The Long and Winding Road to P'shat-Part Three

Language is at once one of the greatest forms of human expression and one of its most limited. We humans experience and think stuff all the time and often we are quite anxious to let others know of our experience and thoughts. We search for the right words to express those thoughts. Sometimes we are successful in conveying those thoughts, other times less so. We like to read good authors be they masters of prose or poetry in large part because they are able to convey their thoughts in words so well.

But words are by nature limiting and limited. Those who write or speak publicly choose their words carefully in order to, at the very least, convey their basic intentions. Often, writers will attempt to convey a multiplicity of meaning using words sparingly.

This is especially true of poetry.

In Dylan Thomas' villanelle:  Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (one of my favorite poems) we read the first stanza:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

When we read the first line, do we think that Thomas is giving us advice about going out after dark? Would we think that's the plain meaning of this text?

Hopefully not.

The term 'that good night' here, as we understand from the rest of the poem, is referring to death. So why didn't Thomas just say: Put up a fight when it's your time to die?

Because it's a poem and the way he put it is more poetic—DUH!

Well, to be more precise, his particular use of language here evokes much more than even the 'plain meaning' would tell us. Night has its own associations and imagery. It is a common word laden with meaning being used here in an uncommon way.

In other words, it is a metaphor.

The reader will quickly understand that the 'plain meaning,' the author's intended meaning, is not at all the same as the literal meaning. Yet the literal understanding of the phrase 'that good night' is always lurking in the background of consciousness of the reader—it sets a mood and allows for the reader to make his/her own associations.

This use of language allows the writer to transcend certain limitations of particular words. By placing words in a certain context, the words are 'value added.'

Looking back at our explication of the word B'reishit (continued here) we understand that the word in question, b'reishit, has a certain literal meaning, namely 'in the beginning (of).' But what was the author's intent in using that particular word? Was it simply to give an indication of a time in history?

Maybe not.

Maybe the Torah's intent in choosing that particular word was to evoke myriad relationships and connections with that word as is used elsewhere.

If poets do this, why would we think that the Torah doesn't do it?

The Long and Winding Road to P'shat -- Part Two

Any thoughtful student of the Torah is confronted with myriad problems. Even if we can get through some sort of cursory reading of, say, the first chapter of B'reishit, we are then confronted with blatant contradictions to that narrative in the second chapter! One moment you think that male and female were created simultaneously into a world with a whole ecosystem and the next (chapter) you see that a male is created before any female or any trees, for that matter.

This is one screwy story, you might say.

Further perusal of the Torah will yield numerous anomalies including contradictions in the particulars of various commandments, many obscure passages and quite a bit of repetition.

In short, a rather messy book.

If you take the critical approach you'll say that these discrepancies reflect a multiplicity of authors whose stories and versions are stitched together over time. This basic approach leads to the Documentary Hypothesis—and a very fancy hypothesis it is!

Also, to my mind, somewhat dull.

But more than that, it doesn't do a very good job of explaining how we end up with this variegated text. It's all well and good to say that various texts got edited together but then why would anyone put together a text that is so full of problems sometimes even within the same paragraph?

This hypothesis seems to assume that if God had written a book it wouldn't be so messy.

This begs the question: If God wrote a book, what would it look like?

Let's step back a moment. Let's say that God created the Universe. I am not going to try to prove that – but accept if you will that premise for the moment.

Now let's look at the Universe. Is everything neat and tidy? Not quite. In fact, just as an example, physicists are still looking for a Theory for Everything because, in fact, lots of observable and theoretical phenomena don't really line up so well. Quantum physics doesn't abide by Newton's rules, for example (I say this as a physics layperson but relying on books like Dancing Wu-Li Masters, recommended by my late Uncle Bob who was a fully fledged and well recognized nuclear physicist).

When humans make stuff we like to think we can make everything 'perfect.' But does that really reflect the way God works? Of course, we can't know that for sure (She still ain't tellin'!) but my senses tell me that this universe is full of contradiction and inconsistency.

Back to the Flatlander's point of view. Recall that the toughest part of understanding the cube might be that the two lines which are farthest apart in the two dimensional representation are actually the same line in the three dimensional cube.

