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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]:
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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.

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 Safaria and a link is included in the show Notes. This week we read Behar-Bechukotai and finish the book of Leviticus. Join us as we challenge the biggest perception of the Sabbath. That it’s a day that we rest from creation. Join us for Made on Shabbat. Well, we’re finally finishing Leviticus and you are dressed up because tonight when we record is Lag b’Omer and you’re going to be officiating at a wedding.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:01:23]:
No better way to celebrate Lag B’Omer than to officiate at a wedding. So happy. Almost lag B’Omer, everybody. And enjoy whatever you plan to do on this on this holiday.

Geoffrey Stern [00:01:35]:
Fantastic. And you know, Lag B’Omer is part of the omer. It’s part of counting. It’s a cycle of seven. It’s kind of clearly linked to the seven days of creation which is Shabbat, and the seven year cycle which is the Sabbatical and the Shemitah. So it’s all connected, isn’t it? And maybe tonight we’ll even find it’s something to be happy about. So here we go. We are in Leviticus 25:1 God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, speak to the Israelite people and say to them, when you enter the land that I assign you, the land shall observe a Sabbath of God. Six years you may sow your field, and six years you may prune it the vineyard and gather in the field. But on the seventh year, the land shall have a shabbat, a complete rest, a Sabbath of God. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of untrimmed vines. It shall be a year of complete rest for the land. And in verse 6 it says, Now The Sabbath yield…. In the Hebrew, it says Shabbat Aretz, the Sabbath of the land. Our good friend Everett Fox says, now the Sabbath yield shall be to you for your servant and for your handmaid, for your hired hand, and for the resident settler who sojourns with you and your cattle and the beasts of your land may eat of its yield. So, Rabbi, we are going to focus on an enigmatic expression. You know, somebody could say it’s a typo. Somebody could say that maybe it was transcribed improperly and we shouldn’t build a mountain on a. Mohil. I will argue that some of the explanations that we’re going to get are so pristine or so valuable it works building the Mohil. So the. The problem is it says והיתה שבת הארץ לכם, it doesn’t say והיתה תבואת הארץ לכם the crops that you collect. So as Rashi says, since Scripture does not say Vahayita Shabbat, Vahayta tavu ata, aretz lahem la Chichay, that the crops or the yield of the land should be to you. But it says, it says only that which has been treated according to the sabbatical year has been dedicated free to all of you. So there is a problem here, that you are actually not harvesting the Shabbat. You’re harvesting the harvest of the sabbatical year. And so what Rashi learns from here, which follows the sifra and the midrashim, is that when it says that you harvest the Shabbat haretz, it means those crops that have been let to lie fallow and can be yours, and it excludes maybe some other crops. But it is a challenge of wording here. And that’s what we’re going to kind of follow the commentaries on. Ramban says the Sabbath Haaretz, the Sabbath produce of the land shall be yours, he says, or it may be the year itself is called Shabbat Haretz, just as the seventh day is called Shabbat of Hashem. So just like we refer to it as Shabbat Hashem, here we’re calling it Shabbat Haaretz. The reference thereof is to the produce of the Sabbath year. So what intrigued me, Rabbi, and this is why we’re talking about the side of Shabbat when we normally think of Shabbat as a day where you don’t produce anything, and the sabbatical year, the produce of the sabbatical year, when we don’t normally think of the sabbatical year as producing anything. That was the irony. That was the contrast that intrigued me. And so far we’ve looked at two commentaries, Rashi and Ramban. And they all recognize the linguistic problem, but Rashi has a halachic outcome from it, which is only crops that have been let follow. So let’s say you had a farmer who wasn’t following the rules, and then halfway through the year, he said, you know what? I’m going to make it hefker. I’m going to make it available that you might not be able to harvest. It’s like too little and too late. And according to the Ramban, he almost makes this sabbatical year like an Earth day. Just like Sabbath of the week belongs to God, the Sabbath of the Shemitah, of the Sabbatical cycle belongs to the land. But they’re all dealing with this Shabbat haretz.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:06:41]:
Yeah, I mean, you have to deal with Shabbat haretz because it’s almost like an oxymoron. It’s almost like two words that don’t fit together, because Shabbat means Shabbos and Haaretz means the land. What does the land have to do with Shabbos? So, you know, they have to be what the significance of Shabbat HaAretz is, if the Torah puts those two words together.

Geoffrey Stern [00:07:06]:
Yeah. And of course, I think just looking at the two commentaries that we have, Ramban makes a lot of sense because we’re letting the land rest. So you have a Shabbat, God has a Shabbat. The sabbatical year is the Shabbat haretz. And that’s why I said it kind of reminds me of Earth Day. So the Hizkuni says what the earth produces during that year is for all of you to serve as food. You are not obligated to tithe any part of it, nor to set it aside for the poor. It is not yours to distribute. Neither is what it produces to be converted into libations to be offered in the Temple. So I take this as almost a commentary on the Ramban. The Ramban says that this is the Shabbat of the land. And if you follow the Hizkuni, it means the land and not God’s, unlike normal produce that you have to go to the Temple and you have to give a little bit to God, a tenth. This is the land’s gift to you, but it clearly is. It belongs to you. Again, they’re learning all sorts of interesting things from what you call this oxymoron, we get to a commentary who I had not heard of before, but this is the one that really started me thinking. It’s called Haktav v’hakabalah. It seems that he wrote at the beginning of the Haskalah of the Enlightenment. And he. He was trying to show how all the laws of the oral tradition are actually in the Torah.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:08:45]:
That being said, now just explain that for one second. That’s what the modern. Many of the modern scholars tried to object to. You know, that the Oral Torah was made up. Right. There’s no connection between the Oral Torah, the written Torah. So he was a traditionalist. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg and he tried to show that the entire Oral Torah was rooted in the written Torah. So he actually was important.

