madlik

At first glance, it feels strangely

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familiar. Haven’t we heard these stories before? The Exodus,

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Sinai, the spies, the wilderness, wanderings. It’s all

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repetition. But maybe repetition isn’t a flaw.

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Maybe it’s the point. Why does Moses spend his

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final weeks retelling a story everyone already knows? Why do

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the rabbis praise the student who reviews a lesson

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101 times? And why does Ben Bag

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Bag famously teach turn it over and turn it over,

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for everything is in it? Two thousand years ago, the

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Roman philosopher Seneca warned that reading too many

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scrolls too quickly would leave us distracted, restless, and

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unable to think deeply. Sound familiar? In an

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age of endless scrolling and shrinking attention spans,

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perhaps Deuteronomy has something surprising to teach

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us about the art of paying attention.

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Welcome to Madly. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a

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spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with

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Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite

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podcast platform and now on YouTube and

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Substack. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria,

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and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s Parasha is

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Devarim. Join us as we explore Deuteronomy and

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the Art of Attention and discover why Moses

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final retelling of the Torah may offer the oldest and

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perhaps the best antidote to our modern

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epidemic of distraction. Well,

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welcome back, Rabbi. We missed you last week, but it’s nice to be

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back. But you had a great conversation. It was truly

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illuminating. And one of the things that he said towards the end

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was, we’re finishing the Torah. And of course, he was right, because

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Numbers ends the Torah. And Mishneh Torah, the

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name for Deuteronomy, really means a copy

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of the Torah. And that’s where the Greek

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Deuteronomy comes from. Second law.

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So it really is a review, it’s a repetition. And

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that’s what we’re going to focus on today.

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In the yeshiva, we called it Chazorah. And

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in Yeshiva, Chazorah was important. And I think when it comes to

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the book of. The Book of Deuteronomy, that’s also important.

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I mean, to give you a sense of what Chazorah was. And I think I

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did come across it a little bit in college where you would have a

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professor give a class and then there was a TA and the teacher’s

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assistant would come out later and meet and smaller groups.

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But in the yeshiva, you would prepare for a

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shiur, a class bechavrusa. And then you would

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go over it, Bechavrusa. And at least my experience

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was, for instance, in Be’er Yaakov, where the

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Mashgiach gave most of his really exciting

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shmoozin on Shabbat, you couldn’t write it down. You couldn’t write it down.

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So you literally had to review it. And many of the

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great books that we have, for instance, on many of

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of the Hasidic great leaders, they never wrote it down. It’s their students who

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kind of wrote it down. So this is a big part of our tradition. Very

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important. Okay, let’s go for it. Okay, so it’s

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only in Deuteronomy 18, where it actually

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uses this word, Mishneh Torah. And there, of course, it

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is talking about the rules of the kings,

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and they shall have a copy of this teaching

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written for him, for the king. But again, this

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has been the traditional exploration, explanation of

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what Mishneh Torah is, this fifth book of

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the Torah. And of course, a lot of time is spent,

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Rabbi, on nitpicking and seeing how

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in the repetition, maybe the story changes,

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maybe how a different phrase is used, word is

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used. We’re going to explore just the story of the

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scouts in a few minutes. But of course, and I’m quoting

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from a Sefaria, a wonderful source that I discover,

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where he gives an introduction. And he says, the people, the scholars

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from the critical theory, obviously,

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who believe that Torah was written by many

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different authors, they will argue that that’s not a big

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surprise. Deuteronomy was edited by a different

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editor and different sources got inside.

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We find that even in the Mishnah, where

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we have the Mishnah and then we have a Beraita, and the Beraita

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maybe didn’t make the Mishna, but it’s a variation of it.

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It’s at the most basic level, this is varying

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texts. And that truly is something

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that is part of our tradition as well. We understood

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way back when there was no only recording. There were

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variations on everything. It’s really baked into our tradition.

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Amazing. Really good. So I do

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think, though, that even the classical commentators clearly, and

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I’ve always argued this, nothing that modern scholarship

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has brought up by way of a question or a problem that the

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classical commentaries didn’t already identify. And so,

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for instance, they will ask, so why were

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they repeated? What laws were repeated? So by way of

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example, Ramban Nachmanides says

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this book is known to constitute a review of the

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Torah. He uses that same

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word, hasefer hazeh yadushu, Mishneh Torah,

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in which Moses, our teacher, explains to the generation

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entering the land most of the commandments of the

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Torah that pertain to Israelites. And he distinguishes that

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from the priests. The priests. Nachmanides, for

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some reason, says, they don’t need that much Chazorah. They got it the first

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time. But the rest of us, Pashut Yisraelim, we

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need to be repeatedly admonished.

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And he uses this word, yahzir otam,

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this word from Chazarah. We have to be reminded.

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Sometimes you have to repeat the things. Multiple warnings,

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so forth and so on. So again, Nachmanides

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recognizes what is going on. And his take is,

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this is like Cliff Notes. Before you go into

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the land, you know your mom told you everything. Then as you’re at the

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door about to go, she gives you the short version. Don’t forget this,

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don’t forget that. Interesting. Well, I

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mean, interesting and logical. I mean, it makes sense that that’s what

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they need. Especially. You see, repetition is important

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because Moshe is going to die. He’s not going to

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be there. And they’re on the banks of Moab, and they’re moving.

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It’s part of the transmission process. It’s part of creating

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something that lasts beyond you. I love that. So

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we’re going to take one example, but there will be many examples in the

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Book of Devorim where there are variations. So we’re

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going to talk about the seminal moment of sending

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the scouts. In Deuteronomy 1:22, part of our

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parasha, it says, then all of you came to me,

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says Moses, and said, let us send agents

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ahead to reconnoiter the land for us and bring back word.

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In 23, he says, I approved of the plan, and So

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I selected 12 of you, one representative from

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each tribe. So first of all, it just us. Right from the beginning,

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it tells us what we already know, which is the whole Book of Devorim is

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written in the first person. It’s Moses speaking. This is novel. This is

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not something that we’ve had. But more to that, you could say

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that Moses is looking at it from his perspective, right? Means he changes

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the story and gives it from the way he remembers it,

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or this is the way it was. And the other version is a different

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variation. That’s correct. It’s not. In numbers 13,

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this is the. The fourth book of the Torah, it says, God

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spoke to Moses, saying, sent agents to scout

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the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelite

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people and someone of each tribe. In verse 3.

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So Moses, by God’s command sent them out from

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the wilderness of Paran. Rabbi, this is not a

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slight of hand. It’s clear in the Devorim text.

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It’s I, I, I. Moses is the one who’s taking

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responsibility, authority approach

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Moses. And in Numbers, God

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is the one who commands Moses to send the spies. The

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whole story is different. So just to give you an example

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of how these variations stimulate thought, I’m

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going to quote Rashi, not because I think he’s convincing, but because

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again, he shows you the type of,

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I think, gymnastics that have to be done if

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you want to reconcile the two texts.

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So Rashi in numbers says, according to your

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own judgment, I do not command

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you, but if you wish to do so, send them. So

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he’s caging here. He’s saying God didn’t tell Moses to do

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it. He simply gave Moses permission to do it.

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And that, of course, reconciles it with our verse

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in Deuteronomy. But I would argue

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that in fact, what we are seeing in front of us is two

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variations. And those variations elicit different

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approaches. And maybe you can say elu v’elu, that this

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one and this one, they’re both, both true from a certain perspective.

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Good. Okay. That’s an interesting approach, that they’re

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both true. It just depends how you look at it.

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They, you know, now it’s hard because God commands Moshe to send the

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spies and the people approach Moshe, you need to tell a different

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story. You need to say the people initiated it.

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And then because the people initiated it, God commanded

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Moses to send the spies. That’s a twist. And again,

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I’m sure if this was the subject matter of today’s

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discussion, we would find 5, 10, 15 other

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variations on this which were trying to

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reconcile. And maybe they would say, like me, that they’re different, but

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they’re both true. The point is that reading

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a story, or I would say telling a story at

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least twice, you’re going to get some variation. And

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that, I think, is the point. And that, I

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think, has gotten our attention. And today we’re talking about how

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do you keep attention and how. What is the

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best defense against attention disorder where you

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stop being attentive and you stop growing with the texts.

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So we’re going to go to the Mishnah in Avot, and

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I’ve quoted this before, it says, ben Bog

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Bog said, I’ll get to his name in a second, turn it over

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and turn it over for all is therein, and

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look into it and become gray and old therein and do not

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move away from it, for you have no better portion than

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it. So first of all, I could not but be amazed.

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Rabbi, I think I’m going to quote another Gemara

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from Hagigah in a second. And there we quote a Bar Hei.

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Hei. It is kind of funny that the two

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scholars who are talking about repetition, they’re not

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funny name not only funny, but the name repeats

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itself, right? It’s fascinating. But in any case,

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what does he say? He says a few things. He says hafachbo v’

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hofachbo, which really means to go in it over and over, turn

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it over, look at it anew each time. And then he

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talks about this being a life endeavor, grow gray and

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old with it. And then something that I had tried to ignore last

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time I mentioned this Mishnah, he says, don’t go to other sources,

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stay with this source and keep at it.

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Keep constantly going back to it. And I think again,

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this is part of the Mishneh Torah tradition

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that we are exploring today. But it’s a

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wonderful seminal expression, is it not? Yeah,

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well, and don’t move away from it, tell, you know, because that’s,

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that’s people’s, that’s what generally you do after

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you go through something and once or a few times you tend

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to move on to the next thing. And what they say is when it comes

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to Torah, don’t move on to the next thing, but continue to

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focus on this. Absolutely, absolutely. And

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I think that we are going to see and it is going to blow us

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away. I hope that Seneca, the Roman

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philosopher, said something very similar. And I’m curious

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to know whether anyone listening or you, Rabbi, think that there might

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have been some influence. But let’s continue. In Hagiga, the

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Gmorra records another discussion between Bar Hei Hei

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and Hillel. Bar Hei Hei said to Hillel, what is the

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meaning of that which is written? Then you shall again discern between

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the righteous and the wicked, between he who serves God and he who does

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not serve him. This is a verse in Malachi. There are

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two redundancies, the righteous who serves and the wicked.

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So what does he answer? He says one who

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reviews his studies 100 times is

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not comparable to one who reviews his studies

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101 times. And then I love the

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fact that they use the modern day equivalent

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of an Uber driver, the donkey

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drivers, as proof. And what they say is if

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you buy a pack of tickets from the donkey

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driver for 10 and you need to get an 11th

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ride, you’ve got to buy 20. So what they’re trying to say is

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it’s not incrementally. One more now you’re

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going into the next hundred of studying.

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But I think what they’re also saying, and I might be going out on a

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ledge here, is that this is practical. You can learn it

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from real life. You can learn it from donkey drivers.

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This need to repeat stuff is

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powerful tool for pedagogy and for learning.

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The idea is, of course, if you buy the extra, if you

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need the extra ride, you have to buy the extra. Tag is that you should

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always be looking forward, you know, always study more. You may not

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know yet that you need to study more, but always be looking

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forward to studying more. It’s a great image, right? It’s the Uber driver

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image. It’s a good image, though. We don’t buy Uber tickets. We don’t buy

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Uber tickets by the 10. No, not that. If they listen to

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the podcast, they might come out with that idea. It’ll be a new subscription

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model. But, you know, I didn’t put it in the show notes, but I think

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Malcolm Gladwell once talked about the difference

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between good to great is practice, practice. And he actually kind

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of documented how many times the Beatles practiced, how many times

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musicians and actors practice. There is no question

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that repetition is something that

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is coming across loud and clear in our

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tradition. And it’s worth stopping and focusing on, I

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believe so. In the Talmud, In Avodah Zarah 19A,

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it says the Gemara cites other statements relating

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to Torah study. Rava said that Rav Sephora said that

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Rav Huna says, what is the meaning of that which is written?

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Wealth gotten through vanity,

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Mehevl shall be diminished, but he who gathers little

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by little shall increase. It’s a verse

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in Proverbs. It says, what is the meaning if a

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person turns his Torah into many bundles,

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they take the word hevel and they change it into

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chavilot, which is in modern day Hebrew, when you come back from the

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grocery store with a bunch of packages, you’re carrying

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chavilot. By studying large amount in short

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period of time without reviewing his Torah will

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diminish. But if he gathers his knowledge little by

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little, by studying slowly and reviewing his

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knowledge, that shall increase. So here

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again, what they’re looking at in, in the yeshiva, we

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would call bekiyus and b’iyun

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a normal nomenclature we would call

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encyclopedic study and a study in

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depth. And that’s a good translation

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of terms that you really never ever translate.

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And now a word from our Sponsor.

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Thanks. And now back to our podcast.

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So it really is, I must say I tried to do Daf

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Yomi for about a year and a half. That’s all I lasted. You didn’t enjoy

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it because you couldn’t really understand it, right? I love to dive

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deep. I love to dive deep and not so wide. Me too. And

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that’s, and that’s what we do on Madlik week in and week

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out. But I love the fact that the rabbis are

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talking about pedagogy and they’re talking about

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it in a very profound way and

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they’re saying that you have to, you have

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to take your study in little bite

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sized pieces and then savor them and go over them and

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review them. And that is in fact

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the biggest, I think, way to ensure

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that they affect you and they change the way your life

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is. And you know, I have a friend who’s a,

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a defense lawyer for criminals and

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when it comes to the police and lawyers, they have

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techniques about making the

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potential criminal repeat the story over and over again.

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We all know they divide the people if there were two culprits

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to get variations of the story.

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But just having the same person repeat the story

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over again is to look for consistency

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they have getting new details. Asking an

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individual to walk through an event again often

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leads to reminiscence, remembering minor details that didn’t

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seem important in the first telling. I love this

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increasing cognitive load. So

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by by asking someone to recount the subject and

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write it over again, maybe outside of

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chronological order, increases the mental

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effort required, which makes people say things that they might not

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thought of before or make them slip. I think that it’s

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a fascinating mirror to look at how

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lawyers and police use

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repetition to try to get to

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the truth. And clearly there’s always going to be cross

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examination. But you have all of this in the way

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that our texts are studied. And I think what comes clear from this,

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I’d love to know your take is that we have nothing to hide. In other

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words, we are willing to

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project and to enable our texts to be

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looked at in multiple ways. We are not afraid of

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the variant readings. If you go back to that concept

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of different texts make it into the canon,

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I just think it’s a wonderful lens to look at this through

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in terms of the techniques we use.

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Torah is a. Is an old famous idea, right? There are 70

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faces to the Torah. So that’s interesting. Rabbi Lamb, who was the president

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of Yeshiva University, his book is called 70 Faces of

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the Torah, his collection of his sermons, because there are so many different

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ways to look at it. And that’s what’s so great. You know, Madlik is like

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the rabbi sermon. He gives a sermon on the same portion every

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single year. And the good rabbi knows how to turn it over and

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over 70 different, different ways. But again,

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I think the shivim panim l’Torah, that there were 70

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faces to the Torah. And the other phrase that I used

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that this and this. And what of course you’re referring to is,

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you know, the joke about the rabbi who talks to a husband and wife or

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having an argument, and he comes out and he goes, well, the wife is

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right. And then he listens to the husband and he goes, the husband is right.

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So his rebbitzin asks him, how can they both be right? And he goes, you’re

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right. Also, you’re. The point is that

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by saying shivim panimla Torah, especially

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when it comes to a sacred text, I think is

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radical because what we’re saying is that there,

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at least from our perspective, there is

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no ultimate truth. There are different faces,

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different lenses that we can look at and different

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reflections that. That reflect maybe the same kernel.

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But clearly, we submit is

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the word I was looking for. We submit our texts

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to the same type of critical review that I think

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is in a court of law, even if that’s capital punishment and

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criminal law. Fantastic. So

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what I discovered, and I discovered it from a

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amazing article. It was an op ed in

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the New York Times this past week. And

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what the Op ed was called is There’s an ancient

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solution to our modern crisis of attention.

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It was written BY A professor, S.J. Murray, who is a

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professor of great texts and creative writing at

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Baylor University. And he quotes

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Seneca. I had Never realized that Lucius

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Aeneas Seneca was. He lived in. He

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was born in Cordova, Spain in 4 B.C. i

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mean, Cordova is. You didn’t know that anybody was in Cordova Spain

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in 4 BC he wasn’t. And maybe what. He left

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a few things in the water because Cordova, what is.

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Is. Is a key city.

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Many great scholars passed through many. The Rambam was

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there from southern Spain. That’s where the Rambam was born. Yeah, it’s very

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important there. Okay, so there was something in the water.

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But again, putting it into context, this is before

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the rabbis of the Talmud. And I would say

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that Seneca could have been fairly widely read. Listen to what

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he says. And now I’m quoting from

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letters from a Stoic. Letter number two.

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Judging from what you tell me and from what I hear, I feel that you

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show great promise. I think he’s writing to a student.

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You do not tear from place to place and unsettle yourself with

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one move after another another restlessness of that sort

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is symptomatic of a sick mind. Nothing

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to my way of thinking is a better proof of a well

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ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop

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just where he is and pass some time in his own

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company. Be careful, however, that there is no element

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of discursiveness and desulteriness about his. This reading

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you refer to this reading of many different authors

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and books of every every description.

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You should be extending your stay among writers whose

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genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment

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from them. If you wish to gain anything from your reading that will

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find a lasting place in your mind. To be everywhere

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00:25:43.650 –> 00:25:46.050
is to be nowhere. It’s a great phrase.

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People. He could have been an

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existentialist. People who spend their whole life traveling

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abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find

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hospitality, but no real friendships. The

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same must needs be the case with people who never set about

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acquiring an intimate acquaintanceship with any one

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great writer, but skip from one to another,

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paying flying visits to all of them. I mean, this

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is the second part of Hofach bo or Hofach bo

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that he says you’ve got even until your old age.

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These are your friends and you’ve got to come back to them

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over and over again. And then he says something

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that this op ed picks up on. And actually the

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professor says he literally uses it. And Rabbi, I

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have to say, because I prepare for Madlik every

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week, I end up doing this organically.

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He says each day to acquire

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something which will help you to face poverty or death

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and other ills as well. After running over a lot of different

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thoughts, pick out one. One to be digested

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throughout that day. This is what I do myself, he

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says. Out of the many bits I have been reading,

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I lay hold of one. So fantastic.

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So it’s like every week I tried to pick a nugget and

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I’ve got to say, you’re thinking about it. You have to do that.

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Because to be everywhere is to be nowhere. So if you

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just say I want to study the Entire Parsha, you won’t be anywhere.

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You have to pick out one thing.

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It’s truly amazing. So this is what this

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professor writes in the New York Times. He says

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Seneca’s concept corresponds to what psychologists call

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deep processing. By returning to the same idea

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repeatedly, we signal to our brain that the idea is

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worth moving into the architecture of long term

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memory. Each time we retrieve an idea from memory,

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we also wrap wrap it in new associations, a process

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known as reconsolidation, which ensures that

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those ideas remain relevant to our life as time

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00:28:06.070 –> 00:28:09.750
goes on. About 2,000 years ago, the

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Roman philosopher Seneca warned of a crisis of attention.

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The problem wasn’t caused by smartphones or TikTok, writes

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this professor. It was because papyrus had become more

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widely available. As a result, scrolls became

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plentiful and wealthy leaders had access more

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texts than ever before. Seneca

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observed that the minds of those who read too many

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scrolls too quickly became restless and

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unsteady. This kind of mind was less able, he

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00:28:41.170 –> 00:28:44.610
noted, to stay in one place and spend time with

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itself. Seneca did not have access to modern

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scientific studies or survey data. But he would

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not have been surprised by our plight. Professors

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00:28:55.290 –> 00:28:58.970
report that students now have difficulty watching feature length

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00:28:58.970 –> 00:29:02.190
films, let alone finishing books.

