Daas Torah?

I just saw a great quote in a Tradition article (by R' Sperber, edition 36:3).

"Nothing could be more praiseworthy and honorable to the Hazon Ish himself than that people should study his words and occasionally come up with different conclusions."
-Igrot Moshe, YD 3:8

R' Bazak on the Spies

I would like to critique R' Amnon Bazak's article in the Shabbat BeShabbato parsha sheet for parshat Shelach.

The Issues

In parshat Shelach, each tribe contributes one spy, and the list of spies along with their tribe is given. Here is the order of tribes from which the spies come. (In a few cases I have included the spy's name because it will later become relevant.)

Reuven
Shimon
Yehudah (Kalev ben Yefuneh)
Yisachar (Yigal ben Yosef)
Efraim (Yehoshua bin Nun)
Binyamin
Zevulun
Yosef/Menashe
Dan
Asher
Naftali
Gad

This list raises the following questions:

1. The tribes are out of order. Most lists of the tribes in the Torah are by order of birth, by mother (Leah/Rachel/concubines), by encampment, or by eventual territorial inheritance. Here, no obvious order is followed. For example, in all four of the classification systems I just mentioned, the tribes of Efraim, Menashe, and Binyamin are adjacent to one another. But here they are separated by Zevulun, a tribe which bears no relationship to them. Why this order?

2. The tribe of Menashe is mentioned here as being a subset of the tribe of Yosef. This is normal procedure in the Torah for both Efraim and Menashe. But here it is done only for Menashe, not for Efraim. Why not for Efraim too?

3. The spies are supposed to be "prominent men, leaders of Bnei Yisrael". But they are not the same people who were previously listed as being the princes of each tribe. Why weren't the princes chosen as spies?

R' Bazak's Answers

R' Bazak assumes that Moshe, fearing that the spies' mission would end the way it did, maneuvered to have his trusted associate Yehoshua named among the spies. He hoped this would influence the other spies for the better. Unfortunately, in the end Yehoshua's influence was not enough to change the outcome.

In pursuit of this goal, Moshe decided to send not the princes (this would have disqualified Yehoshua who was not a prince) but rather people of slightly lower stature. (question 3) To emphasize Yehoshua's centrality to Moshe, Yehoshua and his tribe Efraim were moved forward from their expected spot in the list. (question 2) Beforehand Efraim had been listed next to Menashe and thus subsumed under Yosef. But when their name moved, the mention of Yosef did not move with it. (question 1)

My Criticism

1. It is hard to understand why, in R' Bazak's explanation, the reference to Yosef did not move along with the name Efraim. As it is, it would appear (wrongly of course) that Efraim is not a son of Yosef. If the mentions of Yosef and Efraim were moved up together, it would be clearer that Efraim is a son of Yosef, and then (after a digression) that Menashe was too. Alternatively, the mentions of Yosef, Efraim, AND Menashe could be moved up together, and all confusion about Yosef's descendants could be avoided. (We know that Binyamin "moved up" along with Efraim; as long as multiple tribes are moving, Menashe is a much more natural choice than Binyamin.) According to either of these suggestions, the "moving up" would make much more sense that it does with R' Bazak's choice. Yet the Torah did not choose either "sensible" option.

As further support for my point here, looking throughout Sefer Bamidbar, we see that Efraim is mentioned before Menashe in cases of leadership and war, while Menashe is mentioned first when discussing tribal structure and land inheritance. Our case seems to be in the former category, so Efraim should have been mentioned before Menashe, and the mention of Yosef which precedes both Efraim and Menashe should have "attached" itself to Efraim. Yet we see it did not move with Efraim.

2. It is not clear what is gained by moving Yehoshua from 7th to 5th in the list, as R' Bazak says was done to emphasize Yehoshua's role. If Yehoshua were so important, why wasn't he placed 1st on the list? 5th on the list does nothing more than confuse you. Nobody before R' Bazak saw a sign of Yehoshua's importance in his place on the list, hinting perhaps that such a sign does not exist.

