Up Shittim Creek

Manspreading is a problem of biblical proportions.
In the final verse of this week's Torah portion, the Israelites arrive at their final station in the desert (Num. 22:1): "Then the Israelites traveled to the Plains of Moab and camped along the Jordan across from Jericho."

Yet the final chapter of next week's portion begins (ibid. 25:1): "Israel settled in the Shittim, and the men began to whore with Moabitesses." (Yes, men can whore; in fact, in the Bible, the verb is more often employed in the masculine than in the feminine.)
Wait, "in the Shittim"? What are they doing there? Lower-cased, shittim are acacia trees, but here it's a place name -- one we've never seen before. We have to skip ahead to the travelogue in Numbers 33 to understand that:

They traveled from the mountains of Abarim, and they camped at the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho. And they camped on the plains of Moab along the Jordan from the House of the Wastes to the meadow of the Shittim. (vv. 48-49)

After 40 repetitions of the refrain "They traveled from [X], and they camped at [Y]," suddenly we have encampment without departure. The camp of Israel does not move, but the men of Israel do -- to the point of settling in Shittim.
The results of this are catastrophic, as the Israelites begin embracing Shittite culture, in particular the worship of Baal Peor. What makes this Baal so bad? The Talmud (Sanhedrin 64a) explains:

Rav Judah said in Rav's name: A gentile woman once fell sick. She vowed, 'If I recover, I will go and serve every idol in the world.' She recovered, and proceeded to serve all idols. On reaching Peor, she asked its priests, 'How is this worshiped'? They replied, 'People eat beets, drink beer, and then make diarrhea before it.' She replied, 'I would rather fall sick again than serve an idol in such a manner.'

However, the men of Israel lack the self-respect of this paganess, so "Israel adhered to Baal Peor, and the Lord's anger raged against Israel."
What follows is a plague that kills tens of thousands of Israelites, then a war of vengeance waged by Israel with even more casualties.
And that's why, when the time comes to decamp from the Plains of Moab, Joshua (2:1-3:1) sends spies "from the Shittim." They go to the house of a whore in Jericho, but the only thing they seek from her is information. In return, they spare her and her family, and the Israelites are able to cross the Jordan to the Promised Land -- with focus and purpose.
But this is not the last time Shittim shows up in Scripture. Joel 4:18 states: "In that day the mountains will drip new wine, and the hills will flow with milk; all the ravines of Judah will run with water. A fountain will flow out of the Lord's house and will water the stream of Shittim."

Shittim represents the wild excesses of a young nation -- unruly, unbound, unmoored. The Temple, God's house, symbolizes divine inspiration: peace, tranquility, purity, purpose, justice.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could think about it in that way again?

Secret Jewish Origins of!

While Moses may sound like an Egyptian name, did you know that Moses was portrayed in the move History of the World, Part I by noted Jew Mel Brooks? What about Moe of the Three Stooges, birth name Moses Harry Horwitz? Oh, and bartender Moe Szyslak from The Simpsons is voiced by Hank Azaria... a Jew!

OK, I made that quote up. But let's be honest, you've probably seen a lot of these articles over the past few years. Jewish media need to be on top of trends, and you can't let a story go cold... or even a body. Did a beloved musician die tragically? Read The Forward's "The Secret Jewish History of Chris Cornell and Soundgarden." (There is none.) What about a terrorist attack? Look, it's The Forward again with "Can Kabbalah Help 'Broken' Ariana Grande Heal After Concert Bombing?" (Only if Madonna counts the sephirot backwards.) Maybe it's time to get political? Tablet screams: "Ivanka Trump Mistakenly Identifies the Western Wall as Judaism's 'Holiest Site.'" (The pedantic author also gets it "wrong.") And these are only from the last month!
But this star-kaker trend may have reached its nadir with an article from Haaretz, the reputed gold standard of Jewish/ Israeli media.
I refer to Nathan Abrams' "The Secret Jewish Origins of Wonder Woman," which is so much the epitome of anti-journalism I expected to see it in The Qwardian.
It starts off with a tiresome retread of the international hand-wringing over Gal Gadot: Is she white? Is she Zionist? Why does that matter? Actually, Abrams glosses over the third question, because he needs to get to his thesis, which is about Diana of Themyscira, not Gal of Rosh HaAyin--that she is secretly Jewish!
Wait, Wonder Woman had Jewish creators? No, but lots of Golden Age comic-book superheroes did, so...
Wait, the character is Jewish? Sure, she was molded from clay, and that's got to be a Golem of Prague reference, because there's no precedent in Greek mythology, right...
But her publisher, MC Gaines, was Jewish, so that counts via the Sandler Standard ("So many Jews are in showbiz/ Tom Cruise isn't, but I heard his agent is!").
I mean, tikun olam, fighting Nazis, feminism all seem Jewy, so... Case closed!