Geoffrey Stern [00:09:11]:
Okay, fantastic. But he has a turn of phrase here that sets your teeth on edge. He goes, hashabat lo ta’achal, you don’t eat the Sabbath. He says, this is a problem. The Sabbath of the land shall be for you to eat. You do not eat the Sabbath itself. Therefore, the commentaries add implicitly the produce of the Sabbath of the land. So I think he’s arguing that you can’t understand it literally. It doesn’t read properly. That’s. But I take him to show that we have a problem here. Houston, we have a problem. You can’t eat the Sabbath. And then he goes on to say something absolutely brilliant. He says, that is from that which we have rendered ownerless. So he picks up on what Rashi said, that Rashi says it shows that you can only eat the stuff that was set aside by the farmer at the beginning of the sabbatical year. And so that is what it means, Shabbat Aretz According to them, the word Shabbat here carries the sense of you shall cause to cease, as in you shall remove leaven, meaning nullification, and making it ownerless So he is saying that what we learn between Shabbat Haretz is this sense of nullification. You know, Rabbi, we’ve talked about how much I love the concept of Bitul Chametz before Pesach. I love Bitul nidarim before Yom Kippur. Here we have built into the Sabbath, in this case, the Sabbath of the land. This concept of it’s ownerless. You have to let it go, and you have to let it go in order to be free. But he literally uses these words, and it becomes fascinating. The Mei Hashiloach. Another commentary.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:11:25]:
Wow, we’re going all over the place

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:26]:
today that I don’t quote very much, says, behold, the blessed one shows Israel that the life of Israel runs counter to nature. For according to nature, a person must act, and through those actions receive sustenance and influence. This, however, applies only to the nations of the world, whose life does not emerge from contradiction. Tzimzum and cessation. We’ll get to those heavily loaded words in a second, he says. But the life of Israel is beyond the grasp of this world. Their primary influx comes Davka, precisely from contraction and from cessation, from pulling themselves back through their resting in the seventh year, from working the land, likewise from adding from the Hol, the ordinary unto Kedushah, the sacred. Reminiscent of last week’s segment, he goes on to say, and this is the meaning of the Sabbath of the land shall be for you to eat that from the very act of ceasing they receive good sustenance, for within the cessation is hidden the greater part of goodness. What he is saying is the. The Shabbat. The concept of Shabbat, of pulling back is actually the produce itself. This is the output, this is the production. It’s really quite, I think, poetic.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:12:53]:
That’s very creative.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:56]:
So to fill in our listeners, when he says the word Tzimzum, which is contraction, that clearly makes us think of a Kabbalistic notion made by the Arizal that God, instead of creating the world by emanating His presence onto it, actually MeztamTzem pulled himself back and made room for creation. But he’s only kind of intimating that. What he’s saying here is the very concept of Shabbat, when we pull back from working the land, and by association, maybe when we pull back from working on Shabbat, we are actually doing something positive. We are. He doesn’t quite say this mimicking God when he created the world. And of course there is a connection between Shabbat and creation because it’s the day that God rested. But it’s just. It’s lyrical, it’s fascinating, it’s poetic, and it’s powerful.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:13:54]:
Now, the idea that we’ll mimic God in the Shmita year also is really interesting because creation just has that God took off on the seventh day. But the idea that from there we learn that you have to let the land lay fallow every seven years is a jump of the Mei Hashiloach, which is fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:14]:
And it’s what it’s. The jump is that if it was just on the seventh day, you could say there’s a direct parallel between God’s seven days and ours. But if you go now to the Shmitah, what it’s saying is there’s a parallel between how God acts and how we try to act Whether it’s seven days or seven years, this concept for a Jew and what it’s saying is this is baked into the Jewish psyche. And the Weltanschauung is that when we pull back, when we stop, we are actually giving room for creation. And that is the subject matter of today’s discussion. But it comes from these. I wouldn’t say they’re ancient sources. The Mei Hashiloach is also probably what, the 1800s.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:15:00]:
1800s, correct.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:01]:
Yeah, but I just love the fact that they’re not standing on a soapbox and making this point. But the point is coming out and it’s absolutely fascinating. So I want to pivot from this strange word, Shabbat Harets, to another strange word that has always intrigued me, which is la sot et has to do the Sabbath, if that sounds familiar to you. When we make kiddush on Shabbat, we say the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath for some move in Israel at Ashabbat. And then it says to make take the Sabbath laso at Hashabbat, which again is strange. Rabbi, if you think that the Shabbat is all about not doing work, ceasing, what actively are you doing?

