Agent and Principal (פרשת משפטים)

Last week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (משפטים), includes an intriguing reference to a mysterious agent sent by God to assist the Jewish people in its journey to the Promised Land:

הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי שֹׁלֵחַ מַלְאָךְ, לְפָנֶיךָ, לִשְׁמָרְךָ, בַּדָּרֶךְ; וְלַהֲבִיאֲךָ, אֶל-הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר הֲכִנֹתִי. הִשָּׁמֶר מִפָּנָיו וּשְׁמַע בְּקֹלוֹ, אַל-תַּמֵּר בּוֹ:  כִּי לֹא יִשָּׂא לְפִשְׁעֲכֶם, כִּי שְׁמִי בְּקִרְבּוֹ.

Robert Alter translates the passage this way:

Look, I am about to send a messenger before you to guard you on the way and bring you to the place that I made ready. Watch yourself with him and heed his voice, do not defy him, for he will not pardon your trespass, for My name is within him (Exodus 23:20-21).

Alter comments that “the frankly mythological terms of the preceding narrative—the pillars of cloud and fire, the Destroyer in Egypt—invite us to imagine the messenger as a fearsome agent of God, perhaps human in form like the divine messengers in Genesis, leading the people through the wilderness.”

The 1985 JPS translation, the Sapirstein translation, and my grandmother’s 1957-1960 Menorah Press translation render the passage similarly except, in contrast to Alter’s more literal translation, they translate the Hebrew word מלאך as angel rather than messenger. The English word angel is derived from the Greek angelos, which literally means messenger or envoy.

Rashi explains that the messenger or angel is none other than Metatron (מטטרון), “whose name is like the Name of his Master,” meaning that its numerical value is equal to שדי (Shaddai, the Almighty). For Rashi, this is the meaning of “My name is within him,” though I am reminded of the much later legends about the golem, in some versions of which the clay creature is animated by placing a slip of paper or a tablet inscribed with the name of God under its tongue. Rashi adds that Metatron will not pardon trespass for two reasons: first, as an angel who is free of the evil inclination (יצר הרע) and does not sin, he is unaccustomed to forgiving; and second, “he is only an emissary [שליח] and does nothing but fulfill his mission.”

What else do we know about Metatron? Gershom Scholem, the great Israeli scholar of Jewish mysticism, noted that the Talmud mentions Metatron in the context of its polemics against Jewish heretics like Elisha ben Abuyah. He writes:

Elisha b. Avuyah saw Metatron seated [in a vision] and said, “perhaps there are two powers,” as though indicating Metatron himself as a second deity. The Talmud explains that Metatron was given permission to be seated only because he was the heavenly scribe recording the good deeds of Israel. Apart from this, the Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 blows with fiery rods to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished…. It is however thought that the appearance of Metatron to Elisha b. Avuyah led him to a belief in dualism.

Scholem’s discussion thus leads us to the Jewish heretic Elisha ben Abuyah, also called Akher (the Stranger), who became the model for Isaac Deutscher’s conception of the “non-Jewish Jew.” As Deutscher explained in his famous 1958 essay:

The Jewish heretic who transcends Jewry belongs to a Jewish tradition. You may, if you like, see Akher as a prototype of those great revolutionaries of modern thought: Spinoza, Heine, Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky, and Freud. You may, if you wish to, place them within a Jewish tradition. They all went beyond the boundaries of Jewry. They all found Jewry too narrow, too archaic and too constricting. They all looked for ideals and fulfillment beyond it…. It was this that enabled them to rise in thought above their societies, above their nations, above their times and generations, and to strike out mentally into wide new horizons and far into the future.

Now, Deutscher may be right that the Jewish heretic is the more farsighted individual with the wider horizon. But isn’t there a corresponding danger for the heretic that he will mistake, from his detached viewpoint, the agent—an agent without mercy—for the principal?

Who Built It? (פרשת עקב)

Parshat Eikev (,פרשת עקב Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25) warns against an aveirah (עבירה) that is especially common among the wealthy: namely, the belief that I am singularly responsible for my own success in life and owe nothing to anyone else.

