Jewish Thanksgiving

When you go through the Jewish educational system in North America, there are certain stock questions and answers you get used to hearing annually.

Q: Why doesn't our calendar have a day dedicated to this great idea?

A: Because for Jews, every day is Mother's Day/ Father's Day/ Thanksgiving/ St. Patrick's Day!

OK, maybe not the last one. In fact, maybe not the penultimate one either, since there is a Jewish Thanksgiving -- and it's today, 13 Nissan.
In yesterday's Torah portion, we read about the korban toda, the thanksgiving offering, accompanied by leavened loaves, usually a no-no in the Temple. Those who had emerged safely from life-threatening experiences--the classic examples are crossing the desert/ sea, serious illness and incarceration--bring the toda animal along with 40 loaves, ten of which are hametz. Passover is a great time to bring it, as people are making the pilgrimage anyway, but on the holiday itself, you can't offer it. Nor is Passover Eve acceptable, since the prohibition of leaven starts midway through 14 Nisan. "Hence everybody brought it on the thirteenth"  (Talmud Pesahim 13b).
In fact, Jerusalem was so full of stale toda loaves the next morning that they put two on the roof of the Temple portico as a hametz clock: when they were both present, you could keep eating your breakfast bagels; when one was taken away, you had to put down that croissant; and when the second was removed, you'd chuck your muffin into the flames.
It's funny that 13 Nissan in Temple times was a day of thanksgiving, since it's usually the most stressful day in modern Judaism. Frantic cleaning in advance of the search for hametz at dusk, dashing to the store for last-minute purchases before Hurricane Seder makes landfall (I hate to tell you, but they're out of it already, whatever "it" is), arguing with the kids about how they can't have bread anymore but they can't have matza yet... Gratitude is not the emotion that comes to mind.
But maybe it should. Many of our first-world Passover problems are born of privilege. Ugh, we have so much food, so many appliances, so many rooms--what do we do with it all? But this holiday is all about a people that was once so downtrodden we had to save half a slice for later. As one of my congregants in Canada, a Holocaust survivor who was as horrified by the atrocities in Rwanda and Sudan as those she had personally experienced, reprimanded me when I tossed some bread past its expiration date: "Rabbi, bread you don't throw away."
So let's try a little gratitude today. Personally, my family has been going through a very difficult time, and without the help of my parents and of our good friends like Zippy and Daniel -- and Gila & Sarah, who listened to the gory details when we were at our lowest -- I don't know how we would have made it to today.
There is a Jewish Thanksgiving -- what are you grateful for?

Who knows one trillion?

If I asked you to describe Passover in one sentence, you'd probably say: "God brought plagues on the Egyptians so they would free their Hebrew slaves." That's not really the impression one gets from the verses describing the tenth and ultimate plague, slaying of the firstborn:

And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of the Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the millstones; all the firstborn of the cattle as well.  (Exod. 11:5)
Now it came about at midnight that the LORD struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of cattle. (Ibid. 12:29)

As these verses describe it, the distinction is not between master and slave, but between the Hebrews, all of whose firstborn are spared, and the non-Hebrews, all of whose firstborn are slain.
However, the sages drastically minimize this plague, arguing that many non-Hebrews participated in the Exodus, while many Hebrews perished during the plagues -- specifically, more than 20 million of the former and one trillion of the latter.

***WARNING: BORING MATH PART***

603,550 adult, able-bodied Israelite males make it to the end of the Book of Exodus (38:26). Add back in 3,000 golden calf fatalities (32:28) and 8,580 adult Levites counted separately (Num. 4:48). That's 615,130.
But what about all the children (below 20)? The elderly (over 60, Talmud Bava Batra 121b) and infirm? The women? After all, Pharaoh spared the girls.
It is not unreasonable to assume that for every male 20-59, there was, on average, one younger and one older. Double that to account for (probably more than) half of the population which is double-X, and one arrives at 3,690,780. (Indeed Targum Pseudo-Jonathan mentions five dependents for each adult male explicitly, Exod. 13:18).

***END OF BORING MATH PART. FOR NOW.***

So we have a nation of about 3.7 million, all told. Well, according to Rabbi (not-Pseudo) Jonathan in Yalkut Shimoni 209, the non-Hebrew "mixed multitude" accompanying the Israelites outnumbered them six-to-one. Hence, 22 million non-Jewish Exoduers.
What about the Jews who perished during the plagues? Rabbi Simai states (Talmud Sanhedrin 111a)

Just as at their entry into the Land there were but two out of 600,000 [Joshua and Caleb], so at their exodus from Egypt there were but two out of 600,000.

