The Golden Calf as the Anti-Tabernacle (פרשת ויקהל-פקודי)

This week’s double Torah portion, Vayakhel-Pekudei (Exodus 35:1–40:38), brings the Book of Exodus to a fulfilling close with the building of the Mishkan (משכן) or Tabernacle, aptly described by Hebrew Bible translator and commentator Robert Alter as a “perfect earthly abode for God in the midst of the Israelites,” the construction of which had been “traumatically disrupted by the story of the Golden Calf and the shattering of the tablets of the Law.”

As Alter points out, the construction of the Mishkan mirrors or parallels the making of the Golden Calf, which was “conceived as the terrestrial throne or platform for the deity …, having precisely the same function as the cherubim over the Ark,” upon which the Divine Presence (שכינה‎) was to rest. “The Golden Calf,” Alter reasons, “is thus a kind of anti-Tabernacle or anti-Ark, meant for the same end of making the divine dwell among the people but doing it in a prohibited fashion.”

As I’ve noted in another blog post, Alter's reading is similar to the interpretation of the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Judah Halevi. Halevi suggests that the Golden Calf was not an idol but simply a material symbol that the people constructed to facilitate their worship of God. For Halevi, the only difference between the creation of the Golden Calf and the creation of the cherubim is that God did not command the calf. "They themselves had no right to determine the mode of worship and make an altar and sacrifices in accordance with it." In other words, it was not the fashioning of material symbols that was problematic--after all, what were the Ark and the throne of the cherubim if not material symbols?--but the fact that the Golden Calf was not made in accordance with God's wishes. In support of this view, Halevi notes that God says "they have quickly turned from the way I commanded them" (Exodus 32:8), not "they have turned aside from Me."

We know that the Mishkan and the Ark are completed in the proper way in this week’s portion because (as Alter notes) their completion “echoes the report of God’s completion of creation, Genesis 2:1-3, with completion of the work at the beginning and blessing at the end” (Exodus 39:43). In addition, when the work is completed, “the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34). The proof of the rectitude of the building, we might say, is in the dwelling.

In sum, according to Halevi and Alter, what made the Golden Calf an anti-Tabernacle or anti-Ark is that it was constructed in an unauthorized fashion, which is to say, not according to God’s explicit, specific, and detailed instructions. These instructions are repeated in this week’s portion (Exodus 36:8-38; Exodus 37:1-28), as if to underscore this point. As Alter puts it, the significance of the repetition lies in “the fact that the Tabernacle is now faithfully assembled in all its prescribed splendid details.”

Are there any other meaningful differences between the making of the Golden Calf and the construction of the Mishkan that would help to explain why the former merits wrath and the latter a blessing? At least two such differences stand out to me.

One important difference is the manner in which the Golden Calf and the Mishkan are constructed. The donations for the Mishkan come from “every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing” (Exodus 35:21), every willing-hearted person (Exodus 35:22), every wise-hearted woman (Exodus 35:25), and every man or woman “whose heart made them willing” (Exodus 35:29). None of these qualities are mentioned in the Golden Calf episode. Aaron tells the people to bring him their golden rings, and the Torah states laconically that they did (Exodus 32:2-3). As Nehama Leibowitz writes, “gold alone was given to the calf, but gold and a willing heart was given to the Tabernacle.” Malbim infers from this difference that gifts of gold are “not the chief thing in the eyes of God, since it is the heart that the Almighty demands.”

Reinforcing this point, the people bring “too much for the work of the task that the Lord charged to do” (Exodus 36:5). This detail too is lacking in the Golden Calf episode. There is no mention there that the people give more gold to Aaron than he needs. In short, the people are more generous and enthusiastic in their donations for the Mishkan than in their donations for the Golden Calf.

The different manner in which the Mishkan is constructed is also evident from what the portion says about Bezalel, the man upon whom the Lord calls to manage its construction. Bezalel is provided with detailed instructions, but he doesn’t construct the Mishkan by rote. Rather, God filled Bezalel with wisdom (חכמה), understanding (תבונה), and knowledge (דעת); and God “put in his heart that he may teach, both he and and Oholiab” (Exodus 35:31-35). Alter comments: “God has endowed Bezalel, together with his chief assistant Oholiab, not only with the skill to execute all these sundry crafts but also with the capacity to instruct the crews of ordinary craftsmen how to carry out their work.” To borrow from Christopher Wren’s apt story, Bezalel knows he’s building a cathedral, not just laying bricks, and he helps his workers to understand this too. In contrast, the making of the Golden Calf involves no wisdom, understanding, or knowledge (there is no reference to any of these qualities in the story), nor does the maker of the calf, Aaron, instruct others in how to carry out this work. In fact, Aaron describes the making of the Golden Calf as if he himself doesn’t understand what happened: “I flung [gold] into the fire, and there came out this calf” (Exodus 32:24).