Maybe it is precisely those parts of the Torah which seemingly contradict or don't fit in with each other very well that point to deeper meanings on other planes?

This is essentially the rabbinic approach.

When one puts his or her mind to it, and struggles with the text, one can actually, albeit usually briefly, hold the contradictory passages simultaneously and see something beyond.

Next up: P'shat and D'rash

The Long and Winding Road to P'shat

I heard a story once about Picasso who once found himself accosted by a fellow guest at a cocktail party. The man in question confronted the cubist painter, fairly foaming at the mouth, saying to him, “You're no artist at all! Your paintings don't look like real people or real anything!” He removed a small photo from his wallet and brandished it in front of Picasso's face. “See this? This is a picture of my wife. That's what she really looks like. Why you can't paint like that?”

Picasso took the photo in his hand, examined it carefully and, handing it back to its owner declared, “Your wife must be very small, flat and gray.”

The point, of course, is that the photograph is not necessarily a better representation of a subject than a cubist projection. Both contain information which reflects a reality but neither one 'is' the reality as such. A cubist portrait, for example, chooses to recognize painting as an essentially two dimensional medium. Therefore, in order to present a three dimensional figure, it will lay out the various sides or aspects of that figure so that they are seen all at once on a flat surface.

Imagine for a moment that you meet a two dimensional being such as a Flatlander and you want to explain to him (or her!) what a cube is. You can give them all the information about the makeup of a cube by drawing out six squares in the shape of a cross which would represent the six sides of a cube. The only, but perhaps crucial, element they would be missing is the third dimension. In fact, the toughest concept to explain would be that the two lines which are furthest away from each other are, in fact, the same line!

In the last couple of postings I dealt with a midrash which says that God used the Torah to create the universe. Consider that the Torah mentioned in this context would not have been a Torah scroll written on parchment like the ones we have in the synagogue ark. How could it have been? Prior to the Creation there was no form, no matter.

So what was this Torah which God used?

Okay, I don't know. Nobody knows except God and She ain't tellin'. Or, more to the point, God couldn't possibly tell us just as a three dimensional person can't really tell a two dimensional person precisely what a cube is.

However, just as the three dimensional person can give (nearly) all the information of what makes a cube to the two dimensional person, so, too, God can give us (nearly) all the information which is the pristine, primal Torah.

And maybe, just maybe, if we work very hard at it, we too can glimpse the fully dimensional Torah. More about that in the next posting!

In the End, It's All in the Beginning

I know you have all been dying to understand how Chazal figured out that the word 'reishit' means 'Torah.' Probably you have suffered through sleepless nights, tossing and turning, especially since I promised to explain this nearly two weeks ago.

Well, dear reader, wait no more. I will explain it all to you—well, as best as I can, anyway.

This gets a bit technical—my apologies up front.

Ironically, to understand the beginning of the Torah and the meaning of b'reishit, one must look deep into a much later part of Tanach, namely Mishlei Proverbs.

To the rabbinic mind, there is no real beginning or end to the Torah. It is not a continuum; rather it is that all aspects of the Torah exist (and know each other) simultaneously. While the rabbis recognize that there is an historical chronology to how the books of Tanach were received and that has significance, there is also a notion of Torah that is not rooted in time and matter.

What is found in the written Torah is a kind of transcription of this Divine Torah and while it may inherently contain all aspects of Torah Wisdom, we find this Wisdom explicated in and expounded upon in many other places beginning with other books of Tanach.

Just as we can look at any one thing in the universe as a point of departure for examining all of Creation, so too, we can look at any one part in this expansive notion of Torah to understand the rest of the Torah. Where in particular we begin is not necessarily important.

As it happens, the beginning point of this explanation of b'reishit begins in Mishlei. If you read through the book, particularly the first several chapters, you will see a very clear relationship established between wisdom/understanding and the Torah.

For example, the third chapter of Mishlei begins:

משלי פרק ג (א)בְּנִי תּוֹרָתִי אַל תִּשְׁכָּח וּמִצְוֹתַי יִצֹּר לִבֶּךָ:

Mishlei Chapter 3 (1) My son, do not forget my Torah, and your heart should guard my commandments.