466
00:29:03.150 –> 00:29:06.910
Fantastic. And it’s right of course. So

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I just feel there were parts of the Talmud that

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I didn’t even reference. I think it was in Avodah

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00:29:14.110 –> 00:29:17.670
Zora where they had different of the rabbis saying they

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00:29:17.670 –> 00:29:21.510
finished reading the Parasha and one of them wanted to read Tehillim and

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00:29:21.510 –> 00:29:24.990
another one wanted to read Mishle. And they were really

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00:29:24.990 –> 00:29:27.870
talking. And I think the overwhelming

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00:29:28.670 –> 00:29:32.170
approach was stick that you really

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00:29:32.250 –> 00:29:35.850
believe in. Don’t go from book to book. But the

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00:29:35.850 –> 00:29:39.010
parallelism of these two of

476
00:29:39.010 –> 00:29:42.730
Seneca and the Talmudic

477
00:29:42.730 –> 00:29:46.490
rabbis is amazing. One thing I will say for

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00:29:46.490 –> 00:29:49.930
the rabbis that as much or as little

479
00:29:50.090 –> 00:29:53.450
as they reflected what they read in Seneca,

480
00:29:53.690 –> 00:29:57.090
their traditions have stayed the test of time. Whereas

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00:29:57.090 –> 00:30:00.930
Seneca needs a New York op ed to

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00:30:00.930 –> 00:30:04.720
remind him back. Because truly what

483
00:30:04.720 –> 00:30:08.400
we do week in and week out is truly that it’s to

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00:30:08.560 –> 00:30:12.240
review the same material over again, to hold it

485
00:30:12.240 –> 00:30:15.840
close to us, to discover who we are, to meet old

486
00:30:15.840 –> 00:30:19.640
friends again. And of course that’s what keeps

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00:30:19.640 –> 00:30:23.440
our tradition alive, which is why it’s why it keeps going from

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00:30:23.440 –> 00:30:27.000
generation to generation. Okay, so that’s

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00:30:27.000 –> 00:30:30.330
amazing. This is great. Great. Enjoy Devarim, everybody.

490
00:30:30.890 –> 00:30:34.450
Have a meaningful Tisha Bav and we will see you guys all next

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00:30:34.450 –> 00:30:38.210
week. Be well. Enjoy Mishneh Torah. Read it

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00:30:38.210 –> 00:30:41.930
again and read it once more. Shabbat Shalom. We’ll see you

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00:30:41.930 –> 00:30:43.370
all next week.

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00:30:46.090 –> 00:30:49.730
Before you go, I’d love to hear from you. Ben Bag Bag

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00:30:49.730 –> 00:30:53.290
tells us to turn it over. Turn it over. Turn it over.

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00:30:54.020 –> 00:30:57.660
What’s one book, one Torah passage, one prayer or even

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00:30:57.660 –> 00:31:00.820
one song that you’ve returned to again and again?

498
00:31:01.380 –> 00:31:05.140
What did you discover the 10th time that you completely missed the first?

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00:31:05.620 –> 00:31:08.900
Share it in the comments. I promise to read every one of them.

My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform, and now on YouTube and Substack. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show Notes. This week on Pashat Pinchas, we celebrate the independence of Artzot Habrit, the United States. So welcome to Zelophehad’s Daughters of the Revolution. Rabbi it’s going to be Shabbos.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:02:12]:
Shabbos, July 4, 250 years to the United States. What could be better than that?

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:18]:
And what a better excuse than to look through our texts with a new lens. So here we are in numbers 26 1, and it starts by saying when the plague was over. And of course, this has to do with Pinchas, who has the name of the Parsha named after him. But once again, the Israelite community has sinned. They’ve been punished, and it’s time for a new census. God said to Moses and Eleazar, son of Aharon the priest, take a census of the whole Israelite community from the age of 20 years up, by their ancestral houses, all Israelites able to bear arms. So Moses and Eliezer the priest, on the steps of Moab at the Jordan near Jericho, give instructions about them, namely those from 20 years up, as God has commanded. Moses, the descendants of the Israelites who came out of the land of Egypt were Reuben, Israel’s firstborn descendants of Reuben. And now we’re going to start seeing him parse down to names that maybe thousands of years ago made sense to anybody. And they: “I knew that guy, I knew that clan, I knew that family”. But for us, what they’re showing is how material this was, how we were really going into the weeds. Descendants of Reuben: [Of] Enoch, the clan of the Enochites; of Pallu, the clan of the Palluites; of Hezron, the clan of the Hezronites; of Carmi, the clan of the Carmites. Those are the clans of the Reubenites. You really get a sense of disparate people joining together. There were 43,730 born to Pulu, Born to Pallu: Eliab. (9) The sons of Eliab were Nemuel, and Dathan and Abiram. These are the same Dathan and Abiram, chosen in the assembly, who agitated against Moses and Aaron as part of Korah’s band when they agitated against GOD. So, Rabbi, it’s not only going into the weeds in terms of families and clans, and you get this sense that they’re putting them together, but where appropriate, it’s even given a little bit of their baggage, their history, their culture. Yes, the Reubenites, those were the guys who brought us Dathan and Abiram. It is kind of fascinating. But if you throw yourself into it, maybe even put on your cap of the Constitutional Convention, you’re starting to see different groups, different states, different jurisdictions, different places throughout the country, and they’re all kind of coming together. It’s amazing, isn’t it?

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:05:12]:
It is amazing, yeah. I mean, it really makes this part of the Parasha, which in a way is kind of the dry part of the Parasha, it makes it really come alive.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:21]:
Well, we’re going to see in context. It absolutely provides the context that we need. So Emek Davar says, why does it start by saying it came to pass after the plague? The principal purpose of this census was to prepare for the apportionment of the land, as will be explained later. Therefore, the Torah first notes that it took place after the plague because those who remained alive were precisely those who would stand to inherit the land. That’s the Ibn Ezer’s view as well. But, Rabbi, it seems to me this is not the first time that we’ve had one of these lists. I mean, we started on Parashat Numbers itself, Bamidbar, and it started with a list.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:06:03]:
What do you mean? The book is called Numbers because all it has is a list of numbers of people. Right. So that it gave the book the name.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:12]:
So I think we’re going to see that first of all, there’s a little bit of an exception here because it doesn’t only include the landowners. We’re going to see it actually lists 13 tribes because it brings in the Levites too, who didn’t get land, presumably. But also this coming after the plague, it almost seems, and this is what I’m going to argue, that at a parashat drachim, at episodes, at discrete moments where calamity has occurred, where something is heard, the group has to regroup and almost in a sense recount, but maybe also rededicate themselves to this federation of tribes, make sure everybody’s counted, everybody’s a flag holder, everybody’s a card carrying member. And presumably especially after a plague, after hardship hits. And that’s what I am going to argue. But it is important to note that the classical commentators do not gloss over the fact that it all starts by saying, Vayehi Acharei HaMagefa.. so now we get to another one of the recitations and it says, these were the descendants of Gilead, Isaiah, the clan of Israelites, of Helak, the clan of Helakites. I mean, it almost sounds out of a comic book. And where we’re hearing names like Superman came from (Krypton), these sounds so foreign, all these names, these clans. Shechem, the clan of Shechemites, that rings a cord. Shmida, the clan of the Shmidites. Heifer, the clan of the Heiferites. And then in 26: 33 it says now Zelophehad son of Hepher had no sons, only daughters. The names of Zelophehad’s daughters were Mahla, Noah, Hagla, Milcha and Tirzah. We are going to see that these women are mentioned three times in our verses. But again, it’s adding some of the baggage, it’s adding some of the color. And we’re not going to go into the description of every one of these clans and tribes, just the ones that give us a little backstory. So God in 52 said to Moses saying, among these the aforementioned, shall the land be apportioned as shares according to the listed names, with larger groups increase the share, with smaller groups reduce the share. Each is to be assigned its share according to its enrollment. The land wherever is to be Apportioned by goral, by lot. And the allotment shall be made according to the listings of their ancestral tribes. Each portion shall be assigned by lot, whether for large or smaller groups. So this too, what we’re showing is. Rabbi, this is not some sort of de facto, some kind of just formulitic division of the land. We can imagine again if we put on our three sided constitutional congress hat they were discussing what’s fair, what’s right, how do we divide things up?

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:09:29]:
Isn’t it interesting that they use a lot? Right. They use something that’s totally by chance so that they want to make sure that it’s fair and even, I mean, that’s the over.

Geoffrey Stern [00:09:40]:
You can’t not but make any other conclusion. It’s not drash, it’s here. Rashi says the names of the tribes were written on 12 tablets and those of the 12 districts on 12 tablets. They mixed them up in an urn and the prince of a tribe inserted his hand into it and took out two tablets. They came up in his hand, the hand of the tablet bearing the name of the tribe and the tablet relating to the district that had been declared by the Urim and Tummim to be intended for it. And ultimately what it is a combination, a hybrid where the land was not divided by measurement alone. So they didn’t say 50 acres. 50 acres. 50 acres because one district is superior to another, but it was divided by estimating its fertility. A bad piece of land sufficient to sow a Kor was regarded as the equivalent of a good piece of land sufficient to sow a seir, all dependent upon the value of the soil. Rabbi, I don’t think Rashi’s reading stuff into here. The rabbis understood that this division, first of all, this bringing in of all of these clans and then this division of the apportionment that they were going to get was very thought out, very meticulous and fair. Overriding a term here, there’s no question about it.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:11:09]:
Yeah, I mean, that’s it. It was fair. It didn’t, it didn’t allow for favoritism. All the things that we could imagine in terms of trying to build order into a system of 3 million people where it’s very hard to create order.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:25]:
And it wasn’t cookie cutter either, because if you notice before it did say it was apportioned larger land to more people. This was almost representative government. I mean, Rashi has picked to talk about agriculture, but you can imagine other factors entering into it, sociological and things like that. Then in 26 and this is why I said, we really have 13 tribes here. These are the clans of Levi, the clan the Libnites, the clan of the Hebronites, the clan of the Machlites, the clan of the Mushites, and the clan of the Korah, Achites, Kohat Begat, Amrah. Their enrollment was 23,000, comprised all males from a month up. They were not part of the regular enrollment of the Israelites, since no share was assigned to them among the Israelites. So they get honorable mention, but they are mentioned. And we’re going to see that the number 13 has significance to us on July 4th. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Ramban says, and these are they that were numbered of the Levites, he says, I don’t know why he commanded the Levites should be counted here, what purpose it served now by counting them since they did not receive any portion in the land, answers the Ramban. Perhaps they were counted because it was only to these Levites that they gave the 48 cities to dwell in and their open land for their cattle and not to those who were born afterwards. Rabbi, the different tribes had different functions. We have something called Washington D.C. it does not have senators. I had to Google that. I had to look that up. It doesn’t have representation. The point is they lived in different types of areas, but they were all counted here after this Magefa in terms of creating this federation of clans of tribes. Now let’s get to the stars of our show. The daughters of Zelophehad. The daughters of Zelophehad of Manasseh family, son of Chefer, son of Gilad, son of Machia, son of Manasseh, son of Joseph, came forward. This is in 27 1. The names of the daughters were Machla, Noah, Hagla, Milka and Zirach. It names them a second time. They stood before Moses, Eleazar, the priests, the chieftains and the whole assembly. It’s a constitutional congress at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And they said, our father died in the wilderness. He was not one of the faction, Korach’s faction, that banded together against God, but he died for his own sins. A little bit of color, a little bit of context, and he has left no sons.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:14:09]:
That’s an interesting verse, right? That he wasn’t a bad guy. He may have been a sinner, but he wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t a rebel.

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:19]:
But again, the way I take it is, and I said in the intro, the disenfranchised. Here you have a constitutional congress 3,000 years ago, if you had to pick the lowest of the low, you might pick five daughters. You know, clearly women were. This was not a matriarchal society. And then not only were there five daughters, they were five daughters of a self proclaimed sinner. They’re coming up and they’re showing it all. They’re saying we are the disenfranchised. They say that. But the problem is you have just created this amazing methodology of dividing the land equally and fairly. We got a little question here and it relates to us because what is going to happen, happened to our father’s portion. Now, I know many people are going to read women’s lib into this and clearly, as I said before, the fact that these are women making the first constitutional argument is definitely significant. No one can take that away from the text. But what they’re arguing for is not women’s rights. What they’re arguing is they have punctured a hole. They found an inconsistency in this rule of dividing up the land because their father’s portion will fall through the cracks.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:15:39]:
Right. I mean that, that’s correct. I mean they, they found a problem in the law. And that’s so interesting because the Torah is the book of the law. And these women have found the fact that have found, you know, the case that’s not covered. We do that all the time. We study Talmud all the time. It’s all about cases and what cases are covered and what cases are not covered. But here it’s the Torah itself, which almost sounds like the Talmud. These five women almost sound like they’re rabbis who were sitting and studying the Talmud.

Geoffrey Stern [00:16:16]:
And I think there’s a piece of Talmud that says just that, that they were brilliant and they got it right. And of course, God said to Moses, the plea of Zelophehad’s daughters is just, you shall give them a hereditary holding among their father’s kinsmen, transfer their father’s share to them. Like any constitutional law or ruling from the Supreme Court, there are some conditions. In numbers 36, 6, it says, provided they marry into a clan of their father’s tribe, no inheritance of the Israelites may pass from one tribe to another. So again, Rabbi, putting on my constitutional hat, when you were trying to get those 13 states to join the union, that was not the time to get a little soft and say, but there are some times where Rhode Island is going to get diluted because its daughters are ….

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:17:11]:
No, you have to be strict to dilute the tribe.

Geoffrey Stern [00:17:15]:
They Were not. So I want to point out something that I’ve kind of been hinting at. There are many women in the Torah who we have no clue what their names were. Noah’s wife, no name, but she features in, Lot’s wife, no name. Pharaoh’s daughter, Jephthah’s daughter, who drove a stake through the Sirach’s head. We don’t even know her name. And here we have these five women who are mentioned three times. It is unbelievable. I mentioned in the introduction that these were not only women, but they were daughters of a Sabbath desecrator. Where did I get that from? So as regards what the sin of the father was that the daughters refer to, Rabbi Akiva said that he was the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath day. Rab Simon said he was the one of those presumed to disobey God command. But again, Rabbi, I think if you’re trying to make a case that everybody in this clan, everybody in these families, from the highest to the lowest, is representative, I don’t think you could have picked a better case than five daughters who had no brother, no man running the house. And their father was a famous sinner. He was the guy gathering those sticks on Sabbath that was put to death. It’s quite remarkable, quite remarkable.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:18:38]:
Now the second opinion is that he was from the Mapilim. That does relate to the case of the spies. But you know, the Mapilim were the people who went up, they try to conquer the land of Israel on their own. In a way they were just overly aggressive. But you know, what they would wanted to do was not altogether bad.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:59]:
I love that it brings in different potential narratives, but each person has an identity here. These are not numbers. If that is something that comes across in this narrative, I think it’s because it’s intended. And now a word from our sponsor. If there’s one thing we value at Madlik Podcast, it’s reading texts and talking about them. That’s why I’m excited to share something I created called VoiceGift PLAY. It fits in the palm of your hand like a remote control and clips onto any book. It’s inspired by those old school museum audio guides, but this is personal. VoiceGift PLAY stores up to 10 hours of audio across 999 numbered recordings. You simply enter a number to record a comment, memory or explanation and enter the same number to play it back. It’s perfect for B’ Nai Mitzvah, practicing their leyning, capturing grandpa’s favorite tune, or recording Chad Gad Yah in a voice that matters, go to voice.gift, that’s http://www.voice.gift and use code MADLIK for 15% off. Thanks. And now back to our podcast. Let’s go a little bit further. Before we move on to the Constitution in July 4th, I just thought it would be helpful to put a period in Zelophehad’s Constitutional query. We are about to celebrate Tisha B’Av. People might not realize that while Tisha B’Av is the saddest day of the year, a few days later, the 15th of AV, it’s like Valentine’s Day in Rabbinic Judaism, that girls used to go dancing outside, and it was considered one of the most happy days. This was the day, according to the Talmud in Taanit, in which the members of different Tribes were permitted to enter one another’s tribe. So literally, it goes back to Zelophehad and it says, you know what? We’re not Rhode island joining the 13 anymore. We’ve lived in the land. People feel a little bit more comfortable. And maybe what defines us is less that we belong to that clan, but more that we, I don’t know, we’re a New Yorker or we’re a New Englander. There are other things that define us that we won’t be challenged by a woman marrying outside of a historic clan. These laws developed, these identities of the different clans developed. And I just think it’s precious.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:21:47]:
Absolutely precious. Fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:50]:
So now we’re going to get into federalism. And in the first Parsha of Bamidbar; Numbers, we talked about a scholar named Daniel Elazar who makes a case that the two greatest examples of what he calls federalism occurred in the ancient Israelite federation of tribes and the 13 colonies. And it’s going to be July 4th in a few days. What better time to bring this up to date? So he says federalism has to do with the need of people and polities to unite for common purpose, yet remain separate to preserve their respected integrity. It is rather like wanting to have one’s cake and eat it, too. Politically, a covenant involves a coming together of basically equal humans who consent with one another through a morally binding pact, establishing a new framework. Rabbi I think it is sublime that the Hebrew word for the United States is our Artzot Habrit.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:22:57]:
You love that, don’t you?

Geoffrey Stern [00:22:58]:
It is the land of the covenant, the person, Yehuda Halevi, whoever Ben Yehuda, who formulated that, understood the subject matter of today’s podcast. The covenant idea has within in it the seeds of modern constitutionalism, writes Daniel Elazar mutually accepted limitations on the power of all parties. We had that with the bnot Zelophehad for the good of keeping the Constitution. They couldn’t marry out for a few generations. But it is to preserve and that’s what they were arguing for, to preserve this federalism. So we’ve all seen the play Hamilton in Federalist paper number nine. He talks about the definition of a Confederate republic seems simply to be an assemblage of societies. The extent, modifications and objects of the federal authority are mere matters of discretion. So long as the separate organization of the members be not abolished, you have to keep your identity so long as it exists by a constitutional necessity for local purposes through it should be in perfect subordination to the general authority. Literally what they were imagining was this type of federalist association of the different states. And I will argue for the people within those states, whether those people are families, clans or individuals, constituent parts of the national sovereignty. So I said to my good buddy ChatGPT, were there any speakers during the constitutional era who actually made a reference to the 13 or 12 tribes and reflected on them and the states? So There was a Reverend Joseph Huntington, pastor of the First Church in Coventry, Toland College, Connecticut. And he says “these 13 United States or tribes of Israel”, making a clear comparison in language to the civil structure between America and Israel. Good old Thomas Paine says that the Hebrew form of government was a kind of republic administered by a judge and the elders of the tribes and that it was sinful to acknowledge a king other than God. Rabbi One thing they all agreed upon is when we get to the book of Samuel and Israelites pick a king, that was the end of it. They were picking their [King] George. But until then they were a shining light on the hill. There was another preacher named Samuel Langdon, and he actually became the president of Harvard from 1774 to 1780. Langdon recounted how God had commanded Moses to bring 70 men chosen from among the elders and officers and present them at the tabernacle so that they might share the burden of government with him. Remember Yitro? That’s what Yitro is about. Thus the American preacher concluded a senate was constituted as necessary for the future government of the nation. Like Huntingdon before him, Langdon purposely conflated the American (or rather Latin) and Hebrew nomenclatures Let’s have a drum roll. Senate with Sanhedrin. exegesis was foreseeable. The Hebrew government I never would have dreamed. Rabbi but these. There are scholars that say that the senate took its name as much from the Greek [and Roman] Senate as from the Sanhedrin. So every tribe, Langton pointed out, had elders and a prince with which Moses did not interfere. Those tribal leaders had an acknowledged right to meet and consult consent of the congregation to do whatever was necessary to preserve good order and promote the common interest of the tribe. In short, according to Langdon’s interpretation, the tribes resembled the American states under the Constitution. They were quasi autonomous, semi sovereign entities. Also, as in the United States, the local government of the Israelite tribes was structurally very similar to the general government. Each had a president and senate at its head, while the whole of the Hebrew people assembled and gave their voice in great matters. Instead of the twelve tribes of Israel, we may substitute the thirteen states of the American Union. That is a quote.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:27:46]:
That’s a quote. That’s amazing.