This passage posits a 99.99967% fatality rate for the Jews during the plagues. Which means that they had to start out with 300,000 X 3,690,780. 1.1 trillion who were not righteous enough to leave.
I don't mean to take these numbers literally. If you're unfortunate enough to be seated next to someone who does, at the seder or on a flight, you should probably move. But what they do tell us is that the sages adopted a perspective that made the numbers of the slaying of the firstborn a below-the-fold story. Food for thought, along with your matzo ball soup and brisket.

Another D&C day

I'll be spending today in the hospital.
As it's the last full week before Passover, some Israelis will be enjoying vacation, others will be frantically cleaning and most will be desperately trying to figure out how to balance work, home and child care when school's not in session.
But not my wife and me.
We will be headed to the hospital for a D&C. That stands for dilation and curettage, and you can read the details of this gynecological procedure here, if you're so inclined. Personally, we don't need to, because we've been here many, many times before. By my count, this is pregnancy number 18, and if you know we have three children, well... you can do the math.
Eighteen, of course, is a big number in Jewish tradition. Chai, life (more accurately, "living"), has a numerical value of 18, so it's a good omen. But sometimes pregnancy number chai ends with no fetal heartbeat at week 14. But hey, it's not ectopic, so small miracles, right?
So we're farming out the boys to friends and family, then heading out to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem for this procedure, explained by Wikipedia as "a therapeutic gynecological procedure as well as the most often used method of first trimester miscarriage or abortion."
Abortion is a scary word. It scares people so much that even when it's the same procedure to deal with a pregnancy which has self-terminated, people want to wall it off from all other medical practice, from all other women's healthcare, from the world of fertility. Even when it's a matter of some pills, it still scares them.
No one has a D&C for fun. No one enjoys them. And obviously, as a man, it's not my place to discuss the physical pain. But the emotional agony is something I share, and there is only one thing that could make it worse: government intrusion. That is why I react so viscerally to the idea of adding a cleric to the abortion panels in Israel. That is why it sickens me to my core that the man who "would have basically forced women to seek funerary services for a fetus — whether she’d had an abortion or a miscarriage, and no matter how far along the pregnancy was" is now a heartbeat away from the American presidency. Turns out, you can't count on heartbeats.
I don't intend to debate Jewish / Christian / Muslim theology on terminating pregnancies, or even the different policies we've experienced in Canada, America and Israel. Suffice it to say that I take solace and feel pride in the fact that we are going to a hospital for this medical procedure, and that anyone who needs it has the opportunity to do so in the Jewish state (and have it paid for). Not traveling hundreds of miles to wait days for approval. And to all who would have it otherwise, I wonder: is "life" really your priority?
Think about it. For now, I need to be with my wife.

Hangedover

Sure, Purim is over (Triple Purim fans will have to wait four more years for an excuse to get drunk on Adar 16th), but before you roll up that Scroll of Esther, can we talk about antisemitism?
There are lots of people who dislike the Hebrews / Israelites / Jews in the Bible, but Haman is the first one to get a title that translates to "antisemite," tzorer haYhudim, as he is called four times.

• And the king removed his ring from his hand and gave it to Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, tzorer haYhudim. (3:10)
• On that day, King Ahasuerus gave to Esther the Queen the house of Haman, tzorer haYhudim. (8:1)
• They killed the ten sons of Haman son of Hammedatha, tzorer haYhudim. (9:10)
• For Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, tzorer kol haYhudim, planned to exterminate the Jews. (9:24)

In that last one, Esther inserts "all" (kol), which underscores what the term tzorer literally means: to bind/ bundle/ collect. Job (26:8), for example, refers to God as "tzorer mayim," but that doesn't mean the Almighty is hydrophobic or detests Amy Farrah Fowler. It means He collects water droplets in the clouds.
And Haman is a Jew-bundler par excellence; when Mordecai offends him, he decides to target his entire people. But note that the verse juxtaposes the title not just to Haman, but to his father Hammedatha and his ancestor Agag.
These represent, in fact, three different variations of antisemitism.

• Agagite antisemitism is the classic version. In this view, the Jews are too weak, which is why we must be attacked. "When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all the stragglers" (Deut. 25:18). This pertains on the way out of Egypt, at the border of the Promised Land, throughout the period of the Judges, even as Saul and then David struggle to establish a united Kingdom of Israel.
• Hammedathan antisemitism is the postmodern version. According to this view, the Jews are just too strong, too militaristic, too expansionist. They don't belong in the Middle East, and their national aspirations threaten all the peace-loving residents of the region. Indeed, it is the job of the lone global superpower to rein in those uppity Jews in Zion. "At the beginning of the reign of Ahasuerus, they lodged an accusation against the people of Judah and Jerusalem" (Ezra 4:6).
• Hamanist antisemitism is the reactionary version. It's not about the Jews of Zion, but the international Jew (3:8). "There is a certain people scattered and divided among the people throughout the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different than all the other people, they don't obey the king's laws, and it's not in the king's best interest to leave them alone." The Jews are neither weak nor strong, but other: alien, threatening, disloyal.