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:15:51]:
God’s the one, if anyone. God’s the one who makes Shabbat.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:56]:
Yes. So it’s right. You can see why I combined the two concepts. They’re both enigmatic and they make us think about Shabbat differently and production on Shabbat differently. So it comes from Exodus 31:16, and it says the children of Israel ought to keep the Sabbath, to make the Sabbath observance throughout their generation as a covenant for the ages. That’s Everett Fox’s translation. But it says for some of Israel at the Shabbat, and there you clearly have observed the Sabbath la Sote at the Shabbat, literally to do the Shabbat. And that is an enigma that again, the commentaries are going to help us with. Commentary that we’re looking at is the Ibn Ezra. And he says the meaning of lasot in lasot et Hashabbat, he says, is thus similar to the meaning of lasot and get dress. And he hastened to dress. He is part of a group of commentaries that say when you make Shabbat, you prepare for Shabbat. It almost goes onto the preparations of the day. But again, he can’t ignore it. He’s trying to find what can you actually be doing that is related to Shabbat, where you don’t do anything. The Seforno says the Shamuveni Yisrael Etashabbat in this life to make the Sabbath on a day that is totally Shabbat. Bayom Sekoulo, Shabbat. So again, they’re taking the word lasot Shabbat very seriously.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:17:33]:
And what just the drosha. That’s not really what it means. You would say that’s a Dvar Torah, right?

Geoffrey Stern [00:17:40]:
It is a Dvar Torah. And I warned you we were going to be very close to a Dvar Torah. The Rabbeinu Bachia says very similar. Observe the Sabbath day actively. The plain meaning of this is to provide himself with the necessities required on the Sabbath. That was similar to the Ibn Ezra. A midrashic approach. Anyone observing the Sabbath properly on terrestrial earth is considered as if he had made it in the celestial region. What is meant by this midrash in the Mechiltah is that keeping the Sabbath is testimony that a person is a true believer in God and his Torah. Anyone who ignores the laws of the Sabbath thereoi testifies that he is a heretic and does not believe. So the way I read this, Rabbi, is I focus less on your making Shabbat in another world. And I focus more on the fact that when you keep the Shabbat, you’re making a profound step statement, and that is positive. When you keep the Sabbath, you are. We all know in India they call the Jews the Sabbath keepers. It defines them, it becomes their fingerprint. But I think the way I translate is that, yes, you are creating on something on Shabbat. Because by keeping Shabbat, you’re standing on a soapbox in Hyde park and you’re making a statement. You’re creating a reality. So I don’t have so transcendental and go into creating it in another world. And I think I’m permitted to read that into Bachia.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:19:17]:
Yeah, no, I think that’s right. And Bachia is much less of what I call the Dvar Torah. It’s much closer to what the words really mean. La sota ta Shabbat.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:29]:
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Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:22:14]:
Right. Okay. The idea is that you write the creation is the ability to stop to work. Right. That’s a pretty sophisticated idea that you need to create. The ability to not, I guess people who work, people who run businesses, know that you need to be focused in order not to work. Sometimes it’s easy to work. It’s hard not to work.

Geoffrey Stern [00:22:42]:
I love that. I just because you said economics, I started to think of the concept of opportunity cost. There’s a cost when you don’t do something. Not doing something also creates, whether economic good or loss. But I love the fact that. Fact that these, as you say, are very sophisticated concepts and they’re coming through the commentaries on these, on these. pesukim, the Torah Temima, maybe you can fill our listeners in a little bit on the Torah Temima, my sense is this was a great scholar who, when you go through the Torah Temima Chumash, you see every place in the Talmud that that piece of pasuk is referenced. But clearly we’re going to see. He also gave a commentary when he felt he had to.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:23:37]:
So I just want to tell you that was written also around the year 1900. And what he did was he tells you, he lets you know all of the Talmudic references that quote that verse in the Torah. You know, today we cheat because we have AI. That’s easy to do, but he did it without AI, which was pretty impressive.

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:58]:
So listen to what he says in the small print. He starts by quoting the Talmud to make the Sabbath it is taught. Reb Eliezer Ben Porta says, the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath to make the Sabbath. This teaches that anyone who keeps the Sabbath is considered as if he has made it. Wow, he’s making the Shabbat. This is really in line with what we said a second ago. Now listen to the Torah Temimah The reasoning of this interpretation is straightforward. The verse emphasizes to make the Sabbath. But what making applies here according to the simple sense it should have read, the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath for their generations and no more. Because of this deviation in language, we derive that whoever keeps the Sabbath is as if he made it. From this shift in language, the sages derive their teachers teaching. And now he goes on. And the meaning of this general principle that whoever keeps the Sabbath is as if he has made it can be explained as follows. The commandment of Sabbath is different from all other commandments. All other commandments have visible concrete forms. Titsit, the fringes. tefilin; the boxes we put on our hand and on our head. Shofar, Sukkah, Lulav, they’re all material. Even when they are not being performed, they still exist as recognizable objects distinct from those of other nations. But the commandment of Shabbat is not like this. Without its actual observance, there is no recognizable indication that the day actually is Shabbat. The nature of the day itself is no different from other days. Therefore, its very existence is only recognizable through its being performed and observed. And thus anyone who keeps the Sabbath is considered as if he has made it, because through his actions he makes it recognizable and defined. This takes what I said before of standing on a soapbox in Hyde park to a totally new level. You are not just preaching an ideology, you’re creating a human construct. If we did not keep the Sabbath, there would be no Sabbath. There’s no significance to the seven days. And what connects it also to the shmita. If we didn’t keep every seventh year as a sabbatical year and stop working, there’s nothing in the fabric of the universe that says rest; stop. We really are creating the Sabbath and the sabbatical. These are conventions.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:26:37]:
Well, we use the cycle, we create the calendar, right. And by observing Shabbos and by observing Shmitah. And that’s why it’s la’.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:47]:
Ah.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:26:47]:
So.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:49]:
So it’s just pretty amazing. I think that if you look at the two sets of commentaries on the two different verses, certainly I’ve picked and chosen, but all of them talk about this ability to create something from nothing, to create something by possibly letting go or pulling back, whether it’s tsimtsum, whether it’s copy, what is transcendent and godlike about just letting the space create newness. I think it really gives us a whole new kind of vision of what Shabbat is. You know, there are those that say Shabbat is the great gift of the Jews to the world. And, you know, you can make a case just on a day-off and the social implications of leisure. But this takes it to another level.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:27:42]:
Yeah, this is fantastic. Okay, let’s hear it for the Torah Temima. The Torah Temima., you know, the way it’s written is that on top, in big letters, they tell you what the Talmudic quote is. On the bottom, in really small letters, he has this commentary. And, you know, the jewel is in the small letters. So you need to concentrate. I’ll just tell you that my father, for all the years, he used to have a Torah Temima. in his tallis bag. And on Shabbos, during Torah reading, he would study the Torah Temima., he thought the Torah Temima was the most brilliant and the most fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:15]:
I have to agree. And I have to say that when my oldest son became bar mitzvah and somebody said to me, what should we get him? I get him a Torah Temima.. I don’t know whether it’s been translated into English.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:28:26]:
Is it in English on Sefaria or you translated this?

