Give It a Rest: The Social Significance of the Shmitah Year (פרשת בהר)

This week's double Torah portion, the first part of which is פרשת בהר (Lev. 25:1 - 26:2), includes the instruction to keep the שמיטה (shmitah) (Leviticus 25:2-4):

When you come to the land that I am giving you, the land shall rest a Sabbath to the Lord. You may sow your field for six years, and for six years you may prune your vineyard, and gather in its produce, but in the seventh year, the land shall have a complete rest, a Sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field, nor shall you prune your vineyard.

This institution now finds a distant echo in the sabbatical, a period of paid leave granted to a university professor for study or travel, traditionally every seventh year. Professors are often asked by those who work outside the university to justify the practice of the sabbatical. In the same way we might ask, what is the reason for the shmitah?

While a variety of answers have been given, some of the rabbis stress the social significance of the shmitah year, seeing in it an institution of solidarity and mutual responsibility. Maimonides, for instance, argues that "this law was given in order that we may show sympathy for our fellow men who have neither land nor vineyards, and that they may be happy in the shmitah year, as the rich are happy every year." This explains the obligation to renounce ownership of all agricultural produce and declare it public property (Lev. 25:6-7), but what about the obligation to suspend agricultural work? What is the social significance of this part of the mitzvah?

Both Abraham Ibn Ezra and Abraham Isaac Kook provide insightful answers to this question, anticipating respectively Karl Marx's critique of alienation and Emile Durkheim's conclusions about the rhythm of social life.

Ibn Ezra writes: "The suspension of work in every seventh year causes us to realize that our mission on earth is not to be slaves to the soil but a much higher and nobler one. Work should only serve the purpose of providing food and other needs, while our task is to attain the supreme end; the purpose of giving this land to this people was not to be brought into the land in order to be enslaved by it.... Their purpose is to accomplish themselves and seek perfection, according to the will of their Creator, while satisfying the needs of their sustenance." Here Ibn Ezra recognizes the possibility and danger of inverting the normal subject-object relationship, such that production becomes the objective of man rather than man the objective of production.

 

Abraham Joshua Heschel makes an analogous point about Shabbat. He criticizes Philo for representing Shabbat “not in the spirit of the Bible but in the spirit of Aristotle. According to the Stagirite, ‘we need relaxation, because we cannot work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end’; it is ‘for the sake of activity,’ for the sake of gaining strength for new efforts. To the biblical mind, however, labor is the means toward an end, and the Sabbath as a day of rest, as a day of abstaining from toil, is not for the purpose of recovering one’s lost strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labor. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work. ‘Last in creation, first in intention,’ the Sabbath is ‘the end of the creation of heaven and earth’” (Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, [1951] 1979], 14).

Both Karl Marx and Max Weber would later point to the inversion of the normal subject-object relationship as characteristic of modern capitalism. Capital, which for Marx is nothing more than congealed, objectified, or accumulated labor, should serve as "a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer." Instead, Marx wrote, "bourgeois society" inverts the relationship: in a capitalist mode of production, "living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour." Likewise, Weber noted that the spirit of capitalism made "the earning of more and more money" an "end in itself": "Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship ... is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence." Ibn Ezra implies that such a reversal was possible in precapitalist agrarian societies too, and he points to the shmitah as a way to periodically restore what Weber calls the "natural relationship." Without this restoration, Ibn Ezra suggests, social and spiritual ends tend to be subordinated to material production, which is contrary to the Torah's intent. (This point is worth remembering today, when the ends of education are defined less and less in terms of self-development and increasingly and narrowly in materialistic and economic terms.)

