Patterns in Parshat Balak

1. The triple structure

Three times Bilam went to curse Israel, and each time God caused Bilam to bless Israel rather than curse them.

It is well known that these three visions correspond to an earlier series of events - the three times Bilam's donkey strayed from the way. Three times the donkey disobeyed and angered Bilam, just as three times Bilam disobeyed and angered Balak.

Bilam was supposedly the prophetic expert who Balak looked up to, but this parallel implies that the donkey was even higher than Bilam. In the pre-Yom-Kippur prayer Tefillah Zakah we say "With the power of speech you divided mankind from animals, but I have not even been like an animal, for I have polluted my mouth with obscenities, gossip, lies..." Bilam, who had Divine gifts but used them improperly, did not even reach the level of an animal - and the story of the donkey shows this.

2. The differences between the three

One's natural assumption, when confronted with a grouping of three things, is to look for the commonalities between the three. This year, I looked instead at what differs between them.

Here are Bilam's three visions about Israel, ignoring Bilam's introductory remarks about himself:

"Behold, it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who hath counted the dust of Jacob, or numbered the stock of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let mine end be like his!"

"None has beheld iniquity in Jacob, nor has one seen perverseness in Israel; the LORD his God is with him, and the shouting for the King is among them. God who brought them forth out of Egypt is for them like the lofty horns of the aurochs. For there is no enchantment with Jacob, neither is there any divination with Israel; now is it said of Jacob and of Israel: 'What has God wrought!' Behold a people that rises up as a lioness, and as a lion lifts himself up; he shall not lie down until he eats of the prey, and drinks the blood of the slain."

"How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, thy dwellings, O Israel! As valleys stretched out, as gardens by the river-side; as aloes planted of the LORD, as cedars beside the waters; Water shall flow from his branches, and his seed shall be in many waters; and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted. God who brought him forth out of Egypt is for him like the lofty horns of the aurochs; he shall eat up the nations that are his adversaries, and shall break their bones in pieces, and pierce them through with his arrows."

Note the progression in these visions. In the first, Israel dwells alone, and does not interact with the nations. In the second, Israel escapes Egypt, and will eat the flesh of its "prey". In the third blessing, Israel goes to war against its enemies, and defeats them.

Remember that the very reason Bilam came was that the Moabites feared Israel after Israel's conquest of the Amorites! Now look at what the series of visions means for Moav. In the first vision, Israel does not interact with other nations. In the second vision, Israel is violently consuming "prey" - to me this seems ambiguous, and could refer to material consumption or to defeat of enemies. The third vision explicitly has Israel defeating its enemies!

I get the impression that the more Balak insisted on a curse, the more he dug his nation into a hole. In the first vision, Israel would dwell separately and presumably not threaten anyone. In the second vision, Israel was a possible threat to others. In the third vision, Israel was a definite threat to others!

Now let's see what happens when we examine the three donkey episodes in the same way.

And the ass saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, with his sword drawn in his hand; and the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field; and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into the way.

Then the angel of the LORD stood in an alley between the vineyards, a fence being on this side, and a fence on that side. And the ass saw the angel of the LORD, and she thrust herself unto the wall, and crushed Balaam's foot against the wall; and he smote her again.

And the angel of the LORD went further, and stood in a narrow place, where was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left. And the ass saw the angel of the LORD, and she lay down under Balaam; and Balaam's anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with his staff.

To summarize: In the first episode, the donkey was forced off the path, into a field. In the second episode, the donkey was forced into an alley, and thus tried to edge its way past the angel blocking most of the alley. In the third episode, the angel blocked the entire alley, and the donkey was forced to collapse.

Once again, we see a similar progression! In the first episode, the donkey's progress was slowed, but one can take a path through the fields and get to the same destination as by a road. In the second episode, the donkey's progress was mostly blocked. In the third episode, its progress was entirely blocked. Every time Bilam failed to notice the real cause of the donkey's errant behavior, the behavior got worse. When he failed to understand a third time, the next step was for the donkey to miraculously open its mouth and for the angel appear - and only then did he understand where he had gone wrong.

In a sense, the donkey opening its mouth is a fourth episode - and it is paralleled by a fourth episode in Bilam's interactions with Balak. After Bilam's third failure to curse Israel, without prompting he begins a fourth speech: "Let me advise you what this people will do to yours in the future." This speech too is about how Israel will defeat its enemies - but unlike the previous speeches, the enemies are named, and the first one mentioned is Moav itself. Balak really should have stopped while he was ahead.

3. The three-four structure

Both the visions and the donkey episodes have what is called a "three-four" structure. This structure appears elsewhere in Tanach, most notably at the beginning of Amos. There the sins of various nations are listed:

Thus saith the LORD: For three transgressions of Gaza, yea, for four, I will not reverse it: because they carried away captive a whole captivity, to deliver them up to Edom. So will I send a fire on the wall of Gaza...
Thus saith the LORD: For three transgressions of Tyre, yea, for four, I will not reverse it: because they delivered up a whole captivity to Edom, and remembered not the brotherly covenant. So will I send a fire on the wall of Tyre...

This chapter contains a long list of nations which are punished, of which I have only quoted two. For each nation, the "three-four" structure is explicit. Each nation has already sinned in three ways, but once the fourth national sin is committed, the amount of sin becomes overwhelming and a punishment is decreed against the nation.

In Bilam's case, too, we see the same three-four structures. Three times Balak wrongly asks Bilam to curse Israel; only in Bilam's fourth speech is Moav's punishment decreed. Three times Bilam ignored the donkey's behavior and hit it; only when the donkey speaks in words does the angel appear. Here, too, the sin builds up steadily, and only at the end is the verdict reached.

Mei Merivah

The congregation did not have water, and the gathered against Moshe and Aharon. The people fought with Moshe, and said: "If only we had died when our brethren died before Hashem. Why did you bring the congregation of Hashem to this desert, to die here, us and our animals. And why did you take us up from Egypt, to bring us to this evil place, not a place of seed, or figs or grapes or pomegranates, and there is no water to drink." (Bamidbar 20:2-5)

The people's complaint at Mei Merivah is bizarre. You would expect a complaint about water to focus on water, but in fact water seems to be just an afterthought tacked onto the end. Much of the complaint is about the agricultural bounty - herds, grain, fruit - which the people feel entitled to. Shouldn't survival and water come before these luxuries? In addition, the people say they prefer death to their current situation. But if they want to die, why complain about lack of water? And finally, they quite explicitly link themselves to Korach's rebellion - both in linking themselves to "our brethren [who] died before Hashem" (compare to 16:16-17, 17:5, 17:11, 17:28), and in describing themselves as "the congregation of Hashem"/"kehal Hashem" (see Korach's initial complaint in 16:3). Why would they hope to get a positive response from Moshe and God, when linking themselves to the most evil rebels?

It is no surprise that Moshe reacts angrily to this arrogant, insincere demand. "Listen now, you rebels, will I bring water out of this rock?" Moshe correctly recognized the complainers to be hostile rebels, not innocent desperate people who just want water to drink.

Or so we think. But God's responses to Moshe, Aharon, and the people are the opposite of what we expect. Throughout Sefer Bamidbar, God considers and executes punishments on the people. Sometimes (like 16:21-22) these punishments appear to be much harsher than what either Moshe or the average modern reader would consider appropriate. And yet, in the Mei Merivah story, the people receives no punishment whatsoever. In fact, the only ones to be punished are Moshe and Aharon! They are the ones we thought had correctly interpreted the people's demands! What is going on?

I think the answer is as follows. Correct me if I've missed something, but I think that never in the Torah are the people punished for complaining when there is a lack of food or water. Only when they demand things like better food (meat), or altered political arrangements, or a return to Egypt, are they punished. Food and water are legitimate needs; a person cannot live without them. God, by taking the people out of Egypt and promising them entry into Canaan, took on a certain responsibility towards them, which included not allowing them to die. If there really was a shortage of food or water, it was God's responsibility to fix that, and there was nothing wrong in pointing it out.

It is true that at Mei Merivah, the people expressed their complaint in a very offensive way. Yet at its core, the complaint was legitimate. Water was missing, and God had to provide it. In general, a leader who gets angry when asked to do their responsibilities is a failed leader. It is no excuse that "the other side started it"; to descend to the level of selfish ungrateful rebels is an abdication of moral responsibility, and is seen as such by "the other side". Moshe and Aharon were representatives of God, so their failures reflected badly on God - and thus were a failure to "sanctify God's name" (20:12). When leaders fail at their job, it can disqualify them from further leadership, which is what happens to Moshe and Aharon in the wake of this episode.