Geoffrey Stern [00:27:48]:
You can find in the show notes the text of these speeches. The main speech by Langdon is called the Republic of the Israelites, an example of the American states. And this is not history in reverse. This was in 1780. He delivered this. But he was a lifelong believer in it. John Huntington also talks about. What he does is he actually shows that he’s a scholar. And he read Parashat Pinchas because he says, we find the nation by divine order, composed of a number of states, that is to say, 13, called the tribes of the children of Israel. Jacob had 12 sons, but then, you know, the tribe of Joseph was subdivided and became two tribes, that is the tribe of Ephraim and the tribe of manasseh, which made 13 united, free and independent states. They didn’t have to be. And they didn’t all make the direct connection. But it’s cute that this one did. It shows the level of knowledge they had of our scripture. I used to go to Public School PS6 in Manhattan, and we used to pledge allegiance to the flag every morning. I understand that in Congress they pledge allegiance every morning. I wish they would pay attention and have a little more Kavannah. But the history of the Pledge of Allegiance was written not in the 1700s. It was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892, 27 years after the Civil War. אַחֲרֵ֣י הַמַּגֵּפָ֑ה And I put that in there. It was when our nation was broken, when the Constitution cracked, that he felt there had to be. And this was a minister, by the way, in the original verbiage, it was written for the youth. It did not include God’s name. He decided not to put that in because he didn’t want to divide people. It says, I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. You have this one nation and you have liberty and justice for each individual. This kind of sums it up. And Rabbi, if it reminds you in Deuteronomy 20 when it says God says atem nitzavim hayom, you stand this day, all of you, before the Eternal your God, your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, the entire body of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from wood chopper to water drawer to enter into the covenant of the Eternal, your God, which the eternal your God is concluding with you this day with its sanctions in order to establish you this day. And we were on the steps of Moab, about to cross into the promised land as God’s people and in order to be your God as promised you. I think that 250 years is a good time to look at our declarations, look at the commitments, to pledge allegiance to this amazing concept of being united. Disparate people united by an idea that doesn’t detract from our individuality, but actually celebrates our individuality, but makes us one and united for a greater good.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:31:19]:
Love it. Happy July 4th. Happy 250. Here’s to another 250 and many more.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:26]:
Yes, and we will survive any Magefa (plague). Actually, the silver lining of surviving a magefa, of going through a hard time is reconstructing and rededicating ourselves. And I think both in America and Israel, we are going through tough times. We need to rededicate ourselves.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:31:44]:
Amen.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:45]:
Before we sign off, we’d like to leave you with a question. This week’s Parsha reminds us that unity doesn’t require uniformity, that tribes, families and individuals can remain distinct while sharing a common covenant. So here’s our question: what is the one value or commitment that can still unite people who profoundly disagree? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment below and let’s continue the conversation together.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:32:16]:
Shabbat Shalom, everybody. Happy July 4th.

Geoffrey Stern [00:32:19]:
Shabbat Shalom. Yom ha’atzmut l’Artzot Habrit Samayach . See you all next week.

My name is zGeoffrey Stern, and at Madlik we light a Spark and shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform, and now on YouTube and Substack, we also publish a source sheet on Sefaria and a link is included in the show Notes. This week we read Parashat Chukkat Balak, a summer parasha. We also month of Tammuz and have just crossed the summer solstice. We are about to begin the three weeks of mourning and the situation in Israel is once again uncertain. Welcome to a midsummer nightmare. So, Rabbi, it is interesting times that we live in, but I am sure that those who are very troubled by the current edition of the Iran deal will be talking about the three weeks and the bad news that occurs to the Jews during this period. Clearly, while other people are celebrating a midsummer’s night dream, we Jews in the middle of the summer are agonizing about our history and our future.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:02:41]:
I mean, that’s for sure true. I mean, obviously the fact that the temples were destroyed on the ninth day of that fell during the summer, the rabbis don’t make a point of the fact that it is in the summer, but we all know and it has a lot to do with summer camp and kids, that the summer is associated with Tisha B’av and the summer is associated with destruction and, you know, in Messiah and all those kinds of things. So it’s interesting the way that kind of evolved over time, even though in the earliest sources that wasn’t really such a big deal.

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:17]:
So we’re used to looking at the December dilemma where we compare maybe how we Jews celebrate the middle of the winter, the depths of darkness. But I don’t think we look enough at the summer solstice and how our culture celebrates, commemorates, lives through it, as opposed to what Shakespeare was clearly talking about. A Midsummer’s Night Dream is about a party. Makes sense. As I said in the intro, the sun is shining, we’re in the middle of the summer. You would think it would be a time to celebrate. But near Stonehenge, they seem to have now found. It was in the Times that I picked it up, they found 48 pits that are carbon dated 5,000 years ago. And based on what they found there, broken shards of dishes and jugs and food and bones that must have been eating. The idea is there was a celebration there as well. And if you’ve ever seen pictures of the sun peeking out through stoneheads, it’s on that longest day of the year and boom, it’s set up so that you see it. You can really see how it’s epic. And it is the pinnacle of something and something to celebrate. I mean, I think you don’t need. Need a philosopher to tell you that the way you observe and travel through the calendar obviously affects your mindset. But there are some scholars that I dug up, Jonathan Z. Smith, who really sees religion as an act of deliberate human ingenuity and imagination. And he focused a lot on sacred calendars. And we don’t do that maybe enough. But clearly the cycle of the year is a language in and of itself. It really impacts the way we think. And there were modern additions to that, like summer camp, as you mentioned.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:05:12]:
Now, I think first of all, you think about it for a minute. So yesterday was the longest day of the year. And there was a big music festival in Paris. Now, around the world, they had the celebration, the longest day of the year. When you think about it, today was a little shorter than yesterday. Each day is going to be a little shorter until December 21st. First. Now that’s a kind of frightening to think that we’re now on a downward trajectory until the coldest, you know, darkest time of the year. And here I’m here in Paris, and it was 102 degrees today. And you know, and it got dark. Shabbat was out at 11:04, so you can’t get any later than that. But that’s it, it’s over. Because now we’re starting to get shorter and shorter and shorter. And you’re 100% right. It’s a little bit depressing to think that December 21st is right around the corner.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:09]:
So tell me, what were the celebrations like in Paris? How did you feel it? Because in New York you don’t feel it at all.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:06:14]:
We had a wedding, so we didn’t participate. I’ll tell you the only way we knew. They were worried that there was going to be traffic leaving the city because of these music celebrations. But, you know, but June 21st is a day of celebration. You know, it’s the pinnacle. We’ve reached the pinnacle, the longest day of the year. And again in Europe it’s more of a big deal than it is in America, because when it gets dark at 11 o’, clock, we finished dinner tonight at 9:30 and we started walking home. It really looks like 2 o’ clock

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:43]:
in the afternoon, so. So another scholar, Mircea Eliade, wrote actually a book, Sacred Time and Myths. And again, I’m wondering if how much of your feeling of it’s the longest day, which translates in tomorrow is getting a little shorter, is kind of something that’s written into your DNA as a Jew, or is this how everyone else feels? Or is there an alternative Eat, drink and be merry? It’s just something to celebrate. Stop with the worry already. I’m just curious because we’re going to look a little bit in our tradition where some of that is baked in. They did see the decline at that moment of the pinnacle.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:07:29]:
Yeah, I mean, it’s hard to know. I know that, you know, Shabbat candida lining this week, if last week in New York it was 8:14, so this week it’s going to be 8:13. Like it doesn’t really make any difference. But that’s, you know, that’s symbolic in the fact that we’re starting to get shorter.

Geoffrey Stern [00:07:47]:
You know, you just said something that triggered a thought in my mind because our religion and there are other religions I think that operate this way, but certainly ours is so set in the calendar at least once a week. You need need to know when the sun sets. It’s kind of like a built in Stonehenge. We take it with us. And you really feel that because you see the numbers. I’m wondering if that’s a part of it. I mean, Other religions, the secular calendar is midnight. There’s nothing in the universe that signals midnight. It’s something that you read on your clock. But we really do live by sunrise and sunset, whether it’s our prayers, whether it’s the weekly Shabbat, So maybe that enters into it for sure.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:08:32]:
I mean, and the Muslims are like that too, you know, I’ll just say something interesting, since we want to talk about other religions. You know, the Muslims have Ramadan, and Ramadan is they fast the daylight for 30 days. Now, Ramadan is interesting because Ramadan shifts to different periods during the year. Each year it jumps 11 days earlier. So some years Ramadan is in the middle of the summer and they fast till 9 o’ clock at night. And sometimes Ramadan is in December and they fast till 4 o’ clock in the afternoon. So they’re also very sensitive in terms of Ramadan to, you know, the period, the time of year.

Geoffrey Stern [00:09:10]:
So again, that would be a study worthwhile. Which. What happens when you have a culture where holidays are not linked to the solar cycle at all, such as the Muslims? You know, if the Christians followed a similar calendar, Christmas could be in August, one year. What does that do to your psyche? Is outside of our realm of expertise or wisdom. Maybe someone’s written about that, but with us, that’s an amazing segue into the one posse that really determined that we did have to adjust. The word is intercalate our calendar. So in Deuteronomy it says, observe the month of Aviv. Aviv means either spring or when the crop begins to bud and offer a Passover sacrifice to the eternal your God. For it was in the month of Abiyiv that God took you out of Egypt. Rashi says this means before it comes, watch whether it will be capable of producing ripe ears. So he takes the Aviv to be a fruit that blossoms, so that one may offer the omer meal offering during it. And if not. So if you’re at a time of year that you think is Aviv, but it’s not blossoming yet, if you don’t see that yet, then you have to intercalate the year, meaning add a month to the winter period. In Hebrew, it’s aver et. So we Jews kind of learn from this. There might be other places as well that we have a hybrid between a lunar calendar where every month is Mechadesh, it renews, and the solar calendar, which is the seasons of the year. And because of Passover for sure, maybe others as well, we have to adjust our calendar. But the solar year Therefore becomes important. Now that is also comes out in the commandments. We all know there are 613 mitzvot, but as they reference them that Rav Simlay taught in Makot 23B, he says 365 prohibitions corresponding to the days of the number of days in the solar year. So again, many people think that, that Judaism operates on a lunar calendar. Clearly the solar calendar entered into their symbolism, entered into their worldview. You can’t ignore it.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:11:41]:
Right? That’s for sure. I mean, that, that actually I mentioned before about Ramadan. That’s the difference between Judaism and Islam. Islam is completely lunar. Islam doesn’t incorporate the solar year, but Judaism incorporates the solar year. And since the lunar year is 11 days shorter than the solar year, and therefore the lunar year would jump earlier by 11 days. So every three years we need a shnata ibor. And you know, of course, the word ibor means pregnant. The year is pregnant because it has an extra month. So therefore the year is pregnant. Literally. You can’t beat that use of that phrase there.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:18]:
And we, of course, because we’re matlic, would say it’s also pregnant with meaning. Right? I mean, that’s just the way we think. But the point is that when I talk about the summer solstice, people shouldn’t look at me and go, are you kidding? That has nothing to do with Judaism. No, the solar year was important. And now we’re going to come across a piece of Talmud that really does, I think, kind of paraphrase what you were saying a second ago. When you felt the day after the solstice, you already felt a little bit of dread, you felt a little bit of the days are getting shorter. So this is what it says with regard to the dates of these festivals. The sages taught when Adam, that means the original Adam, the first man, saw that the day was progressively diminishing as the days became shorter. Here in the translation it says the autumnal equinox. But the truth is he could have seen it on June 23. He did not yet know that this is a normal phenomenon. And therefore he said, woe is me. Perhaps because I sinned, the world is becoming dark around me and will ultimately return to the primordial state of tohu and vohu, of chaos and disorder. And this is the death that was sentenced upon me from heaven. He arose and spent eight days in fasting and in prayer. Once he saw that the season of Teyvet, the winter solstice, had arrived, and saw that the day was progressively lengthening after the solstice, he said, clearly the days become shorter and then longer, and this is the order of the world. So again, the rabbis in this piece of Talmud recognize that we are all affected by the shorter days and the longer days and that it’s natural to have those types of feelings that you kind of just vary from your, from your kishkas, from your gut said, this is how we all feel. And so like any great midrash, this translates something that become very natural, but I will argue maybe reflects a uniquely Jewish approach to how we view these seasons.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:14:36]:
It’s such interesting psychology because you’re right, I say, you know, a piece of me said that today’s a little shorter than yesterday and we’re getting close to December. But I, I’m not worried because I know when we get to December, the days will start getting long again. But Adam, Adam in the Garden of Eden, he was nervous because he didn’t know how that the cycle would continue. And I think that’s really beautiful. The cycle of the year is the cycle of life. And the greatest comfort we have when things are bad is the fact that things are going to get better.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:09]:
Yes. And that’s how we typically feel, I think, certainly as Jews. And I would say that would be the gut response I would have when I repeat and retell this midrash around Hanukkah time. And I say that as we Jews are surrounded by darkness, we light a candle. That is Mosef v’holech. If you read the midrash that we just talked about a second ago, you will notice the language kind of resonates that he saw the days getting shorter and shorter and then ultimately he saw that they were mosefer choleg. So it kind of ties into that. And now a word from our sponsor. If there’s one thing we value at Dalik Podcast, it’s reading texts and talking about them. That’s why I’m excited to share something I created called VoiceGift PLay. It fits in the palm of your hand like a remote control and clips onto any book. It’s inspired by those old school museum audio guides, but this is personal. Voice Give Play stores up to 10 hours of audio across 999 numbered recordings. You simply enter a number to record a comment, memory or explanation and enter the same number to play it back. It’s perfect for B’ Nai mitzvah, practicing their laning, capturing grandpa’s favorite tune, or recording Chad Gad Yah in a voice that matters. Go to Voice gift. That’s http://www.voice and use code MADLIK for 15% off.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:16:51]:
Thanks.

Geoffrey Stern [00:16:52]:
And now back to our podcast. What we’re going to explore now is something that I hadn’t really given some thought to, and most of us, I don’t believe, do either, which is the opposite of that. We all know how we feel in the darkness of the winter and how we light that light, and that gives us hope. What we’re going to turn to now is what we feel in the lightness of the summer and how, at least from a Jewish perspective, we seem to find that feeling of dread and uncertainty. So first of all, let’s talk about the month that we’re in. I believe last week when we recorded Madlik, it wsas Rosh Hodesh Tammuz. We are in Tammuz now. There’s going to be a fast day coming up, Shiva aserbeh, Tammuz, the 17th of Tammuz, which marks the beginning of the three weeks of mourning. So Tammuz is the tenth month of the civil year, but the fourth, fourth month of the Jewish year, starting with Nisan. And just like the modern Assyrian calendar, Tammuz is the name, an ancient name in the ancient near east. It’s 29 days and the name of the month was adopted from the Syrian and Babylonian month Arab Damuzu, named in honor of the Mesopotamian deity Damuzid, Hebrew Tammuz, known to the Sumerians as Damuzid the Shepherd. And it’s an ancient Mesopotamian and Levantine deity associated with agriculture and shepherds, who is also the first and primary consort of the goddess Inanna, otherwise known as Ishtar. This becomes interesting, and so far I’m quoting from our good buddy Wikipedia. Tammuz is mentioned by name in the Book of Ezekiel. We’re going to visit that in a second and probably alluded to in other passages from the Hebrew Bible. In late 19th and early 20th cent century scholarship of religion, Tammuz was widely seen as a prime example of the archetypal dying and rising God. And that’s God with a small g. But the discovery of the full Sumerian text of Inanna’s descent in the mid 20th century appeared to disprove the previous scholarly assumption that the narrative ended with Dumuzid’s resurrection, and instead revealed that it ended with Damuzid’s death. However, the rescue of Dumuzid from the underworld was later found in the text return of Dumuzi translated 63 so Rabbi, there’s a little bit of a controversy about whether this fallen God who dies in the middle of Tammuz, actually is resurrected and comes back to life. Or it’s a real doubter and he goes down in the grave. But it is rather interesting that we have a month named after a pagan God, is it not?

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:19:50]:
Yeah, very interesting. I mean, and obviously that’s something that happened later you say it’s mentioned in the book of Ezekiel, that’s something that happened after the destruction of the temple, during the time of the temple and the. And the verse in Zechariah says you refer to the fast of the fourth. So it’s the fast of the fourth month is this 17th day of Tammuz, which is the fast of the fifth month, which is Tisha B’Av during the fifth month. Month. So they describe these days not in terms of Thomas and ah, but in terms of fourth and fifth month. But that is interesting, right? And that’s. That shows, by the way, an evolution, we would say today, Geoffrey, an assimilation of the Jews into the culture and that they actually took the names of the month. Our Jewish months become the names. And I just was officiated a wedding yesterday, and in the ketuba we said Tammuz. What a crazy thing to say. Tammuz in the ketuba, which is after this, you know, this, this ancient God. Why do we say Tammuz? But that became part of our acculturated tradition that we adopted the names of these months. And if you ask any yeshiva Bacher, every Yeshiva bacher will tell you that Tammuz must be holy, right? There must be a name directly from God on that side.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:07]:
I was talking to my brother the other day and he gave me from the Kabbalah Center the meaning of Tammuz. And trust me, it had not to do with an ancient deity. But anyway, this is what Wikipedia quotes is Ezekiel 8, 14, and it says, next God brought me. This means he brought Ezekiel to the entrance of the north gate of the house of God. And there sat the woman bewailing Tammuz. She was Mevachot, et ha Tammuz. And I was told, have you seen a mortal? You shall see even more terr abominations than these. So this is a fascinating pasuk, because on the one hand, number one, it shows that, and this should be no big surprise that there were Israelites and Jews who were still worshiping foreign gods. In this case, it’s Tammuz. But she was crying for Tammuz. Again, if you, if you connect the dots, you know, the Tammuz was someone who was a deity that was more at a certain period, I would assume, during Tammuz. And then if that’s not interesting enough, then Yechezkel says, and as a punishment, guess what? There are going to be more terrible things that happen than these. He’s almost precasting the terrible things that happen during Tammuz. Am I reading too much into this?

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:22:40]:
No, you’re reading it. That’s a very interesting verse. Verse, right. I mean, that’s a funny way to say it, right? You wouldn’t say. Doesn’t deserve the, you know, the proper article, the hey at the beginning. But that’s obviously with the way they referred to it. Anyway, it’s a great verse and.

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:03]:
And again, it’s like so many other things that forecast because the Jews cried in the desert, many bad things happened on that day here because they worshiped Tammuz. Again, they are going to have some real things to warn about. Interestingly, in Ezekiel 1, where Ezekiel has the famous Merakava vision, the vision of the chariot, the real vision of all that is in our mystical tradition, it’s in the 13th year, on the fifth day of the fourth month. It also happens to be in the month of Tammuz, which again, a kind of lit a light for me that in this Tammuz was bad, was tragedy, was going down to the depths, but also the ability to see the light, to see this.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:24:03]:
I want to just tell you that the verse says in Zechariah, Vitzom Hashvi, and the first of the seventh month and the first of the tenth month, which is the tenth of Taylor, it. They will be days of celebration. So even the fast days which are identified as these months will be. They will be days of celebration. So that’s interesting that you quote the verse from the beginning of Ezekiel, because that’s the same idea. And that’s the same thing as when the days get shorter and the days get longer. And that is that we believe the greatest consolation we have is that even when things are really bad, there’s only one way to go. And that is up.

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:52]:
Absolutely. And that. Thank you for adding that verse. Maybe text me the sukim for that and I’ll add it to the Sefaria show notes. But again, along with what you just said, is a tradition that I have the source in the show notes. But I think if you ask people, they will tell you that Tisha B’Av is the day that we sunk to the depths. But it’s also the day when the quote unquote Messiah will be born in Ekheraba. It Says there’s a conversation between a mother whose child is born on Tisha B’Av. It says, because my child has a horse. Fate. She says he said to her, the sage said to her, why? She said to him, because upon his arrival the temple was destroyed. The sage said to her, we rely on the master of the universe that upon his arrival it was destroyed, and upon his arrival it will be rebuilt. So again, again, this concept that you said a second ago, that we Jews can see the glass half full even as we are looking at the glass half empty, or completely empty in the case of Tisubov. So it is really kind of parallel to what we would think of in terms of Kislev and being in the depth of the winter. But I take away from this and I can’t but think of the current situation that we’re in, that in the heights of the summer when that light is streaming through Stonehenge and we look like we’re in the pinnacle. We Jews, based on this kind of narrative and this and our experience over that same 5,000 years as those people living in, celebrating in those pits, we’ve learned to think differently. And the way we think is that we never can afford to be at the pinnacle and that we always have to find and work at finding the real light and the real potential. And I think that’s the real lesson that we took from a Tammuz, which was a deity who perished at the height of. Height of the. Of the solstice. And we. We must have learned and eternalized a message in there that leads us to look for what’s not obvious with all of the light shed on all of the details. Things might look bad or they might look good, but we look for that which is kind of underneath that we need to kind of work on. And we do find the potential. We do have that gnawing feeling within our gut that when things look like they’re good, that we have to be on. On guard. And I think that’s just part of our calendar. But clearly we are affected by the solstice like any other culture. But I think we do it in a uniquely Jewish way.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:28:00]:
I think that’s beautiful. What a great way to enter the. These shorter days. They don’t get short by much right now, but it’s something to remember as we reach those shorter days. Days. So we want to wish you a happy summer to everybody. Shabbat Shalom . This week we read. We read a double parsha getting us ready for the fast, the 17th of Thamus. And we look forward to seeing everybody next week. Thank you, Geoffrey; Bonsoir to everybody. Good evening, good night, and look forward to next week.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:30]:
Thank you so much. And we will see you all next week. Shabbat. Shabbat Shalom.