Second, this week’s portion emphasizes how the Mishkan, though composed of many parts, “became one whole” (Exodus 36:13, 18). Alter, commenting on a nearly identical phrase in a previous portion (Exodus 26:6), writes that it “leads Abraham ibn Ezra to muse over how unity in the greater world is constituted by an interlocking of constituent parts that became a transcendent whole.” This is presumably an aspect of the construction of the Mishkan that Bezalel’s wisdom (endowed by God) allows him to understand. In contrast, the Golden Calf is made through the literal melting down of its constituent parts. It represents a very different kind of unity, one without differentiated and specialized components, like the sameness of Hegel’s night in which all cows are black.

To conclude, we see that what made the Golden Calf an anti-Tabernacle or anti-Ark is not only that Aaron failed to make it to specification, but also that it was made without heart, and without wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, including an understanding of that complex unity-in-difference represented by the Mishkan.

Rejoice in Your Going Out (פרשת משפטים)

This week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (משפטים, meaning “ordinances”), begins pointedly, as the Hebrew Bible translator Robert Alter notes, with “the regulation of slavery, addressed in the narrative situation to an audience of newly freed slaves.” A keyword that appears repeatedly in the first few verses (Exodus 21:2-4) caught my attention. That word is יצא (go out).

כִּי תִקְנֶה עֶבֶד עִבְרִי, שֵׁשׁ שָׁנִים יַעֲבֹד; וּבַשְּׁבִעִת--יֵצֵא לַחָפְשִׁי, חִנָּם
If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.

אִם-בְּגַפּוֹ יָבֹא, בְּגַפּוֹ יֵצֵא; אִם-בַּעַל אִשָּׁה הוּא, וְיָצְאָה אִשְׁתּוֹ עִמּוֹ
If he come in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he be married, then his wife shall go out with him.

 אִם-אֲדֹנָיו יִתֶּן-לוֹ אִשָּׁה, וְיָלְדָה-לוֹ בָנִים אוֹ בָנוֹת--הָאִשָּׁה וִילָדֶיהָ, תִּהְיֶה לַאדֹנֶיהָ, וְהוּא, יֵצֵא בְגַפּוֹ
If his master give him a wife, and she bear him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.

The word יצא caught my attention because of its appearance in other places. Earlier this week, I led a discussion with my students about Judah Leib Gordon’s 1866 poem הקיצה עמי (“Awake My People”), which includes this famous line:

היה אדם בצאתך ויהודי באהלך
Be a man in the streets [when you go out] and a Jew at home [in your tent]

Translated literally (be a human being when you go out and a Jew in your tent), it alludes to Deuteronomy 33:18, part of the blessing of Moses to the tribes of Israel:

וְלִזְבוּלֻן אָמַר, שְׂמַח זְבוּלֻן בְּצֵאתֶךָ; וְיִשָּׂשכָר, בְּאֹהָלֶיךָ
And of Zebulun he said: Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out, and, Issachar, in thy tents.

The great medieval Bible commentator Rashi interpreted the verse this way: “Zebulun and Issachar made a partnership. ‘Zebulun shall dwell by seashores’ [Genesis 49:13] and depart in ships to engage in commerce. He would earn profit, and put into the mouth of [i.e., provide financial support for] Issachar, and [the men of the tribe of Issachar] would sit and engage in [the study of] Torah. That is why [the younger] Zebulun is put ahead of Issachar, for Issachar’s Torah came about through Zebulun.” So Rashi understands the verse to mean “succeed [Zebulun] when you depart for trade,” and “succeed [Issachar] in sitting in your tents for Torah.”

According to Abarim Publications’ Biblical Dictionary:

The verb יצא is one of the most occurring verbs in the Bible. It means to go, and specifically to go out or forth (Genesis 31:33, 2 Samuel 11:8, Micah 4:10). Its opposite is the verb בוא meaning to come. The difference between these two verbs lies not simply in the direction of motion relative to the observer, but rather in a motion relative to either a focal point on one end or a state of dispersal on the other. The verb בוא (to come) is predominantly used to describe a motion away from being all over the place or considering various options, and toward one specific place or one final decision. The verb יצא (to go) is predominantly used to describe a motion away from the focal point (being perhaps a point of origin or pause) and towards the wide blue yonder where everything is possible (Genesis 24:50, 1 Kings 5:13, Isaiah 28:29).