3. Moshe's great faith in Yehoshua, according to R' Bazak, seem slightly misplaced when it was Kalev not Yehoshua who did the bulk of the arguing against the 10 evil spies. If Kalev too was chosen for his good qualities, why is he not "moved up" in the list too? More significantly, why weren't the other 10 spies chosen for their good qualities? Given that Moshe had abandoned the idea of sending each tribe's prince, couldn't he have found a worthy choice among any of the other 10 tribes?

For these reasons, I think R' Bazak's answers must be totally rejected as an explanation for the list's oddities.

Alternative Resolution

3. I am surprised that anyone would possibly presume that the spies would be the princes. When governments communicate with each other, it is rare for the highest executives to travel from one side to the other. For full-time communication an ambassador is used; on more special occasions a foreign minister or other envoy does the job. Summit meetings between top leaders are a rare occasion. When sending spies into hostile territory, it is all the more clear that the top leaders should not be used.

Thus it makes perfect sense that second-tier leaders are chosen to be spies. Yehoshua, who has already demonstrated himself as an able military commander but who is not yet a political leader, is as good a choice as any. His righteousness surely didn't hurt, but there's no indication that it was the most central factor.

2. Based on the above considerations, it seems to me that the "mention of Yosef" problem is insoluble if we approach it as R' Bazak has. However, there is a happy accident in the text which I think provides the correct solution.

Notice the name immediately preceding the tribe of Efraim in the list: "Of the tribe of Yisachar, Yigal son of Yosef. Of the tribe of Efraim, Hoshea son of Nun." The father's name is exactly the "Yosef" we thought was missing! I assume that having the name Yosef appear twice in a row, referring to different people, would have been confusing and weird sounding. Thus while Yosef should have appeared before both Efraim and Menashe, it was "removed" from before Efraim.

Of course, we all know that Efraim is a son of Yosef. Normally we would mention it anyway because that's the Torah's style. But here, where the normal style sounds bad, it is abandoned.

1. Why, then, was Efraim moved in the list, away from Menashe, in the first place?

I don't have a conclusive answer for this, but I don't think I need one. We really know very few details about the spies' mission. There are any number of possible reasons why the individuals should be mentioned in a specific order or grouping, and there is no a priori reason why the order of individuals should be the same as of the tribes. Of course, the fact that the list mostly corresponds to the normal tribal list is very suggestive, but it is easy to think of scenarios that account for that.

For example, imagine that the spies divided themselves into three groups of four, for tactical reasons. The first group included 4 tribes descended from Leah. The second group included the remaining Leah tribe as well as the 3 Rachel tribes. The third group included the 4 concubine-descended tribes. Within each group the spies were ordered by authority level. Due to his background Yehoshua was given the highest authority in the second group. This earned him the 5th spot on the overall list, putting him above the Zevulun spy and thus making the list incompatible with the order of tribal birth.

Another possible direction of inquiry would be to look back to Sefer Breishit where the 10 brothers were accused of being spies. There too Yosef and Binyamin have an anomalous position in a story about spies, perhaps related to their anomalous position on our list. I am not sure what consequences if any this comparison has, but it might be worth looking into.

In short, I see no difficulty with the fact that spies - not tribes - are not in the expected order.

Random Comments

R' Bazak's essay here, and others that he has published in Shabbat BeShabbato, are well below the standards that he has set for himself in such brilliant articles as this one.

This just goes to show that if you are expected to produce an original high-level thought every week indefinitely, at some point you will run out of interesting things to say and will occasionally have to post something of inferior quality.

It is a lesson I myself have learned well, through a long period of blogging.

Ki hem chayenu veorech yamenu

R' Soloveitchik in "Halachic Mind" proposes a philosophy in which halachic and scientific inquiry are conducted in very similar manners. As he describes it, Jewish sources form a kind of "landscape" which we explore, investigate and categorize, just as we investigate the natural world, in order to develop an approach to running our lives.

R' Soloveitchik's formulation resonates with me, and probably with many other people. It also provides a starting point for recognizing the ways in which scientific and religious inquiry are not alike.

In particular, I see one fundamental difference between Torah knowledge and scientific knowledge. If all the scientific knowledge in the world were forgotten, it would only be a temporary inconvenience for humanity. The same natural world would continue to exist as before. All the experiments performed over the last few thousand years could be re-performed and all the scientific laws and models rediscovered.