I am not in the habit of giving lessons to other people, but there is a lesson waiting to be said here. There are many times in life when we, or our ideological camps, are disingenuously accused of misdeeds. Perhaps one person in our camp has behaved badly, and outsiders use this example to besmirch the entire camp. We feel justified in responding in kind - fighting anger with anger, or besmirching the enemy camp based on anecdotes just like ours has been besmirched. I think Mei Merivah's lesson is that in general, we must resist these temptations. Such angry responses rarely convince the other side. More often, they tend to decrease the other side's respect for us, and make the distance between us and them wider and harder to bridge. Particularly in the last few years, when US public opinion has crystallized into mutually exclusive echo chambers which cannot talk to one another, we need the patience to ignore the other side's rhetorical lows and respond thoughtfully rather than in anger. This takes a lot of self-control, and fails to satisfy our inner urge for justice. But it is more likely to lead "the people" to "the promised land" than any alternative.

Credit for this post goes to an interminably long Shir Hashirim reading at the local shul for kabbalat shabbat, leading me to think about the parsha instead of following along.

Arachin and Herem

This shabbat I came to a clearer pshat understanding of the last chapter of Sefer Vayikra (27) than I had in the past, and I want to summarise it here.

The chapter covers four subjects: arachin, bechorot, herem, and maaser. In more detail, the chapter divides as follows:

1) Arachin of a person: אִישׁ כִּי יַפְלִא נֶדֶר בְּעֶרְכְּךָ נְפָשֹׁת (verses 1-8)
2) Arachin of a kosher animal: וְאִם בְּהֵמָה אֲשֶׁר יַקְרִיבוּ מִמֶּנָּה קָרְבָּן (verses 9-10)
3) Arachin of a non-kosher animal: וְאִם כָּל בְּהֵמָה טְמֵאָה (verses 11-13)
4) Arachin of a house: וְאִישׁ, כִּי יַקְדִּשׁ אֶת בֵּיתוֹ (verses 14-15)
5) Arachin of an ancestral field: וְאִם מִשְּׂדֵה אֲחֻזָּתוֹ יַקְדִּישׁ אִישׁ (verses 16-21)
6) Arachin of a non-ancestral field: וְאִם אֶת שְׂדֵה מִקְנָתוֹ, אֲשֶׁר לֹא מִשְּׂדֵה אֲחֻזָּתוֹ, יַקְדִּישׁ (verses 22-24)
7) The "holy shekel" is defined as 20 "gerah" (verse 25)
8) Bechorot, kosher and non-kosher (verses 26-27)
9) Herem: אַךְ כָּל חֵרֶם אֲשֶׁר יַחֲרִם אִישׁ לַה מִכָּל אֲשֶׁר לוֹ, מֵאָדָם וּבְהֵמָה וּמִשְּׂדֵה אֲחֻזָּתוֹ (verses 28-29)
10) Maaser of produce: וְכָל מַעְשַׂר הָאָרֶץ (verses 30-31)
11) Maaser of animals: וְכָל מַעְשַׂר בָּקָר וָצֹאן (verses 32-33)
12) Conclusion (verse 34)

In all of 1-6, the word עֶרְכְּךָ reappears over and over. This word also appears in Vayikra 5 (where the "asham" animal is described as an עֶרְכְּךָ for the person who has sinned) and in Bamidbar 18 (where the 5 shekel redemption payment for a firstborn male is described as עֶרְכְּךָ, and has the same 5 shekel value specified for baby boys in Vayikra). Besides these places, each of which is "arachin" in the human sense, the word never appears in the Torah. But here, it appears in connection with animals and land, as well as humans.

In addition to the three categories of "arachin", there are three categories of "herem" - אָדָם וּבְהֵמָה וּמִשְּׂדֵה אֲחֻזָּתוֹ - human, animal, and land! It seems that nearly any object can be sanctified in one of two ways - either "arachin" or "herem".

What is the difference between "arachin" and "herem"? It seems the difference is that "arachin" may be redeemed to a cash value, while "herem" can never be redeemed. Let us go through how this works in each case.

Of the six types of "arachin", four (humans, non-kosher animals, houses, and purchased fields) seemingly *must* be redeemed. A fifth (ancestral fields) *may* be redeemed, but only until the yovel, and if you miss this deadline, it becomes "like the herem field" (verse 21), i.e. non-redeemable! Just one type of "arachin" can never be redeemed (kosher animals) - even switching them to a different animal doesn't work. Perhaps this is not actually a type of "arachin", it is just included next to the similar law for non-kosher animals for completeness.

As for "herem" (verse 28-29), it applies to people, animals, and fields - but only to ancestral fields, not purchased fields. A purchased field was originally someone else's ancestral inheritance, and it would be unfair to me to deprive someone else of their ancestral inheritance by making it sanctified without ability to redeem.

You may wonder, where do these unredeemable goods go? To the priest. (Source: Bamidbar 18:14, and of course Vayikra 27:21)

What about verse 29, which says that human "herem" must be killed? Verse 28 specifies that the "herem" it refers to must be owned by the giver. Based on this, one would suppose that human "herem" refers to one's slaves. If so, then verse 29 seems to suggest that one may freely get their slaves killed by sanctifying them (!). This seems not only morally outrageous, but incompatible with other laws in the Torah. Should knocking out a slave's tooth lead to the slave's freedom (Shemot 21:26), but killing the slave has no punishment? A master is required to give his slave gifts when the slave goes free (Devarim 15:14); should the master be able to "save money" by killing the slave a day before his release? These possibilities are absurd. Therefore, it seems impossible to understand verse 29 as referring to a slave. The commentator Shadal notes that the "herem" in verse 28 is a gift "to Hashem", while in verse 29 this is not mentioned, implying that it is a different kind of "herem". Rashbam says "herem" in this verse refers to a death penalty convict who may not be redeemed; Ramban suggests it refers to the enemy population of a city that Israel has sworn to conquer (as in Bamidbar 21:2).

Olives and Chanukah

Last Chanukah I happened to be visiting London, and I went on a tour of the British Museum with a Chanukah theme.

It was interesting to learn that olives, and olive oil, have a special significance for the Greeks just as they do for us. According to the founding myth of Athens, the goddess Athena won "ownership" of the city by providing it with an olive tree. The olive tree thus became a symbol of Athens, and appeared on its coins. Olive oil and the light it produced became further associated with the light of learning, as Athens was the center of Greek intellectual culture.

With this background, it is interesting to note how significant olives are to *our* side of the Chanukah story. The mitzvah of the holiday is to kindle lights (best fulfilled with olive oil), in memory of the olive oil lights in the Temple with were relit by the Maccabees. Furthermore, R' Yoel Bin Nun hypothesizes that Chanukah existed as a celebration of the olive harvest (which happens around this time of year) before the Maccabees.

So within the very symbol of the olive, there is a struggle between Greek and Jewish culture, paralleling the struggle between the two cultures in general. The Maccabees found impure oil in the Temple, but insisted on using pure oil instead. Similarly Greek culture was available and popular, but the Maccabees insisted on following Jewish culture instead.

Bitcoin and halacha

The Bitcoin cryptocurrency has recently been in the news as its price continues to escalate. I was lucky enough to hear a friend of mine, a religious computer scientist named A., give a shiur on the halachic aspects of Bitcoin. Here is a summary based on my notes.

1. KINYAN

Mishna Bava Metzia 4:1 discusses the case of using money to buy goods. It specifies, using several examples, that the kinyan must be done on the goods and not the money. For example, one may do "meshicha" on a utensil, which transfers ownership of the utensil to one party and the money to the other party. The reverse does not work: doing a "kinyan" on the money does not transfer ownership of the utensil.

(The gemara explains that the law was originally different. On a deoraita level, transactions are in fact done via money rather than goods. However, rabbinic law reversed the procedure. This was done to avoid the situation where the money had been transferred, making the transaction valid, but the goods were still with their original owner. Were the goods to be endangered due to a fire or similar disaster, the possessor of the goods would not exert himself to save them, since they no longer belonged to him. Chazal did not like this possibility, so they changed the law to make the transaction dependent on transfer of goods.)

The upshot of these discussions is that one cannot take for granted that one's commercial activity has automatic halachic validity. If you want your transaction to be halachically valid, you must look closely at how you are performing it. So, for example, waving a lulav bought with a credit card might be halachically problematic. To perform the mitzvah on the first day of Sukkot, the lulav must halachically belong to you, but was the credit card transaction valid? Was it you paying the lulav seller, or the credit card company?

Sometimes this type of question is resolved by government regulation - "dina demalchuta dina". But this is not the case with Bitcoin, where the transactions happen online independent of any government, and generally without any government policy on their validity.

In this case, we might turn to "situmta" ("custom of the merchants") - an accepted commercial practice which halacha recognizes, even though it differs from the Torah's laws of transaction.

The key question regarding bitcoin transactions is: at what point does the transaction go through?

Imagine the case of a dishonest person who has $10 in their bank account, and writes $10 checks to two separate people. One of the checks is cashed, and their bank account goes down to $0. From now on, the second check will bounce rather than go through.