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:29]:
I translated it. But I. I just, as you say in the fine print, he really comes through. And he doesn’t always do this. Sometimes he just does enough.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:28:41]:
Correct.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:42]:
Anyway, let us always associate the joy, the positivity and the creativity of when we count and we reach a milstone like L’ag B’Omer or, like seven days of creation or the sabbatical. And let us always find new insights into our ancient traditions. And texts.

Rabbi Adam Mintz [00:29:04]:
And this week we finish a book of Leviticus Chazak. Chazak. Finit. Chazak. Shabbat Shalom, everybody. See you next week.

Geoffrey Stern [00:29:13]:
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 read Emor and we ask, what if disqualification’s not the only way to read it? What if hidden inside this seemingly harsh system is a radically different idea, not of exclusion, but of permission? Tonight, we’re going to read these three prohibitions not as isolated rules, but as a single unified vision of holiness, and then ask a question that might turn the whole thing on its head. What if holiness isn’t about being perfect, but about what we allow? Well, Rabbi, I am back from biking in Portugal and reading the Abarbanel. I’m back to my favorite Rashi and the Midrash. How are you doing?

Adam Mintz [00:02:47]:
I’m doing well. Welcome back. And this is a great topic. Let’s go tackle Parshat Emor.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:53]:
So we are in Leviticus 21:1, and God said to Moses, speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them, none shall defile himself for any dead person among his kin. So in the Hebrew, among his kin means Lo Yitame B’Amav. And if you read it before you get to all the commentaries, Rabbi, it kind of sounds like he is distancing himself from his people. Don’t. Don’t defile yourself for your brothers and your sisters, except for the relatives that are closest to him, his mother, his father, his son, his daughter and his brother. So basically it is restricting the circle of relatives that a standard Cohen can mourn for. Can defile himself. I said mourn for. But that’s the next verse, because right now it means you really can’t touch a dead person, which will make you tameh. But it goes further. They shall not shave smooth, smooth any parts of their heads, or cut the side growth of their beards, or make gashes in their flesh. So those are typical standard, I would say, Goyisha, ways of mourning for your dead, and you can’t do it. They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God. For they offer the eternals, offerings by fire, the food of their Lord of God, and so must be holy. So this is the first part, because there are kind of three sections here, and I’m going to argue that they are actually connected. The first has to do with who you can mourn for. The next has who you can marry. In verse seven, it says they shall not marry a woman defiled by prostitution, nor shall they marry one divorced from a husband. For they are holy to their God, and you must treat them as holy, since they offer the food of your God. Again, Lechem Eloheim. They shall be holy to you. For I, God, who sanctify you, am holy. What we’re doing is we are segueing from the laws of mourning, where you are to distance yourself from who you can mourn for, to the laws of marriage where you have to distance yourself from who you can marry. And it goes on to say that the priest who is exalted above his fellows. Now we’re talking not just about any Cohen, but the Cohen Gadol on whose head the anointing oil has been poured, and who has been ordained to wear the vestments shall not bear his hair or rend his vestments. So again, he cannot mourn for those same circle of people. He shall not go in where there is any dead body. He shall not defile himself, even for his father or mother. So the circle gets even smaller. He shall not go outside the sanctuary and profane the sanctuary of his God. For upon him is the distinction of the anointing oil of mine. The Eternals. So he can’t go out to even participate in the funeral at all. He has to go about his business. He has to act as though nothing disruptive has happened. Rabbi, it struck you, too, that these are, if you read them together, they’re an issue of distancing oneself, of limiting the circle of people that you can mourn for and who you can marry. This is the first year I kind of put those two together.