The same is not true of Torah knowledge. If the Bible, Talmud, and other traditions were to be forgotten, then barring miracles, they would be forever unrecoverable. Unlike the workings of nature which are forever present and testable, Torah knowledge was introduced into the world through a limited number of revelatory events. If we lose our memory of what happened at those events, the laws of nature do not guarantee us any future revelation.

It seems to me that this is the reason for the great emphasis Judaism places on Torah study. By studying Jewish tradition, and transmitting it to our children (this is an integral part of the mitzvah, see the first paragraph of the Shema), we do our part to ensure that the Torah is accessible to an infinite number of future generations. Unlike every other investment in the world which may pay off for an hour or a year or a thousand years, Torah study is an investment which can pay off literally forever.

This consideration seems to be the basis for the Jewish commitment to Torah study, a commitment which often seems so incomprehensible to outsiders, but can in fact be readily understood in practical terms.


UPDATE: in a sicha by R' Aharon Lichtenstein I saw the following very relevant source:

R' Hoshaya said: Wherever [a Biblical verse] says "morasha", the word is talking about the future.
- But it is written "[Torah tziva lanu Mosheh,] morasha kehilat yaakov"?
- He said: There is nothing more connected to the future than [the Torah].
(Yerushalmi Bava Batra 8:2)

Things I bet you didn't know

1) If you want to give Aharon Barak a call, an office number which he actually answers can be found here.

2) Ruth Gavison has a number of religious friends in Jerusalem and enjoys singing zemirot at Shabbat meals.

Thoughts on Yehoshua's spies

The two spies sent by Yehoshua to Jericho chose to spend the night there in the house of a prostitute named Rachav.

Understandably, this choice has scandalized generations of Biblical commentators. (Artscroll, for example, says Rachav was an "innkeeper" rather than a prostitute. Some older commentators translate "zonah" as "food merchant", which at least has a plausible etymology.) Why would the spies, who by all accounts were upstanding people who performed their job professionally, visit a prostitute in the middle of their mission?

One reason is that prostitutes, by the nature of their work, are required to be good at keeping secrets. Many of their customers would not be happy if news of their sexual escapades became well-known. Thus the spies could trust Rachav to keep their secret, more than they could have trusted a citizen chosen at random.

Another reason is that since the spies were probably nervous, suspicious-looking people, it was in their interest to behave like other such people and pretend just to be looking for sex. Thus their erratic behavior would be ascribed to a desire to avoid embarrassment, rather than a desire to avoid being revealed as spies.

A third possible reason is that prostitutes were probably lower-class and had less to lose by betraying their city for the enemy, Israel.

Politics and religion

People can be broadly generalized as right-wing or left-wing on any particular political issue. (Obviously.) Among the religious Jews whom we would identify as right-wing, it seems to me that their political and religious beliefs come about in two very distinct ways.

First, there are people whose primary motivation is religious, and due to certain Jewish commandments or attitudes have come to reject "land for peace" and other more left-wing political approaches. Unfortunately, these people are hard to conclusively identify as being in this category, since deep questions of "what came first, politics or religion" cannot be answered based on a few superficial observations.

The best example I can think of in this category is R' Yaakov Medan. The depth of his involvement in social, judicial, and educational issues, his innovation and enthusiasm when engaging in a broad range of religious scholarship, and (I posit from personal experience) the way he interacts with people, are all out of character for someone whose driving motivations are nationalistic. And yet there should be no questioning his right-wing-ness: I'm fully convinced that he regrets not expelling the West Bank Arabs in 1967, and would likely be willing to do the same today.

However, R' Medan is unusual in that the scope of his accomplishments allows us to carefully evaluate what he does and does not value. For normal people like us who make only a limited contribution to the public domain, it is very difficult for others to know what really motivates us.

