Genesis:
Radical/Traditional Interpretations[1]
In Defense of:
·
Science (from
charges of heresy);
·
God (against
unfairness and the Problem of Evil)
·
God’s UNITY
·
Adam and Eve
(against charges of disobeying God)
·
Eve (against
charges of malicious intent)
·
Defending –
partially - even Cain.
Section I)
Is Life Fair?
It
is not fair to create an entity burdened by existence; and so God created the
first being in an idyllic environment – “the Garden of Eden” - to gain its
retroactive agreement to having been created.
It
is similarly unfair to impose the obligation of moral responsibility on a being
that did not choose it; in fact one could reject moral responsibility for one’s
actions on the basis that one had not chosen to exist and be faced with moral
dilemmas.
God
desired that Adam/Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge, in order that they become
capable of free-willed moral choice, facing challenges and observing a moral
code. This is the path of growth rather than the stagnation of a priori
spiritual perfection. But this could not be forced. A situation was therefore
arranged whereby the being itself chose whether or not to bear the burden of
moral responsibility. The Creator forbade the assumption of this burden, so
that the responsibility of the choice became that of the chooser alone.
In
the
In
the terms of the creation and
How Old Is the Universe?
Genesis
can be read as describing God’s infusion of a soul—and perhaps a mind as
well—into a humanoid emerging from “the dust of the earth,” as detailed by
evolutionary theory, in a universe which developed from a big bang created by
G-d.
In
order for the created entities to become “moral beings”, ie to be morally
responsible for their actions, they must possess a certain order of
intelligence, an intrinsically free-willed consciousness, and a moral sense.
Charles
Darwin wrote in “The Descent of Man”:
“I
fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the
differences between men and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is
the most important.”
Free-willed
consciousness and the moral sense distinguish humanity from the animals. In
this sense humans were created in the image of God.
Only
after assembling a complete picture of a moral being and an appropriate
universe could there begin the design of the big bang and laws of nature
leading to their emergence.
Creation
began not with the big bang but rather with the prior idea to create a being
with moral responsibility, and a mental conception of this moral being and of
the universe it would inhabit. Prior to physical creation it would be necessary
to mentally assemble the desired main ingredients of the universe until
everything necessary to produce a moral being has been obtained. The blueprint
of the universe is created one stage at a time. A new stage is initiated after
the previous stage is seen to fit into the whole—“G-d saw … that it was good”—until
the end product is reached. A being is created in the Divine image and is
integrated into the rest of the Creation—“G-d saw … that all … was very good.”
Without
free willed moral activity, everything is automatic (determined/random), and
therefore not purposive to God. From this perspective Creation is completed not
with the emergence of the big bang but rather fifteen billion years later when
the first moral being emerges, accepting the burden of moral responsibility for
its actions.
Making
the free-willed actions of humans truly independent of the will of their
designer-and-creator involves a sacrifice of the sovereignty of the Creator’s
Will, a withdrawal and narrowing of its exclusivity. This parallels G-d’s
tsimtsum (contraction) before Creation, as described by the Kabbala.
In
order for the Creator to bring an additional independent consciousness into
existence, the pre-existent unity had to be shattered. This parallels the
traditional mystical concept of shvirat ha’kelim, the breaking of the vessels.
So
that it will be morally responsible for its actions, the created being is given
a share of the Creator’s free will—the attribute that underlies Creation
itself. In biblical terms, humans were
created “in the image of G-d” with some infusion of the Divine during the
Creation process: “And G-d breathed into man the spirit of life”.
Section II) [3]
At first there is only God. Then God
creates the universe, but there is no independently existent consciousness. All
is UNITY.
Then comes the creation of mankind, and the infusion
into man of 'the soul of life', so that there is an independent consciousness
'other than God’, but which is nevertheless part of the divine unit. Since the
creation of humanity and its independent consciousness involve the perception
of ‘otherness’ than God, the wording used is plural: "let us make Man in
our image".
As the
Following this is the creation of
the perception of a duality of good and evil, and the introduction of pain,
suffering, and mortality, and then of the struggle between the independent
free-willed consciousnesses among themselves, and between them and the divine
law.
Nevertheless, the path to the tree of life
still exists, being guarded for its eventual use at some future time, when all
consciousness will return to its original unity, and all free-will will be
directed to the divine law, becoming thereby reintegrated into a unity, raising
the physical universe and all consciousness to a purely spiritual level,
reinacting in reverse the process of creation itself.
The source of human consciousness is God’s unified consciousness. The multiplicity of consciousness as seen from the human perspective is therefore illusion. Seen as an element of this ‘fragmented’ aspect of the divine personality, then human interaction and moral struggle are actually the reintegration process of the divine fragments, as seen from the perspective of the (alleged) fragments themselves.
Rather than seeing human beings as exterior creations of God who must suffer the consequences of God's decision to create them, not even having been consulted about whether to have been created at all, one can then see humanity as simply an aspect of God. Human suffering is then not inflicted by God on man, but rather it is part of the struggle which God has voluntarily undergone in order to grow; the fragmentation which was a necessary prerequisite for struggle and therefore growth also necessarily resulted in the creation of limited consciousnesses, unaware of their true unitary nature, and the illusory perception by these fragments of the divine consciousness that they are separate beings. Only after complete reintegration can all the components understand that all they had undergone was the result of their own undertaking.
The allegory above addresses the
kabbalistic question of how there can exist that anything other than God, by
claiming that all consciousness is part of God rather than 'other than' God.
The mind-body problem falls away, since all is spiritual, in analogy to the
idealist position which postulates that all is mind. And, the problem of evil
is dissipated, since no being is inflicting pain on any other being - rather
all are in their fundamental essence part of one being, and all is occurring
according to the will of that being.
Adam
was created, then he was commanded not to eat of the tree of Knowledge, then
immediately we are told that God said “it is not good that Man be alone, let me
make a helpmeet for him”.
Question:
Why suddenly now? What has happened to make this necessary?
Answer:
Since the decision to form a helpmeet for Adam was made immediately after the
command not to eat from the tree, there is surely a connection between the need
for a helpmeet and the command not to eat of the tree.
The
motivation for the formation of Eve, as well as the timing of her formation,
may have been this division of labor between them: Adam could not eat from the
tree, so a helpmeet was necessary to take it and give it to him.
The
stage was set for man to choose to eat of the tree of knowledge of his own
choice despite the warning that it would lead to a great burden and death, but
to do so in a way which would not violate the letter of God's actual command.
Since no direct violation was involved, the result was not punishment or
immediate death as was implied previously, but rather only the necessary
consequences of the choice made by man - mortal existence in a non-God-manifest
physical universe ruled by 'natural law'.
At crucial juctures in Biblical
narrative, the fateful choice determining the futures of those involved is
taken by the women. It is Sarah who realizes that Isaac is the true heir of
Abraham and exiles Ishmael, and it is Rivka (Rebecca) who arranges to have
Jacob chosen over Esau. Miriam, Yocheved, Shifra and Puah are responsible for
seeing to it that Moses is born and kept safe. Tamar takes the bold initiative
and chooses Yehuda, and Ruth chooses Boaz (and
“I exist” is the quintessential
self-reference. Free will is non-causal, as is creation.
The creation and Eden accounts
symbolize the onset of those two aspects which are circular and
self-referential - existence and free will - and do so in a manner which in
itself implies circularity; the creation of a being who chooses to exist, and
the free willed choice of a created being which leads to the onset of moral
choice, and of physical existence itself[5].
Section III)[6] Technical Points
After
Adam ate of the Tree of Knowledge God asked: “Where art thou” and Adam
answered: “I was afraid because I was naked and so I hid.”
Question:
The Torah says earlier that “they were both naked and were not embarrassed”; to
balance this, now they should be “embarrassed”, not “afraid”: they should have
said ““I was embarrassed because I was naked and so I hid” not “I was afraid
because I was naked and so I hid.”
In
any case, before they hid themselves Adam and Eve made loin-cloths for
themselves, and so they weren’t naked anymore! So why hide?
And
if they were actually afraid, it should be from the wrath of God, not from
being naked.
Answer:
As is well known, the Torah in the
Therefore
perhaps one can read this passage as telling us that after eating of the Tree
of Knowledge Adam and Eve became estranged from their initial pure nature; they
gained some measure of the twistedness of the cunning of the snake, the
opposite of their natural state of innocence, and now they experienced the
emotions of such a being: fear, denial, rejection of responsibility (Adam’s
blaming of Eve, and Eve of the snake) and the illusion of being able to hide
from God: “I was afraid (capable of fear) because I was Arum (I had become a
creature of twisted cunning) and so (I instinctively sought to deny and so) I
hid.”
If
we are truthful to ourselves and to God, innocent rather than ‘arum’, there is
no need to hide, not from our true selves nor from God.
The Torah tells us that in creating Humanity “God said, 'Let us make man”
Question: If God is ONE then why the plural?
Of course this is the source of the royal “we”. However, why is
this used in the Torah?
Answer: As is well known,
God is neither male nor female, but is referred to using the feminine and
masculine in the Torah. God created humanity in the divine image, and so
perhaps one could say that in human terms this requires that there be aspects
of feminine and masculine in humanity.
The full phrase in the passage is ”God said, 'Let us make man with
our image and likeness.” The likeness of God is perhaps this aspect which in human
terms translates as male/female; although God is ONE, and this aspect is ONE in
God, in order to create this aspect in humanity perhaps it is necessary to
create two creatures, and so it would be fitting that when referring to this
aspect of God which is being created in humanity the plural is used.
This then would also be the reason for the odd switching of the
singular and plural (us/our/His, him/them) in the passage: ''Let us make man with
our image and likeness…God [thus] created man with His image. In the image of God,
He created him, male and female He created them.”
Man and woman are enjoined to become “as one flesh”, to regain the
unity of the original Human, to better
reflect the unity of their creator, and specifically of the aspect of God which
was translated into a duality of male/female.
“You Shall be as God”
The
snake says “Really, God knows that on the day you eat
from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God knowing good and
evil.” “you will become like God”
seems like heresy and does not ring true. Yet God seems to agree with this, for
God Himself says: 'Man has now become like one of us
in knowing good and evil. Now he must be prevented from putting forth his hand
and also taking from the Tree of Life. He [can] eat it and live forever!'
And
not only does God seemingly agree that Man is like God, but also seems to fear
Man attaining eternal life by eating from the Tree of Life!
Answer:
The Rabbis tell us that when only Adam existed, without Eve, it was possible
for him to be led astray by the fact that all animals were male and female and
only he was not, and so to compare himself to God and think that like God, he
is ONE. And so a mate was created for him. However, after the Tree of Knowledge
Adam and Eve were “unique” - the phrase “like one of us” could actually mean
“like one of him”/“unique” - so that
they could again become self-aggrandized into thinking themselves like God,
unique, or ONE-of-a-kind[9]. This is the problem referred to by God: “Man has now become unique in knowing good and evil”;
“unique”, not “one of us” ie “like God.
Speculation: In many passages of this story the tree of knowledge is referred to as
“it” and the phrase used is “from it” = “mimenu”: for example: “do not eat from
it/mimenu”; because he has eaten from it/mimenu”, etc. The word “mimenu” is
exactly the word used for the phrase “of us”
in the passage 'Man has now become like one of us”.
So instead of “of us” we can read “of it” (ie of the Tree of Knowledge), and so
one can read the passage as saying “'Man has now
become unique/like a Tree of Knowledge in knowing good and evil”.
Building
on the teachings of the Rabbis mentioned above, we can see why the reason that
Man must be banished from the garden would be ‘lest he eat from the tree of
life’, for if in addition to his newfound status as a result of the tree of
Knowledge he were to also gain eternal life he would almost certainly fall into
the trap of thinking himself divine.
So
in summary God is effectively saying “Man has become unique again/he is like
the Tree of Knowledge now, and if he is allowed to also achieve immortality, he
will make the error of thinking himself a divinity, and so he must be expelled
from the Garden”.
Our
mortality can give us the ability to transcend the illusion of our
infallibility, and therefore to provide a spur to the continual growth which
sets us apart from the static already-perfected angelic beings, which makes us
of interest to the Creator, and infuses our lives with meaning and purpose.
….
The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and desirable to
the eyes, and that the tree was attractive as a means to gain intelligence.
Sharing, Not Ensnaring
Eve
may have been tricked by the snake, but after she ate of the Tree and became
aware of Good and Evil, would she not realize that she should not give the
fruit to Adam?
Answer:
Although the usual understanding of events is that Eve ate of the Tree and sometime later gave it to Adam, we can interpret the passages as allowing for a nearly-simultaneous eating, so that the effect of the fruit on Eve was not felt before she gave it to Adam. The Torah can be understood as implying that Adam and Eve were affected SIMULTANEOUSLY by the fruit.
“She took some of its fruit and ate [it]. She also gave some
to her husband (with her), and he ate [it]. The eyes of both of them were
opened [“vatipakachna einei shneyhem”], and
they realized that they were naked.”
This implies that Eve was not aware of good and evil when she gave
the fruit to Adam.
Indeed the Hebrew of the passage implies clearly that Adam was
“with her”: “She took some of its fruit
and ate [it]. She also gave some to her husband (with her), and he ate [it].
The eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked.”
What Did Eve See?
Does this mean that she didn’t actually eat of the tree? If
so, what was it then that she “saw” before giving the fruit to Adam? As it
says: “The woman saw that the
tree was good to eat and desirable to the eyes, and that the tree was
attractive as a means to gain intelligence.”?
Answer: Perhaps the snake was clever as a result of eating the
fruit. The snake had to have some way of convincing Eve that he knew what the
effect of the Tree would be, and presumably either ate from it or told Eve he
had eaten from it. [10] And so, convinced that the snake’s
cleverness was due to eating the fruit, she took some of the fruit and went to Adam and
ate it in front of him as she gave it to him standing there next to her: he ate it too
and they simultaneously had their ‘eyes opened’.
Spontaneity perhaps,
but why Simultaneity?
Why would God ensure that Adam and Eve simultaneously receive the effect of the fruit?
Perhaps
it was necessary that they be coordinated in this way: their nakedness and all
its ramifications had meaning only in the context of a couple, not of an
individual. Perhaps it is only an unselfish sharing of the resources to
enlightenment which leads to that enlightenment – a person cannot achieve true
enlightenment if they are leaving others behind.
Also: perhaps: if the effect had already hit her, she wouldn’t have given it to Adam, whereas as we saw (according to the interpretation we presented earlier) God wanted Adam to eat it, and to do so indirectly, so that it was necessary that Eve give it to Adam before she realized that it could be undesirable (!) to do so.
Alternatively: The image of God is male+female, (and also ‘etz ha’da’at’ learly makes reference also to ‘lada’at’) and so the effect “to be like God”(as the snake calls it) has to occur with both male and female eating of the fruit.
Therefore also the effect takes place only when both have eaten and thus the ffect is simultaneous.
