Radical Torah

Posted by Elyssa Joy Auster

“Man does not live on bread alone.” This is a familiar quote to most of us, keenly reminding us that we are not only physical bodies craving sustenance, nor should we be seeing other human beings this way. Oftentimes, the second half of this verse, coming from Parshat Ekev, is missing. Is this omission a mistake for us as Jews, or do we get the most important essence of the verse from remembering simply, “man does not live on bread alone”?

In the parsha, the hunger of the Israelites, or lack of bread, is explained as a test. God needed to find out what was in the hearts of the Israelites. And later in the text, their flourishing and provisions of manna are taken as reward. This is difficult if we take it at face value, trying to apply this system to our current world hunger situation. We cannot take the approach of being hands-off, believing that starvation in third world countries, and in our own inner-cities, farmlands, and with our elderly are a result of some sort of test administered by God to those in need. But we can understand it as a test for those of us who remain prosperous. For the parsha reminds us that when we have prosperity, we must be careful not to say to ourselves: “it was my own strength and personal power that brought me all this prosperity;” Rather, “You must remember that it is God who gives you the power to become prosperous.”

If we take this perspective, being grateful for what we have, both as ours and God’s, but as part of the world system, we might be more apt to give back. So instead of finding joy in what we have, we find joy in what we may give.

“Man does not live on bread alone,” the verse continues, “rather by everything that emanates from the mouth of God does man live.” In other words, our actions, even those of eating or providing food for others, must be thoughtful. According to this verse, this thoughtfulness entails the struggle of understanding the Will and Desire of God. This statement is speaking to a whole way of life. The Hebrew itself emphasizes this as the verb used for emanate is motzah, just as we say the prayer over bread: “hamotzi lechem min haaretz.” God’s word comes forth, and it is a process.

This verse, “man does not live on bread alone” is not only significant to Judaism. In fact it has probably been popularized by our Christian brothers and sisters, who quote it from Jesus’ repetition of the verse. We can work together regardless of religion to combat hunger, and we can collectively relate it back to this verse.

Humanity does need bread in order to live. But in our intellectual circles we often skip to the second half of the verse. We choose to wade through our existential conflicts and manage our time and money based upon the media’s agenda. In the United States with our vast resources, we often forget that humans need bread first. Only then may they concentrate on improvement, contribution and knowledge.

We must boil this verse back down to its basics. Humanity cannot live on bread alone, but humanity cannot live at all without bread. In the plentiful world that God has created for us we must share its resources so that through the blessing of having bread, we may all move on to the second half of the verse, deciphering God’s will. This ability to move beyond the simple necessity for bread, for physical sustenance, can only happen when we support each other past our basic needs and towards a unification of souls, hearts and minds. Just as we recite the prayer before eating bread, acknowledging that God brings forth the bread from the earth, and we thank God for this bread as our bellies are full, so too must we recite a prayer for the ability to help others, and afterwards thank God for granting us the resources to do so.

Posted by Rabbi Brant Rosen

It’s Shabbat Nachamu: the High Holidays unofficially begin today…

This weekend we begin chanting the seven “Haftarot of Consolation” during Shabbat services. The tragedy of Tisha B’Av behind us, we now highlight healing, renewal and hope. With the help of these exquisite prophetic portions, we remind ourselves that there is no trauma so powerful, no despair so overwhelming, no wound so deep that we forever forfeit our ability to find our way back to new life.

It often occurs to me that this profound lesson of renewal is woven into the very fabric of creation itself. Here’s some “environmental commentary” in honor of a new season: a 2005 news report documenting the destruction and subsequent rebirth at Mount St. Helens in Washington State:

A small Douglas fir breaks through the ground six miles from the base of Mount St. Helens. In the distance, trees scattered like dropped matchsticks still lie where they were toppled by a cloud of fragmented rock and ash that exploded from this mountain 25 years ago.

A quarter-century has passed since the devastating blast killed 57 people and an overwhelming amount of plant and animal life. But the barren landscape is now scattered with green, and wildlife has made a home in the vastly different habitat.

As the force of the blast destroyed all in its path, it also carried within it new life - seedlings carried from the south side of the mountain landed and began to grow. Seeds continue to arrive via the fur of animals returning to the area.

Pine trees, honeysuckle and firs are all growing in the blast zone, without the help of man. Alder, cottonwood and willows abound. Some have fallen victim to hungry elk, who nibble at the trees, stunting their growth. But many are thriving in the area that was once covered with ash and debris.

“There was nothing out here. It’s easy to forget it was like that,” said Peter Frenzen, monument scientist for the U.S. Forest Service at Mount St. Helens. “The next forest is essentially here. We just have to wait for it all to grow up.”

Moses continues his trip down memory lane. He remembers some of Judaism’s big hits, including the Ten Commandments and the Shema. He also continues tutoring his younger charges in the finer points of ethnic cleansing; he tells them that they’ll enjoy homes they did not build and vineyards they did not plant. The portion ends with yet another command to “utterly destroy” those on the other side of the Jordan river.

Good thing for old Moses the Iron Age had no International Court of Justice!

- SHABBAT SHALOM! - a & s

Brandeis University is whence we deliver this week’s comic. We are studying the ancient art of the Torah Maven with Amichai Lau Lavie and the Storahtellers. Our training is why this week’s comic is a one-pager.

This begins the fifth and final book of the Torah, Deuteronomy, so we decided to tell one of the stories of Deuteronomy’s origin.

