this today, partly because changing established texts is difficult and fraught with danger, partly because our control of the land is still very incomplete.

Of course, we are forced to say that the third blessing did not always mention rebuilding Jerusalem. When the Temple was standing, it must have said something like “We thank you for preserving the kingdom of David in the holy city of Jerusalem”. Before the Temple was built, it must have said something similar about Shiloh. The exact wording would change from generation to generation. But the Biblically mandated idea – recognition that the land has been delivered into our control as a Divine gift – remains the same.

On a different note: Taking a broad look at birkat hamazon, we see the following rough pattern. In the three blessings we thank God for our food, for the farm which provided the food, and for the political circumstances which allow us to benefit from that farm. This list begins with the immediate and personal, and proceeds to the universal and abstract. In some ways, it reminds one of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, in which the lower needs must be satisfied before the higher ones.

Colorful names

2009-11-14T20:00:00.004+02:00

Lavan, father-in-law of Yaakov, has quite an unusual name. Who, after all, names their kid after a color? One interpretation says that whenever Lavan wanted to trick someone, he would pretend to be “pure and white” in character, and having gained their confidence, would then proceed to rob them.

But interestingly enough, Lavan is not the only person in Breishit named after a color. The other person is none other than Yaakov's brother. Born with the name Esav, he later acquired the name “Edom”. One day Esav came in from the field hungry, found Yaakov cooking red lentils, and begged Yaakov to “give me some of that red, red stuff”. Yaakov agreed only in exchange for Esav's birthright. From then on Esav was called “Edom”, meaning “red”. One might assume that rather than being a compliment, this was a way of mocking Esav for his shortsighted desperateness in agreeing to the exchange. In any case, the name stuck and the nation descended from him is named Edom.

So Esav's “colorful” name is a result of his being tricked by Yaakov. My theory is that Lavan got his name the same way.

When the Torah describes how Lavan tried to trick Yaakov, it includes what looks like an amusing pun. “That day [Lavan] removed the streaked and spotted he-goats, and all the speckled and spotted she-goats, every one that had white [“lavan”] in it, and all the dark ones among the sheep...” (30:35) Lavan agreed to give Yaakov the white-spotted goats in his flock, but he secretly removed and hid those goats to deprive Yaakov of his wages. But Yaakov had the last word in this story. He got the completely black goats to breed, and white-spotted goats were among their offspring. Then he used certain procedures to help his goats reproduce more than Lavan's. Eventually his white-spotted goats (and dark sheep) outnumbered the pure-colored ones. Yaakov outmaneuvered Lavan, and Lavan grew poor and frustrated, while Yaakov returned home wealthy and with a large family.

It is through the coloring of these goats and sheep that Lavan tried to trick Yaakov. But through the same coloring, Yaakov managed to not only protect but also enrich himself greatly. Perhaps, in memory of this, Lavan received the name “white”. He was born with a different name – one not recorded in the Torah. But he received his new and more “colorful” name, in memory of what he tried to do to Yaakov, and how Yaakov turned the tables on him. As with Edom, Lavan's misbegotten plans are preserved forever in the additional name that his contemporaries gave him.

Thoughts on Chayei Sarah

2009-11-14T19:48:00.002+02:00

[Avraham] spoke with them, saying: “If you are willing that I bury my dead from before me, hear me, and approach for me Ephron the son of Tzohar, that he may give me his cave of Machpelah, which is in the end of his field. For the full price let him give it to me, in your midst, for a burial site.” Now Ephron dwelt/sat among the children of Heth, and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the children of Heth, of all that entered the gate of his city, saying: “No, my lord, hear me. The field I give to you, and the cave that is in it, I give to you; before the eyes of my people I give it to you; bury your dead.” (23:8-11)

There is one hard-to-understand phrase here: ועפרון יושב בתוך בני חת - “Now Ephron dwelt/sat among the children of Heth”. What does this mean and why is it mentioned?

One possibility is just to say that Ephron was already physically present and available to discuss the transaction. That's a very boring explanation but I can't rule it out. However, I also have a more interesting explanation. It relies on the following quote, regarding the prophet Elisha.

[The Shunamite woman] said unto her husband: "Look now, I have seen that this is a holy man of God, who passes by us continually. Let us make a little chamber in the attic; and let us set for him there a bed, table, stool, and candlestick; and whenever he comes to us, he will go there.” One day he came there, and he went to the upper chamber and lay there... [Then he asked the woman]: “Look, you have taken all this care for us; what is to be done for thee? Should you be mentioned to the king, or to the captain of the host?” And she answered: “I dwell among my people.” He said: “What then can be done for her?” Gehazi answered: “Indeed she has no son, and her husband is old.” (Melachim Bet 4:9-14)

At which point Elisha arranges for the woman to miraculously have a kid. But before that happened, Elisha offered to get the king and higher officials to help the woman out. She refused, with the explanation: “I dwell among my people.” Apparently this means that any special favors would make the people around her suspicious and jealous, and she valued her community more than whatever perks the king could give her.

Returning to the parsha. When it says that “Ephron dwelt/sat among the children of Heth”, perhaps this means the same thing as the Shunamite's “I dwell among my people”. Ephron would have loved to take the large payment which Avraham just offered him. But his community insisted on Avraham being able to bury for free, and Ephron felt he could not go against this. Thus, Ephron offered Avraham the land as a gift. When Avraham continued to insist on paying, Ephron was able to take the money. But still, to keep up the impression that he didn't care about the money, he continued talking as if he were giving a gift: “Land worth 400 silver shekels, what is it between us?”

Ephron was not necessarily a sleazy Middle Eastern bazaar salesman, professing generosity while manipulating the customer into paying an exorbitant price. It's also possible that he preferred to be honest, but social pressure from his countrymen forced him to present himself as more generous than he actually was.