Adam
and Eve were condemned to die for eating from the Tree.
Question:
Why did they not die?
Answer:
The Sages teach that embarrassing someone is like killing them: we can
therefore perhaps say that God accepted the embarrassment of Adam and Eve at
their nakedness as adequate punishment, or rather as a catalyst which would
bring them to teshuva.
Shame
in front of others is not a useful emotion, but when we feel true shame in our
own eyes after deceitful behavior in the face of God’s commands, at any act
lacking in integrity, we can begin self-rehabilitation.
The
Torah relates that the snake’s punishment is that he must crawl on his belly,
and eat dust: “God said to the serpent, 'Because you
did this, cursed are you more than all the livestock and all the wild beasts.
On your belly you shall crawl, and dust you shall eat, all the days of your
life.”
Question:
actually of course the essential punishment is that the snake can’t speak and
think anymore, he is dethroned from being the most clever of all! Why is this
not mentioned?! And what of being expelled from
Speculative
Answers:
1)
The words “cursed are you more than all the livestock
and all the wild beasts” means that rather than being “the most clever of all
the beasts” the Snake is now less than them.
2)
The ‘Snake’ of
Genesis relates: “God said to Cain, 'Why are you so furious? Why
are you depressed? If you do good, will there not be special privilege? And if
you do not do good, sin is crouching at the door. It lusts after you, but you
can dominate it.’ ”
As has often been pointed out, the stories of the book of Genesis
comprise a chain of fraternal strife, usually instigated by God’s preference
for the younger brother over the elder. The first such instance is Cain and
Abel. Cain, the elder brother, brings a sacrifice; then his younger brother
copies him. God deliberately answers the younger, who brought the sacrifice
only after the older brother did, but does not answer the older. This can only
be designed to challenge Cain to the utmost.
The story is short and bitter: “Cain became very furious and depressed. God said to
Cain, 'Why are you so furious? Why are you depressed? If you do good, will
there not be special privilege? And if you do not do good, sin is crouching at
the door. It lusts after you, but you can dominate it.' Cain said [something]
to his brother Abel. Then, when they happened to be in the field, Cain rose up
against his brother Abel, and killed him.“
Questions: Of course God knew well why Cain was furious and
depressed; it was as a result of God’s snub. What would Cain make of this
strange question of God? And why would he kill Abel after such a warning? And
why be so unconcerned and blasé after killing his brother, saying to God “Am I my brother's keeper?”
The Torah describes the murder scene as follows: “Cain said
[something] to his brother Abel. Then, when they happened to be in the field,
Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him.”
The classic question that is posed is: What did he say? And we may
add, why does the Torah not tell us what he said? And what did it have to do
with the reason for the slaying? And would it not be the reverse: It would seem
to make more sense that Abel said something to Cain, who as a result slew him.
Furthermore in the Hebrew there is a seemingly missing word in the
phrase “Cain said to his brother Abel” and so the translation sticks it in in
brackets: “Cain said [something] to his
brother Abel”. If we are to be told simply that he said something without the
Torah specifying what was said, why would the Torah skip the word “something”?
Speculative Answer: Perhaps Cain understood something very
different from God’s statement to him than what the usual translation tells us.
The usual translation of God’s statement is: “If you do good, will
there not be special privilege? And if you do not do good, sin is crouching at
the door. It lusts after you, but you can dominate it.'”
However, if this is what Cain understood God to be saying, then
after a warning like this Cain would be less likely to hurt his brother, yet he
went ahead and killed him. And so we are led to a speculative alternative
understanding.
The crucial first and last word of the phrase “It lusts after you
but you can dominate it'” means in Hebrew ‘him’, not only ‘it’, making the
phrase “he lusts after (what) you (have) but you can dominate him'”!
There is such a clear parallel to what was told to Cain’s mother
Eve that it is clearly deliberate:
Ø God
to Eve: “your lust[11] will be to your
husband, and he will dominate you’ .'”
Ø God
to Cain: “he lusts after (what) you (have) but you can dominate him'”
God to Eve:
“Your lust will be to your husband, and he will dominate you’ .'”
God to her son
Cain: “It/he lusts after you, but you can dominate it/him.'”
Since the statement is directly parallel to that told by God to
his mother describing her submissive relationship to his father, that his
father would dominate her, Cain may well have understood God’s present
statement to him as referring to his right to dominate his younger brother!
Cain heard not some sophisticated allegorical reference to an abstraction, a
personified “sin” being able to “crouch” at a “door” and “spring” on him, but a
reference to his sinful brother who crouches at his door waiting to pounce on
him (copying his sacrifice and trying to one-up him) instead of being
submissive!
What Cain hears is: “If you do a good job (on your brother), will there not be
special privilege? And if you do not do a good job, he is sinfully crouching at
the door; his desire is for you (ie for what you have), but you can dominate
him.'” And thus empowered, Cain goes to Abel:
In the Hebrew there is a seemingly missing word in the phrase
“Cain said to his brother Abel” and so the translation sticks it in in brackets: “Cain said [something] to his brother Abel”.
But we do not need this interpolation. We know what he said, and the Torah is
leaving it out because it is already known to us; it is referring to the
message God gave to Cain as understood by Cain’s enraged mind: “Cain said to
his brother Abel (ie he told him what God had said). Then, when they happened
to be in the field (Cain’s territory as a farmer?), Cain rose up against his
brother Abel, and killed him. (fulfilling his imagined right to dominate Abel)”.
Then God asked Cain, 'Where is your brother Abel?'
'I do not know,' replied [Cain]. 'Am I my brother's keeper? : ie:
‘You know that I had the right to do what I did!' .[12] Then only when
God yells at him and banishes him does Cain realize that he did not understand
correctly.[13]
We can hear what we wish to hear, and believe ourselves fully
justified, however when the message we seem to be getting via inspiration, or
giving ourselves as a society, is too convenient, we should suspect the
correctness of our interpretation.
Many years after Cain killed Abel, Cain was himself killed. And
so: “Adam knew his wife again, and she gave birth to a son. She named him Seth - 'Because God
has granted (shath) me other offspring in place of Abel, whom Cain had killed.”
Question: Why wait so long to replace Abel?
Answer: Since the vowels are missing, the phrase in Hebrew “ki
h[a]r[o]g[oi] Kayin” whom Cain had killed” can be read “ki h[o]rg[u] Kayin” “because they killed Cain”. That is,
now that both Abel and Cain were dead, both of them killed, Adam and Eve decide
to have another child, in place of Abel[14].
Alternately, it is only after Cain the murderer dies that they
feel safe in bearing another male[15]
child.
At the end of the portion, as a precursor to the story of the
Flood in the next portion, we are told that “God saw that man's wickedness on
earth was increasing. Every impulse of his innermost thought was only for evil,
all day long. God regretted that He had made man on earth, and He was pained to
His very core.”
The word “pained” in the above passage is “vayit’atzev”, which is
the same word (root) as the “anguish” used in God’s words to Eve: To the woman
He said, 'I will greatly increase your anguish …. It will be with anguish that
you will give birth to children [b’etzev teldi banim’]'[17]
.[18]
Question: What does the Torah mean to tell us by using the word
“anguish” here as referred to God!?
Speculative Answer: The Torah refers to Mankind and the Jewish
people as God’s children: we can therefore perhaps understand the attribution
to God of anguish “and God was anguished to His very core” by the action
of His “children”, as a parallel to "It will be with
anguish that you will give birth to children” .
As
it states elsewhere: “Bchol tzorotom lo tzor” “In all their sufferings He also
suffers”.
Indeed
‘b’etzev teldi banim’ can be said (meforshim: rashi?) to refer to the
pains of raising children (‘tza’ar gidul banim’), not just to the birth itself:
it is this pain (that of ‘raising’ the Jewish People: “banim gidalti
ve.romamti, ve’hem pish’u bi”) that God suffers.
…………………
Part IV)
On the face of it Adam was certainly commanded not
to eat: God after all challenged Adam: “is it that from the tree which I
commanded you not to eat, you have eaten?"
However,
the possibility suggests itself that perhaps in fact Adam was not commanded not to eat from the Tree
of Knowledge.
The
However, after Adam has eaten, God
says to him: "Who has told you that you are naked, is it that from the
tree which I commanded you not to eat, you have eaten?". Here we can see
that there is mention of an unequivocal command not to eat from the tree of
knowledge.
We can interpret this as follows.
Prior to eating from the tree, Adam had no sense of moral obligation, or no
understanding of good and evil. He could be 'commanded' to eat from all the
trees, to enjoy the garden, since this was obviously to his advantage, and the
desire to do that which is advantageous or pleasurable is natural. However,
Adam could not be commanded not to eat since he had no inner compulsion to
refrain from doing evil, or no comprehension of what evil was. Therefore, the
statement regarding refraining from eating was necessarily phrased as a warning
or advice. Adam could not be forbidden to eat, he could only be advised of the
consequences of eating.
Even a direct commandment from God
is not in itself binding, one must accept that it is binding in order for one
to feel bound. Therefore all such commandments are essentially only suggestions
or advice. It is only binding on us when we internalize the divine
communication, and our sense of obligation is actuated in response, to act in
accordance with the 'commandment'.
This may also be the symbolism
behind the eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil: by eating of the
tree of knowledge of good and evil, man has become a creature knowing good and
evil[19],
so that the eating of the tree symbolizes the initial internalization of a
sense of obligation, a moral sensitivity. From the Biblical perspective, this
internal sense of moral obligation may be something which is not part of the
natural physical world acquired through a process of random mutation, but
rather bestowed from above, or more precisely, appropriated by mankind from the
realm above.
Alternatively, the sense of moral
obligation may have been implanted in man (creating man "in the image of
God") but without providing a focus for this sense. Eating of the tree
then induced a sense of distinction between good and evil, and this gave a
focus to the internal sense of obligation.
Adam chose freely to eat, but this
was not a good or evil choice because good and evil were not within his psyche,
he only had an unfocused sense of moral obligation - afterwards this sense of
obligation was activated by moral dilemmas, and choices became characterizable
by good and evil.
1)
How could it be that a state of free will, and
therefore the ability to do good and avoid evil, is the result of a
disobedience of God's will?
2)
If the Torah is the purpose of creation, and the
Torah with all God’s commandments can be fulfilled only by a being who makes
moral choices, struggling with good and evil, how can it be that the ability to
fulfil the Torah was only achieved by man through a violation of God's
commandment?
One
way to resolve this is to deny that Adam violated God’s commandment by eating
of the Tree of Knowledge.
In
fact it has been proposed by various sources, including R. Yosef Yozel Horowitz[20],
that God desired man to eat from the tree of knowledge and to thereby accept
the burden of moral responsibility and follow the Torah lifestyle. God was
simply advising Adam that to do so would be hazardous to him, and therefore that
Adam had to make the decision himself.
One of the central distinguishing elements of Jewish
philosophy and mysticism, and of the Torah lifestyle, is the belief in the
potential for holiness in all activity. Nothing is inherently good or evil, but
rather the use to which they are put can be for the good or for evil. Every
inner desire can be channeled towards ends which increase the good, every
mundane object or activity can be directed towards achieving beneficial results
in the service of God or of one's fellow being, and this is what it means to
live a life of holiness. From a kabbalistic perspective, such action liberates
the sparks of holiness present in all entities and processes, and brings
forward the reintegration of the physical universe into the spiritual cosmos.
Even urges and drives which are
potentially harmful to oneself and to others can be channeled to positive
activity, and this is the challenge facing humanity. In Jewish tradition, even
the "evil inclination" in a person can be the stimulus for action
which is beneficial, as the Talmud states: "the jealousy of scholars
(stimulates them to study ever more and thereby) increases knowledge". All
that motivates people can be used for the benefit or detriment of mankind, and
these motivations are necessary even though they are often misapplied - as the
Talmud says: "without the inclination (sexual desire, people would not
marry and raise families and therefore) the world would be desolate”.
Thus in Judaism there is no
glorification of a monastic existence or denial of physicality. The
quintessential Biblical example of an "evil urge" is the snake in
The expulsion from
In this new reality - which in the
context of the traditional understanding of Genesis took place at the close of
the sixth day of creation - the heretofore spiritual universe became a physical
entity, self-consistent and operating harmoniously on the level of physicality,
ecology, mathematics, logic, in accordance with a set of 'natural law'.
God wished for mankind to choose the
burden of moral responsibility - symbolized by 'eating of the tree of
knowledge' - but left this decision to man himself. When man chose moral
responsibility, there was therefore no punishment involved - even the curses at
the end of the
Instead, it was necessary that man's reality
be transformed from a God-manifest one to a universe in which God was at least
one step removed, where God's actions in the universe would be perceived by man
as the operation of a set of 'natural law', and where it would be up to the
choice of the individual to consider this 'natural law' as deriving from God or
not. Indeed, Adam was catapulted into a state in which it was necessary to work
for one's food, there was pain and misunderstanding, and where God was not
manifest directly - and in fact after the exit from the reality-state of Eden,
there is no mention of Adam perceiving a communication from the God he spoke to
so freely while 'in Eden'.
We are commanded “to walk in the ways of God”; as Tradition teaches: just as He is merciful, so too should you be merciful[21].
But of course God is also the source of pain and death [“yotzer ohr ….ra”: I create light and darkness, peace and evil”]; clearly we are meant not to imitate God in this way.
Noah was indeed a righteous man, but in his generation God viewed all humanity as deserving of death, and it was not necessary that Noah view them in this way. God grants us the privilege and perhaps the obligation of differing, as Abraham did in serving as defense attorney for the people of Sdom.
Hashem is the name for God in the divine manifestation to us as Merciful, whereas elokim is the equivalent for Justice. The Torah tells us “tamim tihye im hashem elokecha”: perhaps I may be permitted to translate this as “we should be tamim [tamim = straight, complete, pure, maybe even naïve?] with the Merciful aspect when God is revealed in the aspect of Justice”. Defending Humanity against the Divine Justice is our way of imitating God, of serving God, of actualizing our aspect as beings created in the image of God[22].
Noah was tamim, but he joined in God’s aspect of Justice, not mercy – et ha’elokim hithalech Noach – Noah walked with God in His aspect of Justice. Had Noah been up to seeing Humanity as Abraham did, he might have managed to prevent the Flood, or at least to serve God to the fullest, as did Abraham in his losing battle for the lives of the inhabitants of Sdom, but a spiritual battle which Abraham’s defense won for Humanity and for God nevertheless.
[In a very speculative and allegorical sense we might perhaps say: God relies on the beings He created in His image to set the reality of human destiny, as Man relies on his helpmeet (“etzem mi’atzomai”: “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh = in my image); this is our challenge.]
……………………
And, in this connection, I offer the following:
…………………..
The Torah
tells us that God decided to obliterate humanity, and all of the animal kingdom
as well.