This works because there is a centralized authority - the bank - keeping track of how much money people have. However, no such authority exists regarding Bitcoin. You can send money to two different people, even if you don't have it. After some time, one of the transfers will be "confirmed", and the other is not.

In fact, it's possible for BOTH transactions can be confirmed. This causes the transaction record to "fork", as half the network thinks that one transfer went through, and the other half thinks that the other transaction went through. So there are two, mutually contradictory "histories" held by Bitcoin miners on the internet.

What happens in this situation? When the next transaction occurs, the network's nodes will each choose one of the two histories, generally the more popular one. So one of the two histories will come to dominate the network, while the other becomes less and less prevalent until it disappears. This process occurs at an exponential rate, with one history spreading very quickly. Generally, the rule of thumb is that if your transaction is still recognized as valid after 6 other transactions, it is safe to assume that the Bitcoin network has reached equilibrium, and the entire network recognizes it as valid.

But even after 6, or 50, or any number of transactions you can never know for sure that the transaction is valid. There is still an infinitesimally small chance that it will be rejected in the future. From a halachic perspective, this is the interesting bit - there is no real finality to any transaction, unlike "normal" transactions, where an object is physically transferred at a particular moment. At what point, then, does halacha recognize a Bitcoin transaction as a valid kinyan?

It is hard to come up with an objective answer to this. But perhaps the rule of "situmta" applies - the 6-transaction rule is the accepted practice of Bitcoin "merchants", and therefore halacha accepts it as well.

2. CHALIFIN

In the "chalifin" kinyan, one party takes a object from the other, and that causes the entire kinyan to be valid. For example, if one is trading a donkey for a cow, one can take possession of the donkey, and ownership of the cow will be transferred at the same moment.

There is a rule (Bava Metzia 45b) that "a coin cannot be used for chalifin", because "its imprint may be nullified" ("tzurta avida devetala"). That is to say, a coin is "fiat currency" which derives its value (primarily) from the government stamp of approval rather than from the metal it is made of. So if the government decides no longer to recognize the coin, its value disappears. The gemara considers this to be mutually incompatible with being the object transferred in chalifin.

(Note: the shiur giver referred me to an article by R' Asher Meir on the Gush website, asserting that in the time of mishna the value of a coin equalled the value of the silver in it, while by the gemara's time a coin's value was already mostly by the fiat of the government. I was not able to find the article offhand, but this is interesting historical context.)

What about Bitcoin? Bitcoin is a distributed currency that no government has the power to devalue. So perhaps it is usable for chalifin?

3. RIBIT

The Torah prohibits loaning money with interest.

In addition, the rabbis prohibited lending "seah beseah" (one measure of wheat now, in exchange for one measure of wheat in the future), because the price of wheat changes with time, so the value you return may be greater than the value you borrowed, resembling the payment of a loan with interest. Some amoraim extended this prohibition to lending "zahav bezahav" - gold for gold, at a time when money was typically silver.

The exchange rate of Bitcoin fluctuates very quickly, so it would seem that lending Bitcoin and returning an equal amount of Bitcoin would be problematic.

4. SHMIRAH

For a Bitcoin transaction to take place, one must provide a cryptographic "signature" to ensure they are the owner of the money they are transferring. There is also a concept called "multisignature", by which multiple signatures must be provided before money can be sent. Alternatively, an account can be set up so that the approval of *either* partner, rather than both, is sufficient to send money.

Just like a physical object can be entrusted to another person for guarding, one can imagine Bitcoins being entrusted to multiple people for guarding. If so, the halachic laws of shmirah might would need to be applied in new ways.

5. AVEDAH

In halacha, lost objects must be returned if they have an identifying sign ("siman") that allows them to be returned to the correct owner.

Bitcoin value is accessed by a "private key", a unique randomly generated string of numbers. If you forget the number, your value is lost forever, since with current computing resources it's essentially impossible to regenerate the string.

Since this number is so unique, one could imagine that it is the best type of "siman" imaginable.

However, in the case of "avdah mimenu umikol adam" - when it seems essentially impossible for any person to recover the object, for example if it was washed away by a river - there is no requirement to return the object, even if it has a siman.

Since it is so difficult to recover a lost Bitcoin signature, one might think that it falls in this category, of objects that do not need to be returned if they are somehow found.

Moreh Nevuchim

I recently finished reading Moreh Nevuchim. Here are my notes, organized by page number in the Friedlander translation. If you want to look up an issue, which is not directly referred to in Friedlander's chapter titles, this may be a useful guide.

44 Revelation is an inferior way of communicating what those who are capable should learn through philosophy (also 394)
78 Change implies imperfection either before or after. God as perfect being cannot have changed. Thus can only act on others, not be acted upon
84 Whenever you prove God doesn't have a certain quality, you become more perfect. The more qualities, the higher level you are relative to other people
95 YKVK=existence
99 One can use an interpretation which solves a problem, even if it violates certain grammar rules
104 God is the (Platonic) form of forms
130 Earth is round (also 277)
139 Omnipotence doesn't mean that God can do impossibilities
155 Purpose of the book
178 No-proof is better than a wrong proof
184 Proof from design and diversity (also 291)
195 Being moral helps you reason correctly
196 Directed to a specific person?
198 Aristotle's system is correct refarding the earth, but not the sky/spheres
199 Eternal universe contradicts Tanach less than does incorporeality and other important ideas
210 Miracles built into nature
212 Time created as part of creation
216 Secrets
218 Language is conventional, not natural
228 Intellect leads to logic and imagination. Prophet=both. Intellect vs senses. Teaching is better than learning
232 Torah is not painful, but seems cruel to the carnal
239 Anagrams in Tanach
248 Long lives in Breishit
250 Providence and free will
257 Disagrees with Onkelus re Yehezkel
261 Yetzer hatov <= platonic forms. Yetzer hara <= physical substance
264 Hebrew doesn't have words for bodily functions
265 Physicality = wall between us and God
266 Evil = absence of good. (Its cause: absence of wisdom)
297 Interpretation of Job excites Rambam
310 Only difference between philosophers and us is eternal universe
353 Midrash
356 Belief in God, angels, prophecy, law in that order
375 Torah, like nature, is only partly comprehensible - but that part is sufficient to give us a sense of wonder
385 True worship of God means thinking deeply about the idea of God
386 love of God=knowledge of God
387 intellectual worship of God, not "hollow emotions"
392 Loving God comes from theology, fear from mitzvah performance

The well story

Parshat Chukat contains a short and cryptic story about a well:

...from there to the well, which is the well about which Hashem said to Moshe, "Gather the people, and I will give them water." Then Israel sang this song: "Rise up, O well - answer it - A well dug by princes, carved by the leaders of the people, with the staff, with their rods" (Bamidbar 21:16-18)

Even in this short passage, we see apparent inconsistencies.

• First, God says that He will provide the people with water.
  
• Then, the people say "Rise up, O well", which perhaps sounds like a well is rising miraculously, as God might do in these circumstances.
  
• However, then the people say that the well was dug by human beings, not by God!
  
• Then they say that the digging was done by the leaders (not normal manual laborers), and it used their staffs (not normal digging tools)!

How are these pieces to be put together into a single coherent story?

I think the answer is to look at how miracles were often performed in earlier events in the Torah. In Egypt, for example, the norm was for Moshe to point his staff at something, or hit something with his staff, and a miracle would then occur involving that something.

What is the parallel here? God announced to Moshe that God would provide water. Moshe and Aharon got their staffs, and pointed at or hit a certain rock. This caused water to miraculously come from the ground. At which point the people sung their song.

This explains how all the events could logically have happened. But there is still one inconsistency. Initially God announced that He would provide water. But in the song, the people do not mention God's role, but only the role of humans who "dug" the well. Why the difference?

To answer this, let's examine a very similar story from just one chapter earlier. At Mei Merivah, Moshe was commanded to take his staff and provide water for the people. It's not clear exactly why, but God saw Moshe's ensuing actions as a failure to "sanctify God" before the people. One common interpretation is that Moshe hit the rock, rather than speaking to it, which indicated that Moshe rather than God was the one providing water.

If so, at the time of our story with the well, the people might still have believe that Moshe not God was providing them with water. Here Moshe pointed his staff at the ground and water rose from it, which should have been a sign of God's miraculous intervention. But the people mistakenly saw it as an act of Moshe. And when they sang their song, cheering the rise of the well, they chose to praise Moshe and Aharon rather than God.

This understanding resolves all the loose ends in the story. How does it fit with our understanding of the rest of the Torah?

The most obvious question is about "song". There is a midrashic idea (appearing in the Mechilta, Tanchuma, the beginning of Targum Shir Hashirim, and other sources, generally searchable on Bar Ilan CD with the words "eser shirot") which lists ten "songs" that have been sung throughout history. The exact list varies slightly between sources, but here is a common version: in Egypt; after the splitting of the sea; at the well (our story); around parshat Haazinu; by Yehoshua; by Devorah and Barak; by David; by Shlomo; by Shlomo in Shir Hashirim; and the final song which will be recited in the future messianic era. The common element in these "songs" is that they are Divinely inspired, righteous, and holy. But according to my interpretation of the well song, rather than being holy, it was based on a massive theological mistake. It seems that my explanation of the story is incompatible with this view of "song". Accepting this midrash is not an article of faith, but we should be clear what we would have to give up by accepting my explanation.