This source adds that יצא is associated with the rising sun, which goes out in Hebrew (as in Psalm 19:6); the east (as in Psalm 75:6), the spatial point of origin from whence the sun goes out; and the past, the temporal point of origin from which one goes forth to the future. I’m reminded here of Werner Sombart’s line about Jewish migration: “Wie die Sonne geht Israel über Europa: wo es hinkommt, spriesst neues Leben empor.” (Israel passes over Europe like the sun: at its coming new life bursts forth.) In the Biblical Creation story, new life is brought forth (תּוֹצֵ֨א), a causative form of the word to go forth (יצא).

So what are we to make of all this? Gordon is clearly urging his readers to do more than go out into the world to earn a living through commerce (Rashi’s interpretation of Zebulun). Gordon’s line is typically understood to mean that Jews should abandon public expressions of Jewishness and instead privatize Judaism in the home. As Karl Marx had put it two decades earlier in his essay “Zur Judenfrage”: “Man emancipates himself politically from religion by expelling it from the sphere of public law to that of private law.” And as Marx went on to argue, this kind of bifurcation divides man against himself. But perhaps the appearance of יצא in this week’s portion, where it is linked to emancipation and freedom, lends the word another meaning in Gordon’s poem. It’s noteworthy that in our portion the Hebrew servant goes out after six years of service—a clear parallel to the seventh day of Creation on which God rested (Genesis 2:2), the seventh year in which the land rested (Leviticus 25:2-4), and the cancellation of debts every seven years (Deuteronomy 15). When Gordon urges the reader to be a human being when he goes out, maybe he is calling on Jews to emancipate themselves from servitude and embrace the wide open possibilities of freedom that he saw (however mistakenly in his time and place) bursting forth like the rising sun.

Pharaoh’s Willing Executioners (פרשת שמות)

In Parshat Shemot (פרשת שמות), we read that after the death of Joseph and his generation, “the sons of Israel were fruitful and swarmed and multiplied and grew very vast, and the land was filled with them” (Exodus 1:7). As Bible translator Robert Alter notes, these terms (including the Hebrew word for land, ארץ, which also means earth) allude to the Creation story. In a fulfillment of God’s covenantal promise that Abraham will become “a great and mighty nation” (Genesis 18:18), Alter writes, “the Hebrews now exhibit the teeming fecundity of the natural world.”

It is precisely this teeming fecundity that so alarms Pharaoh:

And a new king arose over Egypt who knew not Joseph. And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the sons of Israel is more numerous and vaster than we. Come, let us be shrewd with them lest they multiply and then, should war occur, they will actually join our enemies and fight against us and go up from the land.”
(Exodus 1:8-10)

There is some debate about whether the words רַב וְעָצוּם מִמֶּנּוּ should be translated as more numerous and stronger than us, as Alter does, or too many and too strong for us, as Moses Mendelssohn, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, the 1917 JPS translation of the Bible, and Nehama Leibowitz do. The difference, it seems to me, is immaterial. Regardless of how we understand this phrase, Pharaoh’s antagonism toward the Jews clearly stems from a perceived demographic threat and from a perception of Jewish power.

Pharaoh’s paranoid fears find contemporary echoes in the slogan “Jews Will Not Replace Us” that far-right extremists chanted in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. As the Anti-Defamation League explains: “The slogan is a reference to the popular white supremacist belief that the white race is in danger of extinction by a rising tide of non-whites who are controlled and manipulated by Jews.” This extremist “replacement theory” has fueled murderous acts of hatred around the world, including mass shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand in 2019.

Motivated by a similar conspiratorial belief, Pharaoh implemented a three-stage policy: first, he imposed a special tax on the Jews in the form of a corvée (forced labor); second, he directed the Jewish midwives Shifrah and Puah to kill all Jewish boys at birth; and third, when the midwives courageously foil his plan, “Pharaoh charged his whole people, saying, ‘Every boy that is born you shall fling into the Nile, and every girl you shall let live’” (Exodus 1:22).