The usual
translation of the passages relating this decision is:
“God saw that man's wickedness on earth was increasing. Every impulse of his innermost thought was only for evil, all day long. God regretted that He had made man on earth, and He was pained to His very core. God said, 'I will obliterate humanity that I have created from the face of the earth - man, livestock, land animals, and birds of the sky. I regret that I created them.'
Question:
Is “every
impulse of our innermost thoughts only for evil”?
What
would it mean for God to be “pained to His very core”?
Answer:
Combining my adaptations of several Traditional ideas with some of my own readings, I offer a defense of Humanity:
God fashioned Man from the Earth which had previously rebelled, as hinted at in the creation account, and the rebellious nature of Humanity was therefore not Man’s fault. God realizes that Man’s heart had this fault in its design and is comforted. (The Flood was necessary, changing Man’s course in history was urgently called for, but man was a victim, not a criminal.)
We read not:
“every impulse of Man’s innermost thoughts only for evil” but “the fashioning
of Man’s heart was with evil”:
And not::
“God regretted that He had made man on earth and God was pained to His very core” but ““God was
comforted with the realization that He had made man with the earth and so the evil of the earth had entered into
the design of Man’s heart” (and therefore this evil in his inner nature was not
Man’s fault.
………………………………
The details of how we arrive at this reading are given below: recommended only for those who are familiar with the Hebrew original.
……………………………………………………………………………………..
It is interesting to note that several words follow in a chain throughout the beginning of Genesis:
· the words ‘adamah’ and ‘eretz’, dirt or earth;
· the word “etzev” which can mean sadness or pain, or can be read as “itzoov” (since the Torah is written without vowels) which means ‘design’;
· the word “yatzar” which means ‘fashioned’ (used in the creation account) or ‘yetzer’, used here for Man’s “inner nature” or “impulse of his innermost thought”.
Furthermore:
· According to the Rabbis, God’s complaint was that Humanity was leading all living beings into a rebellion against God. As a being created form the earth, Humans had the power to lead all earthly beings. God was upset, but consoling Himself that Man was not created from Heaven rather than earth – had that been the case Man would have led all heavenly beings in revolt as well!!
· The word “vayinachem” translated as “regretted” can also mean the opposite: comforted, and the word translated as “on” can also be “with”. Thus the Rabbis read the phrase “God regretted that He had made man on earth” as “God was comforted that He had made man with earth (so that he could make only the earthly beings rebel)”.
· The Torah tells us in the creation account that God ordered the Earth to produce “fruit-trees”, that is, trees which tasted like the fruit; however instead of “fruit-trees” the text tells us that the earth produced “trees with fruit”, trees as we know them. According to Tradition, with this the earth rebelled against God.
God fashioned Man from the Earth which had previously rebelled, and the rebellious nature of Humanity was therefore not Man’s fault. God realizes this and is comforted: it is God’s design that is the cause [as we find in tanach: “yadecha itzvooni”], not Man’s rebellion..
The wording of many passages can be read in this way:
The passage translated as “Every impulse of his innermost thought was only for evil” is more literally (you have to know Hebrew to see this!) “The ytzr of the heart of Man was evil”. Reading ytzr as “yitzoor” = fashioning rather than “yetzer” = inner nature we have:
“The fashioning of the heart of Man was evil”: that is, Man was fashioned from the Earth, which had rebelled early on, before Man was created from it; and so, the fashioning of Mankind from the Earth caused this evil to insinuate itself into human nature.
Instead of God being “grieved to his heart”, “vayit’atzev to His heart” we read the word “vayit’atzev” as “designed” and the reference is to Man’s heart, not God’s: Instead of referring to Man who was made on Earth, we read it as referring to the fact that Man was made FROM the Earth.
In Summary:
Gen 6: 5 And the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great DUE TO the earth, and the fashioning of the thoughts of his heart had been with evil all the time. 6 And it comforted the LORD to remember that He had made man WITH the earth, and that it DESIGNED his heart (and so the urge to rebel came form the Earth and was therefore not his fault)..
After the flood: the Torah states that God said:
Gen
8:21: and the LORD said in His heart: 'I will not again curse the
ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from
his youth”
We can easily see how this fits with our interpretation: “I
will not again curse the ground for having ‘poisoned’ the nature of Man, for
causing Man’s nature to be evil.”
………………….
(Mesh
with the above?)
We are commanded “to walk in the ways of God”; as Tradition teaches: just as He is merciful, so too should you be merciful[24].
But of course God is also the source of pain and death [“yotzer ohr ….ra”: I create light and darkness, peace and evil”]; clearly we are meant not to imitate God in this way.
Noah was indeed a righteous man, but in his generation God
viewed all humanity as deserving of death, and it was not necessary that Noah
view them in this way. God grants us the privilege and perhaps the obligation
of differing, as Abraham did in serving as defense attorney for the people of
Tradition teaches us that “Hashem” is the name for God in the divine manifestation to us as Merciful, whereas “elokim” is the equivalent for Justice.
The Torah tells us “tamim tihye im hashem elokecha”: perhaps in the light of the above I may be permitted to translate this as “we should be tamim [tamim = straight, complete, pure, maybe even naïve?] with the Merciful aspect when God is revealed in the aspect of Justice”. Defending Humanity against the Divine Justice is our way of imitating God, of serving God, of actualizing our aspect as beings created in the image of God[25].
Avram was commanded by the God in the Merciful aspect to be Mighty, to defend humanity.
And
when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD (Merciful aspect) appeared
to Abram, and said unto him: 'I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be thou
wholehearted
19 For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the LORD (Merciful aspect) [= “derech hashem”], to do righteousness and justice; to the end that the LORD (Merciful aspect) may bring upon Abraham that which He hath spoken of him.'
|
|
Noah was tamim, but he joined in God’s aspect of Justice, not mercy – et ha’elokim hithalech Noach – “Noah walked with God (in His aspect of Justice)”[26]. Had Noah been up to seeing Humanity as Abraham did, he might have managed to prevent the Flood, or at least to serve God to the fullest, as did Abraham in his losing battle for the lives of the inhabitants of Sdom, but a spiritual battle which Abraham’s defense won for Humanity and for God nevertheless.
[In a very speculative and allegorical sense we might perhaps say: God relies on the beings He created in His image to set the reality of human destiny, as Man relies on his helpmeet (“etzem mi’atzomai”: “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh = in my image); this is our challenge.]
Our nation is descended from Abraham, not merely from Noah, and so we are given the power – and obligation - to always see our fellow beings in the best possible light.
………..
Who Initiated the Aliyah to Eretz
Cana’an? Terach!? Not Abraham?!
The Torah seems to imply that Abraham’s father, Terach, was the first person to go to Cana’an, and that he took Abram with him, rather than Abraham being the one who initiated the trip. The order as given in the Torah is:
· Terach left Ur Kasdim taking Abraham etc
·
They stopped on the way, in
· Terach died.
·
God spoke to Abraham saying “Leave
your birthplace, go to the land I will show you… “ and so Abraham left Harran
to go to
But
So it cannot be that the passages are in their chronological order!
We can therefore see that the Torah is simply telling us the Terach-saga in complete form before moving on to the Abraham saga, and the passages are indeed not in their chronological order.
This then teaches us two important lessons:
1) Abraham was the one who initiated the trip;
2) the Torah’s chronology is subtle.
1) We know that some of the events in
the Terach saga (eg Terach’s death)
happened AFTER the LATER Abraham saga: we can then easily include the
event of Terach’s leaving
The order would then be:
· God spoke to Abram in Ur Kasdim, and as a result Abram and Sara were planning to go to the land of Canaan, so Terach and Lot etc “left with them” (“vayetzu itam”); however since the father takes precedence over the son, when they went together the Torah tells us that Terah took them rather than that Terach went because his son went.
·
Terach stayed in
·
Abraham then continued to
· Terach died.
2) As with the creation and
Abraham asks Sarah to say that she is his sister[30] for if she doesn’t “they will kill me and let you live”. And as her brother “they will be good to me on your behalf” (and indeed they make him a rich man while she is kidnapped in Pharaoh’s house!)
Questions:
Is it not crass to say “so that they will be good to me on your behalf”?
Was Pharaoh justified in saying that Abraham was to blame since he told everyone Sarah was his sister and not his wife?
If Abraham knew that they would take Sarah to Pharaoh’s house forcibly, what did he expect would happen to her? Would he just allow this to happen?
From the wording quoted above it almost sounds as though Abraham had to convince Sarah to tell the Egyptians she was his sister; why would she refuse him if it was to save his life? Was he asking her to sacrifice herself in order to save him?
Answer: Abraham did have to convince her.
Sarah knew she was in danger of being kidnapped by the King. Which status was more dangerous: sister or wife? If it was known that she was married, perhaps it was slightly less likely that she would be kidnapped; saying that she was Abraham’s sister might heighten her chances of being abducted. On the other hand whereas a married woman might be taken by force since there was no option of getting her for the king in any peaceful manner, it might be that an unmarried woman could be convinced to become the king’s consort, and the brother could be convinced to give his permission, and so there would be no need for violence.
At first Abraham may have asked Sarah to say she was his sister for HER sake, to protect her, so that she would not be taken forcefully but rather negotiations over his ‘sister’ would begin, and perhaps they could leave before having to make a decision. But Sarah may have felt that the possible extra margin of safety for herself was not worth the lie, and perhaps in any case they were honorable people and there was no need to lie. Either way, she was willing to die if need be.
But then Abraham clarifies to her that not only was she affected, he said effectively “do it for me”; he knows that she is willing to die to protect her virtue but he tells her that they will not give her a choice nor will they kill her, so it is not about her at all, but about him: he tells her that they will take her no matter what, but if they know he is her husband they will kill him; of course as soon as she hears that his life is at stake this convinces her to say she is his sister.
However, what did Abraham expect to happen? We can see from the story that before Pharaoh was afflicted when trying to sleep with Sarah Abraham was made wealthy, and this must have taken some time. And the process of being reported to Pharaoh took some time. Abraham was aware of the way things were done there, he knew they would take her, and he knew that they would make him wealthy and therefore knew that he was buying time this way rather than being killed outright and Sarah immediately kidnapped. With the time he could perhaps arrange for her to be saved: perhaps via using his new-found wealth, perhaps via prayer (as it turned out, God intervened at the last minute.) So it made sense to arrange for wealth to come his way to buy influence and for a lengthy process to be initiated to buy time, all by having Sarah say she was his sister. And this is the meaning of “they will kill me and let you live; say you are my sister so that they will be good to me on your behalf”
Pharaoh’s complaint seems justified, “why did you tell me she was your sister, why didn’t you tell me she was your wife?” and at first it seems as though we should agree with him, however from the context it is clear that Sarah was taken by force: clearly had she been asked if she wished to be Pharaoh’s consort, and given a real choice, she would have refused; the fact that she was “taken to Pharaohs house” shows that she was taken against her will. Abraham correctly saw that this would be the case. A king who would kidnap a woman and think that by giving presents to her brother all is OK could well also kidnap a married woman and kill the husband. And so, Pharaoh’s complaint rings as hollow as many complaints of the nations against the Jewish People in other contexts.
Abraham’s army wins the day, his
nephew Lot is rescued, and the king of
Question: So why did Abram allow
Pharaoh to make him rich?
Answer: The other King who was
saved by Abraham, Malchitzedek, says after the victory: 'Blessed be Abram to God Most High, Possessor
of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies
into your hand.' “ He knows it is all from God, and that if Abraham acquired
wealth through the war it was via God, not as a gift from the kings. The King
of Sodom in contrast is all business: 'Give me the people. You can keep the
goods’. Such a person who did not give any credit to God will take credit for
himself for any wealth accrued to Abraham.
Pharaoh also recognizes that God
is sovereign and in charge of Abraham’s fate: he is afflicted and understands
that it is due to an injustice done to Abraham and realized that Sarah is his
wife. The wealth Abraham acquires is understood by Pharaoh to be gained by the
grace of God, not the will of
VAYERA
Would YOU trust the kashrut in Abraham’s tent?
Tolerant Hospitality
Guests appear and Abraham serves them butter/cream and meat!
Various
Traditionally-presented Mitigating factors:
· This is prior to the giving of the Torah laws (on the other hand the Sages teach that Abraham kept the Kosher laws);
· The two substances were not cooked together;
· The guests were not Jews (he had special dishes etc for guests);
· Dairy can be eaten before meat, and there may well have been much time between the two since preparing the cow and the meat took a while (even though 18:8 may imply simultaneous serving).
However perhaps there is a lesson here: Abraham’s mission was to teach hospitality, and to teach monotheism, not to convert people to Judaism. He respected the practices of others and did not impose his views on them unnecessarily: there is no Jewish law forbidding non-Jews from eating meat and dairy, and so since this mixture was one he himself did not eat, but he did not feel that his guests must follow his practice in this, Abraham deliberately served them this to show tolerance and respect for the ways of others. Today perhaps one could not because it is after Sinai and this might be considered unseemly. On the other hand in homes where some are observant and others are not (yet) perhaps one can learn tolerance from this act of Abraham.
Abraham tells the guests: “Let there be taken please a small amount of water and wash your feet”.
Various Traditional sources ask:
· Why does he say: “let there be taken” rather than “take”?
· Or better still, why doesn’t he just give it to them, all travelers appreciate a wash.
· And why a small amount of water- why not offer a whole bath? Or whatever amount could be spared in the desert: why insult them by implying they would inconsiderately use too much?
· Why “please” take as though it is a favor to him: surely travelers will appreciate water, it is a favor to THEM!
· Why not simply give it to them, and say: “here’s water to wash your feet”.
The Midrash tells that some people at the time worshiped the sand and Abraham did not want this in his tent, and therefore Abraham requested that his guests wash their feet in order to rid them of sand (and so today Muslims wash their feet prior to prayer). Abraham was teaching them about monotheism, with the opening being a request of them that they respect his religious beliefs not to bring into his tent the sand that perhaps they or others worshipped.
Perhaps one can offer the following explanation: Since he was projecting his own religious beliefs here, to say “take” or to bring it to them would be overbearing and instead he sensitively said: “let it be taken, please”. And not to insult them by having them think that he really said this due to an odor of theirs after traveling, he specified “a bit of water”, just enough to symbolically wash off the dust.
All this is mentioned to teach us a similar combination of thoughtfulness: the way to get across a religious message, helping people with their spiritual needs, is not preaching or chastising but by helping them with their physical needs: to be unabashed in teaching, but to do so sensitively, and via hospitality and other caring help.
As some have said: rather than looking after your own physical needs and the spiritual needs of others, look after the physical needs of others, and your own spiritual needs. To this one may add:
a) look after the physical needs of others as did Abraham, tolerantly, but infuse it with content as did he:
b) looking after the physical needs of others IS the way to look after your own spiritual needs.
Abraham says: “I’ll take some bread for you, and you’ll eat”.
The guests answer: “So you should do, as you have said”. What a strange answer.
Then Abraham runs to Sarah in the tent and tells her to “quickly” prepare food. Is this a polite way to treat his wife?
