The mummy returns

 Rona Ramon’s death hit me hard. As I wrote Monday to a friend and then shared on social media:

I don’t know if I can look at this on the macro level, at least not tonight. 2003 was so unspeakably awful here. As every Shabbat ended, we’d turn on the news and watch the casualty count. Then Ilan went into space, and it was such a reprieve–no intifadah, no terrorism, just pride. And then, in a second, he was gone. Just vaporized. And I was eight years old again, and it was the Challenger all over again, but worse. Because this was one good thing that we Israelis had which wasn’t about the conflict or existential threat or guilt or vengeance, just ONE fucking thing that was unambiguously good. And everything was fine for two weeks and they were on their way home, and then they would never see home again. And then I felt bad, because who was I to co-opt this tragedy? Rona was the one burying her husband (not that there was anything left to bury), I was just some schmuck intruding on a personal tragedy that was so unfairly national, global. And I stopped thinking about it. I missed when their son died in the training accident. And now she’s dead too. Everyone in that picture is dead. Rona never saw 55, Ilan never saw 50, Assaf never saw 22. But we’ll name an airport after them, so it’ll be OK, right? It’ll mean something, right? It’s worth it, right?

As I headed the post: “No, I don’t know how a compassionate God takes a 4-day-old baby. Or visits this much suffering on one woman.”

And I hoped, how I hoped, that we could leave this poor woman alone in death, after all we as a nation, as a people, as a faith, had asked from her in life. Apparently not.

Because Rona chose cremation to spare her family the pain of another elaborate state funeral. And so some of the worst people IRL and online had to weigh in. Beersheba Chief Rabbi Yehuda Dery, who I am sure holds that position by his own prodigious merits and not because of who his brother is (What, do you think this is a country that would just appoint its two chief rabbis based on who among former chief rabbis’ sons wanted the position?), criticized this decision, while Haifa Chabad Rabbi Gedalya Axelrod condemned it. (See Rabbi Michael Boyden’s eloquent response.)

The halakhic objections are actually quite weak, as so much of Jewish ritual around death and dying is about custom rather than law. (Know anyone who does keffiyat ha-mita?Atifat ha-rosh? I didn’t think so.) Then there are the philosophical objections: the Nazis cremated us! I’m gonna argue that our primary issue with the Nazis is that they killed six million of us, not how they disposed of the bodies. And that killing was done in showers, so I guess showers dishonor Judaism now?

What struck me more than anything is the week this is all taking place: Parashat Vaychi. At the beginning of the last chapter of Genesis, we read:

Joseph threw himself on his father and wept over him and kissed him. Then Joseph directed the physicians in his service to embalm his father Israel. So the physicians embalmed him, taking a full forty days, for that was the time required for embalming. And the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.

It’s hard to imagine a less “traditional” Hebrew mourning ritual than mummification, but this is what the Torah simply states. Then Jacob is buried in Hebron. The same is done with Joseph himself, and his mummy is carried by the Israelites for forty years of the Exodus until it is buried in Shechem (Nablus). It does not make Jacob or Joseph less important; in fact, Joseph’s shiva for Jacob is considered the template for all Jewish mourning (Jerusalem Talmud Mo’ed Katan 3:5).

All I can wish the Ramon family is that they know no more sorrow. The acronym for RIP in Hebrew is taken from Abigail’s words to King David: “May (her) soul be bound in the bond of life.” For her critics, I have a different acronym: STFU.

 Yesterday, as Jews worldwide read about the Binding of Isaac in Genesis 22, 11 people were slaughtered at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. In my house, we learned about it as the Sabbath ended, bringing back the awful memories of a decade-and-a-half ago, when the Second Intifada meant a new terrorist atrocity every weekend. I offer my condolences to the families of the deceased and my prayers for a speedy recovery to the wounded, but that feels insufficient.

I’d like to consider how the Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni 101-102) links the Binding of Isaac, which we read in the morning, to the death of Sarah, which we read in the afternoon.