Why does Pharaoh need to “be shrewd”? He was the most powerful ruler in the ancient world. Why not declare open war on the Jews from the outset and destroy them immediately? Summarizing Nachmanides, Leibowitz suggests three reasons: first, Pharaoh needed a pretext to ruthlessly exterminate an entire people, especially one that came to Egypt at the bidding of his predecessor; second, his own subjects would not agree; and third, it would have meant risking an unnecessary confrontation with a strong people. For these reasons, Nachmanides argued, Pharaoh shrewdly formulated his three-stage policy.

Leibowitz writes: “The originality of Ramban’s interpretation lies in his explanation of this command [to kill every male Jewish child]. The text states that Pharaoh commanded ‘all his people’ rather than ‘his princes and servants.’ This was not therefore an official royal edict, but behind-the-scenes provocation. The government gave no order but merely closed its eyes whilst the Egyptian masses ‘spontaneously’ vented their indignation on the foreigners.” Today, too, powerful leaders close their eyes to nativism and xenophobia. But there is a problem with Leibowitz’s interpretation. How do we square it with her earlier suggestion that Pharaoh’s own subjects would not agree to genocide? “He could not suddenly order the indiscriminate slaughter of persons,” she writes, “who had been good neighbors for so long.” (Leibowitz is probably thinking here of Exodus 3:22.)

So what was the provocation that induced Pharaoh’s people to become his willing executioners—so willing that (according to Nachmanides) they searched Jewish homes to take children from there, and things eventually got so out of hand that Pharaoh had to suspend the decree? Perhaps it was Pharaoh’s propaganda depicting them as lazy idlers (Exodus 5:17), but that hardly seems sufficient. Nor can it be the resistance of Shifrah and Puah because Pharaoh arranges things so that he cannot be implicated in the actions he commands them to do. (“Who,” Leibowitz asks, “would be able or dare to point an accusing finger at Pharaoh?”) The answer, I suspect, lies in Joseph’s actions in Parshat Vayigash (Genesis 44:18 - 47:27). In that portion, Egypt’s peasants offered their land and themselves for some of the grain that Joseph had the foresight to stockpile. Joseph accepts, and they consequently become a class of landless, enslaved sharecroppers for Pharaoh. The peasants, we read there, are grateful to be kept alive. But, as I have written elsewhere, it seems likely that their gratitude would eventually turn to resentment, directed not at Pharaoh but at Joseph and his people. A new king in Egypt could easily exploit such resentment.

The Figure of Shiloh: Reading Vayechi with Thomas Mann (פרשת ויחי)

This week’s Torah portion, Parshat Vayechi (פרשת ויחי, Genesis 47:28–50:26), includes Jacob’s deathbed blessings for his twelve sons (and his two grandsons, Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Jacob raises to the status of his own sons).

Translator Robert Alter notes that Jacob’s blessings, which take the form of a long poem, comprise “one of the oldest extended texts in the Bible.” He points out that “the antiquity of the poem, as well as the fact that it may be a collage of fragments, means that there are words, phrases, and occasionally whole clauses that are not very well understood. Sometimes this is because of the use of a rare, presumably archaic, term, though there are also at least a few points where the received text looks defective.”

This may be frustrating for the translator, who (says Alter) “can do no more than make an educated guess,” but it provides a splendid opportunity for imaginative and poignant retellings of the scene like that in Thomas Mann’s novel Joseph und seine Brüder. Among other embellishments, Mann suggests that “astronomical meanings and allusions were repeatedly mixed in with Jacob’s message to his sons.” He identifies Jacob’s twelve sons with the twelve signs of the zodiac. Reuben (“unsteady as water,” Genesis 49:4) is associated with Aquarius, Shimeon and Levi with Gemini (the twins), Judah with Leo, etc.

Furthermore, Mann places a significant figure from Judah’s past—one whom this Torah portion does not mention—at the deathbed scene. That person is Judah’s daughter-in-law Tamar. In Parshat Vayeshev (פרשת וישב, Genesis 37:1–40:23), Tamar’s husband dies, and she is therefore given in levirate marriage to Judah’s second son Onan (Genesis 38:7–8). Onan refuses to impregnate her (he instead “waste[s] his seed on the ground”) and also dies (Genesis 38:9–10). Perhaps understandably given this string of misfortunes, Judah does not marry Tamar off to his third son. But Tamar, determined to have a child from Judah’s family, disguises herself as a prostitute and sleeps with her father-in-law, Judah himself (Genesis 38:12–23). When Judah learns that she is pregnant, he initially orders her to be executed for whoring but then changes his mind when she confronts him with evidence that he is the father. Tamar then gives birth to twin sons, Peretz (identified in Ruth 4:18–22 as an ancestor of King David) and Zerach (Genesis 38:27–30). Parshat Vayeshev is the last that we hear about Tamar in the Torah. But in Mann’s retelling, Tamar is present with the crowd that gathers outside of Jacob’s tent:

The setting sun outlined figures in the crowd outside against the orange hues of an evening sky, making shadows of them, so that it was not easy to discern individual faces. But the opposing light from the two oil lamps flickering on high stands at the foot and head of the deathbed allows us to distinguish very clearly one arresting figure out there: a gaunt matron in black, standing between two strikingly broad-shouldered men, her gray hair covered by a veil. Without a doubt it was Tamar, that resolute woman, with her manly sons.

Tamar is waiting to hear if “Jacob’s dying words might also happen to mention Judah’s sin with her.” Do they? Jacob first elevates Judah over his brothers—including, pointedly, the firstborn Reuben, who, by sleeping with his father’s concubine, made claim to the patriarch’s authority many years earlier (Genesis 35:22)—and compares Judah to a lion. The next part of the blessing (Genesis 49:10) is a bit cryptic. Below is the original Hebrew followed by Robert Alter’s translation and then a different translation given in the Artscroll Sapirstein edition of the Torah with Rashi’s commentary:

 לֹא-יָסוּר שֵׁבֶט מִיהוּדָה, וּמְחֹקֵק מִבֵּין רַגְלָיו, עַד כִּי-יָבֹא שִׁילֹה, וְלוֹ יִקְּהַת עַמִּים

The scepter shall not pass from Judah,
nor the mace from between his legs,
that tribute to him may come
and to him the submission of peoples.

The rod shall not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh arrives and his will be an assemblage of nations.

What’s going on here? Alter explains that the italicized words can be interpreted in different ways: “The Masoretic Text [the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible] seems to read ‘until he comes to Shiloh,’ a dark phrase that has inspired much messianic interpretation.” Rashi, citing the authority of Targum Onkelos (a Jewish translation of the Torah into Aramaic from the early second century of the Common Era), explains that Shiloh does not refer here to the biblical city but is instead a title or name for the moshiach (messiah). But Alter’s translation follows an alternative exegetical tradition that “goes back to the Middle Ages, which breaks up the word ‘Shiloh’ [שילה] and vocalizes it differently as shai lo [tribute to him, שי לו].”

Mann clearly opts for Rashi’s interpretation. Jacob “heaped blame on those [Shimeon and Levi] he chose not to bless for their attachment to instruments of violence” (cf. Genesis 49:5–7). How peculiar then that he would praise Judah as a lion, a bloodthirsty beast of prey. “And yet in blessing Judah,” Mann insists, “Jacob intended no such brutal heroics.” Mann suggests that Shiloh, not Judah, is the real “hero” at whom Jacob’s blessing is aimed. In Mann’s retelling, this “name of promise” was “something totally new” to Judah and came as a “surprise to the entire assembly.” “Only one person among them all already knew of it and had been waiting eagerly to hear it. We cannot help casting a glance outside [Jacob’s tent] to the outline of her shadow—there she stood very erect, in darkling pride, as Jacob proclaimed this woman’s seed.” This woman is, of course, Tamar. Christians see Shiloh as a reference to Jesus, and Mann hints at this interpretation. From Judah, he writes, “would come the one to whom all peoples would be obedient, the bringer of peace, the man of the star.”

Jacob’s blessing for Judah continues. Here again is Robert Alter’s translation of the biblical text:

He binds to the vine his ass,
to the grape-bough his ass’s foal.
He washes in wine his garment,
in the blood of the grape his cloak.
O eyes that are darker than wine,
and teeth that are whiter than milk!
(Genesis 49:11)

Abraham ibn Ezra explains that the yield of Judah’s vineyards will be “so abundant that his ass can turn aside to the vine and he won’t care if it eats the grapes.” Alter adds: “This explanation jibes nicely with the next image of washing garments in wine—the wine will be so plentiful that it can be treated as water.” Mann picks up on this imagery and does something clever and surprising with it. Judah, or rather his tribe, was so “blended and merged” in Jacob’s blessing with “the figure of Shiloh” that “when it came to the vision of the fullness of blessing and grace to which Jacob now devoted himself, no one could say whether his words concerned Judah or this man of promise.”