What really sticks in my Golden Girdle of Gaea is the rank ignorance and laziness of this piece. You see, there is a Jewish comic book legend who wrote Wonder Woman longer than anyone, a stunning run of over twenty years, from #22 in 1947 to #176 in 1968. His name is Robert Kanigher, son of Rebecca and Ephraim from Romania. You don't need to strain to make Bob Kanigher Jewish. Not only did he shape Wondy's story from the late Golden Age to the height of the Silver Age, he created iconic superheroines Black Canary and Rose & Thorn (not to mention Wonder Girl). He also created Ragman, the vigilante from Gotham City who actually turns out to be Jewish (and inspired by the Golem).
Jews have a lot to be proud of, in terms of our culture, art and science. The desperate need to make every hot celebrity or cause "Jewish" belittles that proud heritage. So raise a glass to Bob and Gal, but don't try to dunk a superhero made of clay in the mikveh!

Pederabbi

We never settled on a good name.

National Religious? Religious Zionist? Srugim, the cheeky, called us, after the kippot serugot (knitted/crocheted yarmulkes) our men wear. Modern Orthodox, foreigners called us. Mizrachistim, the ultra-Orthodox called us. Messianists, the secular left called us.

I’ve always preferred Dati, which is what the pollsters call us. Dat is a biblical word, but of foreign (Persian) origin, which exemplifies what we stand for: an unwavering commitment to Jewish law and tradition, on one hand, and engagement with contemporary society, on the other. We sought to build a bridge between the secular, alongside whom we worked and lived and fought, and the Haredi, whose talmudic language we were conversant in and cherished.

But I’m not sure that’s true anymore, especially considering what happened just the day before yesterday. It didn’t make much news, but slowly filtered through social media: convicted sex-offender Mordechai Elon opened his new “Jerusalem Hall of Meeting and Study” to muted fanfare. Here, on Israel National News (Arutz 7), you can watch him installing the mezuzah to dedicate the site.  INN helpfully puts it in the “Kippa Seruga” section, naturally.

I’ve talked about Elon before — wait, he’s a rabbi, one must not forget that! Let’s give him his proper title then: I’ve talked about Pederabbi Elon before in this forum, in “Sorry, Rabbi, it’s not OK” and “Indecent acts.” But I naively thought that he would go away after his conviction for sexually assaulting a minor and his decision not to appeal.

I could not have been more wrong. Pederabbi Elon keeps popping up, again and again, to give public Torah lectures, even though he’s legally barred from contact with youth. And now he’s got a brand spanking new study hall, across from Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue, 59 King George St.

Now, the Elon family is Dati royalty. His father was deputy president of the Supreme Court, where one of his brothers served as well; while another (recently deceased) was Minister of Tourism, his sister-in-law being a famous author. Oh, and one of his sons is chief rabbi of Caesarea, where our prime minister has his palatial residence.

I thought we Dati were supposed to be different. Didn’t we criticize the Haredim for welcoming back convicted sex offenders like Pederabbi Eliezer Berland? Aren’t we the ones who believe in our court system fulfilling the vision of the Prophets to build a society of justice and compassion? Yet, with nary an admission of guilt nor apology, we welcome back Elon, and the most we can hope for is a Facebook debate: Rabbi Lichtenstein opposed him, Rabbi Druckman supports him, ask your Local Orthodox Rabbi.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. We cancelled our subscriptions to any media that challenged us, and our reading list now spans the “spectrum” from BaSheva to Israel Hayom. We clustered in like-minded communities and cut ourselves off, built yeshivot and synagogues that tolerate only one type of Judaism, and founded political parties to funnel money to them. We out-haredied the Haredim. Now what?

At long last, have we left no sense of decency?

Biblical slut-shaming

Once Rashi calls you a slut, it's hard to come back from that.
But that's exactly what happens to the only woman named in Leviticus, in the passage of the Blasphemer.

And the son of the Israelite woman pronounced the Name and cursed. So they brought him to Moses. His mother's name was Shelomit, daughter of Divri, of the tribe of Dan. (Lev. 24:11)

This lauds Israel, as the verse publicizes her to say she alone was a zona. (Rashi ad loc.)