Rabbi Judah says: When the sword reached his neck, Isaac’s spirit flew away and departed. However, once he heard the Voice emerging from between the two cherubs saying “Do not send forth your hand against the boy,” his soul returned to his body and [Abraham] untied him. Isaac stood and realized that the dead are destined to live again, and he began and said: “Blessed are You Lord, who brings the dead back to life”…

When Abraham returned from Mount Moriah in peace, Samael (Satan) was enraged, as he saw his heart’s desire, to nullify Abraham’s offering, frustrated. What did he do? He went to Sarah and said: “Have you not heard what is happening in the world?” She replied: “No.” He said to her: “Abraham took Isaac your son and slaughtered him and offered him in the roaring flames.” She started to cry and wail: three cries like the three blasts of the shofar and three wails like the three staccato sounds of the shofar. Then her spirit flew away and she died.

The poetic expression of one’s spirit flying away (or blooming — the root is perach, which is also Hebrew for flower) is quite beautiful, but we have to wonder: why does God bring Isaac back to life and not Sarah? Believing in an omnipotent God means that He could have saved both, but the Midrash seems to be arguing that while Isaac’s trauma was survivable, Sarah’s was not — a counter-intuitive position, since Isaac was the one to feel the blade on his neck!

The Midrash makes Samael’s cutting words sharper than Abraham’s sword. Indeed, if we consider them, we find the four food groups of every pernicious lie: some truth, some misrepresentation, some outright fabrications and some glaring omissions. It is true that Abraham takes Isaac and binds him on the altar; the blade is placed on his neck and his heart stops, but he is not slaughtered. Throwing him into the fire is an outright lie, and then there’s the part Satan leaves out: that Isaac has been restored, that he will live many more years (ultimately living longer than any of the other patriarchs or matriarchs). Isaac sees and experiences the truth of his trauma, and this allows him to survive it. Sarah, who hears a monstrous, mangled version of the tale, is irredeemably shattered forever.

This story is, to use the parlance which has even made it into everyday Hebrew, “fake news.” Such manufactured tales lie at the heart of every conspiracy theory: facts without context, twisted and peppered with utter falsehoods. They are not new. Growing up in America in the late 80s, I could name Louis Farrakhan and David Duke before the Ninja Turtles. This phenomenon existed at the fringes of both the left and the right, and it all too often centered on the Jews. Still, I had confidence that the powers that be, the leaders of our society, would condemn that hate.

Today, as a dual citizen of Israel and the United States, I can no longer have that faith in our heads of government. The conspiracy theories do not stop at the top; on the contrary, they are shouted from a megaphone there. And in a democracy (imperfect as it may be), there is only one way to end such a nightmare, lest we all suffer the fate of Sarah.

"Not woman"splaining

 I just can’t. Not anymore.

As a religious Jew, I’d estimate that I’ve said the Morning Blessings, as they appear in the standard Orthodox liturgy, for about thirteen thousand consecutive days, since kindergarten. But there’s one blessing I cannot bring myself to say anymore:

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has not made me a woman.

Unlike most of the other blessings (berachot), which use biblical phrasing and come from Tractate (wait for it) Berachot, this entry is part of a triad which the Babylonian Talmud cites in Tractate Menachot (43b-44a), which ostensibly deals with flour-offerings brought to the Temple.

It has been taught: Rabbi Meir would say: “A person (adam) is obligated to recite three blessings every day, and these are they: ‘Who has made me an Israelite,’ ‘Who has not made me a woman,’ ‘Who has not made me a boor.'”

Rabbi Acha bar Jacob heard his son reciting “Who has not made me a boor,” and he said to him: “Even to such an extent?”

He replied: “So what should I recite?”

“Who has not made me a slave.”

“But that is the same as a woman.”

“A slave is even more degraded.” [Some manuscripts have: “A woman is even more degraded.”]