The people on my second category are much easier to identify. They are those whose religion is simply an appendage of their nationalism. They often don't make a substantial time and effort commitment to learning Torah or engaging in chessed activities. The males among them don't always even go to minyan! But if you ask them to name the person who they most respect and who best exemplifies their worldview, they will invariably point you to a rabbi (generally named Kahane). In a certain sense, therefore, their religiousness is quite deep. But their deep allegiance makes a peculiar contrast with the lack of enthusiasm they show in acting on the more trying of their beliefs.

How does such a combination come about? The answer is simple. Aware that contemporary moral expectations do not allow for wars of conquest or killing Arabs, these people find in certain Jewish sources an alternative basis for their jingoism. A little honesty requires that they adopt the whole of Jewish practice in order to feel justified in believing in what they see as Jewish attitudes. But rarely do they show the same enthusiasm for these "derived" beliefs that they do for mouthing off about the latest comments by an Israeli government minister.

Now, you will tell me that most of the religious right-wing Jews you know fit neither of my stereotypical descriptions. They are neither entirely focused on the Torah to the exclusion of political attitudes not found in the sources, nor is their Judaism a crutch used solely to legitimize their political views. My hypothesis is that rather than fitting neither category, they fit both. Their are motivated by purely religious and purely political beliefs, to greater and lesser extents depending on the person. These motivations, while of separate origin, are mutually reinforcing to a certain extent and generally they live in happy coexistence.

But in their roots, one of these motivations is pure and the other impure, and religious Jews would do well to remove the latter from their consciousness. The prophet Amos tells us that God does not do special favors for the Jews any more that for the Ethiopians, Philistines or Arameans. Our privileges over the Arabs in Israel are limited to the extend of our observance of the Torah. If like secular Zionists a century ago we lose sight of that fact, then we will end up losing not only the Torah, but also our rights in the land and eventually our very will and ability to continue living there.

Beit Yishai

David Hamelech's family tree, based on Sefer Shmuel. The more important people are in bold. Women are in red.

It's interesting how many of the events took place "within the extended family". The same seems to be true of Shaul's family. The Bushes and Clintons still have a long way to catch up...

Ashkenaziss

At some point I was translating online between English and German (which are very similar languages linguistically), and I noticed the following curious phenomenon.

English - German
street - strassen
hot - heiss
nut - nuss

Each of these words, and many others, is essentially the same in English and German. The only difference is that the "t" sound in English is replaced with a "ss" sound in German.

This is, of course, the exact difference between the "normal" and Ashkenazi pronunciations of Hebrew!

My theory is that, about a thousand years ago, everyone in Germany forgot how to say the letter "t" and started pronouncing it as "s" instead. So words in German that had a "t" in them were now pronounced differently, and eventually this was recognized through the use of a new "ss" letter. For the Jews in Germany at the time, this affected their pronunciation of Hebrew as well as German. Based on the common German pronunciation, the letter "taf" became a "saf".

These Jews and their descendants moved east and became the Ashkenazi population of Europe. Despite their migration and dispersion, they remained remarkably faithful to their customs of speech. Their day-to-day language remained a variation of German (Yiddish), and their pronunciation of Hebrew retained the oddities of the non-Jewish population their ancestors had lived among in Germany.

Today Yiddish has virtually died out, but if you want proof that Ashkenazim indeed have ancestry in Ashkenaz, look no further than the "Ashkenaziss" pronunciation which remains alive and well to this day.

Kimsos chatan al kalah

There is a custom at Jewish weddings that the bride walks in a circle around the groom several times before taking her place under the chuppah. I have never seen a good explanation for this, but skimming through Tanach this afternoon I came across an idea which HAS to be the correct explanation.

Yirmiyahu 31:20-21 says:
שובי בתולת ישראל, שבי אל עריך אלה. עד מתי תתחמקין, הבת השובבה? כי ברא יהוה חדשה בארץ, נקבה תסובב גבר

I would roughly translate this as "Return, O virgin of Israel, return to these your cities. How long will you turn away, you elusive girl? For Hashem has created a new thing in the earth: a woman shall circle a man."

The metaphor, of course, is that God and Israel are the man and woman courting each other. Historically men took the active role in courting women; similarly, God courted us by performing miracles and giving us land and the Torah. But in the messianic era, the equation will be reversed as Israel, the "woman", will "circle" and thereby court God by reaching out for Him with unprecedented spiritual enthusiasm. "I will let loose hunger in the land - not hunger for bread or thirst for water, but to hear the words of Hashem."