The second question is the place of the story in Sefer Bamidbar. It is commonly accepted that the Jewish people's behavior was different in the second and fourtieth years of their desert journey. The second year was full of rebellions, culminating in the stories of the spies and Korach. The fourtieth year, in contrast, showed a Jewish people that had learned their lessons, and were now spiritually ready to enter the land of Israel.

But this picture is not so clear. The story of the snakes (21:4-9) was yet another rebellion ending in punishment (though for several reasons it might be more positive than the previous rebellions). And the episode with the daughters of Moav was so serious that God raised the possibility of destroying the people entirely (25:11). Of course there are also more positive stories, such as the people making and keeping a vow to God (21:1-3). So I think there is enough room here for another negative story. The people was still quite flawed, but after 40 years in the desert, they were sufficiently improved that they could handle conquering and living in the land of Israel.

Thoughts on Shemot

Aharon your brother... he comes out to meet you, and he will see you and be happy in his heart. (Shemot 4:14)

Why does it matter that Aharon was "happy in his heart"?

Aharon was the oldest, firstborn brother, and here he was called upon to take a subordinate role to Moshe. Elsewhere in the Torah, older brothers typically get angry and jealous when their firstborn role is taken away from them.

The exile in Egypt started when Yosef's brothers sold him into slavery rather than accepting a subordinate role to him. Fittingly, it ended when Aharon was able to graciously and peacefully accept that Moshe had been chosen as the leader, and work together with Moshe to get the Israelites freed.

Pharaoh's ministers

After Pharaoh's two ministers had their dreams interpreted by Yosef, one was returned to his position, while the other was executed. Why did they deserve these different fates?

Perhaps the answer comes from how they decided to seek Yosef's interpretation. The cupbearer heard Yosef say "Does not God have interpretations? Tell me [your dream]". Thus, he wanted to hear God's message (as conveyed by Yosef). Meanwhile, regarding the baker, the Torah says "The baker saw that [Yosef] had interpreted well". This can be understood to mean that Yosef gave a positive interpretation to the first dream, so the baker expected a positive interpretation as well.

If the first minister wanted to listen to God, while the second minister only cared about his selfish good, is it surprising that the first was rewarded and the second punished?

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Over Shabbat I heard the following idea, which was apparently thought of by a contemporary secular Israeli Tanach enthusiast (I forget the name, I heard it from my friend MS). The idea: In Yosef's second dream, there were 13 heavenly bodies bowing down to him. Yosef was 17 years old when his story began, and 30 years old when he became deputy to Pharaoh. Just as the 7 cows represent 7 years, so the 13 heavenly bodies represent 13 years. Yosef should have known that he would only be elevated at age 30, and so when at age 28 he begged the cupbearer to remember him, this was considered improper behavior.

The shofar in Mussaf

There may not be less than ten [verses for] Malchuyot, ten for Zichronot, ten for Shofarot. Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri says: If one said three of each, he fulfills his obligation. (Mishna Rosh Hashana 4:6)

Mussaf for Rosh Hashana is unusual. Where else do we have Biblical verses inserted into blessings? Occasionally we see a single verse being inserted as a proof-text, for example in the Aneinu prayer for fast days ("Answer us before we call out, as it says: It shall be that before they call out I will answer them"). But once you have one good proof-text, there is no need for another one. There is certainly no need for a set number of verses - 10 in our case. In fact, according to the Mishna above, it doesn't even matter which verses you choose (within reason) as long as there are 10 of them! Why should there be such an unusual requirement?

The following idea is speculative, but it rings true to me. The different opinions in the Mishna require either 10 or 3 verses. In the context of Rosh Hashana, these numbers do not seem to be random. 10 are the number of shofar blasts we blow after Malchuyot (and Zichronot, and Shofarot). 3 is the number of blasts we would blow, if we knew what a "teruah" was meant to be!

So here is my hypothesis. Once a time, the practice was to recite a verse, and then immediately blow the shofar once. You would recite "With trumpets and the sound of the shofar, blow before the King Hashem" (Tehilim 98:6) and then you would do exactly that. You would blow the shofar along with your Zichronot, making the day a "zichron teruah" (Vayikra 23:24) in the literal sense. And you would recite "The voice of the shofar grew steadily stronger, Moshe would speak and God would answer him aloud" (Shemot 19:19) and then blow the shofar, reenacting the giving of the Torah at Sinai. I think all of Mussaf would gain an extra level of powerfulness if conducted this way.

How does this work out halachically?

Shofar is an unusual mitzvah in that if you blow the blasts one by one, with interruptions between them, you still fulfill the mitzvah. This means that inserting them into mussaf in between verses is not a problem.

A complication arises with the number 10. In theory we blow the shofar 3 or 9, not 10, times for each blessing. This is because we are supposed to do a tekiah-"teruah"-tekiah set for each blessing. We don't know exactly what the required "teruah" is, so we do three different options, one of them tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah (in case the halachic "teruah" is our shevarim-teruah). But this shevarim-teruah is technically considered a single blast, so it would be strange to assign two verses to it, and inserting a verse between the shevarim and the teruah would likely be a forbidden interruption. As a further complication, the number 10 is mentioned in the Mishna, while it seems likely that the uncertainty over the "teruah" did not arise until later.

Let us leave the number 10, then, and move to R' Yohanan ben Nuri's opinion, that only 3 verses are required. These three would match well the tekiah-teruah-tekiah of the basic halacha. An unanswered question here is why some verses would correspond to tekiah, and others to teruah, without a clear justification. A further issue is that R' Yohanan ben Nuri's opinion in the previous mishna is that one recites Malchuyot in the 3rd blessing of Mussaf, but only blows the shofar in the 4th blessing (and 5th and 6th for Zichronot and Shofarot, like we do). So the same R' Yohanan ben Nuri who provides us with the number 3, also disconnects the verses from the shofar blasts!

On the bottom line, I think all these halachic issues can be overcome (with 3 verses being the more likely direction to go in, even though we cannot follow R' Yohanan ben Nuri's opinion across the board).

I thought of this idea before or during Mussaf (I forget which) on the first day of Rosh Hashana this year. It made my Mussaf that day more meaningful, as I envisioned the shofar blasts that could have once accompanied each verse. But it made my second day's Mussaf less meaningful, as I saw Mussaf as a broken version of the original shofar-using prayer, rather than a verbal composition that stands on its own! So I can't really say whether having read this post will be spiritually positive or negative for you. But I think the idea is a fascinating possibility, so here you go.

Egyptian in Israel

There are several rivers in or near Israel, whose Hebrew names begin with the syllable "Yar". These include Yarden, Yarkon, and Yarmuk. Yarden and Yarkon are mentioned in Tanach; the first recorded mention of Yarmuk is in the Roman period. Two more rivers - Yabok and Arnon - might hypothetically begin with a distorted version of "Yar". Israel is semi-arid and only a small number of rivers exist there. Of this small number, it’s surprising that so many begin with the same or similar syllable.

It is often proposed to explain this by saying that before the Hebrew/Canaanite language was spoken in Israel, a different language was spoken, and in this language "yar" was the word for river. So the "Den" river was called Yar Den, and when Hebrew/Canaanite became the local language, "Yarden" was retained as a name. Similarly for the other rivers.

What language could it be that was spoken in Israel before Hebrew?

Look around online, and you will find claims that "yar" means river in ancient Egyptian or Akkadian. If you look in online dictionaries for these two languages, in both the main word for "river" does not resemble "yar". But in the Bible "ye'or" is used to refer to Egyptian rivers (the Nile or one of its branches), and according to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon, this is derived from the Egyptian "iotr" which can be shortened to "io'r". So Egyptian seems like the most likely source for a word "yar". Based on this, we can hypothesize that before Hebrew/Canaanite was spoken in Israel, a language related to Egyptian was. We don't know if this language became extinct through assimilation or violent conquest, but either way it left only a handful of traces, perhaps including our river names.

Thinking about this last night, I thought of an entirely different line of evidence that Egyptian was once spoken in Israel. In Breishit 10, the genealogy of the 70 nations descended from Noach, Canaan is mentioned as a son of Ham, along with Mitzraim, Kush (Ethiopia), and Put (?). This is even though the Hebrew/Canaanite language is Semitic, so one would expect Canaan to be descended from Shem! Evidently the Torah sees something Hamitic about Canaan, even though the local language at the time of the Torah was Semitic.

