Them

Marwan Kawasmeh (sometimes spelled Qawasmeh) and Amar Abu-Isa, Hamas members, from Hebron.
Learn those names. They're the prime suspects in the brutal murders of three Israeli teens, who were finally discovered and buried yesterday.

Learn those names, because in all the posts and comments and articles, I hardly ever see them. I see Barack Obama. I see Mahmoud Abbas. I see Gaza (even though Hebron's on the West Bank). I see, most of all, them--"their entire society." "We must wipe them out." "We must destroy them." A lot of anger and frustration, but hardly ever directed at the murderers. Why is that?


I have to ask: do we want Kawasmeh and Abu-Isa found and brought to justice? Or do we want to keep raging against the other "them"?


You know what, don't tell me. I'm having enough trouble sleeping as it is.

#BringBackOurBoys

Bring back our boys--it really is that simple.
Of course, my feed has been flooded for the past 24 hours with a dozen other distractions, e.g.:

• But not through negotiations, because we don't negotiate with terrorists.
• But make sure to teach the kidnappers and their supporters a "lesson" too.
• But first let's shut off all electricity and water to the Palestinians--and shut down their hospitals too!
• But don't forget to share the alleged picture of sweets distributed in Gaza--because they're not looking forward to a trade of prisoners, but just to torture!
• But first protest Obama's silence, because when Kerry speaks, that doesn't represent America. Oh, but Canada's run by a conservative, so his representative's statement does count. http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php...
• But first make sure you have his mother's middle name, because how can Hashem understand you otherwise?
• But let's make a cool graphic representing these bahurim as eight-year-olds, because that's more poignant.
• But first let's condemn the international media for not covering the story, or not covering it enough, or using the term "settler." 
• But let's berate the leftists for not caring about Israelis on the West Bank--wait, what's this? http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20140615_the_three_yeshiva_students_must_be_released_at_once 

I would say we should get our priorities straight, but there's only one issue at stake. I trust the professionals to do their job, and I pray to God to help them. That's really all there is to say.

Hump Day

This Saturday is hump day. No, the calendar has not been re-jiggered to redefine a week; the last people who did that ended up being sent to the guillotine.
I'm referring instead to the seven-week period of counting between Passover and Shavuot, Sefirat haOmer. For the first 24 days, we are closer to the Exodus; for the last 24 days, we are closer to the Giving of the Torah. But Day 25, the fourth day of the fourth week, is smack in the middle. This year, it's the Sabbath when we read Parashat Behar, the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus (OK, 25:1-26:2), which famously starts with the unique verse, "Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying."
The Kabbalists associated certain attributes with each day of the Omer, and the twenty-fifth is netzah of netzah. Netzah is the Kabbalistic trait associated with Moses, and the root has many meanings in Scripture, from victory to eternity to conductorship (orchestra, not train).
The connection of Behar to Sefirat haOmer is quite strong, as the former also revolves around a count of seven cycles of seven, in its case leading to the jubilee year. 49 is clearly an important number in the Torah and of the Torah.
It is thus not surprising that the Talmuds relate this verse to Moses' experience on Sinai (Psalms 12):

Lord's sayings are pure sayings, like silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times over.

However, there is a difference between the approach of the Babylonian Talmud and the approach of the Jerusalem Talmud. The former states (Rosh Hashana 21b), citing Rab and Samuel:

Fifty gates of understanding were created in the world, and all were given to Moses save one, as it says, "Yet you have made him but little lower than God."

The latter (Sanhedrin 4:2) records:

Rabbi Yanai said: “If the Torah were given cut and dried, no one could withstand it! What is the reason? ‘LORD spoke to Moses.’ He said before Him: ‘Master of the World, tell me: what is the Halakha?’ He said to him: ‘Follow the majority' (Ex. 23:2)—if most vote for acquittal, he is innocent; if most vote for conviction, he is guilty. Indeed, the Torah may be expounded forty-nine ways to defile, and forty-nine ways to purify."