The Jerusalem Talmud cites the teaching differently (Berachot 9:1):

It has been taught: Rabbi Judah says, “A person (adam) needs to say every day three things…

‘Blessed… Who has not made me a non-Jew,’ as the nations (goyim) are nothing, “All the nations are naught before Him” (Is. 40:17).

‘Blessed… Who has not made me a boor,’ as no boor fears sin (Mishna Avot 2:5).

‘Blessed… Who has not made me a woman,’ for a woman is not bound by the commandments.

The standard explanation of the formula we know is a bizarre blend of the two Talmuds: we say the Babylonian text (“Who has not made me a goy/ slave/ woman”), but the reason for the hierarchy is a mirror image of the Jerusalem Talmud’s last line: women come last because they are obligated in all commandments except the time-bound positive ones, while non-Jews have only the Seven Noahide Laws.

This technical explanation may suffice until you ask why women (like slaves) are exempt from time-bound positive commands. Rabbi David Abudarham, writing one of the earliest prayer-books in the 14th century, explains it thusly:

Who has not made me a woman”–for she is not bound by time-bound positive commandments, as we explained in the introduction to this book. The man is like a worker who enters his fellow’s field and cultivates it with the owner’s permission, while the woman is like one who enters without permission. Moreover, the fear of her husband is upon her, and she cannot fulfill even what she is bound to. In place of “Who has not made me a woman,” women have the custom to recited “Blessed… Who has made me according to His will,” as if justifying the evil which has befallen one.

Well, at least he is bothered by the exclusion of women from the category of adam.

Apologists have grappled with this text for centuries, but the problem is its threefold nature. If Jewish women are so spiritual that they do not need as many commandments, does that mean that non-Jews (who have fewer) are naturally closer to God? If these blessings are meant “to teach us that a person should not err to associate any deficiency with the creation of a person as a non-Jew or as woman” (Taz, OC 46:4) what does that tell us about the “Who has not made me a slave” blessing? If the last two blessings are meant to impress upon us the oppression suffered by women and those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, what does that tell us about the “Who has not made me a goy” blessing? And if all three are disadvantaged in a Jewish state, how cynical is it to thank God, as Jewish men, for not making us one of the classes we mistreat?

I have accepted these answers for most of my life; I have even told them to others. But at a certain point, one must face facts. I must face facts. And the facts are that in order to maintain a mangled, late tradition about three blessings of identity, we Jewish men have been sending a message to Jewish women (perhaps all women) that they are less. In fact, we’ve been sending it to our menfolk as well, and it has seeped into our public discourse, our politics, our culture.

So I’ve made the choice to join my sisters and recite the blessing they invented to fix our mistake: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has made me according to His will.” This is a text which seems far more in tune with the verse we read this week (Gen. 1:27): “So God created the person in His own image; in the image of God He created it; male and female He created them.”

Is that enough to combat the misogyny embedded in our culture? Maybe not, but it’s a start. Check back with me in another thirteen thousand days.

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.

Shithole countries

 Believe it or not, this is a heartwarming tale of medical bureaucracy. You might want to grab a box of tissues — or maybe a roll of toilet paper.

Last week, my wife and I took our three boys on a tiyul up north, from the Galilee to the Golan and back. Days visiting national parks from Nesher to Nimrod Fortress, Rosh Hanikra to Banias, Yehiam Fortress to Yehiam Hot Dog Factory — plus IKEA in Netanya and chocolate-making in Deganya. A night in a bungalow at Achziv on the Mediterranean, another in a yurt outside of Jatt (named, I assume, for the galaxy’s greatest bounty hunter, Jango Fett), two more in a converted bus in a winery outside of Hatzor.