Then instead of getting bread and doing as he said, Abraham immediately asks Sara to do something else: to prepare cakes!
1) Why does he suddenly do differently than he originally said? And this, ironically, immediately after his guest specifically told him to do as he said!
2) Why does he run to prepare meat? why does he run to prepare meat [the fact of his running is stressed]?
Answer: We are taught that great people say little and do much, and they certainly do that which they say they will do. The opposite is true of people with the opposite characteristics. Traditional commentators point out that from here we can see that Abraham intended to do much more than he said, offering a bit of bread: he intended to offer cake and meat but without telling them, so that they could not refuse.
Perhaps one can add the following: The visitors were intending not to bother him, and being messengers of God knew his intent, and so their strange answer was meant to say “do as you said and not as you intend to do”, that is: “bring only bread rather than the elaborate meal you intend”. However from this wise and perceptive (prophetic?) answer/request, Abraham realized these were special guests, and this is why he raced to prepare the meat.
Perhaps Abraham (having just been in communication with God, and perhaps still in the throes of the experience) realized that they were messengers of God, related to God’s earlier promise of a child, and this prompted him to run to Sarah and excitedly ask her to hurry…. Also for her to be part of the mitzvah: as Yitschak asked Esav to provide him with food in order to receive the blessing: indeed the son whose birth they will foretell is Yitschak! Indeed immediately after the food was placed and eaten the ‘guests’ ask “where is Sarah…”
[Note also the parallel between the two accounts:
· 27:5: Rivka was listening (to Yitschak talk of the blessing). AND
·
· God says: (paraphrase) “Let me go down to see what’s going on in Sdom, is it as bad as it sounds”. Why is God talking to himself?
· Does God not already know what is happening?
·
Right before this we are told that
the guests leave towards Sdom, and as we know they were going there to save
· Abraham starts bargaining with God for the lives of the people of Sdom. How does Abraham know of God’s plan to destroy the city?
Answer
(Tradition):
The beginning of the whole story is “And the LORD appeared unto him by the tents of Mamre” and then the guests appeared. And right as they were leaving God asks Abraham why Sarah laughed. Clearly then Abraham was in contact with God all the while, the arrival of the guests being part of this contact. (Maimonides teaches that the whole event was a vision.) So, when God says “Let me go down to see what’s going on in Sdom, is it as bad as it sounds” he is saying it to Abraham! And that is what “going down to see” means.
Also: in the passage “And the LORD said: 'Shall I hide from Abraham that which I am doing” the words “and the Lord said” are in a very unusual passive form (‘veHashem amar’, rather than ‘vayomer Hashem’). God is deciding to tell Abraham, and then does so via the statement “Let me go down to see what’s going on in Sdom, is it as bad as it sounds”. Abraham takes his cue from this and begins his defense speech.
Abraham interrupted his communing with God as soon as he saw the guests, and ran to greet them. This is not disrespectful: on the contrary the way to worship God is via kindness to those created in God’s image. Bringing strangers into one’s tent and ministering to their physical needs (with a touch of a spiritual message) is the way to bring in God’s presence.
Perhaps one can add: As a result of Abraham’s correct decision to take care of the guests rather than put up a sign saying ‘busy communing with God’, the connection to God was maintained throughout the visit and afterwards. Also, in this way Abraham proved himself sufficiently a lover of humanity and spiritually deep to become the defender of Sdom.
Furthermore, he showed understanding of the principle that God wants us to serve those created in the divine image as the way to serve God, and so Abraham was ready to be a defended of humanity even against God – without this deriving from disrespect: quite the opposite: the more respect for God, the more respect for the divine image that is a human being.
12-15: And Sarah laughed within herself … And the LORD said unto Abraham: 'Wherefore did Sarah laugh… Then Sarah denied, saying: 'I laughed not'; for she was afraid. And He said: 'Nay; but thou didst laugh.'
· Sarah laughed when overhearing the guests talking to Abraham. God asks Abraham why Sarah laughed but we are explicitly told that Sarah “laughed within herself” - how was Abraham to know about Sarah’s internal laughter?!
· Why did God chastise Abraham about not believing the message about the birth of his son, asking rhetorically “Is this too difficult for God to do?” After all, the message came from guests, not from God – and why should an approximately 100-year-old couple believe such a strange message?!
· God asks Abraham why Sarah laughs, but Sarah answers: “I didn’t laugh!” How did Sarah know what God said to Abraham?
Perhaps one can answer as follows: The
questions imply the answer: there was a
……………………….
[Having God in our relationships can help us achieve
deeper empathy with each other: couples can develop an understanding that
borders on telepathy.]
12-15: And Sarah laughed within herself … And the LORD said unto Abraham: 'Wherefore did Sarah laugh… Then Sarah denied, saying: 'I laughed not'; for she was afraid. And He said: 'Nay; but thou didst laugh.'
· Sarah laughs, and God challenges Abraham about it: why does God not challenge Sarah?
· Sarah answers instead of Abraham, why does she interrupt God’s question to Abraham?
Answer: Earlier, when God tells Abraham that he will have a son, Abraham laughs. However he is not scolded for this, and the Sages teach that it was laughter of joy, not of skepticism. The second time he hears of a son who will be born, he does not laugh, but Sarah does.
Perhaps this is because it was the first time that Sarah heard of it, in other words Abraham did not tell her of God’s promise! [32]
This is what God is challenging Abraham about, and this is why Sarah wants to deny having laughed. From the question God asks, and the prophetic connection between the three, she understand what has happened: God hears her laugh, and this of course shows that braham didn’t tell her about the promise of a child! So God challenges Abraham – not Sarah – and then to defend Abraham Sarah claimed that it was not a skeptical laugh but a joyful one, that she of course believed it (the implication being that she had heard about it already from Abraham) and so she had actually laughed from joy (as did Abraham when he heard it and believed it)!
The passage says she lied “because she was afraid”, but we
read it as ‘for she was afraid’ of what would happen to Abraham as a
result of this, not of what would happen to her!
And how could she lie to God?! She learned from Abraham that
to
save the life of another – as was the case when they entered
Of course God knew that Abraham in fact had NOT told Sarah,
but the whole episode was designed to test their reaction, and they responded
perfectly, in defense of each other, and so God dropped the subject and did not
punish Abraham for not telling Sarah, nor Sarah for laughing.
Judaism values truth, and the suffering and growth that comes with the responsibility of accepting the truth, but not necessarily blindly in all cases where MY telling the truth will cause SOMEONE ELSE to suffer. Especially to defend someone else’s honor one can perhaps ‘stretch the truth’.
And now we can understand why the Torah tells us that God
said [
·
After implicitly criticizing Abraham
for not revealing God’s plan to Sarah, God now is ‘obliged’ to reveal the
divine plan for Sdom.
·
Now that Abraham and Sarah have shown
their preference for kindness over justice, and willingness to go out on a limb
for another, they are on the level to be defenders of the people of Sdom;
·
Abraham, Sarah and God are still in a
three-way communication: but Sarah is in her role of “And Sarah was listening”:
·
Now that they have shown their
willingness to stand up to God in order to defend another human being they are
qualified to attempt to defend the people of Sdom against God’s justice
Why is it important for God to contradict
Sarah and point out that she did indeed laugh?
God is not being spiteful or infantile. God wishes to show
her and Abraham that He knows what is in a person’s heart and so confronts her
with the truth, which she no longer denies. And this insight about God is
important for its own sake, and also as a prelude to the story of Sdom.
Question:
How is it that as defense attorney for Sdom Abraham doesn’t even question God’s
determination of the guilt of his clients?! All he asks is that God spare the
righteous: but perhaps they are ALL righteous?
Perhaps one can offer the following answer: After the
previous encounter, Abraham knows now in a very personal way that God is the
Judge of the Earth, and merciful:
·
God knows what is in each person’s
inner heart and therefore a defense attorney cannot question God’s
determination of fact even regarding the most inner thoughts and intents:
·
God is merciful and totally overlooks
even a direct lie if the intent was to save another human being from shame or
punishment, and so the issue here was not one of too strict justice;
As opening line in his argument with God Abraham says about
the imminent destruction of Sdom: “wilt Thou indeed sweep away and not forgive
the place”. Perhaps there is a hidden meaning in this passage. In Hebrew:
·
The word translated as “wilt” is
“ha’af” which also means the forbearance (ma’arich af) or anger (charon af) of
God;
·
The word translated as “forgive” is
“tisa”, invoke, used in the Ten Commandments for “do not invoke my name in
vain”;
·
The word “the place” is a known name of
God (since all space is in God).
Thus the passage can be translated as a
mystical reference, and in the third person: “will the divine attribute of
Anger sweep all away and not allow the aspect “Place” be invoked in its stead?”
The Destruction of S’dom (Hussein?)
Abraham says: Will not the Judge of all the Earth do justice?”
· There is a Jewish law that a court of many judges is required for capital cases, and so Abraham is challenging any decision reached without a defense attorney or alternate judge, and appoints himself.
· Also, there is a law that if a large court rules unanimously for the death penalty, then there is something wrong, if not one judge dissented, and so Abraham challenges the unanimity of the decision.
This is why it seems as though a decision was already reached by God to destroy Sdom, but then he reopens the case in discussion with Abraham.
· The words translated as “Will not the Judge of all the Earth do justice?” can be interpreted as a statement rather than a question: Abraham challenges God saying that a Judge who condemns the whole land (Sdom) is not doing correct judgment, and indeed God then later saves Lot in ‘remembrance’/recognition of this.
·
Abraham says: That be far from Thee to do after this
manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked, that so the righteous should be
as the wicked; that be far from Thee; shall not the judge of all the earth do
justly?'.
Perhaps Abraham is not merely trying to save the righteous: he is saying: if one can slay all the righteous because of the wicked, should it not be symmetrical and one can as well save the wicked because of the righteous?!”. This can fit with the Hebrew: the words translated above as “so the righteous should be as the wicked” is actually symmetric: something like: “and it will be as the righteous as the wicked”.
Abraham bargains with God about Sdom, asking God to save the people if there are 50 righteous people, then if there are only 40 etc until “if there are ten”.
· Why did Abraham stop at ten?
·
Why did he not ask God to spare
his nephew
·
Why did God spare
·
Why does it say that “God
remembered Abraham and spared
Answer: The surrounding culture generally has a great affect on one’s behavior. Can one be blamed for this effect? Yes, because a person is responsible for choosing where to live, and thereby choosing their local culture.
Noah was a righteous person despite his culture, and in any case all humanity was corrupt and there was nowhere to live that was not corrupt, so he was spared (also, in order to spare humanity, someone had to survive the Flood).
However God wants Abraham to teach his
children not simply Justice, but ‘Righteousness and Justice’: 19: “For
I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household
after him, that they may keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and
justice”:
And so God saves Lot even though
Justice would militate against it, in order to teach this combination to
Abraham - and therefore we are told that God remembered Abraham and saved
And this is our inheritance from
Abraham: the combination of Righteousness and Justice, not one without the
other.
Abraham asks: “how can you kill the
good with the bad. If there are fifty righteous people will you save the whole
place? How can the Judge of the whole Earth do this, to kill the good with the
bad!?”
Problem: This is a poor bargaining
tactic: Abraham starts with a minimal demand, not to kill the good with the
bad, then has the courage to up his request, to not kill anyone, neither good
not bad if there are fifty righteous people, then goes back to the weaker
demand, to at least save the righteous. Why do this?
And, strangely God actually replies to
the tougher demand, not to kill at all, rather than to the opening and ending
weaker demand: And the LORD said: 'If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within
the city, then I will forgive all the place for their sake.'
Answer:
We see that the city of
As a consummate bargainer, who could argue with God, and knew the value of human life, Abraham could easily have convinced himself that God wished for him to contest the justice of bringing Isaac as a sacrifice. Whereas the test of Abraham regarding Sdom was whether he would rise to the occasion, put his life on the line, and take up cause against God, now God was testing him to see if he could resist the temptation to do the same here, to get out of the sacrifice. And Abraham passed the test of course.
In contrast to a very wordy exchange with God regarding Sdom, lengthy bargaining, here Abraham utters one word only: “Hineni” (“ I am here, [ready to do your bidding]”) and then after hearing the command, he says nothing at all! He just gets up early in the morning and goes to fulfill his mission.
·
Why does Abraham stop the bargaining at
ten?
·
Why does God simply leave the
discussion without ending it for example by saying “there are not ten people
and so I will destroy Sdom”?
Answer:
Perhaps indeed there were ten, and so Sdom was to have been saved!
How many people were initially to be
saved?
The angels ask
12-14: “And the men said unto
Counting all these we have:
·
·
The two unmarried daughters mentioned
earlier, who indeed escaped Sdom; 2
·
The sons-in-law in the plural so this
is at least: 2: and their wives (his daughters); total at least 4;
·
Sons (or grandchildren); in the plural
so this is at least: 2
for a minimum total of 10![33]
However only
·
Perhaps had all ten believed the
message the whole city might have been saved.
·
Or, perhaps the agreement with Abraham
was to have all the righteous die with the wicked if there were fewer than ten
righteous people, but to save all the righteous people if there were at least
ten of them, but not to save the whole city. Since there were indeed ten, God
gave them the chance to escape: however those that were not sufficiently believing
did not utilize this possibility.
God told Abraham to send Hagar and
Yishmael away as Sarah had commanded: but why did he not give them more water?!
Answer:
First of all God had promised Abraham that Yishmael would be a great nation,
(and had also promised Hagar the same: [
Furthermore, from the previous story we
know that he was living near ‘Shur’ (20:1), which was where Hagar found the
well the first time she was cast out (16:7). Indeed Hagar would have found that
well this time also, as Abraham expected, except that she lost her way [21:14]
“she strayed in the wilderness of Beer-sheba” ….. and it was only after praying
that: “And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water”.
Avimelech, who earlier kidnapped Sarah
and then protested his innocence (Chapter 20) - as though we are to believe
that he could kidnap and rape someone’s sister, but would not have kidnapped
her had he known she was someone’s wife - confronting Abraham “why didn’t you
tell me she was your wife, why did you say she was your sister” now confronts
Abraham again with his slimy hypocrisy.
He should have learnt from before: God
punished him with a disease as a result of taking Sarah, and he was not healed
even after returning her, and giving gifts to Abraham; he healed only when
Abraham prayed for him; and he has the nerve to accuse Abraham of wrongdoing!
“[21:23 – 24] Now therefore swear unto
me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor
with my son's son; but according to the kindness that I have done unto thee,
thou shalt do unto me”
And then Avimelech again denies
responsibility for his actions:
[
Why does Avimelech appear here again,
what is he complaining about, and what is all this about the wells?