Adam Mintz [00:06:31]:
Yeah, there’s no question. That’s right. You know, in last week’s Torah reading, Kedoshim, the word kadosh is understood by Rashi as being separate. Holiness and separateness in the Torah seem to be connected. So you’re 100% right for putting them together. And I think that’s a theme in this second half of the book of Leviticus.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:52]:
Yeah. So now we’re going to get a little bit to this word, halalim. Those priests, those kohanim, who have lost their priestly status for reasons connected with their birth or marriage, they either married the wrong person or they are the child of someone who. A Cohen who married the wrong person. You may not defile themselves by the dead. Scripture therefore says unto the priests, only those sons of Aaron are included who have not lost their priestly character. So even this, this is, you could say it’s a privilege, but it certainly goes with the ability of being an active Kohen, a Halal who is no longer part of that caste. It does not apply to him. Kedoshim Tiihiyu. They shall be holy, Rashi says, even against their will, the court shall force them to remain holy in respect to this. So these are strict rules that have to do with the caste you were born into, and you have to distance yourself from who you mourn for. And this, of course, we come across all the time with kohanim who. who lose a relative. And there are separate parts of the cemetery where are segregated for kohanim so that they don’t have to go in. So far, these rules, even though we don’t have a temple today, still apply to Kohanim. Rashi goes on, thou shalt sanctify him even against his will. And this, it says, if he is not willing to divorce the woman whom he had illegally married, you flog him, you chastise him until he divorces her. I assume from that it means you can reinstate yourself, but he goes on, holy unto thee. Treat him with sanctity, that he should be the first in all holy matters. Meaning to say, reading of the law, he gets the first aliyah, and that he should have the first right to recite the benedictions at a meal. So why he does what Abarbanel did last week, he brings this into the present. When we bench, if a Cohen is present, he is the one. He leads the benching. And if we’re in an Orthodox synagogue, when you have the aliyah, the first aliyah is called the Kohen aliyah. So it’s a privilege, it’s an obligation that lasts until today. The hair of his head shall not be in disarray. He shall not let his hair grow wild on account of ritual mourning for the death of a near relative and what is called letting the hair grow wild, leaving it uncut for more than 30 days. So we learn a little bit about the laws of mourning, but basically Rashi is just filling in the blanks. Here’s one that’s interesting. When it says he shall not go out from the sanctuary, this means he must not follow the funeral bier, attend the funeral of his father or his mother. A rabbi is further derived from this. In Sanhedrin, the halacha that the high priest made the sacrificial rites. When an onan, when he is literally in mourning, he, according to some, can perform the rites, and according to others, he must perform the rites. The following is how this is implied. Even if his father or his mother died, he is not required to leave the sanctuary, as may be assumed, but may perform the service. Interesting what the Talmud says. So the Talmud says in Sanhedrin 18A, if a relative of the high priest dies, he does not follow the bier. This is what the funeral procession that Rashi quoted, carrying the corpse. Since it is prohibited for the high priest to become ritually impure, even for immediate relatives, rather, once the members of the funeral procession are concealed from sight by turning onto another street, he can reveal himself on the street they departed. And when they are revealed, then he is concealed. And in this way he goes out with them until the entrance of the gate of the city from where they take out the corpse. Since the dead were not buried in Jerusalem, this is according to the great Rabbi Meir. So, Rabbi, my reading from this Talmud in Sanhedrin was, this is certainly a little bit about how it looks. It’s a little bit about the perception. You could easily say he shouldn’t go out because he might touch the corpse and become tame. Rabbi Meir is adding to that. He says, don’t get caught seen there. When they pass on Avenue A, you can be on the side street and look at them. When they pass you by, it’s clearly about appearances as much as anything else.

Adam Mintz [00:11:45]:
Can you imagine the Pope going to the local supermarket in Rome? I mean, that would be terrible for the image of the Pope. That is the same thing here. It’s the optics are bad, but I

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:58]:
think it’s not simply the optics of going to the corner Marcolet, the grocery store. It’s the optics of participating in this amazingly disruptive event. I think what I’m taking away this year from these verses is it’s not simply about maybe he might touch the dead person and become tamey. It goes more than that in the Pasuk. It goes more than that because it says he shouldn’t go through the shaving of his head, he shouldn’t go through the mourning motions. And in the Talmud, Rabbi Meir accentuates that by saying he shouldn’t be seen at the funeral. He has this desire to see his father, his mother being buried, but he cannot be seen doing that. Because I think the optics, to use your wor, Rabbi, is the optics have to be that he’s not touched by death, that his life is going on. And that struck me a lot this year.

Adam Mintz [00:12:59]:
Life, you know, the temple is the opposite of death, because the temple is supposed to give life. And if the Cohen Godel is supposed to be in the temple, he can’t come in contact with death. It’s fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [00:13:12]:
So in thetora.com it does kind of see the uniqueness of combining these two sets of laws. The laws of mourning and. And impurity provided by death and marriage. It says immediately following the laws restricting contact with the dead are the laws about maintaining the priest and his family holiness with respect to marriage. This is followed by laws for the high priest in the same order. So there’s no question that these two first kind of paragraphs are situ it together and start one thinking. Some suggest lineal purity is a rationale only for the restrictions on the high priest who must marry a virgin. This is supported by the motive clause that he shall not profane his seed among his kids. However, this consideration does not justify the blanket prohibition of a widow. The priest could simply wait a fixed amount of time. So what we’re finding, especially amongst the moderns, is they’re trying to figure out they can maybe understand the thing about mourning, but the thing about not marrying. So you could say not marrying a virgin. There’s a lot to be made of in ancient society in general about a woman who’s special just for you, who hasn’t been defiled hasn’t been touched. And that’s why he says you could understand this to be that, that the Cohen has to marry up. He can’t marry used goods. But that doesn’t explain necessarily a widow or some of the other things. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But the commentaries are struggling over this. There are some scholars who talk about a profane woman is a cultic prostitute, not just any prostitute. And one of the commentary said not quite clear why a cultic prostitute should be less problematic than an ordinary prostitute. But bringing in a avodah zora always ups the ante. But again, they’re trying to figure this out. They’re trying to understand why these women are clearly okay for Israelite and not okay for a cohen.