It all swam in wine—sparkling wine turned everything red before the listeners’ eyes. It was a land, this king’s kingdom, a land where someone bound his animal to the vine and his ass’s colt to the choice vine. Were these vineyards of Hebron, the wine-clad hills of Engedi? Into his city “he” rode on an ass and upon the foal of a she-ass, a beast of burden. There was nothing but the drunken delight of red wine at the sight of him, and he himself was like a drunken god of wine stomping in the winepress, holding skirts high in exultation—the blood of the wine drenched his apron and the red juice of the grape his garments. How beautiful he was wading there, dancing the dance of the winepress—more beautiful and than any other man, white as snow, red as blood, black as ebony…

Mann’s reference to the “someone” who rides an ass into his city may bring to mind Jesus entering Jerusalem, but he instead identifies Judah/Shiloh with Dionysius, the “drunken god of wine.” So, if Mann gives Jacob’s blessing for Judah a Christian interpretation, it is not exclusively Christian. In addition to Mann’s identification of Judah with the astrological sign Leo, the last part of Jacob’s blessing allows Mann to invoke another element of pagan mythology. In Mann’s retelling, Judah and his messianic seed appear as a confused amalgam, all swimming in wine, of Christian and pagan mythology alike.

The Revolutionary Usurpation of the Firstborn (פרשת תולדת)

The biblical motif of the revolutionary usurpation of the firstborn begins in the first Torah portion, Bereshit, when God favors the offering made by Abel and not that of his older brother Cain (Gen. 4:4-5). The motif reappears in Vayera when Sarah insists that the younger Isaac, and not Ishmael, will receive Abraham’s inheritance. And now the motif continues in this week’s Torah portion Toldot (“generations”) with Jacob and Esau. After they clash together in their mother's womb, Jacob emerges second grasping the heel of his firstborn brother Esau (Genesis 25:22, 26).

שני גיים בבטנך
ושני לאמים, ממעיך יפרדו
ולאם מלאם יאמץ
ורב יעבד צעיר

Two nations—in your womb,
two peoples from your loins shall issue.
People over people shall prevail,
the elder, the younger’s slave.

Genesis 25:23

Robert Alter points out the ambiguity of this verse. Which nation shall prevail over which? “The Hebrew syntax leaves unclear which noun is subject and which is object—‘the elder shall serve the younger,’ or, ‘the elder, the younger shall serve.’”

Jacob (also called Israel) is, of course, the progenitor of the Jewish nation, while his brother Esau is identified as the ancestor of the Edomites. Notwithstanding Jacob and Esau’s eventual reconciliation (Genesis 33), the Hebrew Bible relates that the Jewish nation under David’s leadership later conquered Edom (II Samuel 8:13, I Chronicles 18:12). The Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that the Hebrew Bible describes Edom as “the eternal enemy of Israel (and Judah, Amos 1:11; Ezek. 35:5) who not only always oppressed Israel, but at the time of the destruction of the First Temple took advantage of the situation and seized control of parts of Judah (Ezek. 25:12; 35:5, 10, 2; Obad. 11–16), and it is hinted that Edom also took part in the destruction of Jerusalem (Ps. 137:7; Obad. 11) and even in that of the Temple itself (Obad. 16).” Much later, around the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire, Edom was identified with Rome (ostensibly founded by the children of Esau and included among the cities of the chiefs of Esau mentioned at the end of Genesis 36).

Another interesting feature of this portion concerns Abimelech’s words to Isaac in Genesis 26:10: כמעט שכב אחד העם, את–אשתך (“one of the people might well have lain with your wife”). This is apparently the only place in the Hebrew Bible where the phrase אחד העם appears. According to Rashi, “one of the people” refers here to “the special one of the people, namely the king.” Of course, אחד העם was also the pen name of the great theoretician of cultural Zionism, Asher Ginzberg. As Ginzberg's biographer Steven Zipperstein points out with Rashi's commentary in mind, this pen name may have been a “bid for leadership” as much as a sign of anonymity, modesty, and humility. Asher, though, was no Jacob--he had no older brother, only two younger sisters.

A Vision of Unity (פרשת ראה)

The Shema--perhaps the most important prayer in Judaism--stresses divine unity. "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One" (Deuteronomy 6:4). The Hebrew word for unity, we should bear in mind, is אחדות, which is related to the word אחד (one). This week's Torah portion, Parshat Re'eh (פרשת ראה, Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17), articulates a manifold unity: one vision or one right perspective, one good, one God, one place of worship, and one people.