Answer:
This story is told right after that of Hagar’s expulsion. Perhaps Avimelech
heard of it and wants to rub it in to Abraham, that he is a man not to be trusted
about his wives: he lied about Sarah and allowed her to be taken away by
another man, and now he kicked out his other wife, and didn’t even give her
sufficient water. He has the nerve to come and ask Abraham to promise he won’t
lie anymore. Abraham counters by telling him that Hagar was lacking water only
because she couldn’t find her water-well due to the fact that Avimelech’s
people had taken it forcibly (as they had taken Sarah). Again Avimelech denies
everything “I didn’t hear it etc….[34]
Some nations in that part of the world
will kidnap and rape, and steal water sources, hypocritically not only blaming
others for their own crimes, but will blame the victim.
Even back then the women lamented: Why
are there no Good Straight Men?
Answer: They thought that there were no
straight men left!
There are many indications of the
homosexuality of the Sdom area:
·
The men of all ages surrounded the
house;
·
They wanted the male guests brought out
‘to know them’.
·
This happened ‘before they went to
bed’.
·
They were not willing to accept
·
Seeing that Sdom and other cities had
been destroyed, not knowing the extent of the destruction and thinking it
almost universal, and assuming that any remaining cities were probably also
homosexual Lot’s daughters say:
And therefore in order to have children
they resort to their father (who is old and soon would not be able to have
children.) [35] [36]
…….
Technical Matters
Reducing Confusion
The order of events in the passages is a bit confusing:
· Why does Abraham assume that God has already decided the matter of Sdom’s destruction if God merely says: “I will go down and see if things are as bad as they seem”.
· Why does the passage mention twice that the angels leave for Sdom (in 16 and in 22)
Answer:
The angels were on the way to Sdom, Abraham was accompanying them as one would walk with departing guests, but he did not know of their mission: this is passage 16.
Then God says “will I hide this from Abraham”, and then tells him “I will go down to see”.
Then God does this, and decides to destroy Sdom, or the decision was taken before but this is the way God lets Abraham in on the process.
Then in passage 22 the angels leave Abraham to go towards Sdom and by this Abraham understands that God’s decision was now taken. And thus Abraham starts the bargaining.
God blesses Abraham that his children would be like the sand of the sea (shore)[1]. But Abraham lived in a desert area, and surely there is more sand in a desert than at the seashore! It must have been strange to hear that his children would be plentiful but not the sand in the desert, only as the sand at the shore.
Answer: Perhaps this preference of the sand of the shore is
in reference to the request that Abraham made of his guests, to wash their
feet. The Midrash tells that some people at the time worshiped the
(all-covering, virtually indestructible) desert sand and Abraham did not want
this in his tent, and therefore asked them to wash their feet in order to
remove the sand. Therefore the image of the sand of the desert is not used by
God to describe the children of
Chayei Sarah
Why Is This God Any Different Than Any Other God? Don’t Look a Gift God in the Mouth
Eliezer (Abraham’s assistant/disciple/servant) is sent to bring a wife for Isaac. He ends up at the home of Abraham’s relative Lavan.
“And he (Lavan) said: 'Come
in, thou blessed of the LORD; wherefore standest thou without? for I have
cleared the house, and made room for the camels.”
Why does Lavan say “I have cleared the house”[39] a
rather strange thing to say to a guest?
The Sages teach that Lavan was aware of Abraham’s views on idolatry and when he saw the gold presents given to his daughter by Abraham’s servant, Lavan became instantly “converted” and removed his idols to make his home “kosher” for his guest.
Questions:
· We know that Lavan later on ran after Yakov to retrieve his idols, so they clearly meant something to him. At this earlier juncture we assume they also meant a lot to him, and so why would he suddenly ‘do teshuva’ and remove his idols?
· Why did he do so after seeing the gold?
Perhaps one can offer an additional explanation to the one provided in Traditional sources.
Years later Isaac’s son Yakov (Jacob) flees there. When he
eventually leaves Lavan’s home we are told [35:4] that Yakov’s family gave him “all
the foreign gods which were in their hand, and the rings which were in their
ears.”
Seemingly the jewelry was an aspect of some form of idolatry.
We can now see the explanation for the events in the following: When Eliezer comes to Lavan’s home:
“the man (Eliezer) took a golden ring of half a shekel
weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold ….And it
came to pass, when he (Lavan) saw the ring, and the bracelets upon his sister's
hands… he came unto the man … And he (Lavan) said: 'Come in, thou blessed of
the LORD; wherefore standest thou without? for I have cleared the house”.
Why did he clear the house of his idols? Perhaps Lavan was simply
substituting one idol for the other -
after all, Gold is worshipped even today!
{Alternate version: It may be that when Lavan saw the gold - which had been brought to him as a gift/dowery - he (said “My go(l)d!!, and) accepted it as his new idol(atry). Thus he removed the old gods from his home not because he had done teshuva, but simply to bring in the new. (“bring in the gold, throw out the old (god)”)
[These can be titles: “Oh My Go(l)d”, and “out with old, bring in the gold”.]}
………..
One of the major cities in
But the word ‘shova’ means ‘swore’. And in fact the original name of the town was ‘Be’er-shova’! (swearing at the well!?)
One can perhaps venture that Abraham made a very clever pun with this name as we’ll see below, but for a reason which had political and familial significance for the future.
27 And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto
Abimelech; and they two made a covenant. 28 And Abraham set seven (sheva)
ewe-lambs of the flock by themselves. 29
And Abimelech said unto Abraham: 'What mean these seven (sheva) ewe-lambs which
thou hast set by themselves?' 30 And
he said: 'Verily, these seven (sheva) ewe-lambs shalt thou take of my hand,
that it may be a witness unto me, that I have digged this well.
31 Wherefore that place was called Beer-sh?va; because …….
AR: What is the natural assumption to make regarding the
name? That it was called Beer-sheva (well-of-seven) because of the seven lambs;
after all Abraham and Avimelekh make a big deal about there being seven of
them, and they are the sign for their treaty about the well. Instead though the
Torah makes a switch and says:
31 Wherefore that place was called Beer-shova (‘well-swore’); because there they swore both of them. !!!
AR: A very cute last-second unexpected punny switch! Why did Abraham do this?
Isaac would one day re-dig his fathers’ wells, and would give them similar names. He wanted on the one hand to keep the name Beershova to remind everyone of the pact which Avimelekh had violated, but not in so blatant a manner; so with political wisdom he instead called it Beersheva, the name that Abraham ‘prepared’ in advance and that Avimelekh expected at the time – and anyone hearing it would understand the implication!
History Repeats Itself, Again (“it’s déjà vu all over again!”)
Our forefathers had a history which was a foreshadowing the troubled history of their descendants. But by persisting they created mystical ‘pathways’ which would enable their descendants to prevail in similarlyadverse circumstances:
·
Abraham and Sarah journey to
· They go to areas near the Plishtim[40] and Sarah was kidnapped by Avimelekh (the local king), another kidnapper-rapist who then tries to paint himself as a righteous person.
· Avimelekh’s servants harassed Abraham by stealing his wells[41]; Avimelekh denies all knowledge of this in a very unconvincing speech. So Abraham makes a pact with Avimelekh and a sign, so that posterity will know that he dug the well.
Does all this help? Of course not!
· Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac and his wife Rebecca go to the same area, and again Avimelekh (probably a generic name for whoever was the king of that area) pesters them: he peeks into their window and learns that they are husband and wife rather than brother and sister – so presumably he peeked into the bedroom window. A voyeur-king, who then tries to present himself as an honorable man.
· Isaac becomes wealthy and the local people begin to get jealous and (see 26:16) eventually make him leave (sound familiar?). They probably figure that this exile, and being far from water sources, will impoverish him.
· He goes to the area where his father Abraham had dug the wells, and where he had made the pact with Avimelekh, and, true to form, all the wells had been filled in! Without water he will have nothing; no sheep, no wealth.
· So he digs a new well, they find water, and the people living nearby claim it as theirs. He digs another, finds water, and again the same thing, they take it from him,.
· Finally he digs one and they leave him alone. He showed enough persistence and willingness to work the land and create resources despite whatever they threw at him, and finally was ‘tolerated’.
· God appears to him and blesses him; he remains wealthy and powerful and seeing that Isaac is still powerful despite all their efforts to exile and impoverish him Avimelekh comes to visit him: Isaac says “you threw me out of your land, what do you want now?!” and Avimelekh says he wants to make a pact of friendship, after all they have always been friends! And so they sign yet another peace treaty.
The forefathers went through these cyclic events so that when their descendants experienced these same trials they would be fortified with the merit of their ancestors; with the spiritual tools inherited from our forefathers we can overcome all obstacles.
AR: Interestingly, we do not find people mentioned in the Torah naming their children after their ancestors: this did not happen until much later in Jewish history. (Perhaps because history was still ‘being made’)
However the practice of using the names used by ancestors does appear in a different sense:
· When Abraham’s son Isaac re-digs his father’s wells in the future, after they were covered up, the Torah tells us that he wishes to give them names similar to the ones given by his father.
· Jacob gives the blessing to Efraim and Menashe that they will be called in his name and the names of his ancestors.
Loaded Silence
The Torah seems to present
the connection between each Patriarch and God in a manner which grants them
exclusivity: no two Patriarchs are recorded as having conversation with God in
the same period: After the first recorded communication by God with Isaac there
isn’t any with Abraham anymore, and aftr the first recorded conversation with
Yakov there’s none with Isaac.
However the timing of each
of these transitions is interesting. For the case at hand: the last recorded
communicating from Abraham to God is the one word “Hineni”; immediately
following is God’s request to take Isaac as a sacrifice. From that moment on
Abraham, though totally obedient, does not talk to God.
(The word hineni and the
consequent silence is echoed by the words and silence between Abraham and Isaac
on their three-day journey towars the akedah at Moriah.)
Countering
Revisionist Historians
Although
Abraham and his grandson Yakov (Jacob) left
Why
could Abraham and Yakov - Isaac’s father and son – leave
We’ll
combine two Traditional ideas:
·
God promised Abraham ‘your seed’ will inherit the
land, and tells him that ‘Isaac will be your seed’. Presumably therefore it is
via Isaac that the Land was to be inherited.
·
According to Jewish Law unchallenged occupancy of
land over some period of time indicates ownership. That is, abandonment of a
piece of land by its owners for that period constitutes abandonment of the
claim to ownership.
AR: The Jewish People did not claim the Land via conquest
but rather via the covenant which God had made with Abraham to give the Land to
his seed, Isaac. Had Abraham left
Isaac’s claim to the Land was cemented by a
life-time of his residence there. It was therefore possible for his son Yakov
to leave, even for a lengthy stay, and for this to be considered temporary
since it was always the intention to return, and because the Jews were
eventually enslaved and couldn’t return on their own, and returned as soon as
they escaped slavery.
Perhaps never in history since that time has the
Jewish claim to the Land been as challenged by others as it is now: our enemies
in the past destroyed our Temple, but our enemies today deny that it ever
existed, and make attempts to destroy archaeological evidence of its existence,
and so living there now is especially important – it is a reaffirmation of our
covenant.
Whether is it Lavan or Avimelech or someone else:
Our enemies cast their sins on us; we are called nazis by those who slaughter
us, who themselves want to exterminate us.
·
Those who cannot accept how successful is
·
As they work to destroy the
·
And though they dream of creating another Holocaust,
they deny it ever happened since they cannot reconcile it with their paranoid
fantasy of a worldwide network of all-powerful Jews.
·
After a generation of denial, whatever will then be
left of the Holocaust will be attributed to the Jews themselves: they will say:
first of all it didn’t happen, secondly the Jews deserved it because they are
nazis, and thirdly the Jews perpetrated it themselves just as they did with the
WTC.
AR:
Abraham was too liberal in his treatment of Yishmael, and it was necessary for
God to inspire Sarah to take matters in hand. Yitschak was too liberal in his
treatment of Esav, and it was necessary for God to instruct Rivka to take
matters in hand. If not for them, the descent of Abraham and Isaac might have
been through Yishmael and Esav.
Continuing
in this tradition, Rachel and Leah encouraged Yakov to leave Lavan, their own
father, who they realized had betrayed them.
The
matriarchs were always the trend-setters, determining who would be the true
descendants of Abraham.[44]
…But Names
Will Never Harm Me
Ya’akov
was born holding the heel of his first-born twin brother Esav as Esav was
emerging before him from the womb they shared; as a result he was given the
name Ya’akov (the Torah tells us that the name is based on the root word ‘akev’
= heel, because he ‘held the heel of his twin brother’ as he was being born.)
It’s odd that the great Patriarch Yakov would be named for this incident at his
birth with its negative connotation; and the name itself ‘heel’ is surprising,
and indeed is used pejoratively by his brother Esav later on ("ויעקבני
זה פעמיים"). What was Isaac thinking to give such a name to his son?!
All
three Patriarchs had names given by God: Abram was changed by God to Abraham,
Isaac was given the name by God, and Yakov had the name Yisrael (
However,
though given by God the name Isaac =
Yitschak = “will laugh” could almost sound pejorative, coming as it does in
relation to Abraham’s laughter upon hearing from God that he would father a
child. However since God does not chastise him for this laughter we can see the
reference to it in his name as a positive matter.
How
is it that Yitschak, who was aware that names were so potent (after all God had
intervened to change the names of his parents, and had decreed his own name)
gives Yakov a name in such a cavalier manner rather than a carefully thought
out name; and why give him a name with such seemingly pejorative connotations?
On
the one hand of course this act of holding the heel symbolized the struggle of
Esav and Yakov in the womb that the Torah tells us of, and their subsequent
struggle throughout life, and is therefore very appropriate.
However
as Rivka did not tell Yitschak (Isaac) of the prophecy she received regarding
the two sons, Yakov presumably did not know of this cosmic struggle being
enacted through his sons (at the level of simple text: he certainly did not act
in accordance with the prophecy, to give the blessing to the younger brother,
Ya’akov) and so perhaps Ya’akov could not necessarily see the cosmic
significance of the heel-holding.
If
so, why give such a name to his son?
There
are however two hints in the text to a higher-level meaning to the name
Ya’akov:
The
seminal moment in Isaac’s life and probably Abraham’s as well is when Abraham
brings Isaac to sacrifice:
1)
The words: “and (he) cleaved (the wood)” are one word in
Hebrew: “vayevaka”, which are exactly the Hebrew letters forming the one Hebrew
word “and Ya’akov”! [vayevaka à ve’Ya’akov] "ואת
יצחק בנו
ויבקע Thus we can read: “And Abraham took... Isaac his son; and
(he) cleaved [the wood]”as: “And Abraham took (ie was ready to sacrifice)...
Isaac his son; and Ya’akov” [“ve’et
Yitschak bno, vayevakaà “ve’et Yitschak bno ve’Ya’akov”].
Sacrificing Isaac meant sacrificing his entire line, beginning with Ya’akov.
2.)