Perhaps because this aveirah is so consonant with the individualism of American culture, it is hard to condemn it in America without stirring up political controversy. Consider, for instance, these remarks made by former White House adviser (later U.S. Senator) Elizabeth Warren in Andover, Massachusetts, in 2011:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

U.S. President Barack Obama reiterated Warren’s point in a campaign speech in Roanoke, Virginia, before the 2012 U.S. Presidential election:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me—because they want to give something back. They know they didn't — look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business – you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

The fundamental point that both Warren and Obama made was that wealth is a social product of many people working together. Of course, Karl Marx had made the same point more than 160 years earlier in the Manifesto of the Communist Party: “Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.” Not surprisingly, then, some Americans regarded the point as socialistic, and the phrase “you didn't build that” subsequently became a political flashpoint. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney declared that it was insulting to entrepreneurs, and the 2012 Republican National Convention adopted the slogan “We Built It” in conscious opposition to Obama's comments.

What does last week’s Torah portion teach us about who built it? In his valedictory, Moses assures the people that they will enjoy bounty and abundance in the Promised Land, but he warns them to be ever mindful of its true source: “And you will say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand made me this wealth.’ And you will remember the Lord your God, for He it is Who gives you power to make wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18). Just as it is God who gives the people the power to defeat the fearsome Canaanites (Deuteronomy 7:17-24), so it is God who gives them “power to make wealth.”

Underscoring the lesson, Moses adds: “And you shall know that not through your merit [צדקתך] is the Lord your God giving you this goodly land to take hold of it, for you are a stiff-necked people” (Deuteronomy 9:6). As Robert Alter explains, to be stiff-necked (קשה–ערף) signifies “rigid pride: instead of bowing the head when submission is appropriate, the stiff-necked person remains presumptuously, defiantly, erect.” He is too proud to acknowledge that he owes or depends upon others, even when that other is God.

To drive home the dependence of each person on the One who daily sustains them, Moses tells them: “the land into which you are coming to take hold of it is not like the land of Egypt from which you went out.” Unlike Egypt, which relies on human-initiated irrigation (“you sow your seed and water it with your foot”), the bounty of Israel is dependent on “the rain of the heavens” (Deuteronomy 11:10-12). The message of the portion is clear: human beings are dependent on the One who causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall; only God is truly independent and self-reliant because He alone is the absolute master of nature and history (Deuteronomy 7:18-19, 10:14, 10:17). To think otherwise is a form of idolatry, which the portion vigorously warns against.

If God is the source of wealth, then you didn’t build it—at least not on your own. (It is significant that in the Hebrew, the “you” to whom Moses directs his remarks is singular [אתה] and not plural [אתם]; this indicates that the admonition is to the individual rather than the nation.) Fair enough, you might say; I depend upon and owe God, but what, if anything, do I owe to society? If we equate God with society, as the sociologist Emile Durkheim did in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, then the answer is clear. But even without taking this step, the Torah portion teaches us that the individual incurs obligations to other people because of the help he has received from God (Deuteronomy 10:12-13). The person who enjoys the bounty of the Promised Land, Moses teaches, is obliged to keep God’s “commands” and “statutes” (Deuteronomy 10:13), which include justice and compassion for the orphan, the widow, and the stranger (Deuteronomy 10:18-19). In short, he is obliged to create and maintain an ethical community, for the covenant (ברית) forged at Sinai binds the individual not only to his God but to the community as well; it is the archetype of Warren’s “social contract.” This notion shouldn’t be so hard for Americans to understand. After all, as sociologist Robert Bellah and his co-authors showed in Habits of the Heart, American individualism has historically been counterbalanced by a biblical tradition—exemplified by John Winthop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity”—that draws on last week’s portion to remind us of our obligations to one another.