A little later in the chapter it says:

משלי פרק ג (יט) יְקֹוָק בְּחָכְמָה יָסַד אָרֶץ כּוֹנֵן שָׁמַיִם בִּתְבוּנָה:

Mishlei Chapter 3 (19) God founded the earth with wisdom, he establishes the heavens with intelligence.

A bit later we read:

משלי פרק ח (כב) יְקֹוָק קָנָנִי רֵאשִׁית דַּרְכּוֹ קֶדֶם מִפְעָלָיו מֵאָז:

Mishlei Chapter 8 (22) God made me as the beginning of His way, the first of His works of old.

Reading the straightforward message of Mishlei would yield an understanding that the universe was created with Divine wisdom/intelligence and that this is also known as Torah.

With this last verse from Chapter 8 we can add in that another name for this primal source of Creation is reishit. We get that by parsing the sentence a little differently, to wit:

God has made me, The beginning (reishit), His Way, as the first of His works of old.

In other words, ראשית reishit, is another name for 'me' which is wisdom. Wisdom in this context is another way of saying 'Torah.'

When the rabbis were confronted with the multitude of options in understanding the word b'reishit, what they knew already about the nature of the Creation from Mishlei (i.e. that the creation was done with the Torah) gibed with one of the meanings of the word b'reishit.

So, a kind of possible flow chart of this explanation of b'reishit would look something like this:

1. Read first word of Torah: b'reishit
2. Deconstruct that word into various possible meanings
3. Recall concept of how the universe was created from verses in Mishlei
4. See how that concept coincides with one of the explanations of the word b'reishit

Dear reader, if you have come this far in the posting, please let me know what you think. Did this get too technical? Or would you like to hear more about the mechanics of midrashic thought?

Shabbat shalom!

A New Beginning for B'reishit

Dedicated in memory of Jeannie Rittner ז”ל – see below for important and appropriate comments!

Those of us who are familiar with the English language, namely everyone who happens to be reading this blog, are certainly familiar with the opening line of the Torah: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Seems straightforward enough.

On the other hand, everyone who is familiar with the Hebrew text cannot assume understanding so blithely.

The first word of the Torah in Hebrew is בראשית b'reishit. The ב is a prefix (we'll come back to it later). The rest of the word, ראשית reishit comes from the word ראש rosh which literally means head and by implication means beginning or start as in ראש השנה rosh hashannah, the head or start of the year.

The word ראשית reshit appears nearly fifty times in Tanach. In nearly every case the context shows that the word ראשית attaches itself to the word following as if it said 'the beginning of.' That being the case, the word that follows reshit should be a noun so that it would read 'the beginning of something'. 

An example comes in Parshat Noach (ahem—this means I am now exempt from further comments on this week's parsha proper) when the Torah says about Nimrod:

בראשית פרק י (י) וַתְּהִי רֵאשִׁית מַמְלַכְתּוֹ בָּבֶל וְאֶרֶךְ וְאַכַּד וְכַלְנֵה בְּאֶרֶץ שִׁנְעָר:

B'reishit 10 (10) And the beginning of his kingdom was Bavel and Erech and Accad and Chalneh in the land of Shinar.

The problem we have here is that the word B'reishit is followed by a verb!

That is, if we read the first three words literally it would come out “In the beginning of created God.” Yuck. That is a terribly awkward start for what has come to be the most popular book in history. Surely the author could write better than that!

Or surely we could understand it better.

Another problem is that this first verse implies that God created the heavens and the earth from the get go, rendering the later verses which discuss the creation of the heavens and the earth rather perplexing.

The commentaries worked overtime to bring various plausible and grammatically acceptable explanations to answer all of the above. I will not even attempt to bring them all in here. Rather, I will focus on one of the seemingly more playful midrashim which comes to answer this contextual conundrum and at the same time reveals a deeper truth.

It is time to examine the prefix ב bet of בראשית b'reishit. The bet usually means 'in' but it can also mean 'with' and even 'for' in the sense of 'for the sake of.'