My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform. And now on YouTube and Substack. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show Notes. This week we read Parashat Korach. Join us as we jump into Korach’s crevasse and discuss creation and recreation in Judaism. I’ll tell you, Rabbi, my favorite verse, I would say, but it’s not a verse. My favorite sentence in all of our liturgy is ubetu mechadesh ma’aseh Bereshit, that God every day recreates creation. And here we have. We’re going to see the rabbis have a real problem with anything being created after the Genesis was over.

Adam Mintz [00:02:25]:
Yeah, I mean, it comes up a couple of times. I mean, it’s like the splitting of the sea. How can you have a splitting of the sea even though it breaks the rules of nature?

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:33]:
Good.

Adam Mintz [00:02:33]:
This is going to be an interesting exploration.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:36]:
And we’ve done Korach a few times, so who knew? I never knew this verse had the word Bria in it. So we start in Numbers 16:30. But if God creates a new creation and the ground opens mouth and swallows up them, all that is theirs and they go down in live in Sheol. So this is Moses talking. He says, then you will know that these men have scorned God. So it’s at the end of the rebellion and it’s almost like a test. But the Hebrew, as I said before, the Imbri, ah, yevra hashem. And if Moses says to God, you will create a new creation and create this crevasse to swallow them up. And then of course, it does use this word. Sheol means pit, I would say Everett Fox says sheol, the underworld, which in the Bible is a nondescript gray space, rather like the Greeks, Hades, and not the later heaven and hell of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So it’s not typically associated with Gehennom, which has that baggage. So we have those two kind of interesting words used in our verse.

Adam Mintz [00:03:48]:
That’s going to be a good. That’s going to be a good Madlik someday to talk about Shaol and Gehenna and hell and all those things. Okay, really good.

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:56]:
Well, we’ll touch upon it a little bit today. But first we have to get to the cowards. Ibn Ezra, he doesn’t want to have any part of it. He says bria. And if the word God will make a new thing. Some say that the word bria, a new thing, refers to bringing forth of something that was never in existence. He says, in other words, creation. I have already explained that the word bria is related to the word of Uvara. Hack in the hack of them, many cities have been split open and those who dwell in them have gone down to the pit. This guy is from California. He knows all about earthquakes and the earth opening up and creating a crevasse. He says there’s no issue here. It has nothing to do with creation. Just walk away from it. Right?

Adam Mintz [00:04:50]:
He’s forced to say that because he can’t imagine that there should be a new creation.

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:56]:
Okay. And it’s hard for us to understand how important this discussion is because frankly, for us, I don’t know, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. If God created the world and stopped, or if God created the world and kept on creating. But let’s look at the Mishnah, which is the earliest source we have, I think, for this, what seems to be a very profound philosophy. The Piuke Avot says in 5, chapter 5, 6, 10 things were created on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight, and these are them. Number one, the mouth of the earth. So it lists 10 things, including some that our listeners are surely aware of. The mouth of the donkey, that relates to Bilaam, the rainbow, maybe for Noah the Manna but it starts with the mouth of the earth. And Rabbi, it starts with the mouth of the earth because of our verse and i only realize this year, if our verse did not walk along, use that word, Bria creation, it would not have triggered. It’s truly a trigger for this Mishnah. But what the Mishnah is implying, and we’re going to see how Maimonides reads it in a second, is that everything ceased to be created on the seventh day. And in that Ben Hashot, in that twilight time, God added a few extra things. But as we’ve said so in the past, it’s kind of like writing a program that has programming in it for the year 2000, has programming in it for a lunar eclipse. Everything was created and written into the fabric of the universe according to this Mishnah, in the seven days of creation or at the last minute, at twilight of the last day.

Adam Mintz [00:06:46]:
Fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:48]:
So what does Maimonides say in his commentary on this Mishnah? He says, we have already mentioned in the eighth chapter, that’s one of his books, that they would not believe in creation by the divine will. At every instant they. I assume he’s referring to the rabbis. Rather, at the beginning of things, he placed into their nature that they should do everything that they would do in the future, whether they be things that would happen constantly, that being a natural thing, or whether it be something unusual, that it being a miracle, it is all one. Regarding this, therefore, they said on the sixth day he placed into the nature of the earth, that it would sink under Korach and his community. He goes on to say, and don’t think that these 10 miracles are all encompassing. If you have a miracle that happened is not included in this list, then it was actually just done during the first seven days. Get over it. But I think my first takeaway has always been one of amazing respect for the rabbis. So many religions are based on miracles that somehow when nature changes, it proves something, that somehow it’s a convincing argument and that somehow we want God to swoop down Deus ex machina and change things for us. And it seems that the rabbis, and this is amplified by Maimonides, have a real problem with miracles. And I’m proud to be part of that religion. What’s your take?

Adam Mintz [00:08:23]:
No, I mean, you know that I have a problem with miracles. The Judaism, at least the way we have it through the lens of Rambam, is a rationalist religion. And therefore the idea that there should be new creations, in a sense, that’s kind of a scary model. We we would prefer that Judaism makes sense for us.

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:44]:
So that’s on the one hand. But on the other hand, it does seem as though maybe if Maimonides had made this up by himself, I would say he’s over influenced by Greek philosophy. He’s over influenced by foreign philosophies that somehow have to understand how creation happened. It was a problem because it is miraculous, but they put it in a box. It was like the first power and the second power and then let’s move on. But we Jews, actually, if you read the whole Torah, God is very involved in humanity. He’s very involved with our lives. So I’m kind of torn between, on the one hand, loving the fact that there are no miracles and that we don’t emphasize or celebrate miracles, and on the other hand, that it kind of does say God’s role has kind of finished, at least as it relates to the physical world. Creation. That’s just something that’s kind of hanging over this discussion. Let’s go to the Talmud in Sanhedrin that actually talks about the episode that is under discussion in Sanhedrin 110a. It says, Rava taught. What is the meaning of that which is written? But if the Lord creates a new creation and the earth opens up its mouth, that is our verse says the Talmud, Moses said before the Holy One, blessed be he if Gehenna. Now, our readers, our listeners, need to know Gehenna is not mentioned in the Pasuk Gehenna. Am I right in saying it carries more baggage than Sheol?

Adam Mintz [00:10:37]:
It definitely does. Right. Definitely carries more baggage. It’s interesting that that’s the way they give it to us in the English here, because like Everett Fox said in the translation beforehand, Gehenna represents something that was important in Judaism and Christianity later. That’s not reflected in the Torah. Okay.

Geoffrey Stern [00:10:56]:
And it’s not simply the translation. The Talmud does say Gehennam. So this is what the rabbis are adding, right?

Adam Mintz [00:11:04]:
It’s already the rabbis, but it’s not in the Torah itself.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:07]:
Oh, absolutely. So let’s pause it out. Second, as you said, we might dedicate a whole discussion to this one day. But Sha’ Ul basically means the pit. And up until this moment, if you go through the whole Torah, when somebody dies, he might be gathered to his people, he might bless them. There’s no talk of another world, and he goes down into the pit, into the earth. It’s pretty physical. Gehennom, I think, really does carry with it. It’s not quite the hell of the Christians, but it does Carry it a little more baggage. Am I correct in that?

Adam Mintz [00:11:45]:
There’s no question that that’s right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:47]:
Okay, but you’re right.

Adam Mintz [00:11:48]:
It’s from the rabbis. It’s the Roman period, the Greek period. It’s a whole different thing than what the Torah is talking about.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:54]:
Okay, so this is what the rabbis put into Moses mouth. Moses said before the Holy One, blessed be he if Gehenna is already created, good. But if not, God should create it now. Now, if you just stop right there, that kind of fits into the narrative in an exciting way, because a rebellion just occurred. You could make a case that it was a unique rebellion. Maybe you could make the case that all of the shortfallings of the Jews until this moment were against God. We had the golden calf. We had murmurings. Here was a revolution against Moshe, and he needed some tools in his toolbox. He needed a fiery hell it to be able to hold that over somebody. And if you read that into this verse, it’s kind of into this sentence from the Talmud. It’s pretty good. He says, if God’s got a helm and a brimstone, I’m going to use it. And if he does it, he better create it. I just found that delightful.

Adam Mintz [00:12:57]:
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Yeah, that is great. Okay,

Geoffrey Stern [00:13:02]:
and now a word from our sponsor. If there’s one thing we value at Madlik Podcast, it’s reading texts and talking about them. That’s why I’m excited to share something I created called VoiceGift PLAY. It fits in the palm of your hand like a remote control and clips onto any book. It’s inspired by those old school museum audio guides, but this is personal. VoiceGift Play stores up to 10 hours of audio across 999 numbered recordings. You simply enter a number to record a comment, memory, or explanation, and enter the same number to play it back. It’s perfect for B’ Nai Mitzvah, practicing their layning, capturing grandpa’s favorite tune, or recording Chad Gadyah in a voice that matters. Go to Voice.gift, that’s http://www.voice.gift and use code MADLIK for 15% off. Thanks. And now back to our podcast. So now the rabbis say, for what was Moses asking? If we say that his request was for God to actually great Gehennim. But isn’t it written in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun? Ein chadash tachat Hashemesh. There are new creations after the six days.

Adam Mintz [00:14:30]:
There are no new creations.

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:32]:
There are no new creations after the six Days of creation. So first of all, we all know Qohelet; Ecclesiastes is wisdom literature. And probably that was not the intention of the writer. He was talking about the way people use it in our actually language and literature. But the rabbis, good. They took it as this seems to be the source for where the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot came from. And they seem to take it as nothing can be created. Just kind of interesting.

Adam Mintz [00:15:06]:
Yeah, I mean, but that’s not surprising because the rabbis often take verses out of context. Not just from the book of Ecclesiastes, but generally they take things out of context. So I’m not so worried about that.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:19]:
We’re not worried, but we do know that they felt compelled that there is this. They feel compelled to stop creation after creation finished. And they use this verse to amplify that. But you’re absolutely correct. What interests me more is that they felt compelled to do this. So what is their solution? Rather, Moses asked God to bring the opening of Gehenna close to there so that the assembly of Korach would be buried alive. So what it’s saying is he is talking to the staging. He’s saying, if Gehennom is here, fine. Otherwise I need you to send a truck to go get Gehenna. Because we need the opening in the earth tout suite, to swallow up these sinners.

Adam Mintz [00:16:09]:
Which is interesting, means that these things are created to. To. To solve a problem. Right? They. They needed to do something to the assembly of Korak. So therefore they. They made this new creation. No, God wouldn’t have made a new creation except that he needed it. The manna was a new creation, but he needed the manna because the Jews needed a way to eat in the desert.

Geoffrey Stern [00:16:34]:
Yes, yes. But what I love about this piece of Talmud is it mixes up a few things. There is no way that we cannot take Gehenna as an added layer to Sheol. It’s not a translation, it is an interpretation. It is an up to date ism where they. And they, therefore, I don’t think I’m stretching when they say in their mind, Moshe is actually asking for a new moral force. He’s asking for a new tool to hold over the sinners of Korach. And he says, if it exists, fine. Otherwise we better create it. They have a problem with that. So they mollify it by saying, we’re talking about transportation issues, not real creation issues. But I just love the mix of it all. So let’s go to the other extreme. This beautiful saying that say before the morning shema every day. And it says, hameer la’ arez veledarim oleh barachamim. He illuminates the earth and provides light for those who dwell on it with compassion. And it says, and his goodness renews every day continually the work of creation. So I did a little searching and I found the source for this is actually in the Talmud, in Hagigah and Resh Lockesh said, because sometimes you do wonder, rabbi, in our liturgy, was the liturgist making this stuff up?

Adam Mintz [00:18:10]:
I’d say in general, the answer is no. There always is an earlier source to

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:14]:
the liturgy, which again, and normally it’s a pretty obvious source, but here it’s not so obvious. So in Hagiga 12B Resh Lakish said. There are seven firmaments, and they are as follows. Vilon, rakia, shkalim, zehulun, ma’ on, mekon, and aravot. The gemara proceeds to explain the role of each firmament. Vilon, even in modern Hebrew, is a curtain is the firmament that does not contain anything, but enters at morning and departs in the evening and renews the act of creation daily, as it is said, who stretches out the earth as a curtain and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in it. So it’s actually it is God, because obviously these different firmaments are related to God, but it’s not that obvious or powerful. The liturgist deserves a lot of credit for taking that concept and giving it to you. Every morning when you wake up as if to say, today’s a new day, Adam. You’re waking up in the morning. You can do anything today.

Adam Mintz [00:19:35]:
I just want to say that, you know the way that the davening that the liturgy is arranged in the morning. So we have the Shema, which is the center of the liturgy, and the blessings around the Shema, actually correspondent to the paragraphs of the Shema. So the first thing of that God creates new things that corresponds to SHMA yisrael hashem, elokenu hashem. That is what God is. It says, listen, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. What does it mean? The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And so the. The blessing the liturgy comes to tell you what that means is that God creates everything. So you’re right to like that sentence more than any other sentence in the liturgy, because that really defines what God’s role in the world is, to create new things every day.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:26]:
That’s amazing. I think we can end the podcast right now. We have a new kavanaugh. When we say the Shema, we need to focus on the fact that what that means to tell us is that God is creating the world every day. And every day when you wake up, it’s a new day. The world is an oyster. Anyway, anyway, let’s go and see. In the Psalms, there is one more kind of allusion to this. It says in Psalms 104, send back your breath, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. Tishlach uchacha Yevraun Utah chadesh penei adama. Again, it’s just a beautiful interpretation. And I love the word for chadash, which of course comes also to us on the monthly cycle of Chodesh.

Adam Mintz [00:21:15]:
Today is Rosh Chodesh.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:17]:
Beautiful. So it’s perfect. So there’s this sense always in Judaism of renewal and of creating all over again. I did kind of know that there was this concept of perpetual renewal. And I found it, of all places, highlighted in Chabad. It seems that there’s a link to the doctrine of perpetual creation. And according to this article that I found the great work of Jewish philosophy, such as Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed, Remarx Pardus Rimonim, Rav Yeshaya Ahurowitz Shalach and Rav Shmiel Zalman of Ladi and the Tanya, I should say, discuss this doctrine of perpetual creation and cite spiritual, logical and philosophical proofs that such is indeed the nature of existence. I don’t know if this is the polar opposite of saying that God stops creating at the seventh day. I just feel that both of them, you can kind of have both in both hands. On the one hand, Eyn Somchina al hanes is a beautiful concept in the Talmud, Never rely on miracles. Not even our philosophy and our religion is based on the miracles. And on the other hand, when you live your life every day, it’s as if the world was created on that day. It’s kind of similar to having the two polar opposites of “I am from dust, from ashes” in the one hand, and the other is “bishvili nivrah haolam. The will is created. For me, I love this polarity.

Adam Mintz [00:22:54]:
Yeah. I mean, that tension is what life is about. Right. You need to be humble, but you need to be self confident at the same time.

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:03]:
So I think that if you had. I really do feel, and I would love if we could find a source for really why the rabbis had such a strong problem with God continuing creation afterwards. Of course, you know, we’ve discussed this before. Vayechal Elohim et yom Hashvi’ I v’ Eichal is ending. There is this sense of ending. It’s a word, Rabbi. It could be interpreted. Anyway, I’m curious and I don’t know if we’ll find the answer today of what was driving the rabbis to start the infinite, omnipotent God from creating after creation. I’m curious to know what your thoughts are. But I do believe that in Judaism, if you had to take those two poles, I would say making renewal is a much more powerful, powerful.

Adam Mintz [00:24:03]:
I would agree with you. I think it’s protecting the six days of creation. If God can do everything. So if God created the world, God could do everything, including including create that which wasn’t yet needed for creation. I think it’s something like that.

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:20]:
But it’s a little bit of a mystery. You know, it’s also a little bit of a mystery. The rabbis clearly ended up believing, as did all of the Jewish medieval philosophers, in Yeshmi ayin creation ex nilo from nothing. If you read Beresheat itself, it’s not already clear. God started creation and he took pre existing matter, it almost seems. But this became something that was a stake in the ground. And I think this is one of those things. And I’m willing to say as long as it has no implications for how I think and how I live my life, I’m fine. And actually we already discovered some positive implications. This idea of not relying on miracles, I think is a beautiful idea and distinct to Judaism.

Adam Mintz [00:25:08]:
Really very, very good. Yeah, I agree with you.

Geoffrey Stern [00:25:11]:
So let’s just finish up by talking now about how the rabbis almost are tripping over themselves in that Talmud in Sanhedrin, because what they actually are doing is they’re saying there’s nothing new. You can’t create gehennim. Whether they’re talking in a material sense or a philosophical sense, but by saying the word gehennim, they’re creating this new concept, or at least they’re comporting it. You know, the Torah itself has a shadowy note ocean of the afterlife. You know, the dead go to Sheol, a neutral underworld. We don’t have any stories about people coming back from the underlying coming back to life. But the rabbis read into sheol. Sheol is gehennim. And that creates an interesting literary effect. The rabbis are reading a later doctrine back into the earlier text, not the first text. So you could say that this sugya kind of what if the rabbis are creating a moment here. So in the process of kind of distancing themselves from creation, they are actually creating something and trying to put it into. That’s pretty fun.

Adam Mintz [00:26:29]:
That’s pretty good. Okay.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:31]:
It is kind of interesting. It’s not the first irony that we’ve had, but I do feel that there’s no question in the Rabbis minds Korach was sending… Moses was sending these people down to hell. And that’s not altogether clear in the text. As opposed to the Peshat, like we always used to say is he sent them to an untimely death when the earth opened up and sold.

Adam Mintz [00:27:02]:
Hell was not a factor in the Chumash. Right. It doesn’t matter whether it’s hell or not. He needed to get rid of them and he got rid of that.

Geoffrey Stern [00:27:09]:
So I want to end up by a famous slogan of the Chatam Sofer, the. As you know, and probably can fill in the blanks. Rabbi lived at the period of the Haskalah, of the beginning of the enlightenment of the Reform movements, where people were thinking outside of the box and really being Mechadesh, they were innovating and renewing. And he took, took an innocuous phrase of Hadash Yisroel min Hatorah that relates to what? The new crop. You can’t eat the new crop until a certain amount of time or until the second year. And he took that, as I would say, something that is an overarching directive of the ultra Orthodox community up until today, which is no more creation. Kadash is us from the Torah. And that’s even though we all know that the Talmud was full of creations, fixed prayer was not in the Bible. We had Kabbanot, the synagogue itself, the Passover, Seder, Ketubah, rabbinic holidays, and of course Gehennom itself was created.

Adam Mintz [00:28:27]:
It was a self serving concept of the Hasam Sofer because it was his way of rejecting the Reform movement.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:34]:
Yes, but I think the takeaway that I have today from Korach is that we have always, we have always renewed ourselves and it is baked into us even when we have some conflicting conceptual issues that we have to deal with as we did in this Parasha. But it’s that that reimagining of Moses in Sanhedrit to me is just pristine, where Moses says, I need hell. And if you’re not going to, if you haven’t created it yet, you need to create it now. It’s just, it’s just wonderful. So once again at Madlik we have taken four innocuous words. We’ve dived down into the crevasse and discovered a lot of gems and things to think about. Wonderful.

Adam Mintz [00:29:28]:
Fantastic. Shabbat shalom, everybody. Enjoy. Parashat Korach next week. Week double Parasha Kukat balak.

Geoffrey Stern [00:29:36]:
Does that mean we’re catching up to Israel?

Adam Mintz [00:29:38]:
We’re catching up to Israel next week. Correct.

Geoffrey Stern [00:29:40]:
Fantastic. Okay. Shabbat shalom, everybody, and see you all next week.

My name is Geoffrey Stern and at Madlik we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube and Substack. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria and a link is included in the show Notes. This week in the US we read Parashat Sh’lach through Contemporary Eyes with Pamela Pelled. Welcome Pam, Yesterday there were bombs falling in Israel and had we scheduled yesterday we would not be here. So it really is great to see you.