The portion begins with the imperative to see: "See [ראה], I set before you today blessing and curse: the blessing, when you heed the instruction [מצות] of the Lord your God with which I instruct (מצוה) you today; the curse, if you heed not the instruction of the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 11:26-28). The imperative is addressed not to the individual (לפניך), but collectively to the people as a whole (לפניכם).

The people are admonished, "You shall not do after all that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes" (Deuteronomy 12:8). Instead, Moses repeatedly directs the people's gaze to "what is right [הישר]" or "what is good and right [הטוב והישר] in the eyes of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 21:25, 21:28, 13:19). Following the initial imperative to look, the intent is to align the vision of the people with the vision of their God, so that it is a single vision.

Moreover, it is a vision of one good. In the Midrash (Devarim Rabbah 4:3), R. Eliezer links the opening verse of this week's portion ("See, I set before you today blessing and curse") to Lamentations 3:38: "out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?" The Bible scholar and commentator Nehama Leibowitz, following previous commentators, points out that the Hebrew word for evil in Lamentations 3:38 occurs in the plural form (רעות = evils), but the word for good (טוב) is in the singular.

The portion stresses the oneness of God throughout, warning the people to choose their God (it is always "your God") over "other gods" (the gods of other peoples) that they have not known.

Another feature of the portion is the abolition of religious sacrifice at local shrines and its centralization in Jerusalem ("the place that the Lord your God will choose," Deuteronomy 12:5), which occurred historically between the late eighth century BCE (Hezekiah's reform) and the late seventh century (Josiah's reform). This centralization has a number of consequences, including the innovation of what the rabbis called secular slaughter (שחיטת חולין) outside of Jerusalem (Deuteronomy 12:15). More to the point of this drash, centralization of the Israelite cult is another expression of unity. As the first-century CE Jewish priest, scholar, and historian Flavius Josephus argued, centralization of worship teaches that just as there is only one God, there should only be one Temple, and the Temple should be "common to all men because He is the common God of all men" (Against Apion, book II, paragraph 24).

The argument that Josephus makes concerning the centralization of worship brings to mind a similar argument that the French historian and political writer Alexis de Tocqueville would make centuries later. In the second volume (chap. 5) of Democracy in America, first published in 1840, Tocqueville wrote: "Men living in a similar and equal condition in the world readily conceive the idea of the one God, governing every man by the same laws, and granting to every man future happiness on the same conditions. The idea of the unity of mankind constantly leads them back to the idea of the unity of the Creator; while, on the contrary in a state of society, where men are broken up into very unequal ranks, they are apt to devise as many deities as there are nations, castes, classes, or families, and to trace a thousand private roads to Heaven."

Along these lines, we can see that in addition to emphasizing one vision or right perspective, one good, one God, and one place of worship, this week's portion also underscores the oneness of the people. This is evident in the solidaristic provisions for the Levite, who has "no portion or inheritance" (i.e., they did not receive a portion of the land like the other tribes, Deuteronomy 12:12), and the social obligations stipulated in Deuteronomy 15 to one's "fellow man and brother," including the debtor and the pauper. Remission at the end of every seven years is a leveling practice that restores equality between the erstwhile debtor and his creditor. The instruction to "open your hand to your brother, to your poor, and to your pauper, in your land" (Deuteronomy 15:11), may not place the pauper on an equal footing, but at least it ensures that he will not be treated as an outsider to whom one owes nothing. To be sure, these provisions are in one sense inconsistent with Tocqueville's thesis because they presuppose inequality that must then be compensated. Nevertheless, they express an egalitarian ethos and aspiration, and in this sense they are consistent with Tocqueville's point. As the Bible translator and professor of Hebrew Robert Alter puts it, "whatever the social and economic differences, all Israelites should regard each other as brothers." The social ethic of Deuteronomy thus aims to prevent inequalities from deepening and hardening into caste divisions that would break up the nation.

The ideal of אחדות (unity or oneness) runs against the grain of the individualism that prevails today. Taken to an extreme, this ideal surely has its dangers. But this week's portion reminds us that the ideal of אחדות is also closely connected to the Biblical social ethic and may be needed in some measure today to counterbalance individualism and reinvigorate our sense of mutual social obligations.