Kook, noting that "what the Sabbath achieves regarding the individual, the shmitah achieves with regard to the nation as a whole," adds to Ibn Ezra's interpretation: "The treasure of the nation, the Divine blessing that is implanted in it, the order of the world, the righteous and good life, lived in harmony with justice and honesty, peace and tranquility, grace and courage ... none can be activated in the day-to-day life. The very nature of this life obfuscates the spiritual majesty of the Divine soul (which dwells in the nation) and prevents its bright and shining light from penetrating the profane reality. Life can only be perfected through the affording of a breathing space from the bustle of everyday life.... The periodical suspension of the normal social routine raises this nation -- when morally settled -- spiritually and morally, and crowns it with perfection." Kook's point was not to draw a sharp dichotomy between the profane and the sacred--a viewpoint he implicitly rejects with his reference to the penetration of the profane--but rather about the proper relationship between them. The satisfaction of physical needs is a necessary means to the attainment of spiritual perfection, but it must not be allowed to crowd out or obscure spiritual aspirations.

If Ibn Ezra brings to mind Marx and Weber, then Kook brings to mind Emile Durkheim. Like Kook, Durkheim associated the profane and the sacred with variations in the rhythm of social life. Durkheim found that life among Australian aborigines also alternated between two different phases: a "dispersed state" of "low intensity" in which "economic activity predominates," and periodic moments of "collective effervescence" when the community congregates for intense religious ceremonies. "The first is the profane world," Durkheim wrote, "and the second, the world of sacred things." Sacred time, Durkheim concluded, is essential for the solidarity of the community: "There can be no society which does not experience the need at regular intervals to maintain and strengthen the collective feelings and ideas that provide its coherence and its distinct individuality. This moral remaking can be achieved only through meetings, assemblies, and congregations in which the individuals, pressing close to one another, reaffirm in common their common sentiments." Interestingly, Kook and Durkheim arrived at these strikingly similar ideas at about the same time; Kook wrote Shabbat ha-Aretz prior to the shmitah year of 1910, and Durkheim's Elementary Forms of the Religious Life was published in 1912.

In light of this remarkable convergence of thinking, perhaps we are justified in asking whether there is not a close connection between Marx's vision of an un-alienated social world and Durkheim's notion of a "moral remaking." Can it perhaps be said that the sacred is not just the product and representation of the society as it is, at a moment of collective effervescence, but an anticipation of a morally remade society, a world that is no longer inverted, in which the realization of the human being is no mere fantasy but a living reality?

The Fetishism of the Golden Calf (פרשת כי תשא)

Last week's Torah portion, כי תשא (Ex. 30:11 - 34:35), includes the infamous incident with the Golden Calf.

Robert Alter, in his translation of the Torah, asks why the people say "these are your gods" (Ex. 32:4) even though the calf is singular. He answers: "The gods are plural while the calf is singular because ancient Near Eastern people were polytheists, not fetishists: the golden icon was conceived as the terrestrial throne or platform for the deity (singular or plural), having precisely the same function as the cherubim over the Ark," upon which the Divine Presence 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." (The episode in which the people give their gold jewelry to make the golden calf may thus be seen as a sort of negative parallel to the subsequent moment in which the nation’s women contribute their mirrors for the building of the Mishkan [Ex. 38:8].)

Alter's reading is similar to the interpretation of the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Judah Halevi. In his book The Kuzari, Halevi suggests that the Golden Calf was not an idol but simply a material symbol that the people constructed to facilitate their worship of G-d. For Halevi, the only difference between the creation of the Golden Calf and the creation of the cherubim is that G-d 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 G-d's wish. In support of this view, Halevi notes that G-d says "they have quickly turned from the way I commanded them" (Ex. 32:8), not "they have turned aside from Me."

Alter and Halevi thus raise an interesting question: Was the Golden Calf a fetish? While they both answer negatively, the conventional view--that the Golden Calf was an instance of idolatry--suggests the possibility of an affirmative answer.

To determine whether the Golden Calf was a fetish, we have to answer a more fundamental question: What is a fetish? I always ask this question to the students in my social theory class when we turn to Karl Marx's famous discussion of the "fetishism of commodities." My students are typically uncertain, but when pressed for an answer they can usually articulate (with a considerable amount of giggling) some version of the Freudian conception which has entered into popular culture. This provides a good teaching opportunity as we compare how Marx and Freud used the notion of a fetish.