According to the BT, the number forty-nine represents a linear progression through successive gates, ultimately reflecting the limits of humanity. According to the JT, there are 49 sets of parallel approaches, allowing Halakha to respond (democratically) to the changing demands of society around it.
On this day, it behooves us to embrace the netzah of Torah--the battle, the timelessness, the symphony.

Yom haNaxmaut

Another Yom HaAtzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) has come and gone. The flags have been folded, the barbecues have been extinguished, the fireworks have been fired. We, as a nation, are now done commemorating the events of 1948, and we can go get our miniature lambs ready for Lil’ Passover. (I could explain that, but I don’t think it would help.)
Except, of course, that a week from now one out of five Israelis will be celebrating Nakba Day. This is the day that many Arabs and Muslims mark as the anniversary of the catastrophe of Israel’s founding. So Nakba Day and Yom HaAtzmaut both commemorate the events of 14-15 May, 1948, but from two very different points of view.
After all, there can be no overlap between the two. Even if there are Jews who fast and mourn on Yom HaAtzmaut, seeing the day as an expression of defiance of God’s will (or unbridled jingoism), and even if there are non-Jewish Israelis, Christian, Druze, Bedouin and even some Muslims, who celebrate Israel’s independence, there’s still nothing shared between the two experiences. The establishment of the State of Israel is either triumph or tragedy, mandate or massacre, redemptive rapture or racist ruin, joy or genocide. The Middle East, after all, is where Venn diagrams go to die.
Well, the funny thing about Yom HaAtzmaut is that it falls exactly two weeks after the final day of Passover in Israel. The Midrash (Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, ed. Mandelbaum, Appendix 2) notes something interesting about the holiday: the Torah never tells us to rejoice during this holiday. The phrase “And you shall rejoice on your holiday” is applied to both Shavuot and Sukkot in Deut. 15, but never to Passover. It even explains that this is the reason we abbreviate our celebratory Hallel prayer during most of the festival.

Why is joy not mentioned there? Because the Egyptians died during it. Thus, you find that all through the seven days of Sukkot, we recite Hallel, but on Passover we recite Hallel only on the first day and night because, as Samuel explained (Proverbs 24:17), “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls.”

So on Passover, celebrating the Exodus from Egypt, we limit our joy because the Egyptians, AKA the bad guys, died.
In fact, if we look at the other holidays that celebrate our victories over bad guys, we find a similar reluctance to rejoice in the fall of the wicked. As bloody as the Scroll of Esther is, it clearly contrasts the dispensation of Ahasuerus (Esther 8:11), “to destroy, to kill and to annihilate all the soldiers of every people and country who distress them, children and women, and their booty to plunder,” with the fulfillment: “the Jews gathered to send forth their hands upon those who sought evil against them” (9:2). It is “men” whom they kill, “and they did not send forth their hands upon the plunder.” Why is there no Hallel on Purim? “Its reading is its Hallel” (Talmud, Arakhin 10b) Of course, nowadays we fast on the day that the battle took place, 13 Adar.
Hanukka has eight full days of Hallel, but what is interesting here is that our rabbinic sources ignore the military victories in the Book of Maccabees, instead speaking of the miracle of oil. Hanukka is followed by a major fast day as well. It is reinterpreted in Megillat Taanit as a three-day fast reflecting our complex relationship with Greek culture.
So in our victories over Persia, Greece and Egypt, we recognize the complexity of our battles for survival and for independence. We realize the humanity of the other side. Can we not do that today?
Now, I’m not calling for fueling our Independence Day barbecues with burning Israeli flags. But does it really need to be a zero-sum game? Are we incapable of recognizing the real suffering of the other side? Is the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem a worse opponent than Pharaoh? Was Arafat worse than Haman? Is Abu Mazen worse than Antiochus?
I know what you’re saying: keep dreaming. There’ll be thunderstorms in Jerusalem on Independence Day before that happens.
Well, at the moment, it’s raining, with thunder and lightning, in the Holy Land. At least that’s something we can all get behind.