To be fair, everything I have said so far is speculation, rather than clear-cut proofs. But when you take two "puzzle pieces" from completely different places (hypotheses based on geography and on genealogies), and find that the pieces "match", each of the two hypotheses looks much stronger than it did before.

The cloud in Pekudei

Parshat Pekudei ends with a description of the cloud that descended upon the Mishkan upon its completion:

The cloud covered the Ohel Moed, and the glory of Hashem filled the Mishkan. Moshe was unable to enter the Ohel Moed, because the cloud rested on it, and the glory of Hashem filled the Mishkan. (40:34-35)

Here are some thoughts about this cloud.

Ohel Moed vs Mishkan

The "Ohel Moed" and "Mishkan" are general names for the sanctuary, but each name also refers to one specific part of the sanctuary.

In the initial command to build a sanctuary, Moshe is told to "make curtains of goat-hide, for an 'ohel' upon the 'mishkan'" (26:7). Here, the "mishkan" is a cloth tent, and the "ohel" is a goat-hide tent placed upon it.

This explains the different uses of "ohel" and "mishkan" in the above verses. The cloud *above* the sanctuary is described in relation to the ohel, and the cloud *within* the sanctuary in relation to the mishkan.

The purpose of the cloud

This cloud wasn't a normal thing. It prevented anyone from entering the Mishkan, but normally, priests would enter the Mishkan at least once a day to perform services like lighting the Menorah. So why did this special one-time cloud appear?

To explain this, let's look at an earlier, similar event involving a cloud:

Moshe went up to the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of Hashem dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days, and He called to Moshe on the seventh day from out of the cloud. The appearance of the glory of Hashem was like fire burning on the peak of the mountain, in view of the children of Israel. Moshe entered the cloud, and went up the mountain, and Moshe was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. (24:15-18)

There are a number of similarities between this cloud and the cloud that covered the Mishkan:

• In both cases, an unusual cloud descends to cover the holy site. (Apparently Mount Sinai had previously not been covered by clouds, despite the involvement of clouds in the Sinai revelation).
• With the Mishkan, a "cloud" was present above the Mishkan, while the "glory of Hashem" was present within the Mishkan. Similarly here, the "glory of Hashem" dwelt on the mountain, while the "cloud" covered the mountain. Both terms are present, and arguably there is the same order, with the "cloud" physically above the "glory of Hashem".
• At Sinai, after six days of Moshe waiting outside the cloud, God calls to Moshe and he enters the cloud and receives the Torah. Similarly, in the Mishkan, God calls to Moshe. This command is found in the first verse of Vayikra, and is followed by the laws of sacrifices.

What is the point of these similarities?

One of the main purposes of the Mishkan is described in Shemot 25:21-22:

"You shall place the cover upon the ark, above it; and in the ark, you shall place the Testimony I will give you. I will meet you there, and I will speak with you from above the cover, between the two cherubs upon the ark of testimony, all that I shall command you regarding the children of Israel."

We see that the Mishkan was a place for revelation. The Sinai revelation was a one-time event, but the continued issuing of commandments (like those in Vayikra) was supposed to occur in the Mishkan.

I think this explains the similarities between the cloud at Sinai and the cloud at the Mishkan. To indicate to Moshe and the people that the revelation from the Mishkan had the same status as that at Sinai, God designed the cloud-appearance in the Mishkan to evoke that which occurred at Sinai.

Explorers and spies

What was the purpose of the mission of the spies, as described in Bamidbar 13 and Devarim 1? And how do we understand the differences between these two accounts?

In this analysis, we will assume that there are two distinct purposes of the twelve men's trip. The first purpose is "latur", meaning to explore* the land, to observe its natural characteristics and agricultural bounty, and to report on this to the people. The second purpose is "leragel", meaning to spy, to investigate the military situation and preparations of the land's inhabitants, in preparation for conquest. We can easily distinguish these purposes when they occur. Descriptions of the land and its produce are irrelevant to conquest and thus a part of "exploring"; descriptions of the people and fortifications (which God had promised to overcome) are irrelevant to "exploring" and therefore part of "spying".

The distinction between these purposes is well-known. But I have not seen anyone examine the passages based on these purposes, in the structured manner that I plan to. When I quote verses, I will use bold text to describe exploring, and red italic text to describe spying. This should make clear what exactly is going on in each verse, and allow us to piece together how the entire episode actually took place.

1. In Bamidbar

God's initial command to Moshe mentions only exploring:

Hashem spoke to Moshe saying: "Send you men to explore the land of Canaan which I give to the children of Israel. One man from each tribe you shall send, each one a prince among them."

The men chosen are princes and leaders, perhaps because a public report is most trusted when given by well known and respected individuals.

But when Moshe commands the men before their trip, he greatly expands on God's command:

Moshe sent them to explore the land of Canaan, and said to them:
Go up here in the Negev, and go up the mountain.
And see the land, what it is like,
and the people dwelling in it, are they strong or weak, are they few or many,
and what is the land they dwell in like, is it good or bad,
and what are the cities they dwell in like, are they in camps or fortresses,
and what is the land like, is it fat or thin, does it have trees in it or not?
And you shall be strong, and take from the fruit of the land.

We see that Moshe instructs the men both to explore and to spy. Indeed, he interweaves the two in a kind of chiastic pattern (ABABA).

What do the spies actually do? We see that they perform both parts of their mission:

They went up, and explored the land from the Tzin wilderness to Rehov near Hamat. They went up in the Negev, and came to Hevron, and there were Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmi, children of Anak; and Hevron was built seven years before Tzoan of Egypt. They came to Nahal Eshkol, and cut from there one sprig and cluster of grapes, and carried it on a pole using two men, and [took] from the pomegranates and figs.

The presence of Anakites ("giants") in the land is clearly of military significance. So is the antiquity of Hevron. R' Yaakov Medan explains that ancient Middle East cities were built as "tels", layer upon layer, so the older the city, the higher its "tel" and the harder it would be to conquer.

When the men deliver their report, they also mention both aspects of their mission:

"We came to the land where you send us, and indeed it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless, strong are the people dwelling in the land, and the cities are great and very fortified, and we also saw the children of Anak there. Amalek dwells in the Negev..."

After this the situation descends into a sorry argument and rebellion, but even then the men mention both parts of their mission:

They slandered the land to the children of Israel, saying, "The land which we went in to explore, it is a land which devours its inhabitants, and all the people we saw in it were people of measure. And there we saw the Nefilim, sons of Anak from the Nefilim, and we were like locusts in our eyes, and so were we in their eyes."

And so do Yehoshua and Kalev in their dissent:

The land which we went in to explore, the land is very very good. If Hashem is pleased with us, He will bring us to this land and give it to us. Only do not rebel against Hashem, and do not fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their defense has left them and Hashem is with us, so do not fear them.

In summary, we see that in God's initial command, only exploring is mentioned. But in every single event that follows, both exploring and spying are mentioned.

I think this is the most straightforward view of the events. God's initial command was simply to explore. For some reason, Moshe combined this with a command to spy. From then on, for the rest of the episode, exploring and spying were linked together.

2. In Devarim

In Moshe's retelling, no Divine command is mentioned. Rather, the initiative for the trip seems to come from the people, and it is purely about spying:

You all approached me, saying: "Let us send men before us, who will search the land for us, and give us a report of the way we shall go up to it and the cities we will come to."

There is no mention of the men being princes. For spying purposes, any twelve soldiers can do, and if anything, top leaders should not be exposed to the risks of a spying mission.

Then, the men went on their journey. What they did involved both exploring and spying, but perhaps the spying seems to be first and most important. Here, for the only time in the Torah, the verb "to spy" is used to refer to this trip:

They turned and went up the mountain, and came to Nahal Eshkol, and spied there. They took in their hands from the fruit of the land, and brought to us...

Surprisingly, the men's report, as initially told, seems to be entirely about exploring:

They said: "Good is the land which Hashem our God has given us."

But then the people begin to complain, and in their complaint they mention a different report, which involves spying. As Moshe tells it:

You complained in your tents, saying: Because Hashem hated us, He took us out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorite to destroy us. Where are we going up to? Our brothers melted our hearts, saying, "The nation is greater and taller than us, and the cities great and fortified up to the heavens, and the sons of the Anakites we saw there."

So what did the twelve men actually report? The results of their exploring, or the results of their spying? I think it's clear that they reported both. But Moshe chooses to dignify their exploring as "the" report, the only one he is willing to mention as such. The report of the spying, he puts in the mouths of the rebellious desert generation, not his own mouth. He thereby implies that the people should have listened only to the exploring.

3. General thoughts

Each passage, in Bamidbar and Devarim, has an internal difficulty. In Bamidbar, the mission includes both exploring and spying, though God had only mentioned exploring. In Devarim, the mission includes both exploring and spying, though the people had only asked to spy. Luckily for us, it seems that each passage supplies the information that is missing from the other. It appears that Bamidbar describes half of what led to the mission (God's command to explore) and Devarim the other half (the people's request to spy). These two initiatives must have occurred around the same time, and Moshe combined them into a single mission, which is fully described in both Bamidbar and Devarim.