A fetish, in its original religious meaning, is an inanimate object worshipped for its supposed magical powers or because it is thought to be animated or inhabited by a spirit. Freud and Marx built on this original meaning and extended it in creative and insightful ways.

For Freud, a fetish is an object that a person endows with sexual significance and without which he or she is incapable of sexual excitement. The Freudian fetish is unconsciously associated with a person without being one, and it appears to have power over you because it gives you the (sexual) potency you otherwise lack. The Golden Calf fits this Freudian conception in interesting ways. The Torah indicates that after making sacrifices to the calf, the people "rose up to play," "sport," "make merry," or "revel" (Ex. 32:6). The Hebrew verb used here (לצחק) has sexual connotations, as many commentators have pointed out, which are usually lost in the various English translations. Furthermore, as many commentators have noted, when Moses burns the calf, grinds it into dust, scatters it over water, and makes the people drink it (Ex. 32:20), his actions parallel the ritual procedure for a woman suspected of adultery (Numbers 5:11-31). In addition, the language that G-d uses later in the portion is clearly sexual: the people are warned not to whore after other gods (Ex. 34:15-16). As Robert Alter suggests, "the God who has chosen Israel implicitly represents Himself as Israel's husband and lover (a metaphor that both Hosea and Jeremiah will make explicit)." Lastly, it's interesting to note that the calf is associated with a person; namely, it is a substitute for Moses (Ex. 32:1), which may be why G-d pointedly tells Moses that Israel is "your people," not "My people." (Ex. 32:7). (Interestingly, it should be recalled that Moses was instructed to be "like a god" for Pharaoh [Ex.4:16, 7:1], not for the Jewish people.) In sum, the covenant at Sinai is akin to a wedding, but the bride (Israel) is incapable of excitement without an object (the calf) which is associated not with her Husband (like the Ark) but with His rivals ("other gods") or her tutor (Moses).

For Marx, the fetishism of commodities refers to an inversion of the normal relationship between subject and object. The product of labor, "as soon as it assumes the form of commodities," appears to have an intrinsic value, independent of human beings and their activities, when in fact its value derives from human labor. As a result, social relations (the exchange of labor among producers) are disguised as relations between things (products). Just as in the religious world "the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life," "so it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands." While Marx focuses on labor relations rather than sexual relations, his conception of fetishism has much in common with Freud's: both emphasize the apparent domination of human subjects by the objects they produce while insisting that fetishism disguises human agency and interaction by transposing them to a realm of things. Not surprisingly, then, the Golden Calf exemplifies the Marxian conception of fetishism as well as the Freudian conception. The Torah emphasizes the role of human labor: in response to the people’s demand to “make us gods,” Aaron “fashioned” their gold jewelry “in a mold and made it into a molten calf” (Ex. 32:1, 4). (Where did the gold come from? The Torah tells us that the people took it from their Egyptian neighbors on the eve of the Exodus [Ex. 3:22; Ex. 11:2; Ex. 12:35-36]—an act sometimes understood, Robert Alter notes, as “restitution for the unpaid labor exacted from the Hebrew slaves.” So what we have then is an exchange of labor among producers, for the gold which the people give to Aaron, no less than the calf he gives to them, are both in some sense products of Jewish labor.) But if in a normal relationship the product serves the needs of the producer, this relationship is now inverted as the producers bow down before the product of their own hands (Ex. 32:8), which appears to them as an independent being with a life of its own. When Moses asks Aaron why he "brought a great sin" upon the nation, Aaron answers: "I flung [the gold] into the fire, and out came this calf!" (Ex. 32:24). Aaron's language is telling: downplaying his own agency, he suggests that the calf emerged and formed on its own.