Not so fast

When I was in junior high lo these many years ago, our principal propounded an interesting theory. This yeshiva had many issues with the modern State of Israel, and the rabbi claimed that the Zionists had devised a plot with their holiday schedule to undermine traditional vernal Judaism. They set Yom HaShoa (Holocaust Remembrance Day) in the last week of Nisan, the month of Passover, one in which we eschew public morning, while they put Yom HaAtzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) in the first week of Iyar, a month defined by its mourning practices.

This is the most extreme expression of a common canard: fasting in Nisan is inconsistent with the Jewish tradition, so how can you put a day of mourning in the last week of Nisan?

Except, of course, that long before 1953, when the State of Israel established Yom HaShoa, there was a day of fasting in the middle of the final week of Nisan. That dates back to the 40's--not the 1940s, the 740s.

These are the days on which we fast according to the Torah; whoever fasts on them must not eat or drink until evening: on the first of Nisan, Aaron's sons died; on the tenth of Nisan, Miriam died and the Well vanished; on the twenty-sixth, Joshua son of Nun died. (Halakhot Gedolot, ch. 18, p. 232)

This 8th-century Gaonic source is echoed by the early prayer books of Amram Gaon (Order of Fasts) and Mahzor Vitri (ch. 271). The Kol Bo (ch. 63) concurs, but records the date of Joshua's death as the 28th. So, somewhere between the 26th and the 28th of Nisan, there was a strong custom to fast; somewhere between the 26th and the 28th of Nisan, we have Yom HaShoa. Yet we can't mark this day--because of the added mourning customs we've tacked on during this period after the Crusades 350 years later?!

Well, maybe these days were once observed, but surely the decisive compendium of Jewish law, the Shulhan Arukh, wouldn't mention--oh, never mind, it's quoted verbatim in OH 580:2.

OK, let's put aside the technical halakhic question (I'm not aware of anyone who actually fasts on this day anyway). Can the yahrtzeit of Joshua shed any light on Yom HaShoa? I believe it can. Quite simply, Joshua (along with Caleb) is the survivor of the worst generational holocaust in Jewish history. Out of about 600,000 able-bodied men who leave Egypt, only two enter the land. This catastrophe is caused by the propaganda and demagoguery of ten men, the Spies, who break the will of the people in the name of preserving the Chosen Race. For forty years, the Israelites must pay the heavy price of this historic mistake. Finally, once they enter the land, as we read on the first day of Passover (Joshua 5:4), "This is the reason Joshua circumcised them: all the people who came out of Egypt, who were males, even all the men of war, died in the wilderness by the way, after they came out of Egypt." Normally, it is the father who circumcises, but the generation that entered Israel was an orphan generation; Joshua had to foster a fatherless people.

Upon entering the Land of Israel, I wonder if there were any great thinkers who opined that this tragedy was necessary, that only a catastrophe as vast as the death of 603,548 men would allow God to give us such a great gift. If so, they would have been immediately recognized as fools. God promised the Land to Israel on their way out of Egypt, and the holocaust in the desert only served to delay it.

So why do people insist on putting Yom HaShoa and Yom HaAtzmaut on two opposite sides of the scales of theodicy? As my rebbe, Rabbi Yehuda Amital was wont to say, if God offered us such a deal, it would be morally repugnant to consider it. The Holocaust must be evaluated on its own terms, not least of which because so many others aside from Jews were slaughtered in it as well. It must be discussed, knowing that it can never be fully explained or understood. Adding it to the list of Jewish tragedies on Tisha beAv, when neither schools nor yeshivot are in session, hardly fits the bill.

I think that the yartzheit of Joshua, who buried more than half a million of his kinsmen, friends and countrymen, is a particularly opportune time. Maybe some other day would be more appropriate. But the vagaries of the Jewish calendar should not be an excuse for ignoring the Holocaust and the profound questions it raises.

My sister is really hot

So says the Bible. In fact, we read it over Passover, in the Song of Songs (AKA Song of Solomon):

You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride... How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine... You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain. (4:9-12)

I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride...

Listen! My beloved is knocking:“Open to me, my sister, my darling...” (5:1-2)

Now, you might be thinking, "But SoS is an allegory!" True enough; no one thinks that the unnamed female protagonist (let's call her She) actually has two fawns (7:4) or grape clusters (7:8) strapped to her chest. However, the author does choose to use "sister" as a synonym for "beloved."