An example of this latter meaning is found later in Parshat Vayetze:

בראשית פרק כט (יח) וַיֶּאֱהַב יַעֲקֹב אֶת רָחֵל וַיֹּאמֶר אֶעֱבָדְךָ שֶׁבַע שָׁנִים בְּרָחֵל בִּתְּךָ הַקְּטַנָּה:

B'reishit Chapter 29 (18) And Yaakov loved Rachel. And he said, “I will work for you seven years for Rachel your younger daughter.”

An example of ב meaning 'with' is found in Parshat Vayishlach where we find Yaakov praying to God to save him from his brother Esav. He says:

בראשית פרק לב (יא) קָטֹנְתִּי מִכֹּל הַחֲסָדִים וּמִכָּל הָאֱמֶת אֲשֶׁר עָשִׂיתָ אֶת עַבְדֶּךָ כִּי בְמַקְלִי עָבַרְתִּי אֶת הַיַּרְדֵּן הַזֶּה וְעַתָּה הָיִיתִי לִשְׁנֵי מַחֲנוֹת:

B'reishit Chapter 32 (11) I am humbled from all the kindnesses and from all the truth that You did with your servant (i.e. Yaakov himself) for with my staff I crossed over this Jordan and now I have become two camps.

Let's take this second meaning and apply it to our word: B'reishit. It would now mean 'with the reishit.'

So what would 'reishit' mean in this context?

The Midrash Rabbah here looks at the word reishit in various contexts and comes up with different possible meanings. One of them is that reishit means the Torah itself.

Thus, the first word now means 'with the Torah.' And the first verse can now be understood to say:

God created the heavens and the earth with the Torah!

I will explain how the midrash came to this understanding tomorrow. But let's savor the moment. We now have a profoundly different way of looking at the origins of the universe. We started by thinking the word b'reishit was merely telling us when something happened (in the beginning). Now we understand that the Torah is telling us that the tool for creation is, in fact the Torah itself.

This raises other conceptual issues such as what exactly is this Torah which was used to create the heavens and the earth? Was it a literal sefer Torah (Torah scroll)? Or was it some essence of Torah which could have pre-existed creation? I hope to talk about this in later postings.

I had the privilege of getting to know Jeannie Rittner a bit during my extended stays in Dayton. As her daughter told me, she was a 'force to be reckoned with!' Everyone who knew Jeannie knew her to be vivacious, smiling, outgoing, deeply caring and engaging. She suffered through quite a bit of physical pain in recent years yet I never heard her complain; she was far more likely to make light of her situation or to explain how she was doing so much better than before.

However, it was only in my last months in Dayton that I came to understand Jeannie's close relationship with Torah. She was always trying to study and her studies were based on an education which included an intimate understanding of classical Hebrew texts. She was thirsty for learning and would engage me in my classes and, whenever she had the opportunity, outside of class, as well.

She showed me what it meant to begin everything with Torah and infuse that in one's very being. She was a great inspiration to me and to many and she will be sorely missed for many years to come. יהי זכרה ברוך May her memory be a blessing.

Zoharia Yam and the Final Redemption!

My title sounds like the makings of a pretty heavy children's book.

Little Zoharia Yam, my granddaughter, had a celebration, a Simchat Bat they call it, in her honor yesterday, 27 years to the day since her father's brit mila. I think she will remember the occasion just about as well as Ezra remembers his brit.

I'll relate a few things I mentioned while sitting in the Sukkah and holding her on my lap (until she voiced her opinion of my thoughts and was removed to other quarters for a pick me up from her mother, Dorin).

The noun zohar זהר appears only twice in Tanach. The word at its root means to 'shed light' or 'give off light' (thus we get the word l'hazhir להזהיר– literally to cause light to be shed meaning to warn). It is related to the word tzohar  צהר which is the name for the sky light which God told Noah to build into the top of the ark. You might think that this variant implies something which accepts light given its placement in the top of the ark. However, there are implications from midrash that it was there to give off light from within.

Zohar is also related to the Aramaic cognate sohar סוהר and sihara סיהרא which refers to moonlight and moon respectively.

So these variants cover three aspects: Zohar-radiation of light, Sohar-reflection of light and Tzohar-giving and/or receiving of light. 