Nature and Culture (פרשת אחרי מות־קדשים)

In a previous blog post, I wrote that Judaism is all about distinction, and no book of the Torah exemplifies this concern more than ויקרא (Leviticus in Latin). As Robert Alter points out, the same process of division we find in בראשית (Genesis) is also “manifested in the ritual, sexual, and dietary laws of Leviticus…. Just as one has to set apart permissible sexual partners from forbidden ones” (the incest taboo), “one must set apart what may be eaten in the great pullulation of living creatures from what may not be eaten” (the laws of kashrut); and the Jewish people, through its acceptance of these categorical divisions, “sets itself apart from other peoples and becomes holy, like God.” This week’s double portion, Acharei-Kedoshim (Leviticus 16:1–20:27), continues to develop this theme.

The double portion includes the famous scapegoat ritual, in which the high priest Aaron sacrifices one goat to the Lord at the entrance to the Mishkan (Tabernacle) and sends off the other “to Azazel in the wilderness” (Lev. 16:10). By means of the latter act, the people’s transgressions are carried off by the goat. This ritual continued to be performed in the Second Temple until the Romans destroyed it in 70 CE. The ritual is similar to one used to purify persons afflicted with skin blanch, which is described in Parshat Metzora. In that ritual, the priest slaughters one bird and sends out another bird “over the open field” (Lev. 14:4–7).

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, “the exact meaning of Azazel was a point of dispute already in the times of the talmudic sages: some held that it is the name of the place to which the goat was sent, while others believed that it was the name of some ‘power.’” In Alter’s view, “the most plausible understanding—it is a very old one—is that it is the name of a goatish demon or deity [the name incorporates the Hebrew word for goat] associated with the remote wilderness.” Alter adds: “the ritual depends upon a polarity between YHWH/the pale of human civilization and Azazel/the remote wilderness, the realm of disorder and raw formlessness…. It is as though the goat piled with impurities were being sent back to the primordial realm of ‘welter and waste’ [תהו ובהו, Genesis 1:2] before the delineated world came into being, but that realm here is given an animal-or-demon tag.”
 
In a subsequent passage that seems to support Alter’s interpretation, the Lord tells Moses to instruct the people that “they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the שעירם after which they go whoring” (Lev. 17:7). Who or what are the שעירם? Alter and the Jewish Publication Society translate the word as “goat-demons.” My Sapirstein edition of the Torah with Rashi’s commentary translates the word simply as “demons.” They follow the Greek Septuagint in this respect, which used the Greek word demon to translate the Hebrew word that the Encyclopaedia Judaica says means “hairy satyrs.” And indeed Chabad.org and my grandmother’s old Menorah Press Jewish Family Bible translate the word as “satyrs.” (In modern Hebrew, a שָׂעִיר is a satyr or billygoat.) These creatures are “surely to be associated with Azazel,” notes Alter. “Though our knowledge of their precise nature is limited, they are clearly archaic nature gods of the wild realm ‘beyond the camp,’ outside the pale of monotheistic civilization that the sundry Priestly writers are laboring to create.”

All of this brings to mind to Nietzsche’s famous contrast in The Birth of Tragedy between Apollo and Dionysius. While it may be unseemly to explicate the Torah with a pagan distinction, this week’s double portion seems to lend itself to the analogy. The Mishkan (Tabernacle) of the Lord, who creates clear categorical distinctions and enjoins the people to keep them clear, would correspond in this reading to the Apollonian spirit that gives form and creates harmony. In contrast, the wilderness inhabited by Azazel and the goat-demons recalls the Dionysian frenzy that (in Walter Kaufman’s words) “defies all limitations” and “threatens to destroy all forms and codes.” Like Dionysius, the creatures of the wilderness signify (in the words of Keith Ansell Pearson and Duncan Large) “formless flux,” “excess,” and loss of individuation—in a phrase, welter and waste (תהו ובהו).

This week’s double portion also brings to mind an influential thesis once put forward by the Jewish anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. “For Lévi-Strauss,” as his biographer Patrick Wilcken writes, “the incest taboo was the social rule, from which all kin systems flowed. It distinguished humanity’s rule-bound existence from nature’s promiscuity; it marked the passage from nature to culture.” As Thomas Meaney put it in a review of Wilcken’s book, “Lévi-Strauss interpreted [the incest taboo] as humanity’s most basic attempt to rein in the randomness of nature.” Perhaps not coincidentally, this week’s double portion, which shows such deep concern for keeping the disorder and formlessness of the wilderness at bay, also includes the Torah’s prohibition of incest (Lev. 18).