However, as I abruptly realized around one hour before we made it home Thursday, right before the turnoff from 90 to Highway 1, we had brought something nasty back with us. Trust me, you don’t want the details of a day of vomiting and fever or a week of relentless abdominal pain and diarrhea. On Monday afternoon, my wife wondered if it might be something more: the Golan lepto outbreak. We chatted with our awesome family doctor, Dr. Youngerwood, who thought it was unlikely, but based on Ministry of Health guidelines, we should get ourselves to the ER, especially since lepto has a first phase, then a period when you THINK you’re better, then a second phase which can be fatal. So off we went to Hadassah Mt. Scopus. Blood was drawn, kids were wild, much paperwork was generated, and five hours later, at 1 a.m., we were home with a clean (“You don’t have lepto, so good luck with whatever it is!”) bill of health.

As for the bill of wealth — that floored me. (To be fair, I was pretty close to the floor to start with.)  Taking a whole family to the ER, even if you aren’t admitted, is a month’s minimum-wage salary (not counting transportation). However, we are Israeli, and as such entitled to universal healthcare, which means that ultimately, after going back to the doctor and then to the office of our medical fund (kupat holim), we’ll be made whole. But my wife and I weren’t born here; we were born in the US, where there is no such guarantee. And I couldn’t help but think of all the tens of millions (used to be, and may soon be again, twenties of millions) who cannot get that reimbursement. For them, an ER visit could wipe out their cash on hand or their savings. It could snowball into debt they could never get out of. And their doctors must hesitate before sending them for treatment they may not be able to afford.

I am so profoundly grateful that I and my family live in Israel, for a host of reasons, but the commitment to universal healthcare is one I think of too rarely. And it is truly universal, as the ER signs indicate, in Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian and Amharic: if you’re in spiritual need, call the hospital rabbi and he will find a representative of your faith community for support. That is the Jewish state at its finest — when, for lack of a better phrase, you’re in the shit.

A kinder Tisha B'Av

 or years, I have not said the Nachem (Console) prayer on the Fast of 9 Av, but rather this text from the Jerusalem Talmud (Taan. 2:2). I prefer it because:

1. It predates Nachem.
2. It comes from the Land of Israel (Rabbi Acha bar Yitzchak in the name of Rabbi Chuna the Great of Sepphoris).
3. It does not refer to Jerusalem as ruined or destroyed (chareva), but uses terms of emotional distress.
4. It does not refer to Jerusalem as a barren or childless woman.
5. It does not refer to Jerusalem as having no homes.
6. It does not dwell on violent murder.
7. It speaks of cruel occupation and tyranny.
8. It refers to Jerusalem as being given to Israel “in love, as a legacy.”
9. It invokes Jeshurun (Yeshurun), a poetic name for Israel which comes from yashar, just or upright. (And, as my friend Ori Weisberg points out, plays beautifully with the term for inheritance, yerusha.)
10. It refers to us not as the “mourners of Jerusalem,” but makes us, Israel, Jerusalem and Zion all equal as we seek compassion and kindness.

Have mercy, Lord our God, in Your great compassion and faithful kindness,
Upon us and upon Israel Your people and upon Jerusalem Your city
And upon Zion, residence of Your glory,
And upon the mourning, crushed, devastated city
Given over into the hands of foreigners and trampled by the soles of tyrants
Legions swallowed it and the worshipers of graven images desecrated it
But You gave it to Israel Your people in love, as a legacy
And to the seed of Jeshurun you granted it as an inheritance
Though with fire You destroyed it, with fire You are destined to rebuild it
As it says (Zech. 2:9) And I shall be for it, says the Lord,
A wall of fire around it, and I shall be its glory within it.