Tonight and tomorrow we celebrate the day after Sukkot known from a passage in the Torah as Shmini Atzeret. The word Atzeret literally means 'a stopping.' It is a holiday which is separate from but comes immediately after Sukkot. Later tradition has it that we celebrate the end and beginning of the Torah reading cycle on this holiday. Thus it is also known as Simchat Torah. 

But what is the nature of this holiday? 

Let's look for a moment back at Pessach. The main mitzvah on that holiday is to eat matzah (and back in the Temple times to eat that with the paschal sacrifice). The holiday goes for one week but we count seven weeks from the second day to get to the next holiday, Shavuot. Shavuot is known in the parlance of the mishnah as Atzeret. 

So on Pessach we turn inward in some essential way. It matters little where we eat but what we eat is essential.  

Pessach represents our g'ula, redemption, as a nation. We need(ed) time to move from our initial redemption until we could handle the receiving of the Torah at Shavuot. But then Shavuot became a kind of Atzeret--a stopping, that is an end or a way station in this process of g'ulah. 

On Sukkot, by contrast, it matters little what we eat but it is all important where we eat. We sit in the Sukkah and are surrounded by the mitzvah. We are pushing outwards now. 

The Torah in Parshat Pinchas tells us of the karban mussaf, the additional offering, which was brought on Sukkot and Shmini Atzeret. Part of the offering was oxen. The first day 13 were brought and then each day one less so that by the seventh day there were altogether 70 oxen brought. But then on Shmini Atzeret it drops down to one. 

Chazal tell us that the oxen offering which diminishes each day corresponds to the 70 nations which in the future will also diminish. Some people mistakenly think this means that the other nations besides Israel will die out. Not so.

The idea is that ultimately that which separates nations will die out. We will come together as a single 'nation' recognizing the single Creator. That singleness is symbolized by the single ox brought on Shmini Atzeret. Here we don't need to go through the 7 week cycle we had between Pessach and Shavuot--we go directly into the final redemption when we no longer need the sukkah or the matzah -- we just come to a unity of humanity with the Divine. 

May we merit to see the final redemption, the Zohar, a time which Chazal called 'a day which is entirely made of light.'  

Yom Kippur, Tumah, Taharah, Downfall and Purification

ויקרא פרק טז (ל) כִּי בַיּוֹם הַזֶּה יְכַפֵּר עֲלֵיכֶם לְטַהֵר אֶתְכֶם מִכֹּל חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם לִפְנֵי יְקֹוָק תִּטְהָרוּ:

Leviticus Chapter 16 (30): For on this day He will atone for you to purify you from all your sins; purify yourselves before God.

It is erev Yom Hakippurim and I am thinking about tahara-purification. As the above verse implies, we are striving to reach this state of purification particularly on this day. 

The laws of purity/impurity are vast and complex. Mostly they are not studied today even in yeshivot. In practical halacha the last vestiges of these laws are found in hilchot Niddah and the laws of washing one's hands before eating bread. 

But I will point out something you may already know: The Torah gives us many laws dealing with purities and various types of animals are considered impure. However, only human beings can become ritually impure and impart ritual impurity while alive--all other animals which give off impurity do so only when they are dead. 

So there is a correlation between taharah/purity and life; conversely there is a relationship between tumah/impurity and death. 

The m'tzora, for example, imparts tumah in much the same way that a dead human body does--even under a roofing without touching. So the m'tzora is kind of like 'dead man walking.' 

The m'tzora got his/her tumah, according to Chazal, for speaking ill of others (lashon hara). 

Thus, while one may think the laws of purities is removed from human relations they are in fact intimately entwined. 

Tumah can come upon one without knowledge or, more often, through carelessness. However, the Torah gives various methods of taharah/purification so that one may regain their prior state. 

Tomorrow evening the people of Israel will experience a collective taharah/purification. It will not last--that is part of the human condition. We sin, we are careless and worse. 

But there is always a way back to our previous state. Yet it is not precisely the previous state we reach but a higher level, like the next level on a spiral, which we only can reach because we fell before. 

Wishing all a g'mar chatima tova :)