For this understanding to work, we must explain what led Bamidbar to exclude the people's request to spy, and Devarim to exclude God's command to explore.

3a. What Bamidbar excludes

Let us start with Bamidbar. In many places, the Torah tells a story twice, and we are supposed to understand something by carefully examining the differences between the original and the retelling. One example is the marriage of Rivka. In the original telling, the slave apparently looked for a hospitable woman from any family. But in his long retelling, he makes it sound like only a relative of Avraham would have been acceptable.

Here in Bamidbar, we have something similar. After God's command, it should be unnecessary to record what Moshe told the men. But Moshe's words are recorded, and they differ from God's command, and this difference (the addition of spying) is exactly what led to the mission's failure. Moshe is the leader, and leaders must take responsibility for their decisions. So here Moshe gets the blame, even if the issue of spying was initially suggested by the people.

3b. What Devarim excludes

Devarim has a different perspective from Bamidbar in two ways. First, Moshe is not speaking as an "objective" historian. Rather, he intends to emphasize the people's past sins and the consequences, to deter them from sinning in the future. Second, he is speaking about himself, so he includes a personal perspective.

As part of Moshe's goal to remind the people of their sins, he shows a negative attitude toward the entire spies episode. If only none of the episode had happened, the death of a whole generation in the desert would have been avoided. The presence of a Divine command to send explorers seriously complicates this picture. Perhaps to keep the message simple, Moshe omits that command entirely.

Interesting, Moshe does use the verb "to explore" ("latur") once. This verb is rare, appearing just 9 times in all of Tanach outside the story in Bamidbar, so its use here is significant. After the negative spying report, Moshe tells the people not to abandon God,

"who travels before you on the road, to explore for you a place to encamp, with fire at night, to show you the road you should walk on, and with cloud by day."

For those who had exploring on their mind, Moshe does emphasize that "real" exploring is that which God continually does to protect Israel, and any negative conclusions that might be drawn from 12 men's exploring are insignificant in comparison.

As for how Moshe portrays his own behavior, as one might expect, his perspective is more complex and mixed than that in Bamidbar. Though he puts the blame for initiating the spying on the people, he also admits that "the matter was good in my eyes" (1:23). This makes him complicit in the sin, and explains why "God was angry at me too regarding you, saying: You too shall not go there" (1:37).

Also, Moshe says that he vocally opposed the spies' defeatism when they returned, unlike in Bamidbar where only Yehoshua and Kalev are mentioned as speaking up. Perhaps, Moshe's words are not mentioned in Bamidbar because, naturally, the people would not listen to Moshe when they could listen to men who had actually seen the land. Whereas in Devarim, even an ineffectual criticism from Moshe fits the theme of the criticisms he is giving the people 39 years later.

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*Coincidentally, the English "tour" and Hebrew "latur" not only sound the same, but appear to derive from the same root, meaning "to turn", as a person goes back and forth seeing things until he has seen everything. But the word "tour" has the connotations of traveling for pleasure, and without a practical goal in mind, which are out of place here. So I use "explore" as a translation instead.

The yoke

Speak to the children of Israel, and let them take to you a perfect red cow, with no blemish, which has never worn a yoke. (Bamidbar 19:2)

That the cow have no blemish is a well-known condition for sacrifices. Why, though, the requirement of never having worn a yoke?

Ever since the first-ever sacrifice in Breishit, where Hevel's offering of firstborn sheep was accepted by God, it has been preferred that "the first" of something be used for sacrifices. This is reflected in numerous later examples, such as bikurim for fruits, the laws of bechor for animals and people, and perhaps even Jericho (the first city conquered in Israel) becoming "herem... la-hashem" (Yehoshua 6:17) rather than being plundered by the conquerers.

I think the rule about the yoke is also a case of sacrificing "the first". In this case, that means that the first work done with the cow should be the act of sacrifice. The word for field labor is "avodah", and a sacrifice is also considered a form of "avodah". Both field labor and sacrifice are part of the service/servitude which might be expected of a cow.

I haven't thought about why exactly this requirement is absent for most sacrifices (one can come up with all sorts of guesses why). But where it is present (for parah adumah, and also for eglah arufah), I think the reason is in order to sacrifice "the first".

Bamidbar and Shelach

For years I've wondered if the super-verbose intro to Bamidbar, with the censuses and camps and whatnot, is designed to give us a sense of how big and unmanageable the nation was, as an introduction to the stories where it in fact turns out to be unmanageable.

After seeing verse 14:29 this year, I'm convinced:

בַּמִּדְבָּר הַזֶּה יִפְּלוּ פִגְרֵיכֶם וְכָל-פְּקֻדֵיכֶם, לְכָל-מִסְפַּרְכֶם, מִבֶּן עֶשְׂרִים שָׁנָה, וָמָעְלָה: אֲשֶׁר הֲלִינֹתֶם, עָלָי.

It uses every key word from the beginning of the book - bamidbar, pekudim, mispar, miben esrim. It seems (to me) to be referring back to those stories, just as those stories (I assume) refer in part to here.

The story of the spies concludes a series of disastrous events, beginning with the "mit'onnenim" in Behaalotecha. Here we reach absolute bottom, where the triumphant journey to Israel is entirely called off, until all the men die and are replaced by others.

The census was a triumphant moment, a demonstration of the people's power and potential. But as we see, it also contained the seeds of their destruction.

Lemech's song

In Breishit 4:23-24, Lemech (the descendant of Kayin) recites the following poem:

וַיֹּאמֶר לֶמֶךְ לְנָשָׁיו:
"עָדָה וְצִלָּה שְׁמַעַן קוֹלִי, נְשֵׁי לֶמֶךְ הַאְזֵנָּה אִמְרָתִי
כִּי אִישׁ הָרַגְתִּי לְפִצְעִי, וְיֶלֶד לְחַבֻּרָתִי
כִּי שִׁבְעָתַיִם יֻקַּם קָיִן, וְלֶמֶךְ שִׁבְעִים וְשִׁבְעָה."

What does this poem mean? What does Lemech intend to say, why does he intend to say it, and why is it included in the Torah?

Let us begin analyzing the poem by breaking it down into three lines:
1 - The introduction, calling on Lemech's wives
2 - The line about killing a man and child
3 - The line about vengeance

The most ambiguous line of the three is #2, and I purposefully did not punctuate it above so as to preserve the ambiguity. Essentially, there are two ways of reading it. Either it is a statement:

"For I have killed a man over my injury, and a child over my wound."

Or else, it is a rhetorical question from someone who has not killed:

"Have I killed a man over my injury, or a child over my wound?"

I think the best way to approach this ambiguity is by asking of Lemech was a good or bad person. If he was a good person, then most likely the question is rhetorical, and Lemech has not killed (though some commentators suggest that he had killed unintentionally and wanted to protest his innocence of murder). In the "good Lemech" case, the vengeance in #3 must be God's vengeance against whoever would harm Lemech.

The alternative is to say that Lemech was a bad (or at least violent) person. He is stating for a fact that he had killed. In that case, the vengeance is carried out by Lemech himself against whoever would attempt to harm Lemech.

My difficulty with the "good Lemech" interpretation is that nowhere do we hear that God has promised vengeance upon those who attack Lemech. You would think that this promise should be mentioned in the Torah, so that we know what Lemech is talking about. Since no such story exists, I prefer the "bad Lemech" interpretation in which Lemech promise that he himself will carry out the vengeance.

In that case, line #2 should be translated as follows: "For I have killed a man over my injury, and a child over my wound." This killing is disproportionate: Lemech received a non-fatal wound, and in return he inflicts a fatal injury. That's not very moral, but it does fit perfectly the claim in line #3 that Lemech will take 77-fold vengeance. R' Yaakov Medan, in his book "Ki Karov Elecha", goes further and explains the likely details of Lemech's killing: he killed a "man" and a "child", a man because that man wounded him, and a child (the same man's child) because the most total revenge against someone is to kill them and all their offspring!

So now we have a coherent explanation of everything in lines #2 and #3. What about #1? Why does this story have to be told to Lemech's wives?

Perhaps we can draw an answer from the fact that there are TWO wives. Having multiple wives is not a recipe for happiness in the Torah. In halacha, each wife is known as the "tzara" of the other, due to the hostility they are presumed to have for each other as they vie for their husband's affection. And not only do they fight with each other, but their struggles are likely to spill over and disturb the husband's life. Avraham was forced to part forever from his son Yishmael due to his wives' rivalry, David and Shlomo each suffered incredibly due to their later wives (Batsheva and Shlomo's foreign wives), and even someone as highly regarded as Yaakov Avinu was brought to rage by one of his wives' complaints (Breishit 30:2). We already know Lemech was a over-reacting violent man, and with the extra stress caused by his bigamy, we can imagine this was not a peaceful household.