Fighting antisemitism is not an either/or proposition. Whatever its flavor, it is vile. Those who throw in all members of any race or faith or ethnic group are following in the footsteps of the prototypical tzorer haYhudim. We dare never be silent in the face of such behavior.

Strict Constructionism

The second entry in a trilogy is often the most divisive.
Most of us don't think of the Torah as a trilogy: it's one scroll, containing the Five Books of Moses. However, both the Talmud (Shabbat 116a) and Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 64) insist that the Book of Numbers should not be seen as singular; leaving Mt. Sinai represents an irrevocable shift in the narrative. Indeed, if we look at the Torah in terms of the 54 weekly readings, the 18 which follow the departure from Sinai have a common theme: asymptotically approaching the Land of Israel.
Numbers is not the only book which has a split personality, though. We are smack in the middle of the Book of Exodus, and one can't help but notice how the Exodus part of it abruptly ends halfway through. The first six portions tell the dramatic journey from slavery to Sinai, a story so good Cecil B. DeMille told it twice. It is, in many ways, the culmination of everything established in Genesis, the fulfillment of many of God's promises.
However, starting with this week's portion, Truma, the main focus is not the tribes of Israel or the territory of Israel, but the Tabernacle. For eighteen portions, the Torah details every aspect of the Tabernacle: how to build it, what to offer, who works there and in what capacity, when and where one is allowed to enter. The setting is unchanging, and the only narrative breaks deal with the great joy of constructing and consecrating the Tabernacle (and the violent deaths of any who defile it).
All Jewish studies teachers know this well. That's why once we hit Truma, the time spent on the weekly portion plummets, while the time spent on talking about the upcoming spring holidays swells. Even the Sages seem to recognize this by adding supplementary readings and doubling up the regular portions. But it's hard to jazz up these portions, even if you repackage them in listicles, such as "15 Items Every Tabernacle Needs!" or "You Won't Believe How Impure These 8 Animals Make You!"
Still, I can't help but wonder if there is an important lesson in these portions. The Torah describes in painstaking (arguably, painsgiving) detail every aspect of a structure which we will never rebuild. Even those who foresee a literal rebuilding of the Temple admit we'll never again need to know that the bronze sockets are for the courtyard pillars while the silver sockets are for the sanctuary planks (obviously), because the Tabernacle is passe. In fact, many maintain that some of the elements used in its creation, such as the tahash, were never seen before or since:

The tahash of Moses' day was a unique species... with one horn in its forehead, and it came to Moses' hand just for the occasion, and he used it for the Tabernacle, and then it was hidden.
(Talmud, Shabbat 28b)

And yet it is part of our history and a good third of our Holy Book. We do not discard or deny or defy it.
I was born and bred in the U.S., so naturally I think of the Constitutional analogy. This is a wholly human document barely two centuries old, but there are numerous clauses crossed or grayed out because they are no longer applicable. And yet they are still there, reminding us that Americans once thought it important to safeguard slavery or to prohibit liquor.
Judaism today is quite different from the Tabernacular version of Moses' day. Three millennia from now, who knows what our descendants will think of our religious priorities? Ultimately, the built-in obsolescence of the Tabernacle teaches us that a faith must grow and develop if it is to live on.

Ten years ago, I got my parents back

There are not many couples who get to celebrate a tenth anniversary after four decades of marriage, but it's becoming something of a family tradition for us.
For Bubby & Zaidy, it was a technical reason. Bubby was--and still is, בע"ה--an educated and professional woman, and she told Zaidy that if they were going to do this marriage thing, she would have to schedule it on the one "extra" day in 1948: February 29th. So, at least for the Yekkes their children would eventually marry into, they technically only had an anniversary once every four years.
For my parents, a decade ago, it was life or death, literally. My mother needed a kidney transplant, and my father immediately asked her doctors if he could donate. They were dubious: after all, spouses aren't related in that way, and they usually aren't a match for each other, for the purposes of organ donation. But they ran the many, many necessary tests anyway, and as each one showed that my father was in fact a good donor, the miracle only grew.
The day for the operation was set, and I flew in from Israel to New York, leaving behind my wife Yael, eight months pregnant with our first child. It was bitterly cold, and it seemed to be dark all the time. The operation was long and had some complications which you would find fascinating, dear reader, if you were a nephrologist or a transplant surgeon. The important thing is that it was a success. Six weeks later, we were able to celebrate the birth of their first grandchild.
And in those many dark, cold hours I spent in the hospital, I thought about many things, while trying not to think of many others. When I could pray no more, etymology was a safe topic. In English, of course, transplant is derived from "plant;" but in Hebrew, there are two verbs: nata, to plant a tree; shatal, to transplant. The Latter Prophets love to use the latter term, especially Ezekiel. I was struck by one verse in particular, 19:10:

Your mother is like a vine in your blood, transplanted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.