Adam Mintz [00:15:35]:
It’s interesting. The cultic prostitute seems to be something that was, that was very familiar in the ancient world. It’s not like taken out of nowhere.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:45]:
And of course the irony of a cultic prostitute is if there is one, she is called a kadesha. Which is

Adam Mintz [00:15:56]:
right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:56]:
Yes.

Adam Mintz [00:15:56]:
Which basically means separate. Right. The prostitute is separate. She’s not really part of society.

Geoffrey Stern [00:16:03]:
So there’s also, you know, as Freud pointed out in his book Totem and Taboo, there’s a connection between that which is forbidden, which is separated from us, and that which is holy, which is separated from us. So again the commentaries are trying to understand what the Cohen becomes who doesn’t follow these rules. He becomes a halal or a halalah. And we’ve kind of talked about this word a little bit. There was a Israeli, a great Israeli movie called Filling the Void (למלא את החלל). And halal can mean a void. Interpretations of halal is to pierce to profane. According to this interpretation, the term refers to a penetrated woman, either any non virgin or a woman who has been raped. And that the priest according to this would have to marry a virgin. That again we’re trying to figure out what is this word that is the opposite it used here for holy in thetorah.com it brings a scholar named Sarah Shechtman. And she argues that these laws have to do with the nature of the marital bond, which she suggests conceptualizing as a cord binding husband and wife. In ancient Israel, a woman’s status was determined by her primary male bond. Unmarried women are connected to their fathers and married women to their husband. When a woman was widowed, the cord dissolved. There is no idea in the ancient world of an unconnected woman. She had to belong to somebody through it left alone of a mark to render the woman unfit for marriage to the high priest. When she was divorced, the court was cut, but it remained present because her prior husband was still alive, leaving her primary male bond hanging. So I really, what struck me, Rabbi, was the lengths to which these modern commentaries were struggling and trying to create a thesis, an explanation for these laws. We always ask this, what is the problem that Rashi is trying to solve? So what is it about these rules? And of course, you probably come into contact with these in terms of conversion. When you convert somebody, that’s an issue. Marrying a kohen as well.

Adam Mintz [00:18:44]:
Very big issue. Correct.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:47]:
These are inscrutable type of rules that are still here because kohanim take their lineage very seriously. But again, it’s not that much stranger than other laws in the Torah that we have to figure out. I mean, it seems to me the most, I think, knee jerk explanation that I would give is that the kohen is on a higher level. He’s a higher caste. I kind of intimated that before. And therefore, while the rest of us of our people don’t have to be so particular in who we marry, the choices for a kohen, like a king maybe are more limited. And it has to do with aesthetics or anything. It basically is all of these women are, I would say, not the perfect match. It’s not the match made in heaven. When you meet a couple and they say, we were seventeen, we met in high school and we’ve been married ever since, you know, you go, it’s a beautiful story. That doesn’t mean that the rest of us who have more, every story is the same story.

Adam Mintz [00:20:02]:
Right?

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:03]:
There’s nothing wrong with divorce in Judaism. There is nothing wrong with marrying a widow. I would venture to say it’s a mitzvah. So that to me is, and I think they kind of hesitating to say this, that. But it does strike me as odd that all of these commentaries are kind of squirming one more. And this one, I think really reflects how, how hard they have to press. Dr. Eve Lavavi Feinstein argues, I believe these laws reflect a notion common throughout the Bible, that a man who has sex with a woman marks her permanently, leaving her, so to speak, with something of his essence. When sex takes place outside of marriage, it may be regarded as contamina, polluting the woman. The root tame. Pollute is frequently used to describe the effect of adultery on a woman, which involves the introduction of a foreign or improper essence. I mean, what challenges me with an explanation like that, Rabbi, is it’s hard to translate it into Hebrew. I don’t know what it means, what is essence?

Adam Mintz [00:21:08]:
Right. What is essence?

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:11]:
It’s really kind of fascinating. So what I want to do is I think that all of these scholars have forgotten the third leg of this parasha. Because the next thing that happens is we Read in Leviticus 21:16 as follows, and there’s no gap. And God spoke further to Moses, speak to Aaron and say, no man among you offspring throughout the ages who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the food of his God. Again, we have this ochel Eloheim. No one at all who has a defect shall qualified. No man who is blind or lame, or has a limb too short or too long, no man who has a broken leg or a broken arm, or his hunchback or a dwarf or a scurvy, no man among the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a defect shall be qualified to offer God’s offering by fire. Again, it has that word about Lechem Elohav having a defect. He shall not be qualified to offer the food of his God. He may eat of the food of his God, of the most Holy, as well as of the Holy. But he shall not enter behind the curtain or come near the altar, for he has a defect. He shall not profane these places sacred to me, for I, God, have sanctified them to me. Rabbi, it gets back to that piece of Talmud from Rabbi Meir where he said, it’s the optics, as you said, when it says enter behind the curtain. It struck me, as we are talking a little bit theater here. This is the show of holiness. And in the show of holiness, everything has to be perfect. There can’t be someone who’s maimed as much as God loves the maimed. There can’t be someone who’s not married to that Hollywood marriage. And there can’t be someone who is mortal in a sense, and mourning. And of course, that goes against what we typically say about the laws of Kahuna. Typically. Rabbi, I argue that a Cohen can’t come in touch with death because the Egyptian pharaohs and their priests worship death and we move away from death. But what this reading will say is that the Cohen has to death doesn’t own him, that in fact he’s like God, that he’s not impacted by death. Do you think that this third leg, this third group of rules, has an impact on how you read the first two?