רַחֵם יי אֱלֹהֵינו בְּרַחֲמֶיךָ הָרַבִּים וּבַחֲסָדֶיךָ הַנֶּאֱמָנִים,
עָלֵינוּ וְעַל יִשְׂרָאֵל עַמָּךְ, וְעַל יְרוּשָׁלַיִם עִירָךְ,
וְעַל צִיּוֹן מִשְׁכָּן כְּבוֹדָךְ,
וְעַל הָעִיר הָאֲבֵלָה, הַהֲרוּסָה, הַשּׁוֹמֵמָה,
הַנְּתוּנָה בְּיַד זָרִים, הָרְמוּסָה בְּכַף עֲרִיצִים,
וַיְּבַלְּעוּהָ לֶגְיוֹנוֹת וַיְּחַלְּלוּהָ עוֹבְדֵי פְסִלִּים.
כִּי לְיִשְׂרָאֵל עַמָּךְ נְתַתָּהּ בְּאַהֲבָה לְנַחֲלָה,
וּלְזֶרַע יְשׁוּרוּן יְרוּשָׁה הוֹרַשְׁתָּהּ.
כִּי בָאֵשׁ הֶחְרַבְתָּהּ,
וּבָאֵשׁ אַתָּה עָתִיד לִבְנוֹתָהּ, כָּאָמוּר:
(זְכַרְיָה ב,ט) “וַאֲנִי אֶהְיֶה לָּהּ נְאֻם יי,
חוֹמַת אֵשׁ סָבִיב, וּלְכָבוֹד אֶהְיֶה בְתוֹכָהּ

The First Hasbara-fail

 Is Parashat Devarim fake news?

The Fast of 9 Av, which we observe this weekend, has its roots in the Sin of the Meraggelim, “those men that did bring up an evil report of the land” (Numbers 14:37). Jewish tradition (Mishna, Taanit 4:6) states that 9 Av was the date on which the Israelites who had left Egypt were condemned to wander and die in the desert over the course of forty years.

So it’s appropriate that on the Sabbath which precedes or coincides with 9 Av, we read Devarim, the Torah portion in which Moses retells the story; but shockingly, he barely mentions the Spies (Deuteronomy 1:25-28).

And they said, “Good is the land which the LORD our God does give us.”

Nevertheless you would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God. And you murmured in your tents, and said, “Because the LORD hated us, he has brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. Where shall we go up? our brethren have discouraged our heart, saying, The people are greater and taller than we; the cities are great and walled up to heaven; and moreover we have seen the sons of the giants there. 

Aren’t those ten men (out of twelve scouts, excluding Caleb and Joshua) the ones responsible for the death of an entire generation of Jews? Aren’t they the ones who established 9 Av as a day of misery and misfortune, not only for the next nearly four decades, but the next nearly four millennia? Why do they get a pass?

Let’s t take a closer look at the original story (Numbers 13:27-33):

And they told him, and said, “We came unto the land where you sent us, and surely it flows with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it. Nevertheless the people are strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great: and moreover we saw the children of giants there.The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south: and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains: and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.”

And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.”

But the men that went up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.” And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the Israelites, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eats up its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature. And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of the giant who come of the Nephilim: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. 

The “evil report” comes only after Caleb’s interjection, which quite literally no one asked him for. The mission of the Meraggelim is to evaluate the land and its people geographically, militarily and agriculturally–not to decide whether it can be conquered. In their initial report, the Spies do their job; but Caleb cannot bear the suggestion that there is anything pejorative to say about the Promised Land. His intentions are honorable, but ultimately he steers the conversation off a cliff by raising the feasibility of conquering the land. Caleb is rewarded, but he is also one of only two “men of war” of the Exodus generation to suffer a full forty years of wandering. It is his companion Joshua, who remains silent initially but does rend his garments on that first 9 Av and join Caleb’s dissenting opinion, who becomes the national leader.

So it’s not surprising that Moses editorializes here. Strikingly, Caleb and Joshua’s protest in Numbers, “Good is the land, exceedingly so,” becomes the Spies’ report here in Deuteronomy: “Good is the land which the LORD our God does give us.” As Rashi notes (Numbers 13:3), all twelve Spies start out “kosher.” The Sin of the Spies, for Moses, is not about the ten evil Spies or the two righteous ones; it is about the catastrophe which befalls the people because they don’t know whom to trust: is the land good and impregnable or good and conquerable? The Spies’ consensus that the land “flows with milk and honey,” i.e. the only question they were supposed to answer, is quickly forgotten amidst plaintiveness, paranoia and panic.