A few more hints in the text flesh out the picture. 1:6 states: "My mother’s sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept!" So she has maternal brothers, but apparently no maternal sister, as in 6:9: "My dove, my perfect one, is the only one, unique to her mother, flawless to her that bore her." She says of the male protagonist, "O that you were like a brother to me, who nursed at my mother's breasts! If I met you outside, I would kiss you, and no one would despise me." In other words, if they shared a mother and not just a father, their kisses would be innocent and familial; but since they do not, their interactions are erotic and romantic.

The unusual configuration of Torah readings this year (which won't recur until 2035) means that we read SoS on the Sabbath between the regular portions of Aharei Mot and Kedoshim. They have quite a different view of sororal love, respectively:

You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether born at home or born abroad... You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife's daughter, begotten by your father, since she is your sister. (Lev. 18:9, 11)
If a man takes his sister, a daughter of his father or a daughter of his mother, and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is a hesed, and they shall be cut off in the sight of their people; he has uncovered his sister's nakedness, he shall be subject to punishment. (20:7)

This seems pretty clear and unambiguous (if not redundant), except of course for the use of the word hesed, usually translated as kindness (or lovingkindness, but not that type of loving), but here carrying some pejorative connotation. Granted, it's a bit jarring to slip SoS between these two passages. But maybe it's a cultural thing; after all, sibling marriages were common in ancient Egypt and other societies. Certainly, the Jewish nation, founded by Abraham and Sarah, would never--

Abraham said, "I did it because I thought, There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife. Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. And when God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, 'This is the hesed you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, He is my brother.'" (Gen. 20:11-13)

OK, OK, but that's because of the vagaries of matrilineal descent in Jewish law. Certainly we would never countenance marrying one's full sister, unless--

Come and hear! Why did not Adam marry his daughter?So that Cain should marry his sister, as it is written, "For I said, the world shall be built up by hesed" (Psalms 89:3). But otherwise, she would have been forbidden? Once, however that it was permitted, it remained so. (Sanhedrin 58b)

Well, sure, historically, but once we get past Abraham, Jews start marrying their cousins, like decent folk, not their sis--

"And they took Dinah from the house of Shechem" (34:26)... R. Huna says: she was saying, "But I, where can I take my shame?" (II Sam. 13:13), until Simeon vowed to her that he would marry her. Thus it says, "The sons of Simeon were... and Saul the son of a Canaanite woman" (46:10) Dinah was the “Canaanite woman,” because her behavior was like that of the Canaanites, says R. Judah. (Gen. Rabbah 80:11).

That would be Simeon, one of the twelve tribes of Israel, marrying his full sister Dinah. And fathering a kid with her. Hmmm...

Now, my point with all of this is not to advocate on behalf of incest. It is to point out how complex sexual morality is. We usually assume that the answer to the question "What is the Torah's view on sleeping with one's sister?" is pretty straightforward. It certainly is halakhically (see Shabbat 145b); but when the question is how we think about it, the path gets a little winding and muddy.

That's why it so galls me when people trot out a simplistic view of human sexuality through the lens of the Torah, as David Benkof did in his piece last week. While I respect his personal choices, his portrayal of the Torah's view on the matter leads him to portray the Midrashic idea of Adam being created as a Siamese hermaphrodite as the simple meaning of the text (see Berakhot 61a). Furthermore, it leads him to invoke one reading of 2:24 as the model for marriage, even though the rest of Genesis depicts many other variations on this theme. Then he adds to this the anatomical argument, even though such an approach would lend far more legitimacy to polyandry than to polygamy.