For its first few hundred years, B’nai Israel knew only four books of Moses. The story ended with Numbers. And then…. A new scroll arrived! Controversies galore surround the discovery/origin of the Deuteronomy, as it was told in 2 Kings 22-23. This interpretation amuses us… wierdos that we are.

- SHABBAT SHALOM!

- a & s

Posted by Rabbi Brant Rosen

As the book of Numbers comes to a close this week, we read an account of an Israelite military campaign that can only be described as holy war:

Moses spoke to the militia saying, “Let troops be picked out from among you for a campaign, and let them fall upon Midian to wreak the Eternal’s vengeance on Midian. You shall dispatch on the campaign a thousand from every one of the tribes of Israel.”

…They took the field against Midian, as the Eternal had commanded Moses, and slew every male. Along with other victims, they slew the kings of Midian, Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. They also put Balaam, son of Beor to the sword.

The Israelites took the women captive and other dependants of the Midianites captive, and seized as booty all their beasts, all their herds, and all their wealth. And they destroyed by fire all the towns in which they were settled, and their encampments. (Numbers 31:3-10)

What on earth do we make of a text such as this? Some commentators say that this account is not about war per se as much as it is a polemic against idolatry. Others point to the obviously dubious historicity of this particular text. Still others suggest that God’s commandments to destroy ancient nations such as Midian have long been rendered null and void since these nations no longer exist.

Though these kinds of explanations might be of exegetical interest, alas, they do not ultimately address the core moral problem of this text: namely, God’s commandment that Israel exterminate another people. At the end of the day, there can be no whitewashing of this fact, no re-rendering of the text that will somehow erase the profoundly troubling truth that such attitudes are part of our inherited spiritual tradition.

What do we make of a texts such as these? One thing we cannot do is wish them away. If we are to take our Torah tradition seriously, we must be willing to face it head on and to admit that there are certain voices in Torah that we might sometimes find morally difficult, troubling, or, yes, even repugnant. If we consider ourselves to be serious Jews, we owe it to ourselves and to our tradition to honestly own the all of Torah.

If we are able to do this, we will invariably find that the Torah truly is a mosaic of very different and often contradictory voices. (Serious students of Torah cannot fail to notice, for instance, that a very different portrayal of Midian is offered in the book of Exodus, where Moses finds refuge in Midian, marries a Midianite woman and seeks serious counsel from his father-in-law Jethro, the Midanite High Priest).

This phenomenon, of course, is not unique to Judaism. Ultimately, this is the central choice facing any religious individual: which are the voices in my tradition that I proudly affirm, and which are the voices that I disavow in no uncertain terms? Will I be ready to say without hesitation that there is nothing holy about fomenting fear and hatred of another people - and that there is no place for such ideas in my religious tradition?

In the end, there can be no equivocating on this point. In a world beset by growing violence in the name of God, the stakes of this choice are much too high.

This week’s comic is a resend of last year’s Matot-Massei. Aaron piloted our tandem bike onto a gravelly curb and Sharon needed 7 stitches in her drawing hand. She’ll theoretically be back in the pink next week.

Meanwhile, this week’s parsha is maybe the most horrible in the Torah. We get the divine rules for genocide and (not shown in this comic) YHWH declares that if Israel does not drive out the people living in Canaan, She will cleanse Canaan of Israel. It’s god as Tony Soprano!

Shabbat Shalom,

a & s

Posted by Rabbi Brant Rosen

At the end of last week’s Torah portion, Pinchas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, displayed his “zeal” for God by killing an Israelite man and a Midianite woman who were engaged in a public act of sexual idolatry:

When Pinchas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and, taking a spear in his hand, he followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly. (Numbers 25:7-8)

Pinchas’ act is portrayed in the Torah as an act of salvation for the Israelites. As a result of his initiative, a plague afflicting the people is checked - and at the beginning of our portion, God tells Moses that Pinchas’ action has saved the Israelite nation entirely:

“Pinchas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron has turned back my wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in My passion. Say, therefore, ‘I grant him My pact of peace. It shall be for him and his descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned action for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites.’” (Numbers 25:10-13)

It is important to note that Jewish commentators have long been troubled by Pinchas’ actions, as well as the suggestion that he seems to be rewarded by God for his zealousness. Many have suggested that God’s offer of a “pact of peace” (“Brit Shalom”) should not be regarded so much as Pinchas’ reward, but rather as a covenant that will require responsibility and moderation on the part of this future Israelite leader.

One of the most powerful commentaries on Pinchas’ act is written into the very fabric of Torah itself. The Masoretes - the 8th and 9th century rabbinic sages who codified the written Torah into the version we know today - instructed that the word “Shalom” in the term “Brit Shalom” should be written with a broken letter vav. As a result, every Torah scroll now bears this inner message: peace achieved through zealotry and violence is an incomplete peace - a “broken peace,” as it were.

For an era beset by growing violence committed in “the name of God,” this one small pen-stroke makes a profound statement indeed…

Divorce, Divine-Style

YHWH, ever the violence fan, waxes romantic over Her latest fave murderer, Pinchas. Then She lays out, in significant detail, Her rules for inheritance and tells Moses to make sure they are carried out justly. Hearing that HE is assigned the task, Moses gets all excited thinking maybe YHWH has changed Her mind and that he might be allowed into the Promised Land after all. YHWH has other plans. Shabbat Shalom, a & s