Naso: appearance

Naso: appearance

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The core of the parsha, the fourth aliya, includes the suspected woman (sotah), the Nazerite, and the Priestly Blessing.  

In our time, the sotah is a very disturbing section.  A husband's suspicion (supported by circumstances that appear to support the accusation) compels his wife to undergo a trial by ordeal... and the ordeal of a publicly embarrassing trial.  I presume that the embarrassment of the trial process, imagining its appearance, was the major deterrent for the husband starting the process. 

The sotah trial includes the production of the potion, a drink formulated from water, the dust of the temple floor  and the erasure of the relevant text, including the (otherwise unerasable) name of Gd. The powerful name of the Almighty disappears and is transformed into a concoction  Once this diagnostic chemotherapy is mixed, there is no choice, the accused woman must drink. 

We are told that if a guilty woman drinks the sotah elixir, her belly swells and her thigh falls away.  Furthermore, by virtue of these findings, she becomes a curse and an oath for the people.  The physical findings, especially ascites ( abdominal distention from fluid collecting in the abdominal cavity) are seen in (what we now call) diseases: cirrhosis, ovarian cancer, other intra-abdominal cancers.  I do not want to believe that women who suffer from these ( and other conditions) that cause ascites are, by virtue of their appearance, guilty of adultery. These  diseases are not the scarlet letter. Another disturbing aspect of the text. 

The Nazerite is instructed to cultivate the appearance of alienation from the world.  He must be careful to not care about his appearance. She is not in the appearance world, nor in the real world - she must deny the significance of death. 

The end of the Priestly Blessing says: 

The LRD lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

Does that mean that Gd looks at you?... And sees how pitiful you look 

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Bamidbar: (Re)placement

Bamidbar: (Re)placement

The books of the Torah are connected.  Gd calls to Moshe at the beginning of Vayikra becasue Shemoth ended with a Mishkan filled with the Spirit, leaving it unclear that there was space for Moshe to enter.  Vayikra ends with the law forbidding   replacement (temurah).  A sanctified animal cannot be replaced

Bamidar begins with a census of the tribes...except Levi.  Moshe is instructed not to count the Levites.  And then he is told to count them.  They are counted so that their number can be put into correspondence with the firstborn, whom they replace.

The firstborn are sanctified because of their rescue from the last plague in Egypt. This sanctity extends from animal to people, only the animals keep the status. The fristborn status is egalitarian  Any family could have a firstborn.  It is replaced by a hereditary title. Levites are the sons of Levites. 

The problem with replacement is the insecurity. Specialness is removed.  When Gd does this, the problem is worse.  Gd said don't do it. ( Note that the some of the spirit of the law at the end of  Vayikra is maintained.  The firstborn retains an element of holiness),  But deeper, there is the question of whether we, the Jewish people, can be replaced. We reassure ourselves about our job security in the song Yigdal  ( velo yamir datho). The parsha says no job is secures. 

The parsha sets the stage fro the climax of Bamidbar, the Korach rebellion.  Once the possibility of replacement is open, it is hard to close,  The parsha ends with an admonition not to put the subtribe of Kahath in the  suicidal position of taking on more of the sanctified work than assigned.  Korach was a descendant of Kahath. 

Behar bechukothai landed

The Parsha begins with Sinai  and ends  (twices [Leviticus 26:46 and Leviticus 27:34) with Sinai.

From  the year 70 until 1948, the edicts concerning the sabbatical  and jubilee  years  were  theoretical.  They  served as a reminder of the land, its existence  and significance. And it's message, conveyed in theis week's parsha,  includes the idea  that  the misfortune  of the Jew  was  the direct  result  of landlessness, the consequence of the exile

The land is the source of sustenance and wealth. The curse, the Tochacha,  devolves from  the loss of the land as a  source of food. It ends with the evils of life on the land of an other.

But the  revelation occurs  in exile. Exile, land of  desperation,   is  is where hope is revealed - along with the rules, the  rules  that are  always  broken  with consequent  despair.

The  recent history of my family seems to fit the paradigm of the end of Bachukothai, the reversal of the curse and the emergence of the blessing.

My grandparents lived  in the Pale of Jewish Settlement .  Father’s father was a farmer, not poor (by Polish peasant standards),  My mother, cynically, referred to  that grandfather as  “ Rockefeller from Bagatteles” [ Bagatelees was the name of a nearby town], Perhaps his wealth  qualified for ( Polish, rural,early 20^th century) middle class.  But that was at the height of his success,  The war confiscated everything,  His land, his goods, his children, his life, certainly he descended to the lowest point described in the Tochacha, the curse that makes up much of Bechukothai. Perhaps the prior success embittered the descent even more,  (prospect theory),

My mothers parents were poor, fiercely, even professionally, Jewish.  Her father was a melamed, a man who taught children the Hebrew letters, perhaps  chumash.  I actually spoke to one of his students on the telephone, My sister had found this nonagenarian in Florida.  We sang Oifen pripichuk (you tube) together on the telephone. The song is actually named "der aleph bais” It was what my mother sang and what my wife  and I sang to our children.