Pamela Peled [00:02:03]:
Thank you. It’s nearly midnight in Israel at the moment and last night as you say, we spent dodging missiles. So I might be a little bit bleary eyed, but I apologize.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:02:18]:
Thank you for joining us. We appreciate it.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:21]:
Absolutely. So the book that you wrote is actually was published I believe in 2011 and so from a certain perspective I felt like nothing had changed. It had kidnappings, it had press and media that were distorting the story. So I think the good news and the bad news is that your book could have been published today and maybe we’ll see. We would have to tweak it for TikTok and Instagram, but otherwise just like the Bible and the Torah portion, things never change.

Pamela Peled [00:02:55]:
I’m very happy to be connected to the Bible like that, but it’s true. It’s sad how the situation is possibly even worse today than it was during the Intifada.

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:07]:
Well, we’ll get into that, but let’s just because we are a parasha podcast, let’s start with the sources in numbers. And talking of the spies or the scouts, it says, thus they spread columnies among the Israelites. It’s really about spreading information. Literally. We always think it’s the content of the information, but from the get go, it’s this activity of disseminating and maybe repackaging information about the land they had scouted, saying, the country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. Clearly they were commentating as much as they were observing. All the people that we saw in it are of astonishing great size. Eretz Ochelet, Yoshevar. It is a place that eats its settlers, and they are Anshei Midot. We saw Nephilim there. I guess that’s some sort of giant. The Anakites are part of the Nephilim. And here’s the punchline. We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them. So really we’re talking about perception. What. What do those verses mean to you? Pam?

Pamela Peled [00:04:29]:
It’s very difficult to talk about this at this point in time because we’re living through such a difficult time in Israel and we feel sometimes that it is a land that eats its inhabitants. Unfortunately, after three years of war and so many people we know dead and wounded, and, you know, I’m not sure how political we should become, but what feels to us like a government that’s just out to destroy us. And so these words are very resonate very deeply. But putting that aside for the moment, you know, this parasha starts when, when the spies come back and they say, and they told him, we came to the land to which you sent us. And indeed it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. And Rashi says that when you spread a falsehood, you have to start with something true and something positive, and then it becomes easier to disseminate the falsehood. But it’s very interesting, this parasha. I was looking at it again today, because the spies are actually telling their truth. They saying what they say saw, and they were frightened. And they weren’t actually cursed because they told their truth. They were cursed because of the implications that they gave to their truth. In other words, because they didn’t trust 100% that God could get them out of any mess. And that’s something that we could argue about for the rest of time, I think. You know, and it’s not really what I discuss in my book. I don’t put any. I don’t I don’t show the country through the divine lens of prophecy for the future. And I have to say that I think in my very humble opinion, but I have worked with this a lot. I think that one of the very big problems in Israel today is this messianic fervor and people thinking that if you say something wrong about the government or the country, you’re a traitor or the future of the country. You don’t accept the narrative. And it’s very, very frightening to me. I don’t know if you want me to get into that. The laws now being passed about to try and curtail the freedom of the press here and to put people into positions of power that toe the government line. But that’s a really a huge subject that I’m sure we can talk about at another time. I dealt with in my book, and I’m very conflicted this, I can say it. In the beginning, When I was 10 years old, the Six Day War broke out. So you can easily work out how old I am today. And I went to a Jewish day school in South Africa, in a very apartheid South Africa, I should add. And they broadcast the Six Day War, the news about the war, every day, which was broadcast in the corridors and in the classrooms. And I came home to my parents and I said, I want to go and live in Israel. And my parents were tremendously shocked. They were big Zionists, but, you know, they taught Zionism but hoped somebody else’s children would actually go and live there. But I never changed my mind from the age of 10. And when I was 16, my parents brought me to Israel to have a look at this country. And I said, that’s it. And I really, I was one of those crazy Zionists who said, how can we not be part of the biggest miracle of the millennium? So what if we don’t make the same amount? And my husband was the same, I must say, he was from London. And we used to go overseas to our friends and see that they were all much richer than us and they had better cars and their children were studying at prestigious universities. And we used to say, should we be there? And we always said, no, we are so happy and proud and privileged and lucky to be part of Israel. And I still really do believe that. But at the same time, we feel at the moment that the country has been hijacked, the country we know and love, by a government just wanting to stay in power and by the leader of the government not wanting to go to jail and not wanting to let

Geoffrey Stern [00:09:13]:
me Let me jump in here because what you’re saying is so fascinating to me. Number one, you started by saying we all, in a knee jerk type of way, look at the 10 spies who come back with a bad, a quote unquote bad report as the bad guys here. And I think I was going to quote a midrash that comes out because the other sin was that they cried during that night. And the Talmud says they cried bechi Shel chinam. And they did it on tish of night. So it puts this whole calamity in this same lens at level of institutional problem as the destruction of the Temple. But what I’m getting at is they cried for no reason. What you’re saying is by both focusing on them saying they said that the country eats up its people. Well, what happens if a time comes where the country actually is eating up its people, number one. And number two, what happens, And I’m going to coin a word here, if it’s not a Bechi shel Chinam, but a Bechi SHel M’chir, maybe it’s not pointless whining, but maybe it is a legitimate despair. And that is the moment that we’re in that makes us read this story in a totally new fashion, but also looks at us. I mean, I love the fact that you brought your strong Zionist background in because you were the Joshua. You and your husband were the Joshua and the Calebs, and you came and you raised a family. You’re living in the country and now you’re looking at it and maybe legitimately you’re saying this is a land that right now seems to be eating up its, its people.

Pamela Peled [00:11:11]:
That’s exactly. And we, we did, we did come here very young and we sent all our children not only to the army, but also for a year of service that they didn’t get paid for before the army. And I won’t get into the game of how many people we know have been hurt or killed in the army. And we’re living in a time, you know what’s going on now with the Haredim. You know what’s going on with, with how they refusing to go to the army. And Netanyahu and his government are completely bowing down before them because they need their votes so desperately. The Likud knows that the Haredim have to go to the army and work and pay taxes, otherwise the country will implode. They know Netanyahu himself has been saying it for many, many years, but suddenly, just today, they’re passing another huge budget for the Haridim. It’s crazy. But more crazy than that is that they’re calling people like me leftists. They sneer leftists and traitors. First of all, I’m not sure that I’m a leftist. What is a leftist? I think I’m a very sane center person. But you just have to open your mouth to disagree. And you called a traitor.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:34]:
I mean, Rabbi, it is interesting how clearly this is contextual. There was a time when what they saw maybe didn’t merit their lack of faith. But there have to be times where you have to call a spade a spade.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:12:47]:
So I have a difference. So first of all, Pam, thank you so much for your insights and for your, you know, for your genuine. You got a very authentic view of what you know, what led you to move to Israel and you know, and how you feel. Now I’ll just say that several weeks ago we interviewed Adam Furziger.

Pamela Pellet [00:13:10]:
He was once my rabbi.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:13:13]:
Oh, you’re rabbi. So I’ll tell you a story about your rabbi, Rabbi Furziger.

Pamela Pellet [00:13:16]:
Just for a very short time, he was my Rabbi.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:13:18]:
Rabbi Professor Adam Furziger. So he tells he, he highlights Americans who moved to Israel, who made a difference. And one of the people who he highlights is Rabbi Aaron Lichtenstein, who was a rabbi at Yeshiva University, who moved to Israel and started in Yeshivat Har Etzion and became extremely important in Israel. And the story he tells is as follows. He says that during the Six Day War, there was a bus that went from New York to a rally in Washington, which I guess was asking the government for funds or for arms during the war, literally to save the state of Israel. And the story he tells in the book is that when Rabbi Lichtenstein got off the bus back in New York, he came home and he said to his wife, I don’t want to be a spectator anymore. We’re moving to Israel. So it’s interesting that in that generation there were, you know, that people, you know, it’s exactly the same story as you are telling. What I have a different question based on our story of the Maraglim. When you went to Israel at 16 years old, having decided at 10 that you were going to move to Israel, were you like the maraglim? Did you see giants there who you weren’t going to be able to conquer, or was everything rose colored for you?

Pamela Peled [00:14:45]:
I wouldn’t say everything was rose colored, but I loved living in Israel and I always felt it was a great privilege and I was very happy to be part of the national journey. But it feels today that that is no longer the case because this particular government, for reasons of its own, like for example, today there was a photo being sent of Netanyahu’s face and saying, a rocket a day keeps prison away. So we don’t know anymore why are these wars being fought now. There’s lots of issues here at the same time as really, really fearing this government and fearing for the future of Israel as a democratic state. Really, really, really fearing. At the same time, we do have implacable enemies, there’s no doubt about it, who want us all dead. So we’ve always had, and we’ve always managed to fight them without losing faith in our own government. And there’s definitely, definitely an unfair, anti Semitic, anti Israel flood of feeling in the world today. I’m not so sure it’s wonderful to be a Jew in London or in New York at the moment, or in Toronto. I think it’s not. And I think I still would prefer to be here than anywhere else. But it’s not nice to be here and to be a part of the working, contributing, paying taxes side of the population and to send our kids to the army and to do all this. Where the money that should go to my daughter on the northern border. She lives right on the Lebanon border. They’ve had the most ghastly three years. Ghastly, ghastly. They’ve moved about 15 times and been whatever. So the money that’s supposed to go to her is, Is conditioned on a tax break for the settlers on the West Bank. And then so much money goes to the Haredim that there’s nothing over for them. That’s just ridiculous. You know, that’s what’s happening. So there’s all these intersecting whirlwind of things going on. I was just reading today, there’s a book by doctors, Doctors of Human Rights or whatever that organization is. They’ve just written a book and one of the. I can tell you who it was, if you like, one of the Norwegian physicians. His name is Dr. Mads Gilbert. He says the suffering and destruction that he saw in Gaza made Dante’s Inferno look like a tea party. What about mentioning the suffering in Kfar Aza where they came and shot women up their bodies and took their babies and cut off their… Really, you know, there’s definitely, definitely that side of Israel where people are happy and rejoice in Israel’s destruction. I would very much highly, highly, highly recommend to your viewers on this point to read Howard Jacobson’s searing new novel called Howl H O W L. A Howl of anguish of what it feels to be a Jew in London after the 7th of October. And I’ll skip Geoffrey if I may, to your next point, that you asked about Hasbara and you said what about internal Hasbara? To our own people. And for me, you know, this is the most terrifying thing. I don’t know how I would cope if I was living in America, a pro Israel, Zionist, proud Jew, and my children would go to “From the River to the Sea” demonstrations. It happened to someone we know, a very dear friend’s daughter, after 7 October, went to her from the river to the Sea demonstration in the States. And I called her and I said, you know, darling, you calling for my death when you say that. And she said, it’s metaphorical. It’s metaphorical. I’m not. So what does that mean? So everything is so crazy at the moment, don’t you think?

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:08]:
Yeah, it’s. It’s really a perfect storm. And we’re talking about two separate issues, but there actually is a connection between them. I mean, you are clearly someone who, who loves Israel to your core. On the other hand, you’re not rosy eyed. You see the reality, you’re living the reality. There is in your eyes, and I think I happen to agree with you, a very corrupt government. There’s a population that votes in that government over and over again. Let’s not forget about that. And then there’s the whole other question of, in other words, do we keep this to ourselves or can we talk about it? That’s more of an American Jew problem where we struggle. Can we critique the government from the outside?

Pamela Peled [00:19:58]:
And having said that, there still is a real, true problem, that whatever Israel does, no matter how justified the war is, we will get blamed and we will be called genocidal. It beggars belief that they talk about Israel’s genocide after the 7th of October. Beggars belief.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:20]:
You know, I mean, I think sometimes I think about, I’d love to know what you guys think is that if you’re raising a child and everything that child does you say is bad at a certain point of time, the child doesn’t feel at all controlled by outside morality, outside rights, because the whole world judged them with a crooked measuring stick. And I think what it really emphasizes, our need to find our core. And that’s where you’re fighting the internal battle, Pam, because there are those, you can call them messianists, you can call them nationalists, people who feel we don’t have to answer to the world morality because there is no morality because we are criticized for whatever we do. And I think that’s the quagmire here. And you know, we love to have neat, clean answers, but it’s very hard to tell the difference between the Joshua and the Calebs and the 10 spies in a situation where we’re all trying to understand and process and explain and show the facts. And now a word from our sponsor. If there’s one thing we value at Madlik podcast, it’s reading texts and talking about them. That’s why I’m excited to share something I created called Voice Gift PLAY. It fits in the palm of your hand like a remote control and clips onto any book. It’s inspired by those old school museum audio guides, but this is personal. VoiceGift PLAY stores up to 10 hours of audio across 999 numbered recordings. You simply enter a number to record a comment, memory or explanation and enter the same number to play it back. It’s perfect for B’ nai Mitzvah, practicing their layning, capturing grandpa’s favorite tune, or recording Chad Gad ya in a voice that matters. Go to voice.gift, that’s http://www.voice.gift and use code MADLIK for 15% off. Thanks. And now back to our podcast.

Pamela Peled [00:22:37]:
So for many years I’ve been teaching students to go out into the world and advocate for Israel. And one of the things that I’ve been teaching because having grown up in Apartheid South Africa, I can teach very reliably I think why Israel is not an apartheid state. Definitely not. And I. We don’t have to go into that Israel, I’m talking about Israel proper. Obviously it’s not. There were separate hospital, you know what Apartheid was. There were separate buses and separate hospitals and separate where you could live and Israel’s not in Apartheid state. But I have to say that in latter years with Ben G’vir and the, people going wild on the West Bank, it’s become very difficult to explain that you know and the provocation and the violence, the terrible violence that this, that the so called settlers perpetrate on a daily basis. So it, it actually, it’s a terrible thing to do. But it also really affects and does it, it does terrible things for Israel’s image and it seems so sad. So people like me and there are lots of people like me, I’d say half the country thinks like me. We just wonder if this government gets in again and keeps pouring money into a population that’s growing exponentially. The Haredin. Can the country actually survive never mind anything else can it survive economically? It’s a big question. So we’re just praying, you know.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:24:17]:
Thank you again for, you know, from. From an insider’s view. That’s what Geoffrey. That’s the title today, you know, is that this is an insider discussion. We all know how to read the New York Times, but this is an insider discussion. I want to go back to something that Geoffrey mentioned before, and that’s the source that we have from the Talmud. In Ta’ nit: atem bechitem bechi shel chinam, you cried needlessly that night. V’ani koveia alechem bechi ldorot, and I’m going to force you to weep in future generations. Which, of course, was the establishment of Tisha B’Av. So you talk about, you know, you talk about the problem of the Haridim, the problem of settler violence. And I just wonder, you know, bechi shel chhinam. Needless weeping. How do you define. What’s the distinction? When is it weeping? That has a value. And when is it weeping? That is needless.

Pamela Peled [00:25:20]:
I think it probably has a value if it can be changed. I think if there’s something that you can do to change it, then there’s a value to weeping. I mean, look, I think this is a discussion that’s beyond me, because why would God want his people? It’s too much for our brains. Why would God want his people to suffer for the rest of time? We think immediately of the Holocaust. Is that God? Is that because of the spies? Too crazy for me to. I would prefer to stick to what’s going on now. Those questions are questions of faith and questions of, you know, religion. And I don’t think anyone can answer them. Can you?

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:20]:
My read on Bechi shel chinim is inauthentic crying. There’s no question. A mother loses a son and cries. That’s authentic. No one would ever call that inauthentic or. I love the fact that it used chinam. Because we talk about Sinat Chinam is the source of Tisha B’Av.

Pamela Peled [00:26:44]:
Av.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:44]:
Normally we say the reason why there was a Tisha B’ av is because people hated each other for no reason. And in a very fascinating sense, these two midrashim are connected. Because the crying over things needlessly, I think, speaks to both when people posture, when people use. Whether it’s the situation like what happened in Gaza and like what happened in Iran. The world is not looking at the West Bank. Let’s do what we want there. When people use the fact that no matter what we do, we’re disenfranchised from the world. So that gives us free reign. I think that there’s an inauthenticity here, and that is the source, I think, for future generations, meaning to say that’s our curse. And I don’t take it, Pam, as much as a curse that we have to carry that cross. I think it’s what we, Jews in particular, have to be concerned about. And when we see ourselves divided, we know we’ve lost too many Temples, too many times have we had a chance to make a go at it, and we’ve lost it. And I think that’s the challenge here, with no easy answers. I mean, I think just to give you a little insight, in some of the thinking that’s going on in the United States, where antisemitism is growing, there are people like Dan Sinor, who wrote Startup Nation, and Bret Stephens, who said the biggest answer to antisemitism is that we have to dive and invest more in ourselves and our own pride, whether it’s pride or whatever. I think the idea is, and this is what was so fascinating to me, is that we can’t solve the problem of hasbara. But clearly one of the sources, if this is in fact an issue of they went around re explaining facts. Hasbara begins at home. Hasbara begins inside of our own heart.

Pamela Peled [00:28:56]:
I agree with you 100%. And that’s the main thing that I would like to give to the listeners is our feeling of deep conflict at the moment. Because on the one hand, really, I love Israel. I’ve lived here my whole life. We’ve brought our children up here. My husband spent his whole life dedicated to working for Israel too. And we love it. But we feel that we are now branded as traitors to the country because we don’t like the government. And so we still see the unfairness of the way the world views Israel. We still feel that it’s the only place for Jews to be safe. And why wouldn’t anybody want to? I feel that we’re still so proud of our startup nation, but the startup nation people are leaving. People, doctors are leaving and the leaving for the first time ever, I think, I think double the people are leaving to who are coming. It’s never been before in the history of Israel. I don’t think. And you know, when your prime minister stands up and sneers at you that you’re a leftist because you want a commission of inquiry, as to why the 7th of October happened and sneers that you traitors that you want. It’s very hard to keep a balance especially when you’re under attack from Iran and on seven fronts at once and terrorism and it’s, it’s been dramatic and all we can say is that we actually holding our breath till the elections. And there’s this feeling that if it sane. If I told you what the government was busy with today on the day that we were being bombed, do you know they were busy discussing whether Tali Gottlieb’s immunity should be taken away. Tali Gottlieb is a member of Knesset who can only be described as. She screams, she pulls her hair, she’s peculiar, she screams, she doesn’t talk and she, at the beginning of the war wanted to get back at somebody who was protesting the war. So she revealed this woman’s husband’s details and he works for the security of Israel. She said his name, where he lived, she revealed it all and she’s up for treason or for threatening the security of Israel. So today that is what the Israeli government was dealing with. How to not get rid of her immunity so she won’t be tried for endangering the security of Israel because can you, can you believe it? Can you, can you actually believe that we turn on the TVs to see if our kids are going to go to school tomorrow. How many people have been killed? What’s happening? Are we at war again? And we see t got lip screaming and not one person from the Likud says a word about it.

Geoffrey Stern [00:32:02]:
So we’re getting to the end. I want to tell you and share with you what my takeaway is. My takeaway is that we read this story of the scouts coming back as if they’re tourists giving their travelogue. And yes, we see that there’s a Talmud that says this is on par with the destruction of the Temple. And it’s sometimes hard for us to understand the angst that was going on at that moment. But I think what you’ve done is to literally bring it into today’s moment. And it’s too easy for us, especially living here in the States, who read about this in a scroll or a newspaper to not understand that Israel in your eyes, and I personally share your view, is going through such a moment, such a do or die moment, such as is this generation going to make it or not moment. And I think you’ve really through just speaking your heart have put us into a little bit better mind frame to understand what this is all about. And we have to. If we’re talking about, you know, we all blatantly say, what’s new in Israel? This is literally a moment.

Pamela Peled [00:33:26]:
Well, I would like to believe, because I’ve been so. It’s been terrible here. It’s really with the bombs and the running to shelters and knowing people dying all over the place and our kids in Lebanon and in Gaza and just terrible, terrible stuff. It’s really been terrible. But I would like to end on a optimistic note because I do believe, I really do, that if the government changes and we get a sane and decent government moment, we are going to have such a restart in Israel. That’s what I’m praying for. And when they say that we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, we’ll learn to be grasshoppers that stand on our back legs. And Israel, there’s. We’ve got our energy and we’ve got our. We know how to jump as grasshoppers. Whatever. We’ll be okay. We just need to be gifted with not even great leaders, just leaders like we’ve always had, like Rabin, all our leaders until this time. Leaders who really put the good of the country in front of their own good. That’s all we need. You know, we didn’t always agree. I didn’t adore Begin, but I never believed that he put his own good in front of the good of the country. He obviously cared about the country. So that’s what we need. And I would like to be the Zionist that I once was and say that. Come along and join us. Normal people, come and vote. We need every vote. Just people who aren’t, you know, just crazy messianics and who live in the real world. Come and join us. Come and vote. Come and change our government and come and rebuild our beautiful, tiny, beleaguered, fabulous little country. That’s my takeaway.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:35:32]:
Thank you so, so much. This was really. Geoffrey this was really fascinating. Really an insider’s view. And please, God, again, we should be the grasshoppers standing on our back legs, proud of who we are and what we stand for. Shabbat Shalom, everybod, everybody in Israel, actually, they read Parashat Sh’lach this past week. This week they read Korah.