Now, you might quibble about my translation of zona, but it's certainly not a term of endearment or approbation. Why would Rashi (c. 1100) say something so horrible about this woman? Well, there's a strong Midrashic tradition connecting the "Egyptian man" who fathered the Blasphemer to the "Egyptian man" slain by Moses way back in the second chapter of Exodus. This Egyptian overseer was beating a Hebrew man, and according to the Midrash, it's because the latter discovered the former with the latter's wife, Shelomit.
However, there are two radically different approaches to this story, though both are in Midrash Rabba. This compendium has many different sources, so Exodus Rabba and Leviticus Rabba are not by the same people (or even from the same millennia).
LR 32 calls Shelomit a strumpet, maintaining that she used her flirtatious laugh to draw the Egyptian "to corruption with her."
ER 1 tells a different story:

She was the only one ever suspected of illicit relations...
For one time an Egyptian overseer came to the home of an Israelite officer, and he set his gaze upon his wife, who was shapely and unblemished. At cockcrow, [the overseer] arose and fetched [the officer] from his house. The Egyptian returned and had sex with his wife--who thought that he was her husband--and impregnated her. Her husband returned to find the Egyptian leaving his house. He asked: "Perhaps he touched you?" She replied: "Yes, but I thought he was you." Once the overseer realized that he had been discovered, he returned [the Israelite] to backbreaking labor, and he started beating him, seeking to kill him. Moses saw this...

We have a term for that now: rape-by-fraud.
This may explain the very different view of Shelomit adopted by the Netziv. In his biblical commentary (Hamek Davar, 1880), he argues:

The verse mentions her by name because she was renowned in Israel; it was her prominence which caused him to be brought to Moses and for everything to be done according to the letter of the law. Otherwise, the bystanders would have stoned him immediately upon hearing something so outrageous, as alluded to in the next verse. But because "His mother's name was Shelomit, daughter of Divri," and she spoke prodigiously, she brought the mob to a halt and had him conveyed to court, "And they placed him under watch."

Indeed, every element of her name alludes to this. Shelomit brings peace (shalom) through the word (davar) of truth, allowing her son to be brought to judgement (din). 
The fact is that Shelomit is the lone named representative of the generation of women whose righteousness brings about the Exodus (Talmud Sota 11b) and who live to enter the Land of Israel (Sifre Num. 133). There must be a reason that her name is carried by so many decent people, men and women, throughout Scripture. There'll be no slut-shaming of Shelomit on our watch!

69

When is a national dream realized? When does a people's journey reach its destination?
I ask because it's that time of year again, as we confront the string of post-biblical holidays in the spring. The Exodus itself seems to have an ambiguous ending, as for millennia we've debated whether the atzeret (from atzor, stop) of Passover, its finale, is the seventh day (as in the Torah) or the fifty-first day (as in the Talmud). But here's a truly radical suggestion: what if the Exodus actually lasted sixty-nine years?
This is suggested by some of the verses we read yesterday, in the passage discussing house leprosy. Attributed to Rabbi Eleazar b. Shimon (of Lag baOmer fame) is "There never was a leprous house, and never will be. Then why was its law written? That you may study it and receive reward" (Talmud Sanhedrin 71a), so let's expound a bit.
The law of the leprous house is preceded by God's declaration that he will give the Land of Canaan to the Israelites "as a possession" (Lev. 14:33-35). The Talmud (Yoma 12a) says:

As a possession"--until they conquer it. If they have conquered it, but not divided it by tribe; if they have divided by tribe, but not by clan; if they have divided it by clan, but each does not recognize what is theirs, whence do we know [that the law does not yet apply]? "And whosever house it is shall come"--the one to whom it is unique.

Thus, there are four stages of "possession": military, political, communal and personal. Now, how long does each take? The Talmud talks of seven years of conquest and seven of division (Zevahim 118b), which accounts for the first two stages. We can assume that the next two also take seven years each (seven years being the standard agricultural cycle in the Torah), which would jibe with the total given for Joshua's rule: 28 years (Seder Olam Rabbah 12:1).
But when should our count start? Well, we famously talk about four expressions of redemption used by God right before he sends Moses to bring the Ten Plagues on Egypt (Exodus 6), but God also promises "I will bring you to the land" and "I will give it to you as an inheritance." (Hm, "I will give" (ve-natati)--the exact same term used in the verses from Leviticus.) That's about a year before the Jews leave Egypt, so we have 41 years of Moses + 28 of Joshua = 69 years until God's promise is realized. As the latter puts it (23:14): "“Now I am about to go the way of all the earth. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed."
So here we are, 69 years after Independence. What will Israel be in year 70 and beyond? That's up to each of us, and our unique part of this glorious inheritance. The dreaming is over; time to wake up.

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.