The wedding custom seems to be a direct acting out of the verse in Yirmiyahu: literally, the woman circles the man.

If you know the verse's context, it is clear that the custom alludes to the Jewish people's collective destiny and our continued hope for redemption. In this respect, it is like the smashing of the glass done a few minutes later. Both customs indicate our longing for the rebuilding of the Temple and for the messianic era, at which point our rejoicing will finally be complete.

Thoughts on Ruth

Devarim 10:18 describes God as one "Who performs judgment for the orphan and widow, and loves the stranger..." Intuitively, it seems from this verse that there is a distinction between the orphan and widow, who need support and protection - and the stranger, who needs "love".

This distinction seems to be at the core of Megillat Ruth. Contrary to appearances, I think Naomi and Ruth were relatively financially secure after their return. Naomi's family was well off, and Naomi had sold their plot of land and they were presumably living off the proceeds. Ruth does go out to earn some extra income, but there seems to be no urgency in her decision to do so.

Rather, the book's tension comes from a different question: whether and with whom Ruth will be able to marry. Naomi originally tells Ruth to return to Moav because Naomi has no sons left whom she could marry. When a number of weeks working in Boaz' field have not led to a "shidduch" for Ruth, Naomi takes the initiative in arranging the meeting which leads to their marriage. This is the conclusion of the story: Naomi is once again part of a family, and Ruth - despite coming from the hated Moavite people and having no social standing of her own - gets an appropriate husband. Ruth has been rewarded, not by being rescued from poverty, but by being rescued from loneliness.

The laws of tzedakah obligate us to protect the rights of the poor. It seems from Megillat Ruth that this obligation is not only financial. We are equally obligated to seek out lonely and isolated members of society and to make them feel valued and welcome. It as just as easy to ignore the emotionally poor as the financially poor, so the mitzvah to help them is equally important, and the reward for doing so equally great.

Solo solo hamesilah, saklu me'even

Anyone who has lived here (at least in Haifa, probably in all Israel) knows that the construction companies are incompetent beyond belief.

Take my street for example. For the last two months, the municipality has been repeatedly ripping out the sidewalk and pavement, repaving and repainting it, deciding that they didn't do it correctly (or else damaging what they did correctly by moving heavy machinery over it), and starting the whole process from the beginning. When all is said and done, there will be one or two more parking spots on the street than there were before, a sidewalk made up of both stone tiles and asphalt as opposed to just asphalt like before, and incredible quantities of taxpayer money wasted.

My friend across town (Kiryat Eliezer) tells how within the span of a few months, two kilometers of sidewalk on his street were leveled, a deep trench dug, work done, and the sidewalk replaced - and this whole process repeated twice more from the beginning. The first time was for the future light rail line, then for some kind of cable replacement, then for sewage pipes. Of course it was somehow impossible for any of these digs to be combined with any of the others.

So, the most recent delays reported for the Jerusalem light rail project should surprise nobody. By Israeli standards, the Jerusalem construction work seems more than competent. After all, they only ripped out the already built tracks once, and only on a small portion of the route.

When I think of the employment sectors in the country most in need of reform, banks and rabbinical courts are certainly near the top of the list. And despite what you would THINK would be a much greater amount of competition, construction companies must be right up there with them.

Strike Three

In the last two years, my university has had a professor strike and a student strike. Guess who was feeling left out? That's right, us, the grad students went on strike today. The TAs at universities all around the country now have a rotation: at my university they strike on Mondays, at another university on Tuesday, at another on Wednesday, and so on.

In my capacity as a TA, I lead lab sections several days a week, but not on Mondays. So, theoretically, the strike does not affect me. Or so I thought, until I realized after the fact that my office hours are on Monday and the strike applies to them too. Of course, I didn't think of that until after office hours were over.

Totally by chance, I had to go to Jerusalem for a meeting today, so I told everyone I would not be able to come to office hours for that reason. In retrospect, it looks like a lame dodge whereby I tried to tell both sides I was with them. Oh well, I'll just have to make a clear choice next week. It will make little practical difference anyway, nobody every comes to my office hours.