The first verse simply describes the melamed teaching the small children  the Hebrew letters. It conveys a sense of  clinging to the tradition despite economic and cultural hardships.  Learning lashon Kodesh was not a road out of poverty, and there were manu more interesting thngs for a child to do 

A  flag is proised in one of the versus .  I have that flag . That flag has the pre-1948 ,extended version of the Hatikva.  It is the flag of Zionism, the promise if the land that will heal the woes of the people…as promised in our parsha.

Another verse deals with how the perception of the letters will change as the student learns more and matures.  Viefil in die oysios liggen treren und gevein: how many tears and laments are encrusted n these letters.

Finally,  the song turns the letters into  the conveyance of strength  from the tradition: When the exile exhausts you, look into the letters and derive strength ( zolt yir fun die oysioith koyach shepen; kokt in zey arain. 

What is the Sinai tradition, its blessing and curse? It is hope from a distance, a call to commitment even when the reward is out of sight. It is an acceptance of hardship ...and wonder, perhaps confusion, when the reward arrives. 

Emor: Defection

The dramatic story in the parsha is near the end.  The half-breed blasphemer is stoned to death by his audience and the people. Gd approves of the people's obedicnce in this matter.  A most unAmerican, intolerant story.

After a parha that deals  with defects and the invalidation from ritual  that follows from them, the blashemer is described in terms of his ( defective?) ancestry.  

In our world, the crime of blasphemy is not punishable.  It causes no harm to other people. 

The people, even Moshe, are confused about what to do with this person.  Perhaps it is not clear how the law applies to this individual.  Does he have the immunity of a resident alien on the basis of his paternal, Egyptian,ancestry?  What does it mean  that his father was Egyptian?  Does it mean that he did not join the Hebrews when they performed he Pesach ritual? Certainly this father is not a convert. 

The capital sentence for the blasphemer comes in the midst of several laws, including those concerning the penalty for  murder, killing animals, lex talionis and the equality of the the stranger under the law.   Why all this extra stuff?  Perhaps Gd was taking advantage of the rare direct communication  that the event occasioned.  Perhaps these laws, some of which are the classical example of  rules that are never taken literally ( eye for an eye) give context to this decision as well.  Don't rush to execution. 

Perhaps blasphemy is not the right  translation.  Maybe the act was  more akin to insurrection.  Did the defects of heritage, and the way he was treated  as a consequence, lead to these statements?  Did his home environment allow for this level of dissent?   Did the defect lead to the defection?  

Acharei Moth- Kedoshim: Balance and Bloo

Acharei Moth- Kedoshim: Balance and Blood

The idea of kodesh, sanctity, permeates these parshioth.   What is this dangerous, burdensome stuff , this white robe that stains so easily, is so ugly and dangerous if stained and is so hard to clean? 

There are 2 verses that stand out for me in Kedoshim:
19:3

Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, and ye shall keep My sabbaths: I am the L-RD your G-d

and
19:32
Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and thou shalt fear thy G-d: I am the L-RD

When I was a boy, struggling with the meaning of my life and the role of Judaism in that life (an ongoing struggle), 19:3 was quoted to me.  My parents, whose Judaism did not meet the Rabbi's standards, deserved reverence as special people, but the LRD is the LRD.  The word of Gd, as interpreted by the Rabbis, was the last and definitive word. 

At the time I did not understand how much the Rabbis were obligated to revere my superhero, holocaust survivor, authentic carriers of the tradition, parents.  These rabbis knew stories about the shtetl Europe my parents grew up in.  These rabbis discussed, in theory, the dietary, sabbatical, and other "laws" that my parents were religiously obligated to transgress, in fact.

I understand 19:3 to mean that the previous generations carry forward an image of the institution ( Judaism, shtetlism, Americanism, etc) that is distorted by the way they view their experiences.  They carry forward the compromises, and the idea that compromise is acceptable.  The rabbis try to purify the practice, minimize the compromise, bring practice in line with theory. (I will avoid the issue of how theory changes) 

Verse 19:32, the closing parenthesis to chapter 19, repeats the idea: Respect the old, but (try to) keep the law. [ Onkelos  specifies that the "hoary head" is a Torah sage.] Aging involves accumulating errors. The burden of biological "errors"  is part of the physiology of aging.  Conceptual errors( confusing coincidence with causality, failing to see causal coincidence) are part of the legacy that one generation brings to another.  These conceptual errors are the  superstition that is so loathsome in the parsha..  

We get our beliefs from the past, a mixture of truth and error. We try to make it pure and clean and holy.  New robes are not available.  The blood stains fade, but they don't come out.