Afterwards God tells Abraham (via an angel): “since you did not withhold your
son (Isaac)” you will have many generations etc. Who is the first of this
promised chain? Isaac’s son Yakov. What is the first word of the above key
passage? The word “since”: “ekev”, with the same letters as “heel” from which
Ya’akov’s name was taken.; so the hidden reference means: “you did not withhold
your son (Isaac) and Ya’akov”
"ויקרא
מלאך ה'... ולא
חשכת את בנך...
ארבה את זרעך... עקב
אשר שמעת
בקלי".
When
Isaac saw his son emerging holding on the heel of his brother, he knew there
was significance to this; he gives the name Ya’akov refering not simply to the
‘heel’ event at his birth, but in its hidden symbolism represents the great
sacrifice that his grandfather and father were willing to make, a sacrifice
which would have denied him his promised existence, and so that name carried a
very heavy positive energy for him throughout his life.
Eventually
Ya’akiv earned a new name on his own merit, Israel, the name by which
are called the future generations of Jewish People – the generations promised
to Abraham and willingly sacrificed, and so we are Bnei Yisrael, Children of Israel,
meant to live in the Land of Israel.
Just
as he earned his original name by holding on to his brother, he earns this new
powerful name by holding on to the ‘man’ = angel in his all night struggle (and
ends up injured in the thigh), not letting him go: clearly there is a
connection.
Avimelekh,
Lavan, Bila’am etc seems to be upstanding but the Torah shows more subtly that
they were not; similarly Esav seems upstanding but the Torah hints that he was
not: we are told that Esav’s wives were a source of bitterness to both his
parents (26:35 27:46 28:8), a rather
radical statement, and even Isaac who wanted to give him a blessing requested
of Esav 27:4 “make me savoury food, such as I love, and
bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die.” :
perhaps we can read this as implying that Isaac couldn’t bring himself to give
Esav a blessing without being in a good mood first!
The
great miracle of the splitting of the Re(e)ed Sea was via a strong wind and so
any sceptic could claim that it was a natural event, and similarly for other
public miracles. So too the Torah allows the hypocrites of the world to see
their fellow hypocrites Avimelech, Lavan and Esav as righteous, while seeing
Avraham and Yakov as wicked. The Torah often employs a double standard, holding
the righteous to a higher scrutiny, usually only hinting at the moral failings
of the wicked, while highlighting those of the righteous: NPR and CNN, wishing
to be similarly divine, do the same.
Rivka’s
Main Qualification: She came from a shady family, but was full of Chesed
Isaac
was so liberal that he wanted to give the blessing to Esav – perhaps because he
felt Esav needed it more. But why was Rivka able to see through her son Esav’s
wilyness so clearly, and do the correct thing even though it was a rather harsh
step against her own son, but Isaac could not?
Because
Isaac grew up in the upstanding home of Abraham whereas his wife Rivka grew up
in the home of sly Lavan: she recognized hypocrisy and evil, and was also familiar
with the slyness necessary to fight it.
At the same time she developed the characteristics of chesed, combining
them successfully (gvurah).
Fighting
evil does not make one evil – just the opposite; not fighting evil does not
keep one pure – just the opposite.
How
were Rivka and Yakov allowed to trick Yitschak? How could Rivka say to her son
Yakov “Do it, the curse will be on me”. Can a person do an evil deed at the
behest of another if the person agrees to take the responsibility, blame or
consequences?!
AR:
Again the Torah makes it possible for those who wish to read it negatively to
do so: but it is clear on a contextual reading that God had given Rivka a
prophecy, and had not shared it with Yitschak. Obviously this was all for a
reason, and Rivka was meant - when the time was right - to act on the knowledge revealed. If God
had meant for Isaac to give the blessing willingly to Ya’akov, God would have
given the message to Isaac, not to Rivka. Instead Rivka was following God’s
plan as revealed to her, and so she could reassure Yakov that “it’s on me”.
…………
Note:
It’s interesting that:
when
feeling the struggle inside her of Eav and Yakov Rivka says:
25:22: “if so, why am I “ = “Lama-zeh anochi”
When
selling the birthright Esav says:
25:32: I will die “why do I need the birthright” =
“lama zeh li bchora”.
…………..
The
Torah tells us that Yitschak was blinded. According to Tradition it was caused
by the smoke of the incense offered by Esav’s wives to their deities; these
daughters-in-law were “a bitterness of spirit” to Yitschak and Rivka.
AR:
Support for this attribution of Isaac’s blindness to Esav’s wives can be found
perhaps in the parallel of the words “vati h’yena”/“vatich-h’yena”:
26:35
“and they were (a bitterness of spirit)”: and they (feminine plural) were =
“vati h’yena”
27:1
“and (his eyes) were blinded”: and were blinded = “vatich-h’yena”.
Kissing Cousins?! In a somewhat seemingly risqué encounter, Yaakov sees Rachel at the well, comes over, and kisses her. There are many explanation for this (see eg http://www.ottmall.com/mj_ht_arch/v35/mj_v35i80.html#CABM and thread) and generally it is seen as a crucial encounter in the spiritual relam. [Also, tears, water, wells etc, carry much deep meaning and symbolism.] On the one hand the chumash has extremely interesting/insightful sometimes non-PC stories: I do not think that one should assume that Yakov did not kiss her, however the Torah also contains many plays on words and here the juxtaposition of words enables an interesting reading: “Vayashk es tzon Lovon” = Yakov waterd Lovon’s sheep, “vayishak (exactly the same letters)... rochel.”so one can read the pasuk as: “Yakov watered the sheep from the well and "watered" rochel with his tears”. [Note also that rochel means lamb!]
Yakov
wants to marry the younger sister Rachel and not the older sister Leah. We are
told that Yakov wakes up in the morning and finds that it was Leah rather than
Rachel. “Righteous” Lavan says:
29: 26 'It is not so done in our place, to
give the younger before the first-born.
AR:
Lavan seems upstanding when he explains that the custom is to marry off the
older daughter before the younger. One can say “well, he has a point” and see
Lavan as the righteous one, but this again is simply the style of the Torah: if
one reads the text honestly one will see that Lavan is actually quite a
scoundrel: after all, why didn’t he tell Yakov seven years earlier right when
the deal was struck that he would hold him to this custom!! Some righteous
individual letting his son-in-law work for seven years under false pretences!
And
what a hypocrite: to think that this sanctimonious invocation of custom is
convincing when everyone realizes that he should have spoken his mind seven
years back when the agreement was struck. And furthermore, if he wishes to
pretend that his was a justified claim, why didn’t he at least make it clear
and agreed upon at the wedding rather than the next day when it was too late?!
And
furthermore, to paraphrase Lavan himself: is it done in that place, to give a
woman to a man without him knowing who it is, to switch brides that way?!
Surely such is not the custom, so why should Yakov uphold Lavan’s
suddenly-sacred ‘custom’ if Lavan is himself so blatantly violating what is
likely an even greater taboo!
After
the seven years Lavan says : 'It is not so done in our place, to give the
younger before the first-born’:
AR:
Could it be
that Yakov didn’t know - or didn’t heed - the custom after being there so many
years, and being engaged to a local girl? And how could he expect that Rachel
would go along with it, especially regarding insult to her sister, and to the
society as a whole?
AR:
Answer: Perhaps the very reason Yakov suggested the seven years was to give
time to Leah to find a husband, and the deal was that if despite her knowing
that her younger sister Rachel was to be married in seven years she did not
herself get married during those many years, she forfeited her right to first
marriage.
AR:
If the deal was that after seven years Yakov could marry the younger daughter
despite local custom, then what was Lavan’s claim?
AR:
Lavan the rascal tells him after the seven years that the custom was not simply
regarding the order of getting married but also regarding WHOM one could marry.
Lavan is claiming that if he wanted to marry into the family local custom would
have required him to marry Leah and NOT Rachel, and ONLY Leah, but that the
deal had been that after seven years he would not have to marry Leah and
forfeit Rachel - instead he could marry Leah first and then afterwards get
Rachel too.
Perhaps
had Yakov and Rachel worked to find an appropriate shidduch for Leah during the
seven years of their engagement this demeaning event and its grave consequences
of rivalry and jealousy would not have happened.
Was
Yakov insensitive in not seeing Leah’s misery in not being betrothed through
seven long years? No: the Torah tells us that to him the seven years passed
like days. 29: 20 “And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and
they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.”
Self-Lovon:
Sanctimonious Self-Serving Hypocrisy: Where there’s a Will There’s a Relative:
When
Yakov arrives: 14 “And Laban said to him: 'Surely
thou art my bone and my flesh.' And he abode with him the space of a month. 15
And Laban said unto Jacob: 'Because thou art my brother, shouldest thou
therefore serve me for nought? tell me, what shall thy wages be?'”
Note
that though Yakov is Lavan’s “flesh and blood”, his “brother”, he was already
put to work - and without pay - within the first month.
AR:
So why did Lavan suddenly offer him a salary?
AR:
Yakov’s answer says it all: he wants to marry Rachel. 18 And Jacob loved Rachel; and he said:
'I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter.' The Torah tells us that he
loved her. Surely at some point it became clear to Lavan that Yakov had fallen
in love with his daughter. So about a month down the road when wily Lovon sees
that Yakov is in love with Rachel, and will be asking for her hand in marriage,
he decides to maximize his profit.
If
Yakov is his flesh and blood, and a penniless refugee to boot, he cannot be
asked for a large dowry payment. And it was a special custom for a man to marry
his niece or cousin, and if Yakov were of his household then he had special
claim to Rachel. So Lavan decides that his relationship with Yakov should be on
an employee-boss basis and says that they should discusses salary[45]!
Thus
Yakov has to offer a large dowry, and offers seven years of labor for Rachel.
Lavan
accepts the offer because it is the best one he could get, but makes it sound
as though he actually prefers yakov: 19
And Laban said: 'It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give
her to another man; abide with me.' Yes, better Yakov than anyone else because
Yakov’s offer is so good.[46]
…………….
The
blessings of Isaac were to got o the eldest – how could they go through
trickery to the younger? Would they not be invalid?
Esav
says “Ya’akov ‘heeled’ me twice, he took my birthright and he took my
blessings”. He is essentially admitting that Yakov had the right to the
blessings since Esav had sold him the birthright, which was the ticket to the
blessings.
Note
also that the words for “birthright” and “blessing” in Hebrew - “birchosi, and
“bchorosi” - are composed of exactly the
same (Hebrew) letters, symbolizing that when Ya’kov bought the birthright - the bchora - he was purchasing the right to the purpose of
the birthright, namely the blessing – the brocho.
·
Moses was the most humble person who ever lived: God even
told him to write this in the Torah.
Moshe knew he was very righteous and brilliant and also the
most humble BUT THIS DID NOT IMPACT HIS HUMILITY since his humility did not
derive from a poor self-image. His humility meant that no matter how great he
was, he never felt that he deserved more than anyone else or was ‘better’ than
them; he never felt himself to be too great to serve the people. Conversely,
after his initial encounter with God at the burning bush where he learned what
true humility was and was not, this humility did not prevent him from asserting
himself when it was necessary for him to lead (if it had, this would have
implied that his asserting himself was for self-glory).
·
Yakov was a simple man 25:27 . (In Hebrew ‘Tam’, the same
word we use on Passover to denote the simple child of the four sons, the one
who can ask questions, but not sophisticated ones.) He was not cunning or a
hunter like Esav. But his simplicity derived from a truly spiritual nature, not
from feeble-mindedness or lack of sophistication – rather, he followed God
without sophisticated questioning. But when called to it, he could
·
AR: Just as Moses was truly humble, and knew it, and could
take leadership positions and assert himself as a matter of humble dedication
to the mission God and his abilities and qualities imposed on him rather than
to express ego, so too Yakov could be cunning when required, as a matter of
courageous and even controversial but correct action rather than due to flawed
character or weak personality.
AR:
Every action has an effect: had Yakov and Rivka managed things differently
perhaps Esav need not have become an enemy. The same regarding Avraham, Sarah
and Yishmael. When things came to the point they did, there was no other option
but to follow the course they took, but it would have perhaps been better to
have tried not to get to that point.
Although
he acted as he should have at that moment, Yakov eventually paid for his
trickery:
1)
with Esav: by exploiting Esav’s plea:
“give me please
(hal’iteni na) of this porridge for I am very hungry/tired (ki ayef anochi)” As
a result he was affected by events leading to his request to God:
“save me please
(hatzileni na) from Esav for I am very afraid (ki yarey anochi)”
2)
with Lavan:
a) Lavan exchanges one sibling for the other, presenting Yakov with Leah instead of Rachel just as Yakov presented himself to Isaac to get the blessings instead of Esav.
b) Isaac says: your brother came in deception. Yakov the ‘deceiver’ here later asks Lavan “Why did you deceive me” using the same word, indicating that the deception by Lavan was a direct or metaphysical result of Yakov’s own previous deception..
c) Yakov tells Lavan “I finished my seven years of work, give me my wife” and doesn’t use her name, and Lavan gives him “a wife”, giving him the wrong one since he didn’t specify her name, playing with the words as Yakov said “I am your son Esav” when he was not, justifying it (according to some) by splitting the words “I am your son” without specifying which one, and then adding the word Esav.
d)
Lavan tells him “In our place we
don’t give the younger before the older” whereas Ya’akov the younger sibling
had usurped the rights of the older. And if indeed Yakov bought the birthright
and was thus the elder now, he should marry the elder of Lavan’s daughters, not
the younger.
Yakov
runs away from Esav, on the way he stops to go to sleep, putting some stones
under his head. He has an awe-inspiring dream, wakes up, and makes the stone
into a monument. Basically he says “if the dream promises come true this will
be a holy place and this stone will be a monument”.
·
Why the stress on the stone which was his pillow?
·
Why the conditional “If”? Why shouldn’t he make a monument?
The
relevant passage implies (depends on the translation/interpretation[47])
that he took several stones to put under his head, but it says clearly later on
that only one was under his head when he awoke. According to Tradition, God
made a miracle and had all the stones join into one.
AR:
Yakov could not be sure that the dream was accurate and from God, but the
unified stone was a sign that something special had occurred, that it was
indeed holy ground, and therefore Yakov gave credence to the dream
(appropriately it was the stone under his head while he dreamed which became
unified.)
In
a similar manner: some people living at the time of the events we commemorate
at Hannuka were not sure that the military victory was indeed a divine miracle:
then as today, incredible military victories by the Jewish State could be laid
at the door of naturalistic causes. We are taught that this was one of the
reasons that God made the miracle of the oil: to indicate that the rededication
of the
even
though the war was in itself a ‘greater’ miracle.
AR:
Similarly: Yakov understands that the miracle of the stone is not in itself
consequential but rather was meant to indicate that the dream was a divine
event: he therefore stipulates that IF the events foretold in the dream come
true, so that it was indeed a message from God, then since the stone – like the
oil -indicated that this indeed had been a divine event, it would then become
the focus of the commemoration of the ‘greater’ miracle of the dream.
………………..