There are many interpretations of this verse, but to me it speaks of the reality that we are all transplants. For all of us, life on this planet is about relocating from our mother's womb. Indeed, the Psalmist refers to all children as transplanted saplings (128:3). Some of us may find ourselves transplanted many times, putting down roots in a new land. For Jews, it is our defining national narrative, the reason we must show compassion to the refugee and the stranger. But it is a universal need, especially in this month of Shevat, a month of rebirth and renewal, when we celebrate our common ancestors, Adam of the earth and Eve mother of all life.
As for me, I'm just happy that I got my parents back ten years ago--and that we are all replanted here, as Ezekiel envisioned (17:23):

On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches.

Make Miṣr Great Again!

There is something profoundly bizarre about going into the Sabbath with a world-changing event on the horizon.
On the last day of 1999, it was Y2K. We welcomed Shabbat Shemot, the Sabbath on which we start reading the Book of Exodus, without knowing what exactly would happen when all the clocks hit midnight. Would planes fall from the sky? Would all our bank accounts be wiped out? Would nuclear missile silos open? But the day passed uneventfully, we made havdala, and when we logged on to dial-up Internet, everything seemed fine. None of what we'd feared actually occurred, and 2000 was off to a great start.
But that's not how 2000 ended in Israel.
A year later, it was time for Shabbat Shemot again -- January 19th-20th, 2001. A new president was being sworn in, after a contentious election in which the popular winner went home and the electoral winner had a cloud of suspicion swirling over him. Would eight years of peace and prosperity come to a screeching halt? Could the president-elect, intellectually incurious and surrounded by ideologues, unite the nation? But the day passed uneventfully, we made havdala, and everything seemed fine. None of what we'd feared actually occurred, and 2001 was off to a great start.
But that's not how 2001 ended in America.
So here we are, 16 years after that, counting the hours until inauguration yet again. It will be mid-morning in DC when Shabbat Shemot starts this year in Israel. We will read, as we do every year, that portentous eighth verse: "A new king arose upon Egypt who knew not Joseph." Egypt -- Miṣr in Arabic, Miṣrayim in Hebrew -- is under new management, as it were, but the sages of the Talmud argue about its nature:

Rab and Samuel -- one said that he was really new, while the other said that his decrees were made new... Who knew not Joseph — it was as if he did not know him at all.

Interestingly, the phrase "to rise upon" can also be rendered "to attack" (cf. Deut. 22:26). This innovative Pharaoh ultimately brings ruin upon Egypt; his measures to neutralize the potential military threat of the Hebrews lead to inglorious defeat. But the first step on that path is to disavow Joseph--not just because he is the most prominent Hebrew in recent Egyptian history, but because of the revolutionary decrees he instituted.
Yes, it's that part of the Joseph story which seems to be the least compelling: Genesis 47. After Jacob and family come down to Egypt, but before he is on his deathbed, the Torah details at length how Viceroy Joseph runs the country during the years of famine. You see, for Joseph it is not enough that he has been freed from bondage or that his family is safely ensconced in nearby Goshen. He fundamentally changes Egyptian society in three ways:

1. The people sell everything and become "slaves to Pharaoh."
2. They are moved into cities.
3. The priests (kohanim) remain independent.

It's rather ingenious. Slavery is not abolished, but redefined. Since everyone is a slave, no one is a slave; but they are not tied to the land. The sole exception is the priestly class. Now, these are not the wise men of Pharaoh's court, the hartumim, but rather the kohanim. They are an independent, protected class who are provided for throughout the famine and maintain their land afterwards. Joseph's own father-in-law is prominent among them.
However, the new Pharaoh of Shemot does not acknowledge Joseph: new in flesh, new in spirit, he appeals to "his people" and turns them against "the Israelite people" (Exod. 1:9). It is the latter who really deserve to be slaves, and once they are "cruelly enslaved" (ibid. v. 13), they stop being Israelites and become Hebrews--the ethnic descriptor for Joseph when he was a slave.
But what about the kohanim, Joseph's insurance policy against tyranny? They have been disappeared. Hartumim are definitely around, in Pharaoh's court, but the kohanim are nowhere to be seen. It is only when Moses flees for his life from the sword of Pharaoh to Midian that he finds a kohen--- and marries his daughter. Then the God of the Hebrews appears, in order to redeem the Israelites.
This is the deeper meaning of "who knew not Joseph." The new Pharaoh definitely is aware of Joseph, antagonistic to his legacy, determined to undo his reforms... and make Egypt great again. For "his people," of course.
I don't know what world we'll find when we emerge from Shabbat Shemot 5777. I doubt it will look much different. But it is upon us to make sure that the new king acknowledges that denying progress is no path to greatness. Unknowing is no way to lead.