So how will I decide next week? That depends partly on what the grad students I know decide to do, and partly on whether I decide the strike is necessary. I can't complain about my personal situation - grad student stipends are twice what I need to live on here. But for 45 year old lecturers who teach high level courses yet will never get the status or benefits that professors do, things are much worse. Supporting them seems to be a good cause.

In any case, I have a week to think it over. And perhaps by then, the grad students and administration will have come to an agreement.

A dream is one sixtieth part of prophecy

I recently dreamed that I visited a (non-Jewish) doctor's office on Shabbat. It wasn't clear why it was necessary or what they did - it may have been an actual procedure or we may have just discussed some medical issue. Anyway, at the end the secretary handed me a piece of paper (bill? insurance form? malpractice waiver?) to sign. I was confronted with a dilemma. I would be breaking Shabbat by signing it, but it would be tricky to convince them to let me not sign it. So what to do? After debating a bit I decided that I was being forced to break Shabbat, it was not really my fault and there was nothing I could do about it, and since I was an observant Jew, I would make a point of minimizing the violation to the fullest extent possible.

So I went ahead and signed the paper - not my full name, but only my first name.

Of course, even before waking up, I realized that writing one word is just as big a violation of Shabbat as writing two.

I have no doubts about what my subconscious was trying to tell me in this dream, though Shabbat was just the metaphor it chose to use. The actual dubious behavior that I need to stop rationalizing is in other halachic realms.

Conversions and R' Druckman

On main reason why I have not yet posted about the ongoing conversion-nullification scandal is that My Obiter Dicta is more or less saying everything I'd like to say for me. All are encouraged to read his blog.

If you read the comments section too, you might unwittingly come across a few anonymous comments from yours truly, where I thought it useful to add something.

One can't remain silent when a scandal of this magnitude is occurring, but in lieu of investing time and effort in my own posts, I think My Obiter Dicta can be trusted to speak for me.

T-Rays and my legacy

Some of the research I am doing for my master's degree involves making sensors for terahertz radiation (or "T-rays"). T-rays are best known because they pass through clothing but are reflected by solid objects such as the human body, making them of immense interest to airport security checkers... as well as to voyeurs and perverts.

I just learned of an equally weird, but less disturbing, use for T-rays. Apparently you can use them to scan a fruit or vegetable for insects. The rays pass through leaves and plant matter, but not through animal skeletons... or something. I will have to look into it more. The implications for kashrut could be revolutionary.

I am excited that my work has taken a more idealistic turn. No longer will history remember me as the guy who made it easier for pornographers to gain new material.* Now, my grandkids will know that it was I who eliminated the terrible scourge of bugs in lettuce and broccoli and allowed God-fearing Jews to eat their Shabbat salads without any fear of infestation.

*Though, to be honest, the through-clothing pictures seem to be unavoidably fuzzy and black and white, and I think that a real live person in tight clothing would be infinitely sexier.

Again from the took-30-seconds-to-write-it post department

I'm constantly getting announcements from various campus organizations advertising their events or whatever. It fills up my inbox, it's sort of annoying. And they ALWAYS feel the need to change the time or location or agenda or contact info just a little, and then send out another email to inform everyone of the changes.

I have a feeling that they do this on purpose, because they know that 90% of people delete the email without even reading through it, and if they can get us to read two emails with essentially the same content, then the chances of somebody seriously considering at least one of them are much higher.

In lieu of a more substantive post

...which is, as always, coming, I bring you this.

On Yom Haatzmaut I was on a hike, and came across a fenced-off mountain valley, and on the fence were signs saying:

שטח ניסוי
כאן יורים
התרחק

Translated:
Testing area
We shoot here
Stay away

The sign was ambiguous: it's not clear whether the testing consists of shooting, or whether shooting (intruders) is why you should stay away. I'm not sure which would be cooler. Since I passed up my chance to intrude into this presumably top-secret military area, I guess I'll never know.

Purim Torah

(Sorry it's so late.)