This is a powerful lesson for everyone engaged in public advocacy, but especially for those of us who love Israel. It is hard to hear anything negative about the Promised Land; our first impulse is to leap to its defense. But when we overreact, shooting down any criticism as vile, cowardly, ignorant or bigoted, we may hurt more than we help. Good is the land, we should all agree. Now, isn’t it our sacred duty to make it better?

Soldiers and semen

 When you choose prophecy as your career, you don’t expect to spend eternity swimming in a sea of seething seed, but that’s exactly what happens to Balaam, the protagonist of this week’s Torah portion.

He then went and raised Balaam by incantations [from Hell]… He then asked: “What is your punishment?” He replied: “With boiling hot semen.” (Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 57a)

That gemara is disturbingly specific, but the Mishna twice mentions eternal torment for Balaam and his followers:

Three kings and four commoners have no portion in the world to come. The three kings are Jeroboam, Ahab, and Manasseh. The four commoners are: Balaam, Doeg, Ahitophel, and Gehazi. (Sanhedrin 10:2)

The disciples of Abraham, our father, enjoy this world, and inherit the world to come… But the disciples of Balaam, the wicked, inherit Gehenna and descend into the nethermost pit. (Avot 5:19)

Why does Balaam deserve to suffer such a sticky fate?

He [Balaam] said thus to him [Balak]. “The God of these hates lewdness… Come, and I will advise you. Erect for them tents enclosed by hangings, in which place harlots, old women without, young women within, to sell them linen garments…”

Balaam knows the Jewish heart well, and how easily it can be seduced by the chance to purchase wholesale. An idolatrous orgy results, leading to a horrific plague and ultimately to war — in which Israelite soldiers use a sword to send Balaam to the world to cum.

So it comes as some surprise that none other than Moses is a HUGE fan of Balaam’s work.

Moses wrote the five books of the Torah, then went back and wrote the passage of Balak and Balaam. (Jerusalem Talmud. Sota 5:6)

Let’s remember that Moses completes the original Torah on his dying day. That means he was about to finish his life’s work, but then said: Wait, I left out the poetry of Mr. Boiling in Hell — get me a caret!

Indeed, Moses’ own epitaph in the closing lines of the Torah is reinterpreted as a backhanded compliment by the Sifrei:

‘No prophet arose in Israel like Moses’ (Deut. 32:10) — No one among Israel, but among the nations of the world there was. Who? Balaam son of Beor.

In fact, the Talmud states that Balaam’s words were so well-regarded that they almost made the daily prayer cut:

Rabbi Samuel bar Nahman in the name of Rabbi Judah bar Zevuda: Really, we should read the passage of Balak and Balaam every day…

Rabbi Chuna says: Because it speaks of lying down and getting up.

Rabbi Yosi bei Rabbi Bon says: Because it speaks of the Exodus from Egypt and of kingship.

Rabbi Elazar says: Because it is referenced in the Torah, Prophets and Writings. (Jerusalem Talmud, Berakhot 1:5)

In practice, although we do not read the entirety of Balaam’s hundred-verse prophecy, we do quote one line whenever we enter a synagogue: “Mah tovu,” “How goodly are your tents, Jacob!”

This presents something of a conundrum: if Balaam spends eternity in Hell, should his words really be on our lips? If he’s so despicable, why is he so quotable?

The fact is that this is a question we struggle with regularly, especially since the #MeToo movement gained prominence over the past year. We would like to believe that bad people produce bad art (the Hitler analogy everyone loves), while those who produce good art must be good people — or at least, good enough people. But that just isn’t the case. Good art, great art, even divine art may be produced by execrable people. We must not destroy that which is beautiful because of the ugly actions of the people behind it; at the same time, we cannot excuse their awful actions because of the awesome literature, music or visual art they have produced. Let their work soar even if their actions drag them down.

So here’s to your poetry, Balaam. You’ll understand if I don’t shake your hand. I know where it’s been.