When the Golden Calf incident is read via Freud and Marx as an instance of fetishism, the dramatic smashing of the tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai makes more sense. What did Moses hope to achieve by breaking the tablets? In Meshekh Hokhmah, R. Meir Simhah suggests that it had the educative aim of combating idolatry: "He feared they would deify them as they had done the calf. Had he brought them the Tablets intact, they would have substituted them for the calf and not reformed their ways." By smashing them, Moses sought to demystify the fetishism that gripped the people: "Even the Tablets--'the writing of God'--were not intrinsically holy, but only so on account of you. The moment Israel sinned and transgressed what was written thereon, they became mere bric a brac devoid of sanctity." As R. Meir Simhah points out, this also explains why the broken pieces of the Tablets were placed in the Ark: "It was the first Tablets which were the work of God that were broken, not the Tablets hewn by Moses, which remained whole; demonstrating that no holiness resides in anything created other than that invested in it by Israel's observance of the Torah in accordance with the will of the Creator and His holy name." Just as sexual significance and economic value are not inherent in objects but derive from human action, so too for holiness. Smashing the tablets and placing them in the Ark may thus be seen as a means of liberating the people from the fetishism that gripped them, for as Marx put it, "every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to man himself."

Moses the Marginal Man (פרשת שמות)

The marginal man ... is one whom fate has condemned to live in two societies and in two not merely different but antagonistic cultures.

Robert E. Park

Why did השם choose Moses to take the Jewish people out of Egypt? What made Moses especially suited for this undertaking? Perhaps Moses was best qualified for this task because he was what the sociologist Robert Park called a “marginal man.”

For Park, the “marginal man” was a distinctive personality type produced by contact and communication between peoples. He was a “cultural hybrid, a man living and sharing intimately in the cultural life and traditions of two distinct peoples; never quite willing to break, even if he were permitted to do so, with his past and his traditions, and not quite accepted, because of racial prejudice, in the new society in which he now sought to find a place. He was a man on the margin of two cultures and two societies, which never completely interpenetrated and fused.” In his 1928 article “Human Migration and the Marginal Man,” Park identified the Jew in the modern era, “when … the walls of the medieval ghetto were torn down and [he] was permitted to participate in the cultural life of the peoples among whom he lived,” as the marginal man par excellence.

In this week’s portion, Moses appears as just such a marginal man. He is Jewish, descended from Levi (Ex. 2:1), but cut off from his people when his mother places him in a basket afloat in the Nile. This is a highly symbolic act. As Robert Alter notes, “Egypt is associated with water, almost everything there being linked with its central waterway, the Nile,” which is “an Egyptian deity, as Rashi notes, and the very source of life in Egypt.” Pharaoh’s daughter finds the baby and gives him the name Moses, “for I drew him from the water” (Ex. 2.10), again symbolizing his immersion in Egyptian culture and society. Indeed, the boy Moses grows up in an Egyptian household as a son to Pharaoh’s daughter (Ex. 2:10). However, as befits Park’s notion of the marginal man, Moses doesn't break with his Jewish past: he “went out to his brethren and saw their burdens” (Ex. 2:11). This means, according to Rashi, that Moses did not merely observe but “directed his eyes and heart to share their distress.” And when Moses sees “a Hebrew man, of his brethren,” struck by an Egyptian taskmaster, he leaps to the defense of the Jewish slave with deadly force (Ex. 2:11-12). As a result of this act, Moses finds that he is no longer accepted in the Egyptian society in which he was raised: “Pharaoh heard about this matter and sought to kill Moses” (Ex. 2: 15). As this conflicted upbringing demonstrates, Moses was “a stranger in a strange land” (Ex. 2:22) even before he left Egypt.

While Moses certainly fits the profile of the marginal man, how did this prepare him to take the Jewish people out of out of Egypt? Robert Park suggests that the marginal man is characterized by two related personality traits: he is both “enlightened” and “emancipated.” The marginal man is enlightened insofar as “he learns to look upon the world in which he was born and bred” with less prejudice and more objectivity. He is emancipated insofar as “energies that were formerly controlled by custom and tradition are released…. [H]e is not bound as others are by the local proprieties and conventions.” In contrast to Moses, both the Egyptians and the Jews were bound by customary modes of action and thought. While the Egyptians were unable to see the injustice of their ways, the slave mentality of the Jews deprived them of the courage to resist injustice. As a marginal man, Moses was liberated from both constraints. His ties to the Jewish people freed him to “see” the injustice of their burdens (Ex. 2:11), while his princely Egyptian upbringing (as Ibn Ezra pointed out) gave him the courage that Jewish slaves lacked.