There is a phenomenon called the "breakaway minyan" in which a few people from a large community leave the synagogue and start a separate minyan, in competition with the main minyan. This is frowned upon by gabbais and others, one of the reasons being the halachic principle "Berov am hadrat melech", the King is best honored in the presence of "rov am".

However, it is easy to show that "Berov am hadrat melech" actually means the opposite, that you are REQUIRED to have breakaway minyans! How? At the end of the megillah we read that Mordechai was "ratzui lerov echav", and this is interpreted as "approved by MOST of his brethren". That is to say, a minority of the Jews disapproved with Mordechai.

When we apply this understanding of the term "rov" to the minyan issue, we reach a stunning conclusion: "Berov am hadrat melech" means that "the King is best honored in the presence of MOST of the people". Not all of them! It actually honors God more if there is at least one breakaway minyan. So those shuls where everyone davens together are halachically require to start at least one nasty disagreement which will cause the community to split and some people to pray elsewhere. This shouldn't be so hard, most of us want to do this anyway, right?

On halacha and behavior

Tzvi, sorry for the gap in posts. I suddenly lost interest in blogging for some time. Now, that feeling has passed, but I've been very busy recently. I've effectively been juggling too many balls at once, and once the "blogging" ball fell, I couldn't pick it up without dropping all the other balls. Now live is more sane and I can return to posting, though the rate may not be the same as before.

Last Friday morning I found myself at the northeast corner of Jerusalem, waiting for a ride to a hike in the desert which never arrived. Faced with the loss of my day plans, I decided to visit the nearby Hebrew University humanities library, which has plenty of reading material unavailable where I currently live.

Among the interesting things I found in "BM" (the Jewish Studies Library of Congress catalog code, aka "Beit Midrash") was an article comparing secular court systems to halacha. The example given was the law of adverse possession - that a person who has squatted on another's land can gain possession after a certain amount of time. In secular law, it was argued, the court is instructed by law to determine whether it is "reasonable" for the owner not to have objected. Meanwhile, in halacha a length of time is specified, after which date the squatter automatically has rights.

The article argued that halacha and secular law fundamentally differ in their approach to uncertainty. Secular courts are often instructed to find, through debate and consensus among judge, jury, and lawyers, a "reasonable" understanding of the situation. From this a practical conclusion can be derived. Halacha, on the other hand, is generally directed at individuals, not courtrooms. It is unrealistic to expect individuals with their biases and limitations to decide what is "reasonable" for themselves. So in halacha, many inherently fuzzy concepts are given arbitrary black-and-white boundaries when it comes to practical implementation. The concepts are thereby oversimplified a bit, but there is no alternative when the system relies on personal responsibility.

(In fact, adverse possession seems like a bad example for this distinction, for the following reasons. 1) Looking online, I found that most modern legal systems set a specific number of years, just like halacha. 2) The halachic limit here may well be based on a completely practical consideration. If the owner had traveled to the furthest known point on earth from Israel - Spain, "Ispamia" - it would take the news of the squatter's actions one year to reach him and another year for his reply to arrive. So only in the third year could we presume that the owner's silence means consent. If so, this halacha is not an example of over-defining uncertain situations, but rather reflects the existence or nonexistence of factual certainty.)

Anyway, I found this argument especially interesting, given the halachic situation I happened to be in at the time. According to most opinions, if one has not seen the Old City and Temple Mount in 30 days, one must tear one's clothing as an expression of mourning. However, on joyous occasions such as Shabbat and holidays, or even Friday afternoon and Saturday night, mourning is not appropriate and the tearing is not performed. Since the Hebrew University campus has an incredible view of the Old City, this halacha was very relevant to me.

I did not want to ruin a shirt, and possessed no cutting utensil. Plus, I have never seen anyone actually do this tearing, and for both peer-pressure and real halachic reasons, I'm uneasy about mitzvot which I have never seen performed before. Perhaps there is some detail in halacha or circumstances which I'm missing, which means that the mitzvah doesn't apply? So as I walked onto campus, and even after I got to the library (which had windows), I made extra careful not to look in the direction of the Old City, to avoid possibly being obligated in the tearing. I watched the clock carefully. Once it passed halachic noon, I went to one of the many outstanding lookout points and gazed for a while at the Old City - with my clothing intact.