Adam Mintz [00:23:52]:
Well, there’s no question. And the juxtaposition, the fact that it comes right afterwards shows that it’s all the same thing. Look at the end Kiani hashem, mechadishem. It’s the same word for I, God have sanctified them. And the word mekadishchem is the same word as kadosh, meaning to sanctify. So clearly it’s talking about the same thing. It’s all how do you separate the kohed and how do you define what that separation is?

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:21]:
And what’s fascinating to me. And I keep on saying it, but now I’m going to kind of hit it on its head. This lechem elohav is kind of rare. It only really occurs in this, these three parshiot, in these three different relationships. And of course, to be specific, lechem elohav literally would mean the bread of God. But I think the general interpretation means it has to do with the sacrifices, it has to do with all of the nutrients, the foodstuffs that we give to God. But it does. This is kind of a unique vision for the Kahuna, for the priests. And I think it’s one that we don’t really kind of isolate or focus on too much. I said in the intro, you know, what would it be like if we weren’t affected by death? What would it be like if we had the perfect spouse and family? What would that is this is a kind of a unique to me interpretation of kedusha that we don’t normally, I think, address directly. The Ralbag in his explanation says the fact that she was divorced, getting back to that middle segment shows that something negative about her. So he in a sense kind of gives a little remez to the fact that what linked the second portion is something wrong. There’s something wrong. And of course, what could be more wrong than death? You know, man was born in the Garden of Eden, he was going to live forever. He was born in the Garden of Eden, unitary, not even needing another a spouse. And he clearly was born in the Garden of Eden, complete and beautiful and pure. And so much of our religion and Judaism celebrates all of the opposites of that. It celebrates cleaving to one spouse, finding somebody, making someone else whole, which by definition means they’re not complete without you. And it talks about that we are gathered to our people, our life is mortal. So I think this really to me also shows a path not taken because I would say mainstream Judaism has not followed this path. If you look at the Hasidic stories, they celebrate the people who are imperfect. As the great Leonard Cohen said, it’s the crack that lets the light in. So let’s look at a slightly different interpretation of halal. And in Hebrew, it means to pollute, defile, profane, but also litten, loosen, open, untie, become free, become lawful. And this is something that’s fascinating. The same word that means defile can also mean to free. In our tradition, Rabbi Hulin is food that has taken. You’ve taken the truma, the meisser, you’ve taken the 10th of it and given it to the priest. And now it becomes profane. Yes, but it also becomes hulin. Permitted.

Adam Mintz [00:27:48]:
Permitted. Correct.

Geoffrey Stern [00:27:49]:
Permitted to eat. Eat. Actually, the Arabs have captured that when we see a restaurant or a food stand, that is halal. The Arab word for halal is permissible. It’s the same as hulin. It means that something that is not too holy to be eaten. It is something that is part of us, that is given to us. A hulin, as I said before, is referring to animals or birds consumed in nine.

Adam Mintz [00:28:20]:
I wonder whether the word comes from the word chol. Chol, meaning like the weekdays, the ordinary, as opposed to Shabbos, or the chulin, as opposed to the sacred.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:33]:
I think they’re all connected. And we always knee jerk when we say hiloni means secular, but it also means part of the normal life. So I do think it’s kind of fascinating, number one, the juxtaposition between what is holy and. We’ve seen what that can mean. And that which is permissive, which is the. You’re permitted to marry who you want, you’re permitted to not be perfect. You’re permitted to confront your mortality. I just found that kind of fascinating. And I must say, getting. Just getting back from Portugal, one of the things that was fascinating to me was the power of the monasteries in Portugal and the fact that they so ruled the country that at a certain point in time in 1834, a new king arose and he kicked them out. In other words, we see that a little bit with Hamas and Isis, where this religion can take people and isolate them too far from normal people and where they can kind of do damage. And it kind of, I guess, sensitized me to the power of the hulin, the power of the hol. In juxtaposed to the perfect world of

Adam Mintz [00:29:57]:
the kodesh, it all goes back to Portugal. This was amazing. Everybody should enjoy the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, which is a great Torah portion. Shabbat shalom to everybody. And we look forward to seeing you next week. We’re going to finish up the book of Vayikra, of Leviticus next week. Bahar Bechukotai. Have a good week everybody.

Geoffrey Stern [00:30:16]:
Looking forward to next week. Some people will let out a sigh of let out a breath of air when we finish Vayikra, but we’ve enjoyed every page. Look forward to seeing you all next week. 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 Parshat Acharei Mot from Lisbon. At least I’m in Lisbon. And we explore Abarbanel’s bold reading of Achasrei Mot. So join us for Brotherly Love in Lisbon. So, Rabbi, you were in Scotland a week and a half ago. I’m in Lisbon now. We are the traveling podcast, Torah Podcast.

