Are Jews white? Yom Kippur edition

 What qualities would you look for to lead a nation? Obscene wealth? Sweeping ignorance? Tiny, tiny hands?

Then, according to the Talmud, Joshua ben Gamla would be your man. JBG was High Priest in the last decade of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and the Talmud in Tractate Yoma paints a picture of him which is… less than flattering. In the Babylonian Talmud (18a), Joshua ben Gamla is the prototypical High Priest who never learned the basics of the Yom Kippur service; in the Jerusalem Talmud (5:1), he holds the record for smallest grasp, “for his hand could hold but two olives’ worth.” How did he get the job? BT Yevamot 61a reports that it was thanks to his rich wife, Martha:

[The king] appointed him” — but he was not elected! Said Rav Joseph: I see collusion [Rashi: “a conspiracy of villains”] here; for Rav Assi, in fact, related that Martha bat Boethus gave King Jannai a gallon of dinars to appoint Joshua ben Gamla among the High Priests.

That is why it’s such a shock to find another Talmudic passage (BT Bava Batra 21a) in which Rav declares:

Indeed, that man should be remembered for good — Joshua ben Gamla is his name — for if not for him, the Torah would have been forgotten from Israel. At first, one who had a father, he would teach him Torah; but one who had no father would not study Torah… Then they instituted that teachers be hired in Jerusalem… Until Joshua ben Gamla came and instituted that teachers be hired in every locality and every municipality, and they would be brought to school from the ages of six and seven.

So is Joshua ben Gamla hero or villain? Some commentators argue that there must have been two men by this name; or that he was qualified, but not the best candidate for the High Priesthood; or that he started out unfit but matured in the position. These arguments are not particularly convincing, given that the historical record mentions only one Joshua ben Gamla, who lasted about a year.

What if it’s all true? Yes, Joshua ben Gamla was totally unlearned; but as the last source makes clear, that could easily be an accident of birth. Living in the periphery, with no father to teach him, someone like Joshua ben Gamla would not have had a chance at an education. Still, JBG claws his way, bit by bit, to the top of Second Temple society and buys the High Priesthood — not because he needs the title, but because he intends to do something with the office: make sure no other child faces the lack of opportunity he has.

There is one more mention of ben Gamla, also in Yoma (Mishna 3:9):

There were two goats and an urn (kalpi) was there, and in it were two lots. They were of boxwood, but ben Gamla made them of gold, and they would mention his name in praise.

To choose the Yom Kippur scapegoat, lots were drawn to choose which of these identical goats would be sent to Azazel in the desert, symbolically taking the sins of all Israel with it, and which would be offered on the Altar. (In modern Israel, we vote by putting our “lot” into the kalpi.) Originally, we are told, the lots are made of boxwood, but ben Gamla gilds the lottery. Why? If JBG were merely a short-fingered vulgarian, we could presume a compunction to cover everything in gold. But that is not the man the previous source shows him to be, nor would it be a reason to “mention his name in praise.”

Perhaps we should instead wonder why the lots were originally made specifically from boxwood. This material shows up elsewhere in the Mishna (Nega’im 2:1), when Rabbi Ishmael declares: “The Children of Israel – may I make atonement for them – are like boxwood, neither black nor white, but in between.” In context, Rabbi Ishmael (the High Priest) is stating that there is a standard color for Jews, from which both white Germans and black Cushites diverge — but Rabbi Akiva (whose own father was a convert, according to some traditions) immediately objects. True, the Torah is given to a specific ethnicity, a family descended from twelve brothers. However, by the end of the Second Temple era, Judaism is no longer merely a color. Most Jews are brown, yes; but some are white, some are black, and they must all be equal before the law.

Joshua ben Gamla may not have known the intricacies of the Yom Kippur service, but he knew that its climax was the drawing of the lots for the scapegoat. So he replaced the boxwood ballots, which could send an exclusionary message, with golden ones, which could represent everyone. And that is why his memory is praiseworthy.

Stand up!

 I admit it, I’m not a Tel Aviv Jew. In the Dan Codex, the verse goes: For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day, He stopped traffic and was refreshed.

Every Saturday night, there is some mass protest or rally in Rabin Square, often for causes I support. And thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand, turn out, not just Jews and not just from Tel Aviv, but Israelis of every stripe and background. But with three rambunctious boys under age 12 and no car, the logistics of getting there from my home in Greater Jerusalem are daunting.

As for mass demonstrations in Jerusalem, those are usually Haredi affairs. I guess I could show up to counter-protest, but the same roads the ultra-Orthodox block are the ones I would use to get from Maale Adumim to Jerusalem proper. Between work and family obligations, I almost always come up with excuses not to go. And this morning during the Torah reading, it struck me what a hypocrite that makes me.

Nitzavim is this week’s portion, always read on the last Shabbat of the year, Moses’ words to the people shortly before his death (Deuteronomy 29):

All of you are standing (nitzavim) today in the presence of the Lord your God—your leaders and chiefs, your elders and officials, and all the men of Israel, together with your children and your women, and the foreigner living in your camp who chops your wood and carries your water.

Now, in biblical Hebrew, there is already a word for standing around: om’dim. Nitzavim has a different connotation; it is standing with a purpose, standing for something, standing up to someone. It is particularly striking that Moses uses this term, which appears in the verse describing his first brush with public criticism of his leadership, in Egypt 40 years earlier (Exodus 5:19-21).

The Israelite officials realized they were in trouble when they were told, “You are not to reduce the number of bricks required of you for each day.” They confronted Moses and Aaron, standing (nitzavim) to meet them when they left Pharaoh. They said, “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.

Moses then responds bitterly — not to the officers, but to God Himself!

Not only that, after Sinai, when Moses finds himself overwhelmed, God commands him (Numbers 16:11):

Bring me 70 of Israel’s elders who are known to you as elders of the people and its officials. Have them come to the tent of meeting, that they stand themselves up (ve-hityatz’vu) there with you.

That is the reflexive form of nitzavim. These leaders stand up to Moses in Egypt, so they now have the chance to stand with Moses in the desert. Nitzavim is also a noun — the representatives of the people, those who stand in for others who cannot be there, as Moses alludes to in Deuteronomy 29: “I am making this covenant, with its oath, not only with you, who are standing (omed) here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God, but also with those who are not here today.” The Jews of Moses’ time physically stand before him, but they represent all Israel, for all generations — men, women and children, from the chiefs to the foreigners among them.

That’s why tomorrow (Tuesday, September 4th), at 9:30, I’ll be at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, God willing: to stand up and protest the way the government of Israel has welcomed a mass murderer who endorses rape and emulates Hitler. The State of Israel must decide if we want to export divine light to the nations of the world or hellish firepower. Can we really ask God to inscribe us in the Book of Life if our role is to be merchants of death? It’s time to take a stand. It’s time to be among the nitzavim.