Geoffrey Stern [00:35:52]:
But, Pam, we will.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:35:53]:
We’ll leave the. We’ll leave the. The image of the grasshoppers for everybody. Grasshoppers on their back legs. Thank you so, so much.

Geoffrey Stern [00:36:01]:
Thank you so much, Pam. Great seeing you, Adam.

My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed a light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform. And now on YouTube and Substack. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show Notes. This week we read Beha’alotcha and we revisit a subject very close to my heart. So join us for Entitlement Reform cont.. We’ve done this before, Rabbi, but I sure have. It’s a great time here again, I really learned something. And when I said that it’s almost on the equal footing of Sinai and Exodus, you’re going to see why I was blown away. But let’s dive right into it, because you’re in London town, it’s late at night there, and you’re on your way to Georgia, of all places. And we’re not talking about the state in the southern part of the United States either. So here we go. We are in Numbers 8:1 God spoke to Moses saying, speak to Aaron and say to him, when you mount the lamps, let the seven lamps give light at the front of the lampstand. Now, this has nothing to do with the subject matter that we’re going to talk about, but Rashi, quoting the Midrash, says something that I think gives us a context. And he says as follows, when thou lightest the lamps, Rashi asks, why is the section treating of the candelabra put in juxtaposition with the section dealing with the offerings of the princes. He answers because when Aaron saw the dedication offerings of the princes, he felt distressed because neither he nor his tribe was with them in the dedication. Whereupon the Holy One, blessed be he, said to him, by your life, Bechayai, your part is of greater importance than theirs, for you will kindle and set in the orders of the lamps. Rabbi, it was competitive. And we spent so many verses in last week’s Parsha detailing each and every prince of each and every tribe that you’ve got to. You shouldn’t need a Rashi to tell you that the Levi’s felt left at the sidelines. But the reason, I say it has context, is because we are going to be talking about a transference from those leaders and those entitled people of power to the Levites. So the kind of juxtaposition and the interaction between the Levites, who were a stateless kind of tribe and the other tribes has a bearing what thinks you?

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:12]:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, the. This first Rashi kind of, you know, raises a flag to say that all of these issues here are connected to one another. Right. And, you know, and the role of Levi and where it came from, that that’s really what all these Torah portions are about. Now, I think we’re going to discuss today why, especially here, does the Torah bother to bring this up again? Like you said, this comes up a whole bunch of places. Why does it come up here specifically? But yeah, you’re right. From the very first Rashi in the parsha you know that this is going to be the thing.

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:51]:
Okay, so now let’s get to the meat of the matter. We are in numbers 8:14, and it says, thus you shall set the Levites apart from the Israelites, וְהִבְדַּלְתָּ֙ אֶת־הַלְוִיִּ֔ם מִתּ֖וֹךְ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל And the Levites shall be mine. Vayhu li halavim’.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:14]:
Thereafter the Levites shall be qualified for the service of the tent of meeting, once you have purified them and designated them as an elevation offering, for they are formally assigned to me from among the Israelites. He keeps on focusing on from among the Israelites, I have taken them, meaning the Levites for myself, in place of all the first issue of the womb of all the male firstborn of the Israelites. Pitrat kolrechem bechor kol b’ nei yisrael lekakhti otamli. So netunim netunim is emphatic. I’ve taken them. I’ve taken them. And then it uses this word, mitoch. There’s kind of like a trade off from out of the B’ Nai Yisrael. And then it does something that we’re going to get into a little bit is that Peter rechem is that which opens up the womb, which rabbi is from the maternal side. And Bechor is the firstborn. You would normally think on the father’s side. So we’re combining a lot of ideas here. Then it says in verse 17, for every male firstborn among the Israelite, human as well as animal is mine. Interesting. I consecrated them to myself at the time that I drum roll. That I smote every male firstborn in the land of Egypt. Wow. We are going back to the Exodus. We’re making a direct correlation to the plague, the last plague where the firstborn of Egypt were killed. Now I take the Levites instead of every firstborn of the Israelites. And from among the Israelites, I formally assign the Levites to Aaron and his sons to perform this service for the Israelites in the tent of meeting and to make expiation for the Israelites so that no plague may afflict the Israelites for coming too near the sanctuary. There’s a lot of baggage here.

Adam Mintz [00:07:21]:
There’s a lot of stuff there.

Geoffrey Stern [00:07:24]:
I had never really thought of the tie in to the death of the firstborn and this concept of the firstborn because it’s not exactly something that is Jewish. In other words, in many cultures there is this sense of the firstborn gets a larger portion. There’s an entitled class. But that was the first thing that kind of struck me. And going to see that even this idea of firstborn, human and animal somehow ties into the Exodus story. Just fascinating how it is trying to give legs to something that is occurring kind of in front of our eyes here as we speak in the Book of Numbers.

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:14]:
Yeah, okay, very interesting. Let’s go on. Let’s see what we have.

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:17]:
Okay. So Rashi says, and I have given the Levites to do the service of the children of Israel that there will be no plague among the children of Israel. The meaning is I have given them etc so that it shall be unnecessary for them to come near the sanctuary. Because. And this is the translator who puts it in having sinned by worshiping the calf, if they come near, there will be a plague among them. So I don’t know how much you feel the translator has legs to stand on, but certainly there is this tying it into the plague of the firstborn. But clearly also what happened at the sin of the golden calf was those that sinned, the earth opened up. There was a Plague upon them. And the Levites were the ones who were pure, but also took Mi L’Hashem Eliy took the leadership role there. It does make you think, where do we know, in fact, why the firstborn lost the the right and why the Levites had to serve instead of them?

Geoffrey Stern [00:09:29]:
Well, let’s say the first thing. The story in, in Exodus chapter 32 that says that the Levites got up and they said, Mi L’Hashem Eliy means they. They protected God, they protected Moshe. And the fact that the firstborn were included among the people who worshiped the golden calf, none of that. Geoffrey is explicit. You can’t know, right? You don’t know that the firstborn worshiped the golden calf. All you know is, is the Torah doesn’t distinguish between the firstborn and everybody else. You know, Levi seems to be the good guy, but you don’t actually know whether or not Levi participated in the worship of the golden calf. If anything, the one who was responsible for the golden calf was Aaron , and he was the Cohen Gadol. So he is the chief Levi. So this, you know, this is like we always like to say, this is reading history backwards because God chose the Levites over the firstborn. Therefore, we read back in that story of the golden calf that the firstborn were guilty and the Levites were innocent. I’m just pointing out here that the rabbinic read sometimes becomes what we like to call the peshat Sometimes it becomes the literal read, even though the literal read doesn’t actually say that. To say it another way, the way we always learned in yeshiva, and that is that Rashi’s explanation isn’t Rashi’s explanation. Rashi’s explanation, because Rashi is so famous, his explanation becomes the simple explanation of the Torah. And this is an example.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:14]:
You took the words out of my mouth because I think if most Jews were asked why the firstborn were passed over and the Levites got it, they would just say, as a matter of fact, it was because of the sin of the golden calf. And what we are learning, that not only in this Rashi is it in parentheses, because it’s only a translation, but it is totally rabbinic. And you can look at the story as you did Adam and say, it’s not altogether clear that that was the moment, because who says the Levi’s hand clean? So now what I want to do is go to those verses that do connect to the firstborn. And that is something that I think most of us, including myself, really didn’t focus on till now. And now a word from our Sponsor if there’s one thing we value at Madlik Podcast, it’s reading texts and talking about them. That’s why I’m excited to share something I created called VoiceGift PLAY. It fits in the palm of your hand like a remote control and clips onto any book. It’s inspired by those old school museum audio guides, but this is personal. VoiceGift PLAY stores up to 10 hours of audio across 999 numbered recordings. You simply enter a number to record a comment, memory, or explanation, and enter the same number to play it back. It’s perfect for B’ Nai Mitzvah, practicing their layning, capturing Grandpa’s favorite tune, or recording Chad GadYa in a voice that matters. Go to voice.gift, that’s http://www.voice.gift and use code MADLIK for 15% off. Thanks. And now back to our podcast. And now we go back to Exodus 12 and it says, it was in the middle of the night God struck down all the male firstborn in the land of Egypt. From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon. And all the firstborn of the cattle. So the first surprising thing that all the commentaries have a challenge with is why the cattle? Not only because there was a plague a few plagues earlier where all the cattle were killed. But what does the cattle have to do with all of this? There were some commentaries that go so far as to say, we’re talking about domestic animals who were spared the other plague. It’s a problem. So now we continue. But it does have this issue of the firstborn. So in Exodus 13:12 it says, now here is the halachic takeaway. You set apart for God every first issue of the womb. Every male firstling that your cattle drop shall be God’s. But every firstling donkey you shall redeem with a sheep. If you do not redeem it, you shall break its neck. And you must redeem every male firstborn among your children. This stood by itself in Devarim. It ends right here. But in Exodus, look what it ties it to. In verse 14 it says, and when in the time to come a child of yours asks you, what does this mean? This comes right out of the seder. But at the seder we don’t replace firstborn at the seder. We’re talking about Matzah and Marah. You shall reply to him. It was with a mighty hand that God brought us out of Egypt, the house of bondage. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let Us go. God slew every male firstborn in the land of Egypt, the firstborn of both human and animal. And here’s the takeaway. Therefore, I sacrifice to God every first male issue of the womb, but redeem every male firstborn among my children. We should be having this discussion at the Seder if we are loyal to the question of this one of the four children. I had never really focused on this, Rabbi.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:25]:
Fantastic. So verse 14, which is of course taken from the Haggadah, this is the question of the third son, the simple son. When your son will ask you, what does this mean? You should say, with a mighty hand, God took us out of Egypt. It’s not explicit. What does it mean, Mazot? What is that? You know, what is that referring to? Now, your read of these verses is interesting because you’re trying to read it to say, what is this all about? Meaning, why is it that the firstborn are separated to be special? What’s that all about? And God answers, because I took you out of the land of Egypt. And therefore. And that was represented by the fact that the firstborn of the Egyptian were killed. So all of a sudden, this is a great read, Geoffrey. All of a sudden, the killing of the firstborn becomes front and center in the story of the Exodus. All of a sudden, the whole Exodus story is about the killing of the firstborn. Now, that is for sure not the way we learned it in Yeshiva. It’s not the way you say it at the Seder, but you’re a hundred percent right. These verses seem to suggest. Mazot, what is this about? The whole story revolves around this point.

Geoffrey Stern [00:16:46]:
It is literally nestled between verses 12 and 13, which talk about the redemption of the firstborn. And verse 15, which again gets back to the firstborn. It’s hard not to read it as one piece. It is absolutely fascinating. So if we look at numbers 3:12. And again, Rabbi, one thing we always know, that there are multiple ideas behind every rule. Whether it’s, why is it called Beersheba? Because there are seven wells, or because we had an oath there. So there’s different pathways. In numbers 3 12, it says, I hereby take the Levites from among the Israelites in place of all the male firstborn, the first issue of the womb among the Israelites, the Levi shall be mine, for every such firstborn is mine. At the time that I smote every male firstborn in the land of Egypt, I consecrated every firstborn in Israel, human and animal, to myself, to be mine… Gods. So here it already, whatever happened, Rabbi, that made the Levi’s take the baton from the firstborn. Here it already packs it into two verses and it rates it back all the way to the Exodus, like our other verse did. And it ties the knot to firstborn gave it to the Levites. And here we are. Rashi says on numbers 3 12, behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel. This means I. Whence do I claim the right in them among the children of Israel that the Israelites should have to hire them for my service? It is through the firstborn, to whom I surely have a tithe, that I have a claim on them. He goes. For originally, the service, the priestly functions, was performed by the firstborn. But when they, the Israelites among them, their firstborn too, sinned by the worshiping of the gold calf. So here it is not the translator, it’s actually Rashi who says it. They became disqualified. And the Levites who had not worshiped the idol were chosen in their stead. And this comes from Zevachim. Again, it’s Rabbinic. Rashi is bringing this tradition that we feel almost is the pashat, as you say. But in Numbers three, it all kind of gets mixed together. There is almost a direct line from what happened at the last plague to the Levites in our pasha. And then something happens that I had never focused on before, Rabbi, and that I was blown away by in last week’s Parasha, in numbers 3:39. It tells a story. And that’s why I say this is on the same level as Exodus from Egypt or Sinai. It is a moment in our history. All the Levites who were recorded, whom at God’s command, Moses and Aaron, were courted by their clans. All the males from the age of one month up came to 22,000. So, Rabbi, we’ve been spending a few weeks now counting each tribe by head, counts who’s going to go into the military. Many times we say the Levites don’t get counted, they don’t serve. Here we count all the males. From the age of one month up, they are 22,000. And then it says, and God said to Moses, record every firstborn male of the Israelites from the age of one month up and make a list of them. To make a long story short, all the firstborn males as listed by name recorded from the age of one month up came to 22,273. So we have Levites that come to 22,000, and we have the firstborn comes to 22,273. Rabbi, we gotta just. We’re trying to balance the books and we’re trying to reconcile our accounts. And we’re off by 273. And as the redemption price of the 273 Israelites, firstborn over and above the number of the Levite, take five shekels, per head head. So make a long story short, these sukim are crafting a scene, a powerful scene where you’re lining up, it’s putting meat on this story. You’re lining up all the Levites and you’re transferring power in this magical moment. And because we’re not even talking about a myth, there are real numbers here. The numbers don’t add up. Then we get into the five shekels behavior head. So I was so struck that they made a moment just like the Exodus moment and just like they made the Sinai moment a moment for the transference away of primogenita of the value, the entitlement of the firstborn to the Levites. I had never focused on this before.

Adam Mintz [00:22:01]:
It’s fantastic. Now I want to tell you something amazing. You know, you get to 22,000 and then there are 273 extra. The way you get to 22,273 is actually a trick because the other tribes are counted from the age of 20. The Levites are counted from the age of one month. So first of all, it’s interesting that their tribe is so much smaller than the other tribes, but it’s almost, Geoffrey As if the Torah is working backwards. It’s almost as if the Torah needs to get to the number where the number of Levites and the number of firstborn is going to be the same. So they actually, you know, play a little game with the math and they say, well, when it comes to the Levites, if you count the Levites from one month old, then you’ll get to 22, 273. We only have to exchange 273. If we take him from 20 years old, we’re gonna have to exchange 10,000. We can’t do that. So even there, you see, the Torah is very much interested in redeeming one for the next.

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:04]:
It could have easily been an origin story like George Washington cutting down the cherry street. We didn’t have to get into numbers. What the editor, what the writer of this text is trying to do is he’s trying to make it real. He’s trying to make you so that you could visualize this moment. And I took it this year. He’s Trying to emphasize the power of this moment. So there is an article in thetorah.com it’s called Laws of the Firstborn, how they connected to the 10th plague by a professor, Rabbi David Frankel. And what he tries to do is to show to what degree the writer of this story God, Moses. Editors later it doesn’t really matter to us. What matters is that what the writers are trying to do is to show how powerful this moment was. He makes an argument there is no to have the animal, the firstborn animals die in the last plague. The reason they brought that in was because there was a pre existing tradition and law about giving the firstborn animal. We’ve seen that already. And he wanted to connect it. They wanted to connect it to the powerful Exodus story and they wanted to connect it to the firstborn of humans as well. And so what they did is we would call it a mashup. Now. They mashed up these varying traditions to give this power. He says it is clear that this combined complex of firstling firstborn laws was of great importance to the later editors of the Pentateuch. This is evident from the brief law collection in Exodus. And here he brings even one more mashup of verses. In Exodus 34 it says, you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread. Eating unleavened bread for seven days as I have commanded you at the set time of of the month of Aviv. For in the month of Aviv you went forth from Egypt. Every first issue of the womb is mine. From all your livestock that drop mail as firstlings, whether cattle or sheep, but the firstling of a donkey, you shall redeem. You must redeem every male firstborn among the inhabitants. None shall appear before me empty handed. So he even brings it to the annual sacrifice that you bring in the pilgrimage festival. They wove this concept of the firstborn. Rabbi, I don’t know what I’ve been reading. I’ve been missing this. I mean there is at so many levels it is trying to bring in this issue of the firstborn into the Exodus story that you cannot ignore it. I’ll say something else that he said. When the firstborn at the Seder or about the Seder asks it, it’s because he really felt that this was annualized in this verse in Shemot, you get it as part of the pilgrimage festival that we are annualizing this concept of the firstborn. We think of it, when your child is born, 30 days later, there’s a pidyon haben. What this is trying to do is to keep that story, that narrative and the message behind it, which we’ll get into next in front of us at all times.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:35]:
Yeah, so that’s fantastic. So what I think another piece of this is that you see another example of the tragedy of the golden calf, because the golden calf created a rupture in the way it was supposed to be. The story of the Exodus is the story of the firstborn, of the choosing of the firstborn of the Israelites. But because of the golden calf, the firstborn lost their right. That actually is a bigger deal than we were ever willing to make make of it.

Geoffrey Stern [00:27:11]:
So. So what you’re saying is part and parcel of, I would say, celebrating the firstborn is also acknowledging what was lost when we gave up the firstborn. So he says to explain how two ritual practices simultaneously symbolize a single event, the editor of the Law of Exodus simultaneously added the death of the firstling animals to the plague of the firstborns. Not only the Egyptians first born was destroyed, but so also their firstlings that he makes over and over again, and he doesn’t really have a takeaway, is that the Torah is intent on combining all of these messages. I would say that what the real takeaway is is that this becomes a story about breaking the ideology of the birthright. Because if you think about the most basic message of Pharaoh is from Pharaoh to anybody who was in charge in the prisons, whatever, this is breaking down, primogeniture, breaking down, as I say, entitlement. And this is, I think, why this becomes so important. The Torah systematically dismantles the hierarchical assumptions of the ancient Near East. Human dignity is not determined by birth. And that really comes through to me. Rabbi, when we think of what we’ve been reading numbers about all these heads of the tribes, all these Nissim, all of these famous people, and then woof, it gets transferred to the landless Levites. And I think ultimately what happens. And we’ve come across this. We came across this in Joshua Berman, who in his book Created Equal how the Bible Broke with Ancient Political thought, that everything that we read about the revolution leads us to believe that we’re breaking down these hierarchies. We saw it recently in Daniel Elazar and when we talked about federalism, the firstborn lose the priesthood, and eventually the rabbis declare that a Torah scholar takes precedence over an ignorant high priest. So ultimately where this all goes, Rabbi, is where we get to the rabbis and the rabbis say, even the Levites who had the temple, but the temple was destroyed, so maybe they had the manoah and the light. We have midrashim that talk about that in this week’s Parasha. But ultimately, what the rabbis did was the rabbis said in the Mishnah in Horiot that a priest precedes a Levite, a Levite precedes an Israelite. We’re ready for a Mishnah that talks about the hierarchy. And then it says, after all of the hierarchies and a convert goes in front of an emancipated slave, it gets to the very bot says, when do these halached precedents take effect of hierarchy? In circumstances when they are all equal in terms of wisdom. But if there was a mamzer who is a Torah scholar and a high priest who is an Am Haaretz, an ignoramus, a mamzer takes first place. So my argument today, Rabbi, is one of the reasons why this, I would say, segue and this evolution from the exodus from Egypt and bringing down the pharaoh and giving it to the firstborn and bringing one’s first, the best for God and that whole tradition and then moving it to the Levites because we’ve fallen short. And then the temple being destroyed and there are no, there’s no more temple for the Levites, all led to a wonderful, I would guess, evolution in Judaism that broke down all of the hierarchies in favor of learning and real authority, which is character. There’s a beautiful thing in Avot, Rabbi Simmons said there are three crowns. The crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood, the crown of royalty. But the crown of a good name supersedes them all. It’s just, I think, a wonderful story, but it’s not so much a drush when you look at the actual narrative that we saw for the first time today through fresh eyes and the actual recasting of the whole Exodus.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:47]:
Amazing. This is really, really good. And, you know, again, we’re reading these stories that we read every single year, but we have a new twist on him this time. Thank you so much, everybody. Enjoy Parashat Beha’alotcha. We look forward to seeing you next week. Shabbat Shalom from Georgia, the other Georgia Shabbat Shalom.