These leadership qualities are most evident when Moses flees from Egypt into the wilderness (Ex. 2:15), undertaking on a personal level what he must later lead his brethren to do collectively. The wilderness, as Robert Alter notes, is a “liminal space” between Egypt and the Promised Land, “where freedom will be realized and new obligations incurred.” Moses does not fear to journey into this symbolic space. Indeed, herding the sheep of his newly acquired father-in-law Jethro, Moses “led the flock to the farthest end of the wilderness” (אחר המדבר) until he arrived “at the Mountain of God, toward Horeb” (Ex. 3:1). Horeb, as Ibn Ezra noted, means “dryness” or “parched place”; it is thus the antithesis of watery Egypt. Here in the wilderness Moses is free from the fear of Pharaoh’s death sentence, which was a reiteration of Pharaoh's previous genocidal order to drown every Jewish son in the Nile (Ex. 1:22), and Moses incurs new obligations (“you shall take My people, the Children of Israel, out of Egypt”), prefiguring the receiving of the Torah by the Jewish people.

When an astonished Moses asks, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should take the Children of Israel out of Egypt,” השם answers cryptically, “this is the sign” (זה–לך האות). To what does זה (“this”) refer? Perhaps to the marginality that has brought Moses to Horeb and prepared him for the task ahead.

Joseph and his brother

When you read “Vayeshev’’ enough times, the story starts sounding rather melodramatic and almost day-time-television-like: there’s sibling rivalry and betrayal, sexual harassment, false accusations and undue imprisonment, heart-broken fathers and in-laws who don’t keep their word, a woman who dresses like a prostitute—you name it. There is also a good brother and an evil one, although they are not twins separated at birth. The leading role, of course, belongs to Joseph if only because this portion is the beginning of a four-part arc leading up to the next book, Exodus.

The story of Joseph’s trials and tribulations in Egypt is suddenly interrupted by a seemingly unrelated account of the life story of Judah, one of his brothers, the one who, in fact, played the most instrumental role in selling Joseph into Egyptian slavery. So, why do we need to know how many sons Judah had and how he mistreated his daughter-in-law and how she bore him twins after entrapping him under the guise of a prostitute?

I think, Judah is a more human character, compared to Joseph. Among his twelve siblings, Joseph is the most beloved and spoiled by his father. He is handsome, dresses in chic clothes distinct from his brothers’, and gets attention and favors from powerful women and men. Good things, even in the worst of circumstances, happen to him without much effort on his part: as the portion states on several occasions, “the Lord lent success to everything Joseph undertook.” He is even quite arrogant: without hesitation or an afterthought he tells his parents and brothers his dreams where they all bow to him as their ruler. He comes off almost superhuman.

Judah, on the other hand, appears to be a deeply flawed man. It was his idea to sell Joseph to the Egyptians. He does not keep his promise to his daughter-in-law to let her marry his youngest son when she is widowed twice. He is not in big favor with the Lord, who takes lives of Judah’s two sons, presumably as a punishment for their father’s transgressions. On the other hand, we see him recognize his flaws and his mistakes: when the brothers want to kill Joseph, he dissuades them saying “after all he is our brother, our own flesh”; when Tamar gets pregnant from him, Judah acknowledges that she is more in the right than he is because he did not keep his word. And as such, to me Judah is not only more human but more sympathetic. As all of us, he struggles with his demons and often, although not always, overcomes his shortcoming. He ends up a righteous man but after years of inner struggles and blunders.

What is even more significant is the fact that he is the ancestor of the messiah. Emancipation of the Jews and entire humanity comes not so much from the perfect Joseph but from his brother Judah—despite or maybe precisely because of all his faults and imperfections and his efforts to overcome them.