Gathered to His Kinfolk (פרשת ויחי)

Last week’s Torah portion, Vayechi (פרשת ויחי, Genesis 47:28–50:26), recounts the passing of the patriarch Jacob: “Jacob finished charging his sons, and he gathered his feet up into the bed, and he breathed his last, and was gathered to his kinfolk” (Gen. 49:33).

That phrase—“gathered to his kinfolk” (ויאסף אל-עמיו)—was on my mind last week as I traveled to attend the graveside service of my recently departed uncle, of blessed memory. What does it mean? It’s a recurring phrase in Genesis, also used to describe the death of Jacob’s father Isaac (Gen. 35:29) and his grandfather Abraham (Gen. 25:9). In an article about the phrase published in 1948, the Bible scholar Bern Alfrink pointed out that it always appears in a sequence between death and burial (died–gathered–buried). Alfrink reasoned that it could not literally mean burial in an ancestral tomb or family sepulcher because, for example, Abraham is buried in Machpelah with his wife Sarah but far from his ancestors, and Jacob is said to be gathered to his kinfolk while still in Egypt, long before his body is taken back to Canaan to be interred with his fathers at Machpelah. Alfrink concluded that the phrase must refer to a spiritual reunion of the deceased with his ancestors in Sheol (the afterlife).

Whether we understand it in a physical or spiritual sense, it’s striking that the gathering of Jacob to his kin in death parallels a family reunion in life. First, there is Joseph’s tearful reconciliation with his brothers. “Come close to me,” he says to them, “I am your brother who you sold into Egypt” (Gen. 45:4). Second, there is Joseph’s tearful reunion with his father Jacob, who had long thought his son to be dead. “Let me go up and tell Pharaoh,” says Joseph, “and let me say to him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household that was in the land of Canaan have come to me’” (Gen. 46:31). Third, after Jacob’s death, Joseph and his brothers recapitulate their earlier reconciliation. Afraid that Joseph will “pay us back for all the evil we caused him,” the brothers plead for his forgiveness. Joseph, again weeping, promises to sustain them and their children, and “he comforted them and spoke to their hearts” (Gen. 50: 15-21).

I was struck by a similar parallel in my own experience last week. As my uncle was gathered to his kin in death—literally buried in the same cemetery with his parents—his far-flung extended family was reunited, at least briefly, for an all-too-rare gathering in life. Just as Joseph sustained his brothers, that gathering helped us all to sustain one another. In that moment, I was reminded of something that  Émile Durkheim, a French sociologist and the son of a rabbi, wrote in his classic study of religious life. “The basis of mourning,” he suggested, “is the impression of enfeeblement that is felt by the group when it loses a member. But this very impression has the effect of bringing the individuals close to one another.... And from all this comes a sensation of renewed strength, which counteracts the original enfeeblement … To commune in sadness is still to commune, and every communion of consciousness increases social vitality, in whatever form it is done.” Perhaps that is the real meaning of being gathered to one’s kinfolk.

Joseph between Millstones (פרשת ויגש)

A thought about Vayigash (פרשת ויגש, Genesis 44:18 - 47:27): The portion ends with Joseph, whom Pharaoh has made his chief administrator, using the famine in Egypt to dispossess that country’s peasants. Out of desperation they offer their land and themselves for some of the grain that Joseph had the foresight to stockpile. Joseph accepts, and in a process akin to Marx’s primitive accumulation, they become a class of landless, enslaved sharecroppers for Pharaoh. The peasants, we are told, are grateful to be kept alive. But how long before their gratitude turns to resentment, which is directed not at Pharaoh, the “good czar” who now owns their land and steals a fifth of their crop, but at Joseph, the intermediary in the antagonistic relationship between Pharaoh and the peasants?

The pattern reappears in later Jewish history. “The catastrophe of the Jews of Spain,” sociologist Werner Cahnman observed, “shows with great clarity the price Jews have to pay for their role as agents of the powers that be; it can happen that they are ground between the upper and nether millstones.”

There is no mention in the Torah of Egyptian jacqueries that become pogroms. But when, in Shemot, the new Pharaoh arises and orders his people to commit genocide—“every [Hebrew] boy that is born you shall fling into the Nile”—none of the Egyptians demur.