The Jewish concept of sexuality, like so many other things, has evolved over time. We should not pretend that we are still in Eden. Instead, we should use the halakhic tools at our disposal to welcome all who wish to study and pray with us. It's hesed, you know.
Search for more information about sororal love at4torah.com

Lucky number seven

Poor 7oP. The Seventh Day of Passover seems to get no respect, despite its being a bona fide biblical holiday. It has no special custom, command or ceremony all its own. Compare this to the end of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret; the Talmud (Sukka 48a) already enumerates six special traits of the day in Temple times, to which another half-dozen have been added in the two millennia since. Meanwhile, 7oP remains forlorn, a sort of Anticlimaxodus.
True, tradition tells us (specifically, R. Hanina bar Papa in Talmud Sota 12b) that the 21st of Nisan was the day of the Splitting of the Sea of Reeds and the subsequent Song of the Sea. But this sequel to the Ten Plagues feels a bit underwhelming: once again, the Israelites face hardened-heart Pharaoh; once again, Moses raises his staff; once again, God performs a miracle; once again, the Israelites are spared and the Egyptians are smitten (but not in a good way). However, since we celebrate at the Seder as freemen, it's hard to muster up much emotion about Pharaoh 2.0. Instead, he seems to fit into the familiar pattern of "They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat."

But I would like to argue that the events of the Seventh Day are in fact vital and integral to our Passover experience. A week ago, Eylon Aslan-Levy posted "The Ten Plagues and the Ethics of Modern Warfare," in which he argues that "For Moses, the Death of the Firstborn was the nuclear option." I have a number of issues with the piece, but first and foremost, I am dismayed by the portrayal of the Slaying of the Firstborn as some sort of weapon of mass destruction, introducing lethal force into the equation for the first time.

The fact is that in their first appearance before Pharaoh (Ex. 5:3), Moses and Aaron already use threatening language: "And they said, 'The God of the Hebrews has met with us: let us go, we pray you, three days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the Lord our God; lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword.'" As the Plagues strike Egypt, it's very hard to imagine that there were no casualties from the week-long lack of drinking water, the invasion by wild animals, the death by pestilence of all domesticated animals and a raging plague of boils (a disease which causes limbs to fall off; see Talmud Ketubot 20b).

Still, let's assume that the first six were nonlethal. That still brings us to unlucky number seven, flaming hail. The Torah is explicit about this one (Ex. 9:19-25):

For upon every man and beast that shall be found in the field, and shall not be brought home, the hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die. He that feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses. And he that regarded not the word of the Lord left his servants and his cattle in the field... And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and broke every tree of the field.

So Egyptians were dying; more importantly, their animals and slaves were dying for their masters' disbelief. That is equally true of the Slaying of the Firstborn:

And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sits upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts. (11:5)
And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. (12:29)

Pharaoh, the cause of all this, does not die; all other firstborn of Egypt, including slaves and animals, do.
It may be convenient for us to think of the Slaying of the Firstborn as a powerfully destructive and indiscriminate weapon, but this plague is very personal, as we read in the Haggada: God Himself does the killing. It is not modern ethical warfare; it is ancient tribal warfare, in which Egypt is bad and Israel is good, and no other distinction is relevant. To contend that "Moses took every reasonable step to shield civilians from their leadership’s callousness and indifference to their plight" is laughable.
That is why we need the Seventh Day of Passover. The final chapter of the Exodus, the Splitting of the Sea, shows us an evolving ethic. This time, it is not Egyptian slaves or civilians who suffer, but Pharaoh's war machine (Ex. 14:28): "And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the army of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them." As the Psalmist puts it (136:15), "And He hurled Pharaoh and his army into the Sea of Reeds, for His kindness is everlasting."

In fact, in the Talmud (Megilla 10b), we find:

For the Holy One, blessed be He, does not rejoice in the downfall of the wicked. And R. Johanan further said, What is the meaning of the verse, "And one came not near the other all the night" (Ex. 14:20)? The ministering angels wanted to chant their hymns, but the Holy One, blessed be He, said, "The work of my hands is being drowned in the sea, and shall you chant hymns?"

Once we can distinguish between the good Egyptians and the bad Egyptians, we can distinguish between the good and the bad within each Egyptian. Once we can identify the villains, we can have compassion for the enemy. That is the most provocative idea of Passover, and we can only embrace it once we are safely on the other side, on the Seventh Day.

Hag sameah.