Geoffrey Stern [00:32:06]:
We can’t wait. We can’t wait to hear all about it as you in the Book of Numbers as we travel. So Shabbat Shalom. And we will see you all next week.

My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube and Substack. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show Notes. This week in the US we read Paushat Nasso, and we’ll split hairs with Michael Boryde. But this is not an episode about hair. It’s an episode about whether Judaism is governed by text alone or by the Jewish people who live them. So, Rabbi Broyde, before I introduce you, I have to say that my son went to Emory and he was an undergraduate, but he took an elective in one of your courses, and at the end of the course, you invited him, along with the whole class, to your home. So this is Hakarat Hatov. We are inviting you into our home here at Madlik. We are absolutely delighted to have you. I covered this subject maybe four years ago, and you reached out to me, and now you’ve published a whole book. So welcome to Madlik.

Michael Boyd [00:02:59]:
Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:01]:
So let me tell our audience a little bit about you. You are a professor of law at Emory University School of Law and the Berman Projects Director of its center for Study of Law and Religion. You were a Senior Global Scholar for the United States Fulbright Scholars Program at Hebrew U and a Visiting professor at Stanford University of Law and have visited at many other law schools. You teach advanced Jewish law at Columbia University, my alma mater, but I didn’t go to the School of Law and is a professor of the TAM Institute of Jewish Studies at Emory. You held a variety of rabbinic positions in the past, from the Rabbi of the Young Israel Congregation in Atlanta to Director of the Bet Din of America as well as Rosh Kollel of the Atlanta Torah Mitzion Kollel. But of all these things, for some reason this subject has intrigued you for 30 years and so I’d love for you to share with us what intrigues you about women’s head covering that has led you to write multiple monographs and now finally a 500 page book.

Michael Boyd [00:04:11]:
And it’s an excellent question. The uniting characteristic of all the things I’ve written about in halacha are about how halacha confronts modernity. Whether it’s my article on celebrating Thanksgiving and Halacha or the use of electricity in halacha or so much more, I’m profoundly interested and how halacha has adapted to life in America. And hair covering is an excellent example of this because modest non Jewish women historically didn’t cover their hair. When we came to America a century and a half ago, you were hard pressed to find a religious woman who covered her hair and an evolution has occurred as it has occurred in many other areas of Halacha as secular America evolves. How the hallafic community responds to that evolution intrigues me very much. So I view hair covering as no different than any of the many other areas. I answer lots of questions of halacha in our little universe, and people ask about areas ofhalacha where the reality in America doesn’t correspond to the historical reality. I don’t get a lot of questions about when Shabbos begins in America because Shabbos begins in America, the same test that it began in Europe. But I get a lot of questions about electricity and modesty and celebrating secular holidays and so many other modern American pop[ular culture].

Adam Mintz [00:06:16]:
So Michael, this is obviously fascinating. Can you just explain for our listeners what it means? Hair covering for women? I think most of our community, if they think of women covering their hair, they think that they go into shul and either they put on a hat or they put on a doily. What are you referring to when you

Michael Boyd [00:06:35]:
say hair cover? That’s an excellent question. And to some extent the answer is what I mean is the practice of women to cover their hair in some way and in some form when they go outside. Fifty years ago, this was commonly a wig, which we’ll call the shaitul in Israel, it’s commonly a tichel or a hat or a wrap, and there are many more varieties of it. But I’m not talking here about covering one’s hair only in shul. I’m talking about covering one’s hair all the time when one is outside. That’s a very good point.

Geoffrey Stern [00:07:22]:
And I would guess that most of our listeners have seen Orthodox women who have their hair covered, whether with a wig, with a hat on, the wig, with a kerchief, variations. And in your book, you talk a little bit about how it can identify you, both in terms of what tribe you come from, but also whether you’re married or not married. So it has a sense of symbolism. But I think that most of us would assume that, and I’ll use the word that most people use, that is authentic Judaism. And somehow our parents or grandparents decided to shed their hair covering. And there’s a division now between either modern Orthodox or Conservative Reform, typical Jews. And one of the things that you argue is that, in fact, over the last 2, 3, 400 years, recent history, the truth is that the norm was that most women, as Orthodox and observant as they might have been, did not cover their hair. And one of the intriguing things that you reference is something called the Limudei Zechut, this kind of making an argument to stand up for our forebears, to make sure that we’re not under an illusion, that those of us who can remember our grandmother or great grandmother who didn’t cover their hair, that somehow they were doing something wrong, that there is a tradition in Judaism to kind of argue for the fidelity of a Jewish community that doesn’t seem to adhere to the Halachah. And I just founded that fascinating. You quoted Moshe Feinstein, you quoted the Shulchan Aruch, that basically there is a tradition of defending communities whose observance is different than ours, and maybe from some perspective, less observant than ours. Talk about that for a second, because that was novel to me.

Michael Boyd [00:09:38]:
I think that what Rabbi Feinstein means, and it’s not unique to him, is that when I encounter our community that generally keeps Halakhah, they keep Shabbat and they keep kosher, and you see an odd practice that’s inconsistent with what you think the text requires, you should seek to defend that odd practice. We’re not talking about defending the practice of a community that’s wholeheartedly unobservant. We’re talking about defending the practices of a community that is wholeheartedly observant. And yet they’re not doing this. And you should seek to work very hard to defend the practices of a community that is, on the whole, observant, even if they’re not doing this. I think that that’s standard rabbinic care. Rabbis defend the practices of generally observant communities that don’t seem to be observant in this specific detail or that specific detail. And I very much believe in doing that. I grew up in a community that’s Shomer Shabbos and keeps Kosher and married women didn’t cover their hair. But that not covering the hair was not connected to a general laxity of observers. As I observed to somebody else in a different context. Our grandparents struggled mightily to keep Shabbat when keeping Shabbat was hard. If they didn’t cover their hair, it’s because they didn’t think they had to, not because it was too much. Keeping Shabbat was too much, and they did it anyway. Had you told them that halakha requires hair covering, they would have covered their hair. They didn’t think halakha requires it. That’s my general understanding of what we’re talking about. Now, Michael.

Adam Mintz [00:11:56]:
this is fascinating. So let’s go back to Rabbi Feinstein. The idea that you need to defend the practices to justify the practices of a basically observant community, even situations where they may not be doing what your interpretation of the Halakha requires. What’s the halachic rationale for justifying behavior that’s not halakhic?

Michael Boyd [00:12:25]:
So I think that Rabbi Feinstein is in your core intellectual aporalists, which is he understands that many areas of halacha are open to more than one reasonable explanation. And even though he has an opinion on which of these explanations is correct, he recognizes that other explanations are possible and other hallafic authorities will adopt other explanations. And when I encounter a community that’s basically observant, I need to search mightlily to find an explanation for why they’re doing it. I think that that’s right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:13:11]:
I love his language, though. He says one must find a reason why they conducted themselves this way. It’s almost a variation on what we call dan l’kav zechut. It almost sounds like a Hasidic story or Rav Kook when he saw a car driving by on Shabbat and said mazel tov, because they must be going to the hospital to give birth to another Yiddisher kint. I love the fact that it almost empowers us and obligates us to find the beauty of the Jewish people. And I know there is a halachic issue here, but you have to agree there is a nuance that it’s worth our while to go that extra mile to determine and to prove that previous generations, or maybe parallel communities are actually beautiful Jews. We’re not going to dwell on this too much, but I do think that for 30 years, in one of your statements, you said you’ve done this. And that has been one of the compelling reasons. And that’s fascinating to me.

Michael Boyd [00:14:23]:
I think that Rabbi Feinstein is no rabbi Kook. He’s only prepared to do this for communities that are essentially observant and that this is a very important distinction. Rabbi Feinstein doesn’t say this for everybody. He thinks that when you encounter an Orthodox community, that’s what you should get.

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:49]:
And now a word from our sponsor. If there’s one thing we value at Matlique Podcast, it’s reading texts and talking about them. That’s why I’m excited to share something I created called VoiceGift Play. It fits in the palm of your hand like a remote control and clips onto any book. It’s inspired by those old school museum audio guides, but this is personal. Voice Give Play stores up to 10 hours of audio across 999 numbered recordings. You simply enter a number to record a comment, memory, or explanation and enter the same number to play it back. It’s perfect for B’ Nai Mitzvah, practicing their laning, capturing Grandpa’s favorite tune, or recording Chad Gad Yah in a voice that matters. Go to voice.gift, that’s http://www.voice gift and use code MADLIK for 15% off. Thanks. And now back to our podcast. Okay, let’s move on. This is a parsha podcast, and the reason we’re doing it on your book is because in the parsha we have the parsha of what is called the sota, the unfaithful wife. Or more correctly, a wife who is accused of being unfaithful. And in the process, where she is brought in front of the kohen after her husband accuses her of infidelity, something very strange happens. And it says in verse 18, after he has made the woman stand before God, the priest shall bare the woman’s head and place upon her hands the grain offering which is a grain offering of jealousy. And then the priest’s hand shall be the water of bitterness that induces the spell. So not get carried away in all the detail. This very short description of somehow either embarrassing or disrupting the normal way of demeaning herself of the woman is intrinsic to this ritual. We always go to Rashi. Rashi says he shall put in disorder the woman’s hair. So the interpretation that Rashi gives the peshat of Para is not so much as uncovering as in the children’s book Yahushua Paruah. It is messing up. Messing up her hair. That is, he pulls away her hair plates in order to make her look despicable. And then he says something else. Mikan livnot Yisrael shekilui Rosh ganeilahem. We may learn from this that as regards married Jewish woman, an uncovered head is a disgrace to them. And this is where the games begin for your book. And you spend 500 pages basically trying to determine whether these verses are a basis in the Torah for the custom, the law, the observance of Jewish women who are married covering their hair, or whether it’s a variant interpretation. It is kind of fascinating. I will say that the reason I say the peshat is Rashi in two other places when he talks about Para, he says the first time is with regard to the Nazir, the Nazirite, who takes an oath not to drink, not to shave, cut his hair. He lets his hair grow wild also, and that’s clear that he’s not uncovering his head. And the second instance that Rashi brings is when kohanim are forbidden to outwardly mourn. They are not permitted to let their hair grow wild, which is a sign of mourning. So I think the simple interpretation would be not to make any big deal out of all this, but Rashi says, quoting the Talmud and others, this is used as a pretense, or this is the source of the fact that uncovering a married woman’s head is a disgrace. Do you think this is a kind of a tempest in a teapot? That didn’t have to happen.

Michael Boyd [00:19:39]:
No, Jewish law is governed by the Talmud. It’s not governed by Rashi. And the Talmud makes it clear that the verses here deal with head covering. And however, whatever is going on in Rashi is an excellent question, but it’s essentially a very technical question in Rashi. By the way, your translation of Rashi is not quite correct because Rashi makes no mention of married women. Rashi said, from here we see that women Cover their hair. Somebody in your translation inserted married in the text.

Adam Mintz [00:20:21]:
Take it up with Sefaria!

Michael Boyd [00:20:23]:
Okay. And they presumably took it from somebody else. It’s not an. It’s not a translation. It’s an editorialization. Rashi doesn’t say it in Hebrew. Rashi says Mikan. Here it’s to Jewish women that uncovered hair is a disgrace or a degradation for them. Well, whatever Rashi means, Rashi is channeling the Gemara in Ketrubos. And the Gemara Ketuboss clearly understands that what we’re dealing with here is head covering rather than head disheveling. Had Rashi gone in a different direction, it would have been very hard to harmonize Rashi with the Gemara.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:15]:
So let’s go to that Talmud in Ketubot, because the Talmud in Ketubot raises another, I would say binary that I had never really heard of. And that is, it’s talking about on what basis can a man divorce his wife? And it says there are certain things where the wife violates precepts of Moses: “Dat Moshe”. And there are other characterizations where a wife violates precepts of. And here the translation, I don’t think you will agree with either of Jewish women. I think the Hebrew says “Dat Yehudit”. But in any case, it’s a binary, and you wrote a whole monograph on this. Between the laws of Moses, which you say are objective, they’re from the Torah, and then there’s dat Yehudit. And this is really the basis of your whole argument. They are more, I would say, not subjective so much as talui al hazman v’al Hamakom. They are dependent on circumstance. And they are exactly what Rashi was talking about before, which is they are dependent on the normative activity of the Jewish community. Could you explain and unpack a little bit this binary between Dat Moshe and Dat Yisrael and the fact when you marry somebody, you say kedat Moshe v’Yisrael, you’re actually referring to these two different concepts.

Michael Boyd [00:23:02]:
I’m not 100% sure that the marriage ritual refers to them, but it doesn’t matter one way or another. Dat Moshe is a reference to immutable law, whether it’s Torah law or rabbinic law. It’s a reference to law that doesn’t evolve based on customary norms. And Dat Moshe is a reference to law that evolves along customary norms. And Dat Moshe doesn’t essentially change, and Dat Yehudit does essentially change. And thus the heart of the book is pointing out the following idea. Rambam in his code, calls the rules of Hair covering and modesty Dat Moshe. But when the Shulchan Arach Yoseph Karo writes his code, he moves these things from Da Moshe to Dat Yehudit, referencing to me the following basic idea. All matters of modesty are customary and driven by the norms of the world around us and not driven by anything else.

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:25]:
I think when I read that original Rashi and he said, mikan, from here we learn. It could have been. We learn, but it also could have been Rashi putting on his sociologist, his anthropologist hat, and say, this is where most of the people in the community take the fact that women are supposed to cover. In a sense, rabbis become anthropologists. They become descriptors of the practice of the community. And I want to use that as a segue into a fascinating responsa that you bring. It’s the response of Ben Ish Chai. I alluded to it in the introduction. He was a Baghdadi Jew. And he again describes the women of his day. And he describes. It’s a. I think, give us the background. It’s a fascinating story of a man torn between his parents and his wife. It’s an insight into a period in Jewish history where maybe a Baghdadi Jew was being influenced by Europeans and European practice. And then he goes ahead and gives the halakhic ramifications. So tell us about this fascinating response of the Ben Ish Chai.

Michael Boyd [00:25:49]:
The Ben Ish Chai was writing a book for Jewish women in his community, and he’s acutely aware of the fact that Western women in Europe do not cover their hair. And yet the women in his community are. And he lays out what I think is the correct norm, which is we live in an Arab society where the Arabs cover their hair and you have to dress in social norms of the community around you. And the European Jewish women live in a Christian society where the women don’t cover their hair and they don’t have to cover their hair. And I think that the Benish Chai is the single greatest halachic authority who adopts the full blown thesis of subjectivity. Now, it’s easy for him to do this because he’s explaining to the women why in a place where they don’t live, they conduct themselves differently. But it’s a very important thesis. It’s the thesis of social subjectivity. And the Ben Ish Chai has it absolutely correct.

Geoffrey Stern [00:27:07]:
I love the fact, again, that he quotes the women themselves. He says, the women make this argument. These are their words which they answer for this custom. And we do not have an answer to push them away. I find that Amazing. But if you could also touch upon the censorship that you have discovered or uncovered with regard to this, because those who disagreed with it found it so unnerving.

Michael Boyd [00:27:36]:
I didn’t discover it and I didn’t uncover it. Jacob Zephone pointed it out to me and I incorporated it in the book just as a notation. I’m not really interested in that topic. This is a fine topic for somebody like Dr. Mark Shapiro, but the later generations are always uncomfortable with comments of previous generations. And this is an example of that. I’ve not investigated too much who censored and why, but it’s a common thing that when you find venerated people saying things that you think are ridiculous, you don’t share them so quickly.

Adam Mintz [00:28:18]:
Now, first of all, the whole thing is fantastic. My question is, do you think the Beni Shai, being a Baghdadi rabbi, that he was more inclined to appreciate cultural norms while somebody living in Eastern Europe might have been less inclined?

Michael Boyd [00:28:40]:
That’s an excellent question. I’m not 100% sure. Baghdad in the life of the Ben Ish Chai was a transition point. We close our eyes and we think that Ben Ish Chai lived in Aladdin, but he was living in a Baghdad that transitioned from a pure Islamic society to a French British society. And it was undergoing an enormous cultural revolution while he is there. And I think he is trying to manage the transition from being a purely Islamic society to being a Western society. Just like Rabbi Mastass the older, who was the Chief Rabbi of Morocco as the French slowly take over. Is managing a similar transition. Transition moments cause you to really examine your principles.

Adam Mintz [00:29:39]:
That’s fascinating, Geoffrey Sharon in Sotheby’s, she sold the tefillin of the Ben Ish Chai. So you see, Michael, that it was a transition period to the west, but they still had very much of the magic symbolism of the East. That’s also reflective of all of this.

Michael Boyd [00:29:58]:
Absolutely. And the Baghdadian community remains extremely traditional all the way until the end. No doubt. No doubt.

Geoffrey Stern [00:30:11]:
Picking up a little bit on where Adam was going, you bring up the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, the great Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. And those of us who know Chabad know that in Chabad, almost universally, not only are the wives of the Chabad rabbis typically very pretty, God bless them, but they wear Sheitals and they wear fake hair coverings that look like really great hair. And OvadiaYosef feels very strongly, especially for Sephardim, who are obviously his Kehillah, that they not use hair to cover hair. And in his explanation, he does say in particular to Sephardim, who had always conducted themselves this way in times of the past. And again, I think this triggered in me this sense that we are involved here with culture wars, with people identifying themselves, whether of their marital status or from which community they come from. And from that perspective, the sociology that you identify lies behind halacha, I guess, also shows itself. Do you feel there’s any weight there that Ovadia Yosef felt so strongly about this in terms of Sephardic women giving up what made them proud? Sephardic women doing something different than the [Bagdadi] Ben Ish Chai that we just talked about? He wants them to retain their identity. And covering the hair is one way that he feels very strongly about.

Michael Boyd [00:32:05]:
Well, I want to reflect for a minute how unusual the wig covering is. We don’t permit things that should be covered to be covered by something that looks like it. We don’t permit people who need to cover their chest to cover their chest with pictures of their chest, and we don’t permit people who need to cover their legs to cover their legs with pictures of their legs. The practice of covering hair with a wig is extraordinarily unusual, and it itself reflects the de-eroticization of hair. If hair were genuinely erotic, we would not permit hair to be covered with hair. And the Ashkenazi factit of hair covering has this double unusualness. Single women don’t cover their hair, and married women cover their hair with an invisible covering, with a covering that looks like hair. The Sephardic community always had some doubts about both of these because the Rambam draws no distinction between single and married and certainly doesn’t permit a wig. And the Shulchan Arach Rabbi Caro in the 1500s notes that there are some places where single women don’t cover their hair without fully endorsing this. Yet Ashkenazim haven’t lived in a community where single women cover their hair in a very long time, and they haven’t lived in a community where married women didn’t cover their hair with a wig in a very long time. The weirdness of hair covering is embodied in both of these ideas. I’m not going to psychoanalyze Rabbi Yosef here. He’s telling you what I think is the simplest explanation of the halacha, which is if hair needs to be covered, it needs to be covered with something that doesn’t look like hair, just like if legs need to be covered, they need to be covered with something that don’t look like legs. And if buttocks need to be covered. We don’t cover them with pictures of buttocks and so on and so forth. Rabbi Yosef’s position is exceptionally intuitive. The Ashkenazi custom, very well established as it is, reflects an embarrassment with hair covering, which is we cover in a way that doesn’t let people know we’re covering.

Geoffrey Stern [00:34:57]:
We had a guest who said that the modern kippah in Israel might be a kippa shekufa, an invisible kippah. And what you just said reminded me of that in terms of a Sheitel is covering hair with hair is a hidden head covering.

Michael Boyd [00:35:13]:
I was just in Israel last week when an eminent Torah scholar remarked to me that the liberalities and modesty rules in our community in Israel comes from the fact that the community that we don’t like. This was a reference to the Arab community in Israel is certainly more modest than us. And we see in Israel, he said, that modesty is not connected to virtue. You can say many bad things about Israel’s Arab neighbor, but you probably can’t say that they’re immodest. And the community in Israel hopes that the winner isn’t the most modest because that’s not us. In America, orthodoxy perceives itself as aligned with more modest community, and that itself creates an interesting social tension between Israel and America.

