Assemble!

 Hebrew, especially biblical Hebrew, is funny. For example, this week’s Torah portion starts (Exodus 35:1) with the word vayakhel, spelled ויקהל: “Moses assembled the whole Israelite congregation.” But those exact letters in last week’s portion (ibid. 32:1) were read vayikahel: “The nation massed upon Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us.'” The shift from passive to causative (for all you grammar freaks) changes the tenor: from an amorphous mob demanding a new god to an orderly community united in purpose.

The word ויקהל appears only one more time in all of the Torah, in Numbers 16:19: “Korah assembled (vayakhel) the whole congregation upon them at the entrance to the tent of meeting.” Korah, cousin to Moses and Aaron, is leading a rebellion against them, ostensibly for religious purposes: “For all in the congregation are holy, and the Lord is in their midst, so why raise yourselves up over the assembly of the Lord?” Nevertheless, even though he is supposed to be standing with a firepan in order to have an incense-off with Aaron and prove this point, Korah is busy running around, riling up the crowd so he’ll have an audience. Presumably for this reason, the Sages point to him as the paragon of insincere divisiveness (Mishna, Avot 5:17).

In addition, he makes an alliance with Dathan and Abiram, whose criticism of Moses is purely about the land:

We will not come! Isn’t it enough that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey to kill us in the wilderness? And now you also want to lord it over us! Moreover, you haven’t brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey or given us an inheritance of fields and vineyards. Will you poke our eyes out? No, we will not come!

Now, I have a soft spot for Dathan (probably because he’s played by the only Jewish actor in The Ten Commandments, Edward G. Robinson [though a Jewish actress, Olive Deering, plays Miriam]), but that sounds pretty nuts. In fact, D&A’s nationalist critique seems to have nothing to do with Korah and Company’s theological critique. And yet they form an alliance. In fact, they build a “tabernacle of Korah, Dathan and Abiram.” You might even call them a Technical Bloc (my nickname in the Army). D&A, true believers, put their families on the line; Korah, in the meantime, cannot convince his own sons to stick with him. Ultimately, the rebellion fails in a spectacular pyrotechnic (Korah’s men) and seismic (D&A) denouement.

That’s all I can think of as I consider the ill-advised union of the Jewish Home and Jewish Power parties. The former used to be the National Religious Party, which supposedly represented “my” sector, the Religious Zionists. The latter is the latest iteration of Kahanism. Some want to defend this merger of theocrats and ethnocrats by arguing that it’s no biggie. After all, Michael Ben-Ari, head of Jewish Power, banned from entering the US as a terrorist, was in Knesset as recently as 2013.  And what about those Arab parties?

Ignoring the fact that “those Arab parties” represent a wide range of views, they at least raise the banner of democracy, not ethnic supremacy. Their members have endorsed or winked at violence against Israeli authorities, but unfortunately many right-wingers, far beyond Jewish Power, have done just that, in word and deed, against Israeli police, soldiers and the courts.

Far more important than that, though, is the active role that Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken: brokering the alliance, promising cabinet posts, guaranteeing a spot on the judicial appointments committee and signing a deal to share votes with this new alliance. Sure, why shouldn’t the new Education Minister be a “proud homophobe” who thinks his wife shouldn’t have to give birth in the same ward as Arab mothers? Why shouldn’t the new Housing and Construction Minister be the guy who threatened to bring a D9 bulldozer to raze the Supreme Court? I cannot stress enough that these statements were made not by the Jewish Power faction, but by those who now sit in Knesset representing the “moderate” Jewish Home!

So, here’s what we’re gonna do on Motzaei Shabbat Vayakhel: we are going to assemble, across from the PM’s Residence in Jerusalem, against Kahanism–not just one faction, Jewish Power, but the rot at the heart of Israeli politics which Netanyahu has decided not only to let fester, but to help foster.

I hope you’ll join us. Firestorm and earthquake not guaranteed.

Todah, Tzipi

 Twenty years ago, I made aliyah, just ten days after the elections for the Fifteenth Knesset. I was a newly-minted Israeli, and there was a whole crop of newly-minted Israeli legislators. Among them was a woman who would break many glass ceilings, Tzipi Livni. And her political career, it appears, ends today.

A lot of people are applauding that, most of them snidely, some of them misogynistically. They snicker as they note that she has held eight different cabinet positions and run with four different parties. After all, in Israeli society, there is nothing worse than being a freier, a sucker, the one left holding the bag. And that’s what has happened to Livni time after time.

Though the Likud’s 2005 Disengagement from Gaza was Ariel Sharon’s brainchild, and his #2, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, voted for it four separate times, the blame for its missteps is laid at her feet. It was the Bush Administration that wanted Palestinian legislative elections to happen less than six months later, with the participation of Hamas, but sure, that was her fault too. Ehud Olmert’s corruption ended his own premiership, and he handed the party off to Tzipi, his foreign minister (arguably, the last real foreign minister Israel has had). She managed to win more seats than Netanyahu in the subsequent elections, but he had made prior arrangements with the ultra-Orthodox parties to deny her the PM’s seat. Then Shaul Mofaz took her party — all the way from having the most seats in Knesset to the fewest.

She built a new party, coming back to the position in which she’d first distinguished herself, as Minister of Justice. Eventually, she’d join forces with Labor’s Isaac Herzog, ceding him the leadership role in a last-ditch attempt to beat Netanyahu in the last election. Then, in the run-up to this election, Labor’s new leader, Avi Gabbay, unceremoniously dumped her on live television. (I wonder why he doesn’t get criticism for jumping parties…) And now, alone again, naturally, it doesn’t seem like her party can get over the electoral threshold.

That same year that Tzipi first made it into the Knesset, another woman with a famous last name was striking out on her own, as Hillary Rodham Clinton ran for the Senate in New York, winning the retiring Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s seat the next year.

At the same time, another strong woman, Angela Merkel, was assuming control of the Christian Democrats in Germany. She would assume the chancellorship in late 2005. She’s still in that position, but she no longer heads the party and is also at the sunset of her political career.

I think there is something that binds them, beyond gender, hair color and career choice. None of them were supposed to succeed. Livni was the daughter of an Irgun power couple (the first people to marry in the newborn State of Israel!), but that was not exactly the route to power in the State’s early years; Clinton took her promising law career to Arkansas, a seeming dead end; Merkel hailed from East Germany. But throughout their careers, they shared the conviction that democracy, diplomacy and capitalism work, even as Israel, America and Europe seem to be drifting away from that belief. They have earned enemies on the right and the left as they have evolved as politicians. They have absorbed all the slings and arrows of their critics with equanimity. And they have changed their societies forever. I hope that we have not seen the last of them.

In the meantime, let me just say: Thank you, for everything.

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.