For my article on the
life of Ya’akov and its relation to the ladder-dream and
Yakov’s reaction to it see: Jewish Bible Quarterly (Dor LeDor) “Dynamics of the
Divine/Human Interaction” VOL XVI 51
See reference at:
http://www.jewishbible.org/cgi-bin/title2.pl?Key=Rabinowitz&SearchTyp=1
…….
Vayetze
*
Advanced readers can skip directly to material marked by an asterisk.
…………………………………………………………………..
(Introductory) Kabbalistic/Inner Meanings of the stories in the Torah
The actions of our forefathers and mothers
were archetypical, and set up spiritual channels for their descendants for all
generations. Our own history is therefore a reflection of theirs, and so the
events in the stories are of direct relevance to our lives. The Torah does not
tell us of every event in their lives, but rather recounts those events which
have this special significance.
·
It’s important when reading the Torah to pay attention to connections
made between the stories: they are indications of deep undercurrents and of
repeating patterns in the history of our ancestors and therefore in our own
collective history and private lives.
·
The connections between stories are often made via the usage in two
stories of the same unusual word.
·
Undercurrents are highlighted by repeated usage of a particular word or
phrase in a story;
·
Since the meanings or messages of these patterns are sometimes obscure,
but the existence of the pattern is significant in of itself, I will point out
connections I have noticed even if I do not offer an explanation or interpretation
for them. It may be that these
connections are made and explicated elsewhere.
…………………………………………………………………………
The events - and the words used to describe them - related at the very beginning of the portion (ie from 28:10) and very end are almost identical, and almost in reverse order.
Seeing the parallels may help the reader of the portion to more clearly arrange the events retold in it in their mind.
Note the protagonists of the stories: Yakov, Esav and Lavan, archetypes of those making history throughout the ages; note the keywords and the archetypical actions and situations the stories refer to: running away from in fear and going towards for reconciliation; nightfall and daybreak; sleeping, waking, dreams; angels, being afraid, vows, treaties, invoking the names of ancestors and naming places.
· Yakov runs away from Esav: then: (First 15 or so passages of the portion): Yakov leaves, and “meets” a place[48]. He spends the night, goes to sleep, then sees angels in a dream, God mentions his father and grandfather Abraham and Isaac, he is afraid/overawed, (goes back to sleep) wakes early, erects a stone monument, names the place, (28:17) calling it “the house of God”, makes a vow and a treaty or ‘deal’, mentions his father.
And then almost in reverse order virtually the same events and words:
· (Last 15 or so passages of the portion: starting from 31:42): Yakov mentions his father and grandfather Abraham and Isaac, erects a monument, names it, makes a vow and treaty/deal, speaks of “the fear/awe” of his father, goes to sleep, (Lavan) gets up early in the morning, Yakov leaves (32:3), meets[49] angels, names the place (“hamakom”), referring to it as “the camp of God”. Then the next portion: Yakov goes to meet Esav.
In between these two stories appears the following similar one:
· 31:10 Yakov recounts a dream he had; the word ‘olim’ appears in reference to the angels in the first dream and in reference to the sheep in the second; reference is made by God to the monument and vow of the first story; he is told to leave, he gets up; mention is made of his father. Then Lavan has a dream, and God appears to him. Then Lavan goes to meet Yakov.
After the above three stories are told:
· 32:4: Yakov send angels, they are sent to go to Esav, (they return with a report and) Yakov is afraid, he creates ‘camps’, he mentions his father and grandfather Abraham and Isaac, he goes to sleep, he gets up, he spends the night, makes a ‘deal’(with the man/angel), he names the place (“hamakom”),
These are all deep stories with hidden meanings. I don’t know whether the parallels between these four sections (and perhaps various others which may also be similar) are drawn elsewhere, but certainly the events in these sections are dealt with in depth by many commentaries and by the Kabbalah.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
(Introductory) Summary: Family Politics
Yakov loves Rachel, but
not Leah. Leah wishes to have children to compensate and to make Yakov love her
too. Eventually she has four sons and is somewhat comforted. Then she stops
giving birth (30:9). Once she realizes that she can’t have more children, she
gives Yakov her handmaid as an additional wife who then bears him more sons; as
was customary Leah considers the sons to her credit and as a result feels more
secure in the affection that Yakov will have for her.
Leah’s oldest son, gives
her special flowers, and Rachel sees them and wants some. Leah says “you took
my husband and now you want to take my flowers!?”. ). Presumably Yakov stopped
spending as much time with her once she stopped giving birth, and spends time
with Rachel even though SHE doesn’t give birth at all. Rachel says “You can
have Yakov tonight”. Leah tells Yakov “Come to me, for I have given the payment
for you.” As a result of that night, Leah conceives and gives birth to a
boy.
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
* Unexpected Reward
As a result of the night
with Yakov whose access was purchased by the flowers, Leah conceives and gives
birth to a boy. She says: “God gave my pay/reward because I gave ….”
AR: What would we initially expect the missing words to be? What did Leah give that earned her this son? The flowers of course! That is how she obtained Yakov for that night. And so we expect her to say: “God gave my pay/reward because I gave my sister Rachel the flowers she wanted”.
But instead Leah specifies something unexpected as the reason for her reward: not “because I gave the flowers to Rachel” but “because I gave my handmaid to Yakov”!
The unselfishness of giving the handmaid to Yakov to bear him more children after she had stopped having children was what gave her the spiritual merit of having more children herself: the flowers were merely the means whereby she was able to exercise that right on that given night.
AR: The Torah perhaps makes use of this wording, the surprise ending, to bring out this point. (This is similar to the technique of the Torah in recounting the naming of Be’ersheva, as discussed in a previous parsha.)
AR: Similarly, Yakov was the one who deserved the blessings and not Esav, as God made clear in his message to Rivka when she was pregnant with the two of them. And so Yakov’s obtaining the birthright via pottage (and the actual blessings via bringing food while in disguise) was simply the means whereby he secured the blessings which were his right.
After the mystical dream Yakov says: [28:20-21] “If God will be with me, and watch me on the way and will give me bread and clothing and I will return in peace to my father’s house, then God will be my God and this monument will be the house of God.”
Ramban’s commentary: The wording may not necessarily imply conditionality: the word translated as “If” is “im”, and it is used in a different sense (28:15) in the very dream which Yakov is responding to! So, it is reasonable to assume that Yakov means it in the same sense.
· AR: However we can see that Yakov is haunted throughout his life by echoes of the words in his vow: his life tragedy is the disappearance and presumed death of his son Joseph.
· “If God will be with me”: As a result of his sorrow at the loss of Joseph he is not capable of receiving the divine presence – effectively God leaves him.
· “and watch me on the way”: Joseph (and then Benjamin) disappears “on the way”.
·
“will give me bread”: The brothers
eat bread after selling him; also, there is a famine and he is convinced to
send his children to
· “will give me bread and clothing”: The brothers smear Joseph’s clothing with blood to make it look as though he was killed by an animal, and bring this ‘evidence’ to Yakov.
· “and I will return in peace to my father’s house”: Eventually it is Joseph who must be “returned in peace to his father’s house”.
Yakov is also haunted throughout his life by echoes of his deception of his father, even though it was justified. In a previous parsha we saw how the deception by Lavan regarding the switch of Leah for Rachel was an echo.
AR: The same is true regarding the switching of Leah for Rachel via the flowers.
The theme is identical:
· 25:29: Yakov purchases, from his sibling rival, a birthright;
· 30:16 Leah purchases, from her sibling rival, a right (to Yakov) leading to a birth.
(Clearly Leah and Esav are connected.)
the timing is the same:
· Yakov is approached by Leah when he returns from the field:
· Esav is approached by Yakov when he returns from the field.
even the means is similar!
· Yakov uses (cooked) vegetation as payment.
· Leah uses (aesthetic) vegetation as payment.
Firstborns are involved:
·
Leah’s oldest son Reuven, the firstborn, gives her
special flowers, with which she purchases the right to a child.
· Yakov gives Esav the firstborn a porridge, with which he purchases the birthright.
In fact, even the words are the same:
· 30:15 Leah says to her sibling rival: “you took my husband and now you want to take my flowers!?”
· 27:36 Esav says about his sibling rival: “he took my birthright and now he took my blessing!”
AR: In any given situation there is an optimal mode of conduct, but it is our responsibility not only to do what is right given the situation, but also to make the given situation the best possible. If as a result of non-perfect behavior the situation is far from optimal, then even correct deeds may have negative ramifications.
The relationship between Yakov, Rivka, Yakov and Esav was clearly not optimal. The same for the situation between Yakov, Rachel and Leah. It may or may not be that Yakov could have done more – not that WE could have in the same situation, but perhaps he was so great that more was expected of him. Even if he could not possible have done more, events were divinely arranged to constantly remind him not to feel too comfortable with his previous actions, however justified.
If harsh action is necessary and justified, we must do it, and not be deterred by the harsh necessities; but we must execute our responsibilities not with smug self-satisfaction, but rather with sensitivity even to the enemy we must hurt. And we must also always be willing to question whether somehow perhaps additional sensitivity could also change the situation, and thereby also change the necessary actions.
· Rachel steals her father’s idols. Yakov, not knowing that it was she (just as he didn’t know it was NOT her at the wedding), and thinking that Lavan is totally unjustified in his thorough search of their belongings says [31:32] in anger: “let the thief die”. And so Rachel dies early, in childbirth.
· This is also of course a terrible tragedy for Yakov who loved her, and whose words kill her. And, with this, Yakov’s statement “Am I God that I prevented you from having children” takes on ironical overtones, since it turns out that he in this sense had the power of life and death over her.
· Rachel says to Yakov re her lack of children: [30:1] “Give me children (plural), because if not I am dead/will die!” and Yakov gets angry with her saying “Am I (in place of) God, that I prevented you from having children!?”.
· Rachel is not satisfied by the blessing of finally giving birth to a child: she says “Let God add to me another son”, and therefore names her son Joseph/“Yosef” = ‘let Him add’! This dissatisfaction has grave consequences.
* The Ramifications of the Naming of Yosef
· AR: The irony is that as soon as Rachel has children (plural) as she requested, that is, as soon as her second child is born, she indeed dies – and ironically she dies in childbirth!
· AR: The word ‘yosef’ in this context initially appears in the Torah after Eve gave birth to Cain: we are told: “and she additionally (“vatosef”) gave birth to Abel”. The parallel is clear: Cain was intensely jealous of Abel, and killed him, and the brothers were intensely jealous of Yosef, and wanted to kill him.
· AR: Rachel asks for a child “in addition” to the first-born, and gets one, Benjamin. Later however Joseph disappears and Yakov must console himself with Benjamin INSTEAD of Joseph, not in addition to him!
AR: Words uttered in anger: “Am I (in place of) God, that I prevented you from having children!?” and “let the thief die” bring tragedy; this is all triggered by Rachel’s dissatisfaction and Yakov’s incomplete sensitivity to her, and by Rachel’s theft, based on her decision to forcefully change her father’s religious practices.
AR: These were great people, and we in their place would have fared less well, but we can learn from these stories: however great the individual, however much one feels one’s actions and words are correct and for the sake of Heaven, one’s decision might be incorrect, and the ramifications of unethical actions or not-totally sensitive words can be immense. The Torah in this way teaches us that no one, even the greatest among us, can consider themselves beyond possible reproach. How much more so for us, whose intentions are less pure and whose spiritual understanding is of a lesser degree. Anger destroys, and words kill!
This event re-occurs later on, when Joseph in
This is of course an echo of what happened with Rachel, the mother of both protagonists, Joseph and Benjamin, and knowing what we do from that story we realize that this utterance can harm Benjamin. Just as his father Yakov’s words caused his mother Rachel to die while giving birth to him, Benjamin himself can perhaps die due to the words of his brothers.
AR: Knowing this, Joseph corrects them and makes the decree softer! Instead of accepting the death penalty decree of the brothers he says “let him on whom it is found be a slave to me and the rest of you will be free”. This leniency must have astounded the brothers.
Joseph will not let their words be accepted: even though he has no intention of killing anyone, and even though Benjamin is not actually guilty as his mother Rachel was, Joseph understands the power of the words and corrects them.
AR: It is interesting that he does so by saying “yes, let it be as you have said, let him on whom it is found be a slave to me and the rest of you will be free”, even though he changes the meaning completely. Had he instead said “NO, not as you have said, but rather it will be like the following ……” this would have creates two versions, perhaps each having its own power. Instead he robs the words as uttered by the brothers of their power by subverting them, usurping them to his version, so that there is no version of the decree consigning Benjamin to death.
AR: Just as the concern by the brothers for Benjamin metaphysically “redeems” their prior hostility to Joseph, this action by Joseph (with the full forgiveness of his bothers that it implies) brings full circle and redeems the deadly words uttered by his father Yakov.
· Yakov and Rachel were fated to be married and have Joseph, and for him to be the first born. Joseph was meant to have great spiritual potential as a result of this; this would also have forestalled all power struggles. Instead Yakov was with Leah first and Yosef was not the first-born, and his spiritual energy was weakened.
· It was crucial that the thoughts of both Yakov and Leah be attuned at the moment of conception. Yakov thought he was with Rachel but he was with Leah instead and so the child that resulted, Reuven, was spiritually impaired, and this caused his actions to be less than perfect.
· Though as it turned out Reuven was first-born, it was still Joseph who was preordained to be the leader, and this was the root of the struggles between the brothers. (Their struggle was like those of the previous generations: between the first-born Yishmael and his younger brother Yitschak [first-born of Sarah], and between the first-born Esav and his younger twin brother Yakov.)
The tricking of Yakov had great
ramifications for the future history of the children of
As we are told later on in the story, Yakov is cheated repeatedly by Lavan (31:7, 15, 38-42). When Lavan asks what payment he wants (30:28) Yakov responds that he want only certain colored sheep (read the story, it’s very strange). He then uses a magic stick colored with his chosen color, and places it near the sheep when they conceive, and the sheep come out this color! So Lavan switches his chosen color, and again Yakov succeeds by changing the color of the stick!
What is this strange story about the sheep! Why did Yakov do this!? (see below)
…………
Yakov
is cheated repeatedly by Lavan. Yakov places a magic stick near the sheep when
they conceive, and the sheep come out this color! Intentions Have Effect. I heard the following from my grandfather:
Lavan told Yakov that since he was given Rachel in the end, the deception had
no negative long-term effect. Yakov countered that the negative effect was in
the mystical mismatch of intention that he had when with Leah, thinking it was
Rachel, and this affected Reuven and Joseph negatively. Lavan countered that
such things could have no effect. So Yakov showed him that even what the sheep
think of when conceiving has a physical effect (!) how much more crucial are
human thoughts.
……………
I heard the following from my grandfather: Lavan told Yakov that since he was given Rachel in the end, the deception had no negative long-term effect. Yakov countered that the negative effect was in the mystical mismatch of intention that he had when with Leah, thinking it was Rachel, and this affected Reuven and Joseph negatively. Lavan countered that such things could have no effect. So Yakov showed him that even what the sheep think of when conceiving has a physical effect!