My behavior was totally in accordance with the letter of the law, yet totally contrary to its purpose. Tearing your clothing is supposed to be a symbol of inner anguish at being confronted by the destroyed Temple. Yet all morning I made myself think nonstop of the Temple, only so that I could avoid the tearing! What I did in the afternoon was scarcely better. At the very moment I was supposed to be overcome by enthusiasm for the approaching Shabbat, I turned for a long look at the Temple Mount, thereby experiencing not entirely ecstatic feelings which were not quite in tune with the joy of Shabbat.

The halacha of clothes tearing presupposes a whole set of emotional responses to different religious situations. The other circumstance under which you tear clothes is when confronted with the news of someone's death. It seem that tearing is an outward expression of what you should feel when suddenly confronted with a situation of loss. There are various possible reasons why you do not tear on happy occasions, such as when Shabbat is near. Perhaps your happiness in these situations outweighs the sadness. Or perhaps your sadness is legitimate, but it is inappropriate to express it openly, when the rest of the world is happy. Or perhaps Shabbat has a sort of inherent mystical holiness on which you must be continually focused, which precludes involving oneself in grief. It would take further investigation to decide which of these possibilities is correct. In any case, it's clear that my emotional responses followed none of them.

The previously mentioned article argued that halacha's overly precise definitions were necessary, since the real complexities of the world are in practice not navigable by individuals with all their flaws and biases. My experience with tearing shows that even the precise definitions can be twisted until any semblance of underlying meaning is lost.

But at the same time I distorted the meaning of halacha, a common-sense appraisal of the halachic boundaries alerted me to the fact that I was distorting it. I, like all human beings, am flawed. I cannot balance all the religious demands of the world in exactly the way they should be balanced. But by comparing my actions to halacha, even if the halacha itself is perhaps an over-simplification, I can learn about my flaws and begin to work on correcting them.

Early Jerusalem

David took the head of the Philistine [Goliath], and brought it to Jerusalem. ... And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistines, Avner took him, and brought him before Shaul with the head of the Philistine in his hand. (Shmuel Alef 17:54-17:57)

After killing Goliath, David took the dead giant's head to Jerusalem, to show off to the king Shaul.

In Shmuel Bet chapter 5 we learn that Jerusalem was a Jebusite city, which was only conquered and made the capital of Israel after David became king! So what is David doing, years beforehand, bringing Goliath's head to a non-Israelite city? Would a Mossad agent have brought Imad Mugniyah's head to show off to Ehud Olmert in, say, Beirut or Cairo?

To understand this, I think we have to look at the context of David's conquest of Jerusalem. In chapters 2 to 4 there is a bloody civil war between David and Shaul's son Ish-Boshet, each of whom intends to be king over all Israel. At the beginning of chapter five, the Ish-Boshet side finally capitulates and all of Israel recognizes David as king. The very next story is David's conquest of Jerusalem.

I think it's no coincidence that Shaul happened to visit the same city, which David conquered right after subjugating Shaul's tribe and dynasty. Jerusalem is located right on the border between the tribes of Binyamin and Yehudah. In the rivalry and conflict between these tribes, represented by the conflicts between Shaul/Ish-Boshet and David, it is hard to imagine that Jerusalem remained impartial. Presumably, at an early date Jerusalem declared itself a close ally of Binyamin and Shaul's dynasty. Thus Shaul could be expected to frequently visit Jerusalem (and showing them Goliath's head is a good way of emphasizing Israelite strength, and how it's worth it to stay allied with Shaul). And when open warfare broke out between Binyamin and Yehudah, Jerusalem allied with the former, and remained opposed to David until he finally conquered it.

David then declared Jerusalem to be the national capital, in which the Temple would later be built. From a practical perspective, this meant putting the past threats to his power right under his nose, where he could ensure they did not threaten him again. At the same time, choosing a capital on the border between Yehudah and Binyamin symbolized the reconciliation between those tribes, and the peace which he hoped would prevail throughout the entire nation.