Blessings for Wells (פרשת תולדות)

In פרשת תולדות (Gen. 25:19 to 28:9) both Isaac and Jacob receive blessings. Although in both instances others call their deservingness into question, the Torah suggests that the blessings are neither arbitrary nor unconditional, but tied to the fulfillment of spiritual responsibilities.

Despite a famine in Canaan, Hashem tells Isaac: "Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and to your offspring will I give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father: 'I will increase your offspring like the stars of the heavens; and will give to your offspring all these lands'; and all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your offspring" (Gen. 26:2-4). The blessing includes both possession of the Land and fertility for Abraham and his descendants. Moreover, the fertility seems to extend to the land as well. "Isaac sowed in that land, and in that year he reaped a hundredfold" (Gen. 26:12-14). While this blessing may seem to be unconditional, a closer reading suggests it is tied to spiritual responsibilities. Hashem prefaces the blessing by telling Isaac, "Do not descend to Egypt" (Gen. 26:2). This warning carries a symbolic meaning as well as a literal meaning, i.e., do not descend spiritually to Egypt and all it represents. Hashem also reminds Isaac of his spiritual responsibilities at the end of the blessing: "Because Abraham obeyed My voice, and observed My safeguards, My commandments, My edicts, and My Torahs" (Gen. 26: 5).

The Philistines are envious of the blessing bestowed upon Isaac (Gen. 26:14). They also dwell in the Land, but--as evidenced by the famine--it doesn't bloom for them the way it does for him. Moreover, they see Isaac's prosperity as both a threat and a usurpation. Abimelech, the Philistine king, tells Isaac: לך מעמנו כי–עצמת ממנו מאר (Gen. 26:16). He expels Isaac ("go away from us"), and in Hebrew the reason for the expulsion can be rendered in two ways: "because you have become mightier than us" or "because you have become mighty from us." The first reading indicates fear of Isaac's power, the second the notion that Isaac has dispossessed the Philistines of what is rightfully theirs.

The Torah suggests that if the Land blooms for Isaac and not for the Philistines, it is because Isaac has shown himself to be spiritually fit. In contrast to the Philistines, who make the land desolate by stopping up the wells that Abraham dug in the Negev desert, Isaac re-digs them (Gen. 26:15-18). If the well symbolizes the womb and if (as Nehama Leibowitz says) "water means life," then to stop up the wells is to stifle fertility. (The fact that Isaac is redigging his father's wells suggests an additional Freudian interpretation, but I'll leave that aside for now.) Moreover, according to some readings, re-digging the wells is not only an act of physical reclamation but a fulfillment of spiritual responsibilities as well. One rabbinical commentator emphasizes that Isaac called the wells "by the same names that his father had called them" (Gen. 26:18). Like Abraham, Isaac called the wells "by the name of the Lord" to remind all who used the wells that Hashem was the source of the water and thus of life and thus of blessings. In this way, both Abraham and Isaac were public educators who used the wells for pedagogical purposes. In contrast, according to this midrash, the Philistines "reverted to idolatry" after Abraham's death "and in order to erase from their memory the names of these wells, which recalled the very opposite of their false opinions, they stopped up the wells."

We find a parallel in the story of Isaac's sons, Jacob and Esau. Just as Isaac appeared to the Philistines as an illegitimate usurper and dispossesser, so Jacob appears to Esau when he acquires his older brother's birthright for a mess of pottage (Gen. 25:29-34) and, by means of trickery and deception, their father's blessing (Gen. 27:1-40). In fact, the Hebrew root (עקב) of Jacob's name (יעקב) means "to overreach" or "to supplant."