……………………….
* Yakov’s special connection with stones: AR:
· The group of stones around his head formed into one during his dream; the stones were to protect his head from animals, as though they are more powerful than his head, but the immaterial-seeming dreams in his head proved more powerful and shaped all the stones into one;
· The huge stone that he was able to remove from the well; wells and water symbolize blessing, and Yakov could get blessing even when it was seemingly going to be given instead to the powerful and very material Esav, and even when it was blocked by a powerful and very material stone; (his mother Rivka earned the right to bear him via her kindness with the water of the well);
· The stones he made into a pile as witness in the treaty with Lavan; Lavan gave it a name in Aramaic, and Yakov did not accept the name as given and instead named it himself in the Holy Tongue (and he swore in the name of “the Fear of his father Yitschak”: the fear at the Akeda while Yitschak was on the (stone) altar (anenu ki-she’anita le Yitschak ke’she’ne’ekad al gabey hamizbe’ach’)?
Sachar (Introductory)
The Hebrew root “sachar”= pay, salary, reward[51] appears in various forms at several junctures in the saga of Yakov, Lavan, Rachel and Leah.
· (29:15): Lavan asks Yakov “What’s your salary?” = mah maskurtech = your “sachar”. (see also 30:28 and 31:41)
· Leah tells Yakov “Come to me, for I have given the payment for you (sachor scharticha)”.
· As a result of that night, Leah conceives and gives birth to a boy; she says: “God gave my pay/reward (my “sachar”)….. And she called his name “YiSachar””
…………………………….
*
· AR: Yisachar was born as a result of this “payment” and then Zevulun after him. This may be the root of the special connection between the two: that the Torah of one could be ‘puchased’ by the other as a result of financial support.
…………………………………
25:22 Rivka re the turmoil in her womb: “Im keyn lamah zeh anochi”
30:1: Rachel re her lack of children:“Ve’im ayin mesah anochi”
Vayishlach
Vayishlach
……………..
Introductory: Summary of
parsha:
·
Yakov:
1.
fears the encounter with
Esav
2.
sends Esav gifts
3.
wrestles all night with
the ‘man’ (angel) and receives the name
4.
meets Esav.
·
Dina is kidnapped
·
the people of Schechem are
killed and Dinah is rescued.
·
Rachel dies.
·
Yakov returns to Isaac.
·
Isaac dies and is buried
by Yakov and Esav.
……………………………………………………………………………………
Surprisingly – even shockingly - the Torah employs
the same words for very different levels of beings:
·
Interchanging Man and Angel (“mal’ach”): Yakov’s
human emissaries are called ‘mal’achim’ which generally means angels – indeed
the word is used in that context immediately beforehand. On the other hand the
being with whom Yakov ‘wrestled’ is clearly an angel yet is referred to as
‘ish’, ‘a man’ [and the same for Abraham’s visitors].
·
Man and
Animal: Ish VeIshto: “man and wife”: is used for animals in the story of Noach!
·
Man and God: “Elohim” (generally meaning “God”) is
used for humans in two contexts: “bnei elohim” literally “the sons of Elohim”
but meaning “important people” or etc; Also God says to Moses that he will be
to Ahron “like God” (‘ata tihyeh lo laylohim’) or “like a leader” in that he will tell Ahron what to say.
·
[God and Angel: Mal’ach hashem: “angel of God”: the
mal’ach starts talking and God continues.]
Off-Handed Compliment
When
Yakov hear sthat Esav is coming towards him with many men, he is terrified, and
makes all sorts of preparations, and also sends a gift to Esav. And the
composition of this important gift?
[32:14] “he took that which was at hand” “Vayikach min haba biyado”. For
a man so terrified of an encounter, sending a gift to the one he fears, and
considering how much care he took in general preparation for the meeting,
Yakov’s off-handedness is exceedingly strange: why would he be so careless;and
why does the Torah use this paticular expression?
Ans: The defining moment in the
naming of Yakov was “VeYado ochezet be’akev achiv” “and his hand was holding
the heel of Esav”. So we can see that
“That which his hand held” was Esav! Therefore to metaphysically prepare for
the encounter with Esav he took “that
which was at hand”! (Perhaps this is also
similar to a lottery, where one allows ‘the hand of God’ to choose.)
………
INTRODUCTORY:
“Yakov was
‘left alone’ and a ‘man’ wrestled with him all night”: After sending the
gift to Esav Yakov (went to sleep and then woke up and) crossed his family over
the river: this seems to the commentaries to be an indication that he intended
to flee, and not encounter Esav. That he was ‘left alone’ implies that he was
not on the same side of the river as they were, which implies that he went back
across the river. But it says clearly that he took his belongings, so why did
he return? The Talmud tells us “he forgot small containers”. There is much
speculation as to what these were. Then Yakov ‘wrestles’ with a ‘man’ all
night. The ‘man’ is obviously an angel, as evidenced by the story: he gives
Yakov a new name, and afterwards (32:31) Yakov says “I saw God face to face”.
………………
Why
did Yakov cross his family over the river? And then why return alone!? [52]
AR:
Perhaps one can offer a very different explanation: The implication of
[32:22-23] is that Yakov first slept, and then he woke up in the middle of the
night and it was only then that he crossed his family and his effects over the
Yabok river, and then returned to the original side. Like Yakov’s first dream
encounter where he wakes up in realization of the vision, here too while Yakov
slept he had a vision from God, woke and understood that he had to encounter
the man/angel in a unique fateful and dangerous struggle. Just as we are told
earlier that he wished to protect some of his possessions from Esav by
splitting them, and later he protected his family by splitting them, Yakov
wished to distane his family during the upcoming struggle whose outcome was
uncertain. Thus he awoke and crossed his
family over the river and then returned IN ORDER TO ENCOUNTER THE MAN/ANGEL!
Shchem kidnaps Dinah the daughter of Yakov and takes
her. (Just like Avimelech and Pharaoh wanted to do to Dina’s mother Rivka and
her grandmother Sarah.) Later, Schchem offers much to Dina’s brothers in return
for her hand in marriage; they react by killing the whole town. And they do it
via treachery/trickery. Again, as with the incidents between the Patriarchs and
Lavan, Avimelech and Pharaoh, a casual reading of the story makes it seem that
the Patriarchs and their family are in the wrong. After all, Shchem’s offer of very high dowry
and fraternity among the two peoples sounds quite sincere and generous, and peace-loving.
Actually though, we can see easily from the text
that the brothers were not in the wrong.
The Torah unequivocally states that Schem kidnapped and raped Dinah.
Though he eventually fell in love with her and perhaps made her love him,
Shchem at no point offered to return Dinah! And Chamor, the father, the leader,
did not apologize or offer to free Dinah. And this is the essential point.
When the brothers present their plan to Schem they
say “and if not we’ll take Dinah and leave” but of course this is just
face-saving bargaining talk, it was clear that had they been able to they would
already have taken her back. It’s clear that Schem had no intention of taking
no for an answer.
As with many other accounts in the Torah, one must
read it with careful eyes and throughout the narrative remember we are dealing
with a kidnapper/rapist and never in all the negotiations does Shchem mention
the possibility of returning Dinah to her family. When a man violent enough to
kidnap and rape, and so brazen as not to even apologize does not offer to
return the victim, a violent rescue is necessary.
There was no way to rescue Dinah from the clutches
of Shchem other than by force. And, being that it was a family against a city,
they were heavily outnumbered, and so they had to use a stratagem in order to
succeed. Cruel but necessary.
Forced Assimilation?
Since Schem fell in love with Dinah he perhaps
wished for her to want to remain with him, not only as a captive, and wanted
her to feel that she had her family’s blessing; he therefore didn’t prefer the
option of killing them and alienating her. So he offered to give a large dowry
and arrange intermarriages, trading his men for the Jewish women.
The offer by the people of Schchem to the children
of
It’s interesting that the Torah uses the same phrase
regarding Shchem’s attachment to Dinah as it does for the intended attachment
of man and woman in the Garden of Eden account: “therefore shall man cleave
unto his wife”[54];
here we are told “and Shchem’s psyche (life-force) cleaved unto Dinah”. Nowhere
else in the Torah is a man said to be connected
to a woman in this way. And given the circumstances this is quite ironic
and provocative.
……………
THIS SECTION HAS A
DUPLICATED VERSION FOLLOWING IT: CHECK WHICH IS BETTER:
·
This sounds unethical, but the Torah may be hinting
at justification of their action: the word for ‘they answered’ = “vaya’anu” is
parallel to “vaya’aneha” = “and (Shchem) tormented her (Dinah)”.
·
The word ‘mirmah’ (deceit) haunts Yakov: as his
father Isaac said to his brother Esav regarding his taking of the blessings:
“Your brother came in deceit”
·
Yakov was angered at the actions of his children who
“answered in deceit”: he was afraid of the possible revenge by neighboring
peoples for the actions of his children against Shchem, justified though it may
have been, just as he feared Esav’s revenge for his own act of deceit,
justified though it was. Both were unfortunate extreme actions, necessary and
therefore justified, but it would have been better had the whole situation been
somehow preventable.
Yakov’s sons
tricked the males of Shchem into circumcising themselves - according to
the simple reading it was not just Shimon and Levi - and then Shimon and Levi
killed them all while they were in pain from the operation.
·
Was it morally proper to kill them all?
·
Was it morally proper to use circumcision as a
tactic in this way?
·
Why did the sons of Yakov involve all the males and
not just Shchem?
Answer: The children of Yakov,
seeing that they would not be able to obtain Dinah’s release, pretended to make
a deal for their assimilation into the Shchem culture – their condition was
circumcision. And it would not be enough that Shchem himself circucize, but
that he must be from a people who are circumcised, so that all his people must
follow suit. So, Shchem made an announcement in front of all his people,
‘welcoming’ the Jews into their midst, but made it clear that he was offering
all the Jewish women to his men. In return the Jewish men would have access to
the local women.
Chamor was a crafty leader: in order that his people
not be jealous of him, he was telling the men in his city that just as he took
a Jewish woman, he would make available to them all the other Jewish women. And
they weren’t circumcising themselves for him to be able to have Dinah, but in
order for them to be able to have access to the new women in their midst. All
they had to do was circumcise themselves. In a culture led by a kidnapping
rapist the men wouldn’t eagerly undertake a painful operation just to welcome
some strangers into their midst or to allow the leader to mary someone, but
only if they themselves had intention to take a Jewish women. And even if there
was social pressure to circumcise themselves, if they did not intend to marry a
Jewish woman no one would ever know whether or not they were circumcised, so
why bother doing it. Most likely it was not the agreement per se but the
promise of the resulting availability of these newly-arrived women which
motivated them, and moreso, it motivated only those intending to take Jewish
women for themselves. And it was precisely these men that Dina’s brothers
needed to identify and neutralize.
Shchem knew that he needed his people’s help to
defend him in case Dinah’s family would try to rescue her. By promising the
Jewish women to the men, he bought their allegiance and their support in case
of attack: now it was not anymore simply a matter of the men rallying to defend
their leader from the ramifications of his escapade, but rather now there was
to be a prize for all of them.
The brothers, planning their rescue, wanted to
immobilize the men who were most likely to resist, and it was clearly those men
who were planning to avail themselves of the Jewish women who would be most
likely to resist the rescue, or to pursue the Jews when they fled to safety
with Dinah in their hands, and so they came up with this stratagem, knowing
that only those men who intended to take Jewish women were likely to go to the
length of circumcising themselves.
There might have been differences in strategy by the
brothers who were full brothers (having not only the same father but also the
same mother as Dinah) and those who were only half brothers. The intent of the
half brothers may have been merely to incapacitate them so that they wouldn’t
interfere with the rescue, however Shimon and Levi went further.
As has been pointed out by commentators, the passage
“the city which polluted their sister” [34:27] can have the implication that
the city as a whole was guilty of the pollution of Dinah, in other words that
there was more than one man involved in the rape. And, in fact the relevant
passage also implies that all the men of Shchem circumcised themselves.
Dinah’s full-brothers decided that the males who had
circumcised themselves were likely the culprits and deserved death, and in any
case they were the ones who were indicating by their actions that they would
want the Jewish women, and so were more dangerous.
And so they decided to take no chances and kill all
those who had circumcised themselves.
Further Indication that they
were justified
[34:30]Yakov
chides the two brothers, worrying that the nations will retaliate. But he does
not claim that their deed was unjustified. And when the brothers reply “will
Dinah be treated as a whore” [34:31] Yakov has no reply. Presumably, they are
saying that there was no other way to actually rescue their sister. And indeed
God provides protection for them from the nations [ 35:5], which seems to imply
divine acceptance of their deed.
…………………
DUPLICATION: CHECK WHICH VERSION IS
BETTER
Shchem kidnaps Dinah the daughter of Yakov and takes her. Just like Avimelech and Pharaoh wanted to do to the matriarchs, Dina’s mother Rivka and her grandmother Sarah. It happens every generation.
Later, Schchem offers much to Dina’s brothers in return for her hand in marriage; they react by killing the whole town. And they do it via treachery/trickery. Again, as with the incidents between the Patriarchs and Lavan, Avimelech and Pharaoh, a casual reading of the story makes it seem that the Patriarchs and their family are in the wrong. After all, Shchem’s offer of very high dowry and fraternity among the two peoples sounds quite sincere and generous, and peace-loving.
Actually though, we can see easily from the text that not only is he a kidnapper and a rapist, Shchem at no point offered to return Dinah! He only offered to give large dowry and arrange intermarriages, trading his men for the Jewish women.
Dinah was a captive the whole time without the option of release, being forced to be with her captor. She was taken by force, and there was no way to rescue her from the clutches of Shchem other than by force. As with many other accounts in the Torah, one must read it with careful eyes: never in all the negotiations does Shchem mention the possibility of returning Dinah to her family. And, being that it was a family against a city, they were heavily outnumbered, and so they had to use a stratagem in order to succeed.
Cruel but necessary.
The offer by the people of Schchem to
the children of
· This sounds unethical, but the Torah may be hinting at justification of their action: the word for ‘they answered’ = “vaya’anu” is parallel to “vaya’aneha” = “and (Shchem) tormented her (Dinah)”.
· The word ‘mirmah’ (deceit) haunts Yakov: as his father Isaac said to his brother Esav regarding his taking of the blessings: “Your brother came in deceit”
· Yakov was angered at the actions of his children who “answered in deceit”: he was afraid of the possible revenge by neighboring peoples for the actions of his children against Shchem, justified though it may have been, just as he feared Esav’s revenge for his own act of deceit, justified though it was. Both were unfortunate extreme actions, necessary and therefore justified, but it would have been better had the whole situation been somehow preventable.
Yakov’s sons [56] tricked the males of Shchem into circumcising themselves, and then Shimon and Levi killed them all while they were in pain from the operation.
· Was it morally proper to kill them all?