Geoffrey Stern [00:36:25]:
Okay, Michael,

Michael Boyd [00:36:28]:
thank you very much.

Geoffrey Stern [00:36:29]:
Amazing. It was great having you. And maybe we’ll have you back on Thanksgiving to share with us your insight into that hag.

Adam Mintz [00:36:40]:
Very good.

Michael Boyd [00:36:41]:
Thank you very much.

Adam Mintz [00:36:42]:
Thank you, Rabbi Professor Michael Broyd. Shabbat shalom, everybody. Thank you, Geoffrey. An amazing week as always. We look forward to seeing everybody next week.

Geoffrey Stern [00:36:53]:
See you all next week.

My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform. And now on YouTube and Substack, we also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show Notes. This week, we start the fourth book of the Torah, Parashat Bamidbar. We will suggest that this is the book where the rubber hits the road and a radical new political model is launched. So join us for We The Tribes. So before we started, I asked you if you had ever heard of this Daniel Elazar. I had not. And I’ve kind of skimmed through, done a fast read through two of his books. He, we will see, is a world renowned scholar in federalism and obviously also a very knowledgeable Jew. Fascinating take this week, I think, on Bamidbar Are you strapped in and ready?

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:02:24]:
This is amazing. Yeah, he’s a Jewish political theorist, which I think, you know, there aren’t that many of which is really fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:31]:
Okay, so here we go. We are in Numbers 1, 1-4. On the first day of the second month in the second year after the exodus from the land of Egypt, God spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the tent of meeting, saying, take up the head count, take a census of the entire community. And it uses the word community or assembly or edah, which means like the ruling council or the children of Israel by their clans, by their father’s houses, according to the number of names every male per capita, which really means “kup”. It means a head count. And you and Aaron shall record them by their groups from the age of 20 years up. All those in Israel who are able to bear arms associated with you shall be a representative from every tribe, each one the head of his ancestral house. So, Rabbi, the first thing that struck me is because I’m still a little bit in Portugal, I looked at Abarbanel, and his first question was, he goes, you know, I don’t quite get this, as if this is at Sinai. Why are they at the tent of meeting? I didn’t get to the part where he gives the answer, but I think what we’re going to see is this is almost the setting for a new constitution. And it’s not so important where, when, and how. They are setting up something directly connected to the Sinai revolution. And it is normative. So there’s a tent of meeting. And then the other thing that struck me was all of the different words used for describing who we’re talking about. It says, So edat, as I said from Everett Fox, talks in terms of edah can mean a ruling council or the entire people. Then it says for their families, for the heads of each group. And then it talks about ish, ish, lemate, ish, rosh, levet, avotav, hu, a representative from every tribe, each one the head of his ancestral house. Maybe I’ve been reading too much about gerrymandering and who represents who and where the lines have divided. But it seemed to me, Rabbi, looking at it fresh through fresh eyes, this year, we’re really talking and deciding who has a voice, the different superstructure going down from individual all the way up to the head of the representative, so to speak, of each tribe. It just struck me the way it parsed it.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:05:32]:
I think that’s right. Let me go back to your first question. So it says in the second year after the exodus from the land of Egypt, God spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the Tent of Meeting. So what’s the significance of the Tent of meeting? So the Book of Numbers is the book of the journey of the Jews. You know, it’s an interesting thing. The book of Exodus talks about the journey. They leave Egypt, they go to Sinai, and they start traveling. The book of Leviticus takes off. It’s like a big bracket. Cause it tells you all about the tabernacle and the sacrifices. But there’s no narrative, there’s no story, there’s no journey. And the journey continues here in the Book of Numbers, chapter one, I think, in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting. That’s how that, you know, that was showed, they were journeying. They weren’t at Mount Sinai anymore. They weren’t actually in the tabernacle. It was the tent of meeting, which seemed to kind of travel with them. So I think that an important point. And for sure, there’s a big emphasis here on levels of authority, on how the people are divided. You know, that’s an important thing today when we take a census. The census takers, I don’t know who they are exactly, but they’re not the governors, they’re not the mayors. Right. You just have people who are working for the department of the census or whatever. You have it. But there. But here in the Torah, they want to tell you that the people in charge of the census are the governors and the mayors. It elevates the importance of the census. So it’s interesting to compare their census to our census. It’s also will be important to, you know, that we’ll get to it in his work what the purpose of a census is. Right. Like you said, you know, in the United States now we have all these court cases about, you know, how you divide the districts, which is related to the census. Right. You know, every state has a number of representatives depending on their population and how they divide the state. So obviously that’s not what the Torah does. And that’s also interesting to compare one with the other.

Geoffrey Stern [00:07:37]:
I love it all. I love it all. What follows after what we just read is then it goes tribe by tribe, nasi, the leader by leader, and it counts everything. And it’s at this point that this Daniel Elazar kind of also tries to put the Book of Numbers into context. He says, going back to the book of Genesis, a principal purpose of the Jacob and Joseph stories is to explain the foundation of the twelve tribes of Israel. While those twelve sons of Jacob may have been the ancestors, real or eponymous, of the original 12 tribes of Israel, in fact, history indicates that while the number remained the same, the identities of the 12 tribes shifted. The beginnings of the shift are described in Bereshit. In the process, we have the final dimension of covenants developed in Bereshit, namely the establishment of the basis for a covenantal polity, a tribal federation. So again, you can go look at B’reishi, you can look at the whole story of Exodus, and you can say it’s doing many different things. There are times where I’ve looked at it and it talks about sibling rivalry, and you can go chapter by chapter by chapter, seeing how that all develops. You can go through Bereshit and say it all has to do with who’s the chosen. Is it the first son or the second son, what this guy is doing? And we’ll see when we get to his bio that he is a federalist, meaning to say that just as with the states, the 13 states, there are separate, smaller entities and then there’s an overall government. He’s looking at everything that lies before this book of Numbers as preparation for what happens the second. We read the verses we started with today. And so he looks back at all those narrative stories about the patriarchs and the matriarchs, and he’s saying they’re all there to establish this confederacy of tribes. It’s going to change the way we look at everything before and possibly everything after. And I just love that because they’re all right of course, there are just different lenses that we can look through.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:09:54]:
Amazing. Okay, let’s go for it.

Geoffrey Stern [00:09:57]:
So he says, in keeping with the organic character of the 12 tribe kinship group, before Sinai, the tribes were governed by customary law. Through the Sinai covenant, God changes the moral basis of the Israelites obligations and rights as much as he changes their content. So what he’s arguing, and he doesn’t say it as a commentary on our verses, but the fact that it mentions Sinai is at Sinai, when God already makes a covenant with this disparate group of people. Six, we always thought there were 600,000 Jews. We’re going to see in a second that there were 12 tribes camped around with flags. But he was establishing a new basis for the social contract. And that I think becomes fascinating when you think back to the verses that we started reading. So for instance, in Numbers 2 2, the next chapter of our parsha, it says, the Israelites shall canmp each household with its standard under the banners of their ancestral house. They shall camp around the tent of meeting at a distance, camped at the front or east side. The standard of the division of Judah, troop by troop, chieftain of the Judahites, Nachshon ben aminadav. So I had to drop a celebrity name. But the point is that what he’s doing is he’s changing our vision of what happened at Sinai. And all of a sudden, now we don’t see 600,000 individuals. We see 12 tribes camped around sticking their flag, so to speak, in the ground. And if it reminds us of Washington, trying to bring together these 13 states because there were things that had to be done, I don’t think it’s that far fetched.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:11:42]:
I think that’s great. Now, of course, you have to remember that in this week’s Torah portion, it tells us that the census of the Jews, which is really the census of the men who are over 20 years old, was 603,550, which means that there were between 2 and 3 million people. So part of it, Geoffrey, has to do with communication. That is, how did they communicate? Moses spoke. You know, you get the impression when you read the Torah that Moses spoke and everybody heard. Right. There was a microphone and everybody heard. Obviously, that’s ridiculous. There had to be some kind of system. And would you describe the way they camped? Is part of the system of protection? Correct, but it’s also of communication. That’s the way they got the word out.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:27]:
I love that. And absolutely. And it’s all because we’re visualizing it slightly differently. If we go to Rashi Legilgalotam. by their polls, he says by means of shekels, and then he refers back to Exodus 38. So this isn’t the first time that we’ve come across this. But again, we have two variations on the story. One is where they count by their head count, and the other is where they do it by shekels. Rashi is trying to combine the two. Ibn Ezra, he says, as I have already explained, the meaning of gilgalatam, their poles, the word gulgulatam their poles literally means their skulls. Galgal, it’s round and so called because it is round. He sees this as different. But what I’m trying to say, and I think even Eleazar kind of referenced it, we have these traditions of 12. Sometimes the names will change. We have these traditions of polling. Sometimes it’s referred to by skulls, sometimes it’s by shekels. The details are not important. These are combining of different traditions. But the resulting vision, that is what is ultimately important and what we are going to look at. The Emek Devar says as follows, the tribal leaders were already agreed upon by each tribe as worthy to be the head. Here in our Parsha, God agreed with their selection and appointed them with his word. And this is what the verse means. Each man shall be the head of his father’s house. The man who is already the head will be appointed to take charge of the counting by God’s command. So, Rabbi, there’s already been a primary. There have already been county elections. As you were saying before, there is already. The polling stations have been set up. There are so many levels, what you call communication. It’s necessary for communication. But I love the way the Emek Davar says, we’ve already assumed all of this political superstructure. And we’ve gotten to the point where the 12 Nassiim, the 12 princes of each tribe, are presented before Moses, before God, and approved.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:14:46]:
Fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:47]:
Okay, so I wanted to talk a little bit about how the number 12 is achieved. So there are numerous times where the 12 is achieved. In our particular Parasha, it does something interesting. It says, from the sons of Joseph, in verse 1: 10, there was Ephraim the Elishama, son of Ammihud, and Manasseh Gamaliel son of Pedisur. So how do you get to 12? If Joseph is divided into two, you leave out Levi. So in our particular rendering of the 12 tribes, we don’t have Levi. And of course, if you say, why not? You could make the argument because since we’re looking at military age and Levi did not serve in the military, that’s why they were left out.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:15:40]:
And they didn’t have land. They didn’t have. They didn’t have a portion in the land because they lived in houses. They lived in special cities because they had a rotation to work in Jerusalem. Slow.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:53]:
Absolutely. But the point is that while we all agree that there are 12 tribes, if we look at the different lists in the Torah, depending on the needs and the context, those numbers change. So in our parsha, it says, like we just said, the Levites, however, were not recorded among them because, as Moses had spoken, do not on any account enroll the tribe of Levi or take a census of them with the Israelites. And so therefore, we use Joseph, we split him, and we take his sons, Jacob’s grandsons. If we go to Exodus, it talks about, these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob there to get the number 12. We obviously include Joseph and Levi, and that’s how we get to 12. There are renderings in the book of Judges where they leave out different tribes. Judas, Shimon, and Labor, Levi are left out. The point that these modern scholars are making is that it’s not always important who made up these tribes. What was important was that there was a confederacy of 12 tribes. We’re creating a structure. And I would even argue that, you know, there are those who say, who was the tribe of Levi? Why can they not bear arms? Is it because of what happened in Genesis when Shimon and Levi went and they did a massacre? Did they have a… violent tendency? The point is, are these tribes necessarily all the children of the same patriarch? It wasn’t important at this point. This was a revolutionary confederacy of 12 disparate tribes. And they were all confederated, based on a covenant and a belief system. And that’s why this scholar who strutted between the biblical world, he was a religious Jew and a scholar of Judaica and a political scientist. He sees this as being absolutely unique in the history of politics.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:18:07]:
I’ll just say we’re not so different. You talk about the United States, it’s 50 states. If I asked you to talk about the states, there’s no way you would mention all 50 states. You’d mention some states. We have 50 states like New York, California, Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, whatever. You would say the detail is not important. It’s the fact that you have a United States of America.. The detail wasn’t so important. The point was you had a federation of 12 tribes in Israel.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:38]:
Absolutely.

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Geoffrey Stern [00:19:48]:
So I I’ve hinted that I found the guy’s bio so interesting. I am going to run through it as if he was a guest. He unfortunately passed away in 1999. So this Daniel Elazar was a political scientist known his seminal studies of political culture of the US States. He was professor of Political Science at Bar Ilan University in Israel and Director of the center for the Study of Federalism and professor of Political Science at Temple University. He was the founder and President of the Jerusalem center for public affairs. In 1986, President Reagan appointed him a citizen member of the U.S. advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, the major intergovernmental agency dealing with federalism. He was a appointed for a second term in 88 and a third in 91. He was the author and editor of more than 60 books. His books in the area of federalism Included the American Partnership, American Federalism, the American Mosaic. And this is I found fascinating. He was also the author of multi generational study of the development of civil community in Midwestern cities. This guy was not just a tangential professor of political science who had a slight interest federalism. He was absolutely absorbed by this federalism. And lucky for us, he also wrote books on the Torah. So he writes. And now he’s talking about our book, the fourth book of the Torah. Numbers in Hebrew Bamidbar continues the constitutional corpus and is understood in the Jewish tradition to be an indivisible part of the original constitution. Numbers is an elaboration of aspects of the regime. It concentrates on the operational dimensions of the government of the tribal confederation. He gives a list. So now we’re starting.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:21:44]:
Wow, look at that list.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:45]:
He is going to give us a list of what happens in the rest of this book through his lens. We already looked backwards, now we’re looking forward. So the national consensus by tribes and the federal means by which the census is taken. Two, the manner of forming the tribes around the tent of assembly. Three, the divisions of the tribe of Levi. Four, operational rules for managing the camp. Removing lepers, corpses. We focus on the lepers and corpses. He’s focused on operational rules for managing the camp, the order of tribal sacrifices. Okay, that you could say that’s not surprising. Technical details for praying the Levites for service. Trumpet calls for public assembly. That gets into your aspect of communication, Rabbi. Implementation of the death penalty commandment that all Israelites put on a garments with fringes. So that he’s looking at.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:22:40]:
Interesting that that’s part of it.

Geoffrey Stern [00:22:42]:
Because he’s looking at it like. What’s the word I’m thinking of? It’s not a costume, it’s a uniform. He’s seeing it as a uniform.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:22:50]:
That’s fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [00:22:51]:
Then he goes. Provision for the division of land of canaan in chapters 26. Provision for succession of Moses. Adjudication of vows, division of spoils of war. Provision for the settlement of the two and a half tribes on the other side of the Jordan. Rules for conquering the west bank, the borders of the land of 12 tribes. Allocation of the Levites, cities of refuge, rules regarding the tribal lands. If you look at the Book of Numbers from his lens, this is creating the boundaries and the mechanics of this federalist revolution. It’s just amazing how you can look at it all differently when you look at it through a lens such as this.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:23:37]:
That’s fantastic. And that’s great that he lays out the entire Book of Numbers based on.

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:43]:
On that, he says this is a book filled with the day to day stuff of government and politics, worth a political commentary in its own right. In that sense, it is an excursus on the Book of the Covenant and the other constitutional laws of Exodus and Leviticus. If the decalogue is the covenant and the Book of Covenant is the basic constitution, Numbers provide several organic laws designed to implement the covenant and the Constitution in the real world occupied by the Israelites, both in the desert and what was to become the historic land of the 12 tribes on both banks of the Jordan. He just makes us look at our Parsha and this Book of Bamidbar differently. And now I want to go a little bit into what federalism is through his lens, because that’s the key argument here, that it is novel and that it appeared once, maybe twice, because he includes Switzerland, but once before the Constitutional Congress and the federal government. So he says federalism has to do with the need of people and polities to unite for common purposes, yet remain separate to preserve their respective integrities. It is rather like wanting to have one’s cake and eat it too. So again, he sees this as radical. The federal idea itself rests on the principle that political and social institutions and relationship are best established through covenants, compacts and other contractual arrangements, rather than or in addition to simply growing organically. In other words, that humans are able to make constitutional choices. We’re going to get into this “organical” in a second. The term federal is derived from the Latin for foedus, which like the Hebrew term Brit means covenant. There have been three critical federal experiments in the history of humanity to date. The Israelite tribal federation described in the Bible, what was the first. More than 3,000 years ago, it formulated the founding principle of federalism by transforming the vassal treaty among unequals into a covenant among equal partners, equal at least for the purpose of covenant. That led to the establishment of a polity of tribes maintaining their liberties within the framework of a common constitution and law. Although external pressures ultimately brought about the demiss of the tribal federation as a regime, the Jewish people lived on as the first federal people. And they have continued to use federal principles in their internal organization to the present day. So that is the most profound statement he makes. Because, Rabbi, if there’s anything that we do at Madlik is we marvel at the Jewish people’s ability to welcome different opinions, but respect different opinions. And ultimately what he’s saying is that’s what federalism is, that we are united as a people. And not only can can we disagree, but we have to disagree. We have to retain our identity. That is fascinating. So he says that other countries are started and maintained through the glue of conquest. So conquest tends to produce hierarchically organized regimes ruled in an authoritative manner. Think power pyramids with the conqueror on top. You guessed it, that is ancient Egypt. Then there is another model. The organic model has proved most attractive political philosophers, precisely because at its best, it seems to reflect the natural order of things. So if you recall a second ago, he said, before Sinai, the Jews had tradition, they had common practices. They were a people, they were naturally formed. That was the moment where they were just like the Greeks. What happened, according to this scholar at Sinai, was all of a sudden the organic model changed into a covenantal model. Covenantal foundings emphasize the deliberate coming together of humans as equals to establish bodies politic in such a way that all reaffirm their fundamental equality and retain their basic rights. It really is fascinating.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:28:05]:
It’s fantastic. That’s a fantastic couple of paragraphs.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:07]:
So he makes us look at all of this stuff so differently. He goes on to say that the biblical design is federal in three ways. First, it’s based upon a network of covenants, beginning with those between God and man, which weave the web of human, especially political relationships in a federal way, that is through a pact, association and consent. And again, you won’t be able to read what follows after reading this and not think in terms of groups coming together. Even Zelophchad’s daughter, We normally read that through a feminist lens. And once you look at this, what happened was they came up with pushback. How can we have tribal and distinct, different tribes if women who marry out of the tribe and don’t have the father or brother to do it? This was kind of like something that has to go to court. It has nothing to do with feminism. It has to do with how do we retain the Confederacy. 2. The classical biblical commonwealth was a fully articulated federation of tribes instituted and reaffirmed by covenant to function under a common constitution and common laws. Any and all constitutional changes in the Israel polity were introduced through covenanting. And even after the introduction of the monarchy, the federal element was maintained until most of the tribal structure structures were destroyed in external voices. The third thing that he says is fascinating. He says even in the end of Days, where it’s all la dee da, universal lambs lying down with sheep. If you look at Ezekiel, he talks about the End of Days and he talks about the tribes, and he talks about the 12 tribes being reinstated. Rabbi. In the same words as he talks about, the nations of the world will come. And if you read through this len, what happens is the lens that normally we call universalism, where we all become homogenous and lose our distinctions. If you take this to the end, even the biblical eschatology looks where we retain our distinct characteristics, whether we’re inside of Israel or around the world. And I just thought that this was fascinating. He even has a term that he talks about a federalist state of mind, that you think about things differently. I just am so thankful that I discovered him. And it makes you really think about how revolutionary this material is, but also to think about it differently. And I have to say what I have to do is control myself, because the gut reaction is we’re projecting back in time.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:31:03]:
Right. Well, I was going to say that it’s so modern. The question is, is it really modern? Or what is it saying is this is built into the human fabric of the way states are designed, developed.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:13]:
And if you have those 12 tribes around the thing, and then you talk about laws that help to support the 12 tribes, and you look at the cities and you say, how are they distributed amongst the 12 tribes? And the Levi’s, it makes you say, this is real. This is not some theology they were putting together the real thing, confederacy of tribes.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:31:36]:
Amazing. This is really good. Okay, enjoy the beginning of the Book of Numbers, everybody. We got a good couple of weeks coming up. You see from the professor, we have a great couple of weeks coming up. Great. Shabbat Shalom, everybody.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:49]:
And I think we have Shavuot coming, so we.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:31:52]:
Yeah, and Chag Sameach, who will pick it up in Parashat Naso in two weeks from now.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:57]:
So get around Sinai next week, plant your flag, keep your independence, but also listen to the words that everybody else will be listening to. Accept the Torah in your own way. Sabbat Shalom, and we will see you all next week.