Open Spaces (פרשת תולדות)

I couldn’t help but think of the politics of resentment in connection with the week’s Torah portion (תולדות). As Robert Alter comments: “the spiteful act of the Philistines in blocking up the wells [that Abraham dug] expresses a feeling that if we can’t have the water, nobody should.” That feeling seems to imbue contemporary politics in Wisconsin, the nation, and maybe the world. Alter adds: “at the end, Isaac’s workers discover a new, undisputed well and call it Rehoboth, which means ‘open spaces.’ We are being prepared for the story in which only one of the two brothers [Esau and Jacob] can get the real blessing, in which there will be bitter jealousy and resentment; and which in the long run will end with room enough for the two brothers to live peaceably in the same land.” Let’s hope the story prefigures open spaces for us all.

What Does the Akedah Teach Us About Mitzvot?

On the second day of Rosh HaShanah it is customary to read the story of the Akedah (עקדה), the binding of Isaac (Gen. 22:1–19), which is included within Vayeira (וירא). According to the story, G-d commands Abraham  to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, Abraham obediently takes Isaac to Mount Moriah (later the site of the Jewish Temple) and binds him on an altar, but an angel of the Lord appears at the last moment to stay Abraham's hand.

What was the purpose of the Akedah? In accordance with Gen. 22:12 ("now I know that you fear G-d"), it is traditionally understood as a test of Abraham's obedience to divine commandment. But this reading is troubling because, as Søren Kierkegaard pointed out, the test seems to require a "teleological suspension of the ethical." In other words, in order to obey G-d's command, Abraham must apparently renounce his ethical duty to nurture, protect, and care for his own son. Divine command and ethical duty are thus counterposed.

On Rosh HaShanah 5771, I learned that the Hebrew word mitzvah (מצוה‎), commonly translated as commandment, means "connection" in Aramaic. This opens up the possibility of finding a different meaning in the Akedah. What if Abraham is seeking not to obey, but to connect with his G-d?

As Rashi points out, G-d never instructs Abraham to "slaughter" (לשחוט) Isaac, but rather to "bring him up there" (העלהו שם) to Mount Moriah (Gen. 22:2). The Hebrew verb  "to bring him up" (להעלותו) shares the same root as olah (עלה), the "ascending offering" described in Leviticus chap. 1, which is completely burned up by the fire on top of the altar. And G-d does indeed instruct Abraham to give Isaac the status of an עלה. But these words also share the same root as aliyah (עלייה), "ascent," as in spiritual ascent to the bimah or the Land of Israel. What kind of ascent is intended here and by what means?

Perhaps Abraham mistakenly thinks that the only way to connect with his G-d, to ascend spiritually, to return the divine spark in his son to its original root and source, is through the annihilation of his son. This would make the Akedah akin to the religious suicides once practiced in India. Emile Durkheim, in his classic sociological study of suicide, described such suicides this way: "We actually see the individual in all these cases seek to strip himself of his personal being in order to be engulfed in something which he regards as his true essence." To be sure, the Akedah is a story of sacrifice, not self-sacrifice--but if Abraham's love for his son causes him to identify so strongly with him that he cannot lose Isaac without losing some part of himself, this may not be a significant distinction for him.

If this reading is correct, Abraham's mistake is to think that connection with his G-d requires complete self-abnegation (or abnegation of others). The purpose of the Akedah may not be to test his obedience so much as teach him that connection with his G-d be cannot come at the expense of his connection with his son (and, by extension, his connection with other human beings). On the contrary, as the Hassidic tzaddik Mendel of Kosov preached, love for one's neighbor (or son) is only another side of the love of G-d. "If a man loves his fellow," Mendel taught, "the Divine Presence rests with them." In this way, they ascend together. The Akedah is therefore indeed instructive, but its purpose cannot be to provide an omniscient G-d with knowledge that G-d must already possess; rather, it is instructive for human beings.