Perhaps, given this situation, we can explain why Lemech chose to give this speech to his wives. Perhaps there had been one fight too many in the household, and Lemech had had enough. He knew only one way of solving conflicts, and that was to utterly destroy the other side. Thus, in this poem, he threatened that if one of his wives went a bit too far in the future, he would kill her. Given Lemech's past, this would not be an idle threat. And since Lemech had TWO wives, killing one of them might not be an overwhelming blow to him, as he would still have the other. If this idea is correct, then here we have the first and perhaps the only mention in the Torah of marital violence.

Lemech's poem is the last word in the story of Kayin's descendants: the next verse (4:25) tells of the birth of Shet, who would eventually become the ancestor of Noach. In some ways Lemech's life could be seen as a success: his three sons go on to found the disciplines of herding, music, and forging (4:20-22). As with Joseph Kennedy, whose children included a president and two senators, one has to suspect that such accomplished kids owe something to the parents. But Lemech was a violent, vindicative man - not only to strangers but, it seems likely, even to his own wives. That quality is the "death sentence" for Lemech. Once the Torah attests to his negative character traits, it immediately and permanently abandons him, turning its attention to the family which will in part survive the flood.

Naaseh Venishma

According to the famous midrash (Shabbat 88a) on the words "naaseh venishma" (Shemot 24:7), the Jewish people first agreed to accept the Torah unconditionally, without understanding or judging its contents ("we will do"), and only then seeked to understand it ("we will hear").

This is not the simple meaning of the words. They should be translated as "we will do and we will obey" rather than "we will do and we will hear". The same Biblical Hebrew word is used for "listen" and "obey"; the modern Hebrew word for "obey" is simply the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew word for "listen". So the idea of unconditional acceptance does not really have a source in Shemot 24:7.

In fact, one might even argue that the opposite is implied. The entire verse reads as follows: "[Moshe] took the scroll of the covenant, and read it to the people, and they said: Everything Hashem spoke, we will do and we will obey." They people declare their acceptance after hearing what is in the scroll, not before.

So if "we will do and we will hear" is not the simple meaning of this verse, what on earth is the midrash talking about?

One might say that the midrash's idea must be true on a philosophical level - perhaps your commitments can only be meaningful if you make them unconditionally, and intend to hold to them in good or bad times, without considering if at some point in the future it will be advantageous to you to betray them.

But beyond this general idea, I think we can locate many specific verses in the Torah that make the same point.

There are a number of sections in the Torah where a mitzvah or category of mitzvot is presented in detail. In addition to all the details, there are often a couple verses which summarize the section, including either a brief summary of the laws, or else an explanation of the effects and importance of keeping them. Interestingly, this summary appears not at the beginning of the section (where you might expect it), but rather, almost universally at the END of the section. Here are a number of examples:

• The Mishkan: In addition to the details of HOW to build the Mishkan, the reason WHY we build it is so that God may dwell among us. This is mentioned briefly at the beginning of the long Mishkan passage, but more fully explained near the end (why it's not at the absolute end is the subject of another essay).
  
• Kosher animals: This passage has no special beginning. Rather, the passage immediately starts by listing kosher and non-kosher animals. The passage ends with a "why" explanation for the laws of kashrut: "be holy for I am holy", and therefore, do not eat anything impure.
  
• Tzaraat: This passage has no special beginning (the first paragraph is just one type of tzaraat). The passage ends with a summary of the types of tzaraat, which is introduced by the formal heading "zot torat hatzaraat".
  
• Bodily emissions: This section too begins with specific cases rather than a special beginning. It ends with both a "zot torat ___" summary, as well as a "why" explanation (that Jews not "defile My tabernacle").
  
• Sexual sins: The beginning here is somewhat unusual in that it starts with the generalization of not doing "the practice of the land of Egypt/Canaan" - the kind of broad explanation I'd expect to find at the end. However, the end is more involved, repeating this generalization and adding both individual and collective punishments.
  
• Sotah: This passage has no special beginning. The end is a "zot torat ___" summary.
  
• Vows: This passage has no special beginning. The end has a summary of the laws.
  

(At the end of this post, you can find a table including the various verses for each of these laws, to give a clearer picture of what I'm referring to.) We see that, repeatedly, the summaries and philosophical content of a section come at the end of the section, not the beginning. Normally we expect the opposite: the broad explanations should come at the beginning of the passage, so you are clear about what you are about to learn and why. But the Torah chooses a different way; it mostly withholds the explanations until you are done learning all the laws. Why does the Torah do this? I think it is due to the idea of "naaseh venishma". In all these passages, the Torah wants you to learn and accept the laws WITHOUT necessarily having a clear picture of what their purpose is. You must be willing to obey even if you don't understand. Once you have done that, you can then be taught the ideas that will give you understanding and a broader picture. This is what the midrash says; earlier we suggested the same thing for philosophical reasons; and now I think we see the same idea built into the structure of the Torah's commandments. It has been said that the midrash on a verse is not the simple meaning of that verse. Rather, it is often the simple meaning of a DIFFERENT verse or verses. I think the midrash of "naaseh venishma" is a good example of this. As I argued at the beginning of this essay, this midrash is not actually the meaning of the words "naaseh venishma". But as I argued at the end of the essay, it IS the meaning which can be found in a number of other passages in the Torah.

The Mishkan	Begins with "Speak to the children of Israel, that they take for Me an offering ... This is the offering which ye shall take of them: gold, and silver, and brass..." (Shemot 25:2). This is soon followed by a basic description of the purpose of the Mishkan: "And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them." (25:8)
	But the full description of the Mishkan's purpose only appears near the end of the passage: "And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God. And they shall know that I am Hashem their God, who brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them." (29:45-46)
Kosher animals	Begins with "These are the living things which ye may eat among all the beasts that are on the earth. Whatever parts the hoof, and is wholly cloven-footed..." (Vayikra 11:2)
	Ends with "You shall not soil yourself with any swarming thing, nor impurify yourselves with them, and become impurified thereby. For I am Hashem your God; so sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy; and do not defile yourselves with any swarming thing which moves upon the earth. For I am the LORD that brought you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God; ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy." (11:43-45)
Tzaraat:	Begins with "Should a man have in the skin of his flesh a rising, or a scab, or a bright spot, and it is the plague of leprosy in the skin of his flesh, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest..." (13:2)
	Ends with "This is the law for all manner of plague of leprosy, and for a scall; and for the leprosy of a garment, and for a house; and for a rising, and for a scab, and for a bright spot; to teach when it is unclean, and when it is clean; this is the law of leprosy." (14:55-57)
Bodily emissions:	Begins with "When any man hath an emission [zav] out of his flesh, his emission is unclean." (15:2)
	Ends with "Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile My tabernacle that is in their midst. This is the law of he who has an emission; and of he from whom semen goes out, making him impure; and of her who is sick with her impurity, and of them that have an emission, whether it be a man or woman; and of he who lies with an impure woman." (15:31-33)
Sexual sins:	Begins with "You shall not do according to the practice of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, nor according to the practice of the land of Canaan where I bring you... You shall keep my statutes and ordinances, which man keeps and thereby lives, I am Hashem." (18:3-5)
	Ends with "So you shall keep My statutes and ordinances, and not do any of these abominations; neither the native nor the stranger living among you - for all these abominations did the men of the land that were before you, and the land was defiled - that the land not vomit you out also, when ye defile it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. For whoever does any of these abominations, the souls that do them shall be cut off from among their people. Therefore you shall keep My charge, that ye do not any of these abominable customs, which were done before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am Hashem your God." (18:26-30)
Sotah:	Begins with "Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: If any man's wife go aside, and act unfaithfully against him... " (Bamidbar 5:12)
	Ends with "This is the law of jealousy, when a wife, being under her husband, strays and is defiled; ... then shall he set the woman before Hashem, and the priest shall execute upon her all this law. And the man shall be clear from iniquity, and that woman shall bear her iniquity." (5:29-31)
Vows:	Begins with "This is the matter which Hashem has commanded. When a man makes a vow to Hashem..." (30:2-3)
	Ends with "These are the statutes, which Hashem commanded Moshe, between a man and his wife, between a father and his daughter, being in her youth, in her father's house." (30:17)

Fixed or personalized vidui?