But here too the Torah suggests that Jacob's usurpation is only apparent. If Jacob receives the blessing, it is because his brother Esau shows himself to be spiritually unfit. Esau married two Hittite women, who "were a provocation of the spirit to Isaac and Rebecca" (Gen. 26:34). Rashi comments: "All of the actions of [Esau's wives] were a cause of anguish to Isaac and Rebecca because they worshipped idols." According to the Talmud, Esau himself became an idolator, presumably through the influence of his wives. Rather than teaching them the ways of Hashem, as Abraham and Isaac endeavored to do with the wells, Esau learns their idolatrous ways. For this reason Rebecca tells Isaac "I am disgusted with my life on account of the daughters of Heth" (i.e., the Hittite daughters-in-law) and why they take great pains to ensure that Jacob will not follow in his older brother's footsteps (Gen. 27:46, 28:1-8). What's more, when Esau complains to his father that Jacob deprived him of the paternal blessing that Esau expected, Isaac answers him this way: "Your brother you shall serve; yet it shall be that when you will be aggrieved, you may remove his yoke from upon your neck" (Gen. 27:40). What Isaac means, Rashi explains, is that "when Israel will transgress the Torah, and you will have a claim to be aggrieved over the blessings that [Jacob] took, 'You may remove his yoke, etc.'" Once again, we find that blessings come with spiritual responsibilities and depend upon their fulfillment.

Morals and Manners

If blessings warrant spiritual commitments, one would expect them also to be contingent on moral and ethical standing of the person receiving them. But “Toldot,” this week’s portion, and its later rabbinical readings send mixed messages in this regard.

In the portion, Jacob appears at best as a clever trickster when he barters his twin-brother’s primogeniture for a plate of lentil soup and at worst as a con artist scheming Esau not only out of their father’s blessing but also out of a significant chunk of inheritance (according to tradition, firstborn got twice as much as other sons). In the latter instance he also deceives their elderly, blind, dying father by pretending—with the help of elaborate costume—to be Esau and be named as the ruler of their people. And when Jacob is discovered to have lied to his father and cheated his brother, he happily allows his mother to send him away under false pretenses. This behavior is hardly suited one of the patriarchs of the Jewish people. Deception, fraud, evading responsibility for one’s actions are by no means markers of high morality. So does this mean that Jacob, the future forebear of the twelve tribes and arguably the most important of the patriarchs, is undeserving of his father’s blessing or that morality is not a necessary condition for paternal and divine sanctification?

According to traditional rabbinical interpretations, Jacob’s attainment of the privileges of the firstborn is not only not reprehensible, but right and fair because Esau is not worthy to offer sacrifices (the prerogative of the firstborn) and be the heir to the covenant of Abraham and Isaac. While the portion describes Esau as a hunter and an outdoorsman, Jacob is portrayed as a gentle man who stays in camp where he presumably studies Torah. To emphasize the purported difference between uncivilized Esau and cultivated Jacob, the former is said to be hairy while his brother—“smooth;” the Talmud makes physical distinctions between the two brothers even more obvious: Jacob was born clean, handsome, and circumcised and Esau—covered with hair all over, red in color, and with all his teeth developed. Talmud’s retrospective description of the twins is supposed to symbolize spiritual differences between Jews (offspring of Jacob) and pagans—descendants of Esau who married two Hittite women and, supposedly, through them becomes an idolater himself. Therefore, it is Jacob who is presented as a more virtuous successor to Abraham and Isaac and hence a more suitable beneficiary of the privileges of primogeniture. In short, he is a better Jew (to use an anachronism) and this makes him entitled to Isaac’s blessing even though he obtains it dishonestly. Thus, ethics trumps morality: particularistic religious commandments supersede universal principles of truth.

To me, this raises two problems. First, it makes me wonder whether immoral means can really justify ethical ends. I believe that such interpretation of Jacob’s transgressions suggests that misdeeds against fellow human beings—compatriots, co-religionists, comrades, as well as “the others”—can be absolved if they are committed in the name of god. But what about offenses that are explicitly proscribed by one’s religion, which in Jacob’s case would be, for example, disrespecting for one’s parents, telling lies, thievery, or envy (see Ten Commandments for more precise formulation)? Here morality encoded in particular religious laws contradicts other ethical behaviors mandated by the same doctrine.