Here is an argument for not saying the long text of vidui that appears in Yom Kippur machzorim. In the following comment (also posted there), I argued that the accepted text should be said (in addition to any additions that are appropriate for an individual, like the page argued. Here are my reasons:

ברור שוידוי אישי מאוד חשוב, והמחשבה שנדרשת כדי להכין וידוי אישי היא אולי החלק המרכזי של התשובה. בכל זאת, נדמה לי שיש ערך בוידוי המודפס גם מעבר למה שאמרת. יותר מפעם אחת, לפני יום כיפור עזרתי בוידוי המודפס כדי להדריך את התשובה שלי. חשבתי לעצמי, "מתי בשנה האחרונה בגדתי במישהו? מתי עשיתי משהו שיכול להיחשב לגזילה? מתי דיברתי דופי?" ומתוך כל הזויות האלו נזכרתי בהרבה חטאים שבכלל שכחתי קודם לזה, וגם הוספתי כמה ביטויים לוידוי האישי שלי בתפילות יוה"כ על בסיס אותם תובנות. זה קצת דומה למה שקורה בתפילה - אם במקרה לא היה איכפת לי מאנשים חולים, ברכת "רפאנו" מזכיר לי שצריך להיות איכפת לי. אם לא ציפיתי מספיק לבניית בית המקדש, ברכת "רצה" מזכיר לי שזה צריך להיות חשוב לי. עובדה שאנחנו לא תמיד זוכרים את כל מה שכדאי לנו לומר בתפילה ובוידוי, והטקסט המקובל עוזר לנו לזכור.

עוד סיבה שהוידוי המודפס חשוב, נדמה לי שאפשר לראות בסוג בחטאים שהוא מפרט. זה מעניין שוידוי המודפס כוללת בעיקר חטאים בין אדם למקום, והוידוי המורחב שרואים לפעמים בצילומים כוללת בעיקר חטאים בין אדם למקום. למשל, ל"בגדתי" מוסיפים "ביטלתי תורה, בירכתי לבטלה". אני לא רוצה להגיד שבין אדם למקום יותר או פחות חשוב מבין אדם לחברו, אבל נדמה לי שיש משהו מופלא כשמחברים בין השנים, בזה שגם חטא בין אדם לחברו צריך וידוי לה'. ייתכן שהחיבור הזה הוא אפילו אחד הדברים מייחד את היהדות משאר דתות העולם. וחבל להפסיד את זה.

סוף סוף, כל הרבנים ששמעתי ממליצים להוסיף משהו אישי לוידוי, ולא שמעתי רב (חוץ ממך אם אתה רב) שממליץ לדלג על המודפס. אזי אני מוסיף ולא מדלג, ומקווה שאני מרוויח מכל הבחינות.

Thoughts on Beshalach

Moshe said to them: "Let no person leave of it till the morning.' But they did not obey Moshe, and some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and rotted. (16:19-20)

Why did the manna have to spoil each morning? One reason is obvious. The manna was supplied was not just to keep the Jews from starving, but also to train them to depend on God: "[Hashem] fed you the manna, which you and your fathers did not know of, to show you that man does not live by bread alone, but by the decree of Hashem" (Devarim 8:3). Every morning the Jews woke up with an empty pantry and nothing to rely on but the promise that God would provide them with more food.

I think there is another possible reason, which we see by comparison to a completely different topic - korbanot.

For those Temple sacrifices which are eaten by human beings (as opposed to being burnt on the altar), the eating must be done within a certain period of time (see Zevachim chapter 5). For a few sacrifices, this period is two days and one night (i.e. the remainder of the day on which it is sacrificed, plus 24 hours, until sundown). For all other sacrifices, the period is one day and one night. This means that the sacrifice must be entirely consumed by daybreak after it is sacrificed. The Torah warns us a number of times not to leave sacrificial meat "until morning" - in Shemot 12:10, Vayikra 7:16 and 22:30, Bamidbar 9:12, and Devarim 16:4, regarding different types of sacrifice.

Just as sacrifices must be eaten by morning, so too manna, and perhaps this hints at a deeper similarity between them.

A second similarity between manna and sacrifices appears if we look at Shabbat. As we know, a double portion of manna fell before Shabbat and none on Shabbat. (This is commemorated in our modern double challah bread on Shabbat.) Similarly, the Shabbat musaf offering is virtually identical to the daily tamid offering - two sheep and two tenth-eifah mincha offerings. This means that overall, double as many sacrifices are offered on Shabbat as on weekdays. This double sacrifice is parallel to the double manna associated with Shabbat.

A third commonality between manna and sacrifices is the focus of their location. A jug of manna was to be placed "before Hashem, as a remembrance, for your generations", next to the ark in the Mishkan (Shemot 16:33). This parallels the many sacrifices which were to be brought "before Hashem" in the Temple, and especially the lechem hapanim, another kind of bread which was to be placed "before Me, forever" (Shemot 25:30)

The upshot of all of this is that it's possible to see the eating of manna as a parallel to the eating of sacrifices. Perhaps living in the desert was like a perpetual visit to the Temple, and eating the desert food was like a perpetual sacrificial occasion.

Moshe built an altar, and named it Hashem-Nissi. And he said: "A hand upon the throne of Hashem: there will be war to Hashem with Amalek from generation to generation." (17:15-16)

Two questions arise when reading the lines. 1) Who is "he" who spoke, Moshe or God? 2) What does the phrase "a hand upon the throne of Hashem" mean?

All the standard commentators say that the raising of a hand indicates the making of an oath, and so God is promising that He will wage war against Amalek. I agree that an oath is being made here. But I would like to suggest that perhaps it is Moshe, not God, who is speaking and making that oath.

There is one other occasion in the Torah when someone places their hand on a chair:

"Avraham said to his servant, the elder of his house, who ruled over all that he had: 'Please place your hand under my thigh.' " (Breishit 24:2)

When a person is standing, there is no "underneath" their thigh. So Avraham must have been sitting at the time. He asked his servant to place a hand between Avraham's thigh and the chair, below the thigh and above the chair. This is exactly the gesture we have in Shemot - a hand is placed on a chair (or throne).

Who made the oath in Breishit? The servant, who swore to his master Avraham that he would not marry Yitzchak to a Canaanite. The physical gesture of a hand under the thigh is suggestive of the servant-master relationship: to put your hand in such a position, you must crouch or bow down, making yourself literally subordinate to your master, reflecting your social role. You accept the master's authority over you, and the promises you make to the master become binding commitments you must fulfill.

(This is the pshat, while the midrash says that the servant held Avraham's brit milah. This is a very perceptive interpretation. It highlights the oath and the role of Yitzchak both regarding brit milah and here: there God says that the covenant will be perpetuated through Yitzchak; here Avraham moves to ensure that Yitzchak's role in the covenant is upheld. The ideas of brit milah were probably on Avraham's mind when he beswore his servant - that's what we can learn from the midrash. But we should not think that the servant's hand was literally on Avraham's brit milah, since we have a good explanation that does not require adding extra details to the story.)

In Shemot, we have the same gesture of a hand being placed on a chair (metaphorically, since God and His throne are not physical), and I would like to interpret it the same way. Clearly God is the master and Moshe is the subordinate. That means Moshe, not God, is making the oath! Why does Moshe do this? He has just been saved by God from the attacking Amalekites, and like any good Biblical figure who has just been saved, he builds an altar and swears loyalty to God from then on.

What about the contents of the oath? The phrase "milchama lahashem ba'amalek" is normally translated as "God will be at war against Amalek", indicating that God made the oath. Were we to take the phrase in a vacuum, I think this would be the simplest meaning, and this also has the best continuity with the previous verse.

I have two responses to this claim: 1) The phrase "milchama lahashem ba'amalek" could be translated as "There will be a war dedicated to God (=a holy war) against Amalek", with the war conducted by Israel. 2) Moshe could be pledging his loyalty to God, as a response to the promise God just made regarding Amalek.

Given how confident I am about the throne metaphor, I think one of these two approaches is preferable, even they make the phrase "milchama lahashem ba'amalek" seem more awkward in isolation.

What about the identity of the speaker in the phrase "And he said"? This phrase too is ambiguous. The commentators would say that "he" refers to Hashem from "Hashem-Nissi" in the previous verse, even though this is a proper noun and Hashem doesn't do anything active in that verse. Whereas I would say that since the previous verse spoke of Moshe building an altar, this verse speaks of Moshe making an oath.

Shabbat Yom Kippur

From Breishit Rabbah (22:13):
"And Cain went out from before God" (Genesis 4:16) - R' Hama in the name of R' Hanina son of R' Yitzchak said: [Cain] went out happy ... Adam ran into him and said to him: "What was your judgment?" [Cain] said: "I repented and [my punishment] was commuted." Adam slapped himself in the face, and said: "Such is the power of repentance, and I did not know it?" Immediately Adam stood and recited: "A song of praise for the Sabbath day: It is good 'lehodot' [=to thank or to confess to] God..." (Psalms 92)

Why does Adam's song refer to the Sabbath day? Because as the rabbis say elsewhere, not only was Adam created on the sixth day, but he sinned on the very day he was created. He could have immediately repented and entered Shabbat purified from his sin. Adam missed this initial opportunity. But once he learned about repentance, he took himself back to the moment of his sin and welcomed Shabbat while repenting.

This midrash seems especially appropriate as we enter the Shabbat of Yom Kippur. Not only is it the special day of atonement for the Jewish people, but it commemorates the occasion on which all of humanity learned about repentance and forgiveness.