Secondly, Talmud’s whitewashing of Jacob’s actions aims at presenting him as an ever-righteous, unswerving, loyal man who from birth was predestined to greatness and never faltered in his mission. However, this also makes him one-dimensional and precludes any possibility of personal, spiritual, or moral growth, which is not only uninteresting dramaturgically but also narratively incorrect since after many years of living away from home and being deceived himself Jacob returns to ask for Esau’s forgiveness.

Furthermore, it is precisely this overcoming of one’s moral and spiritual failings—as we will also see in the story of Jacob’s son Judah (the progenitor of the messiah) in “Vayeishev” in several weeks—that is rewarded with eminence and renown for himself and his successors.

Who Speaks for the Trees? (פרשת שפטים)

Last week's portion (שפטים or "Judges," Deuteronomy 16:18 to 21:9) begins with the stirring injunction: "Justice, justice shall you pursue" (Deuteronomy 16:20). The rest of the portion elaborates what it means to pursue justice, including justice in war. Among other things, justice in war requires us to exempt from battle a man who has just married, built a home, planted a vineyard, or is "afraid and disheartened"; obligates us to offer terms of peace before attacking a city; and prevents us from cutting down a fruit tree when laying siege:

When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the axe against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down (Deuteronomy 20:19).

Following these lines, at the end of the verse, is an ambiguous statement:

כִּי הָאָדָם עֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה, לָבֹא מִפָּנֶיךָ בַּמָּצוֹר

At first glance, I would translate it this way:

Because the man is a tree of the field to come before you in the siege.

Others translate it differently:

Robert Alter: "For is the tree of the field a human, to come away from you in the siege?"

JPS: "Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city?"

My grandmother's 1960 Menorah Press translation: "For is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of thee?"

Sapirstein/ArtScroll with Rashi's commentary: "Is, then, the tree of the field a man, that it should enter the siege before you?"

All the translations except my own read the sentence as a rhetorical question. In this respect, they all follow Rashi and therefore rest on good authority. Even so, this is an inference on the part of Rashi and other translators; it's not self-evident, because the original Hebrew text has no question marks.

Turns out I'm not entirely alone in my idiosyncratic reading. Apparently Ibn Ezra also refused to see in this sentence an interrogatory statement. And as Nehama Leibowitz points out, these alternative readings "reflect not only divergent grammatical approaches to the text. They inevitably lead to actual differences in meaning and implication." According to Rashi's interpretation, "the ordinance is inspired by compassion for whatever G-d has created." (What did that poor tree ever do to you?) But according to Ibn Ezra's interpretation, "the ordinance is motivated by considerations of human welfare." He understands "man is a tree of the field" to mean that man depends on the tree to sustain himself, or (as a rabbinic midrash puts it) the life of man is only from the tree. This is also consistent with the King James translation: "thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege." From this perspective, the ordinance is "designed to protect man from the wilful destruction of things from which he derives benefit" and--according to some rabbinical interpretations--prohibits any such destruction (not just fruit trees).

Interestingly, both interpretations provide some basis for the eco-kosher movement, though Ibn Ezra's reading admittedly provides a narrower one that rests on (enlightened) self-interest rather than the intrinsic value of nature. But even Ibn Ezra's reading subverts the worldview that C. B. Macpherson called possessive individualism. Nehama Leibowitz notes that the Torah's prohibition against the willful destruction of anything that benefits humanity trumps property rights: "it does not matter whether the object of our destructive efforts belongs to us.... Once man is allowed to rule himself and his property without let or hindrance, there is no knowing where it will lead him." (Actually, I think we know all too well.) And for Chabad rabbi Tzvi Freeman, "man is a tree of the field" emphasizes connectedness and mutual interdependence rather than (in Karl Marx's words) the "separation of man from man," the "individual withdrawn into himself, into the confines of his private interests and private caprice, and separated from the community." For me, all of this gives new meaning to the maxim that the Torah is a tree of life.