Adam Mintz [00:01:44]:
Here you go. Lisbon has amazing Jewish history. The Abarbanel is remarkable.

Geoffrey Stern [00:01:49]:
It is so amazing and intriguing and complicated. I’ll tell you. You know, Abarbanel is included in Sefaria and every week as I go through stuff … first of all, he’s not translated into English in Sefaria. And then second of all, we’re going to see in a second. He has a very unique and long-winded way of presenting his commentary. And as a result, until this week, I have really not dived into him. Have you learned him on a regular basis?

Adam Mintz [00:02:22]:
No. I’ll tell you the truth. It’s long and complicated. You know what he does is I’ll tell you a yeshiva joke because you like yeshiva jokes. He has very, very long questions. They used to say that you’re not allowed to read Abarbanel on Shabbos afternoon because the problem is you read all his questions, but the questions are so long that you fall asleep and you’re left with all the questions, but you don’t get any answers? So that’s the kind of the feel you get from Abarbanel.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:52]:
I was going to say that sometimes the Abarbanel seems as long as the galut itself, as the exile. It is very long. But this is what it takes. You have to go to Lisbon to get this opportunity…. excuse. So I want to go a little bit into his history. The first thing that I’m going to say is we are going to refer to him as a Abarbanel. But I learned in my research this week that most scholars believe his name was Abrabanel, as in Abraham. I’m going to go with the street and call him Abarbanel. But anyway, the other fascinating thing is, and I’d love to know your take on this, he’s not called Rabbi Isaac ben Yehuda Abarbanel. He’s called Don Isaac Abarbanel. And I would say that makes him also kind of unique amongst the commentators that we read every week, that whether he was a rabbi or not, he certainly was not referred to as a rabbi. He was referred to as a Don.

Adam Mintz [00:03:50]:
He was a politician. He was an important person in the government in Spain before the expulsion, and he was part of the group that were expelled on July 31, 1492.

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:05]:
So I think what we’re going to find is, at least in Portugal, what I’m learning is you can’t really ever distinguish between religion, culture, politics, power, economics. And that’s his story. So he was a statesman, a philosopher, and yes, a biblical exegete. Born in Lisbon, the city that I’m privileged to be in, he received a broad education embracing Jewish religious philosophy, besides the traditional disciplines, also the basic work of classical literature and the writings of the foremost Christian theologians. His father, Judah Abarbanel, engaged successfully in both commerce and state finance. After his father died, he succeeded him as treasurer of King Afonso V of Portugal. This guy was like a Rothschild. He came from one of the most established families who was known not only for their wealth, but for their economic know how. And he was able to write these commentaries that we’re lucky to visit. His importance at court was not restricted to his official sphere of activities. Of a loan to the state of 12 million rays raised from both Jews and Christians in 1480, more than 1/10 was contributed by a Abarbanel himself. This was a wealthy man, a real don. When in 1471, 250 Jewish captives were brought to Portugal after the capture of Arquilla and Tangier in North Africa, Abarbanel headed the committee which was formed in Lisbon to raise the ransom money. So bottom line is, notwithstanding his high position and the great wealth he had inherited from his father, his love for his afflicted brethren was unabated. This was truly the pillar of the community. He was also in touch with cultured Christian circles. His connection with members of the aristocracy were not founded only on business, but also on the affinity of humanism. We always tal;k about Spain and now Portugal as the New York of their era. This man was truly integrated into the highest realms of society. He mixed easily with his Christian peers. And then it all came to an end. The period of tranquility in Lisbon ended with the death of Anfonso in 1481. And what I have found, Rabbi, is Portugal is even up until today, is more about who’s in power then about ideology. He was riding the horse of one king who died. And like the ancient pharaoh, there was a new pharaoh in town. The nobles rebelled against him, but the insurrection failed. Abarbanel was also suspected of conspiracy and forced to escape. He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1485. So he left Portugal not because he was Jewish, but because he was on the wrong side of the aisle. He was following the old king, and there was a new king in town. He moved to the border of Spain and Portugal, a little town called Segura. And then we’re going to talk about his exegesis, how he interpreted the Torah. And I have to say, Rabbi, when you go on tours in a city like this, they say, maybe he walked here, maybe he said this, maybe this happened. I feel so privileged that we’re going to be reading the Commentary of Abarbanel. We don’t Have to speculate what he said. We’re actually going to be reading his (original) words. And I find that. So that’s the privilege of learning Torah, is it not?

Adam Mintz [00:07:55]:
It’s amazing. It’s absolutely amazing. I love that too. To go to these cities and to think, you know, you walk the streets of. You walk the streets of Paris and you think about the rabbis who were in Paris and Rome and Florence, and you’re a little more exotic in, you know, in Portugal and Lisbon, and that’s fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:16]:
But I think by reading his commentary, we have a better insight into him than maybe an archeologist walking on cobblestone. So in terms of how he interpreted his commentary works, the first thing that makes it unique is that unlike usual biblical commentaries, he took special interest in the social and political conditions of the time into consideration. And I have to say that today we’re going to be Diving into his commentary on our parsha. And I’m going to make the case that we’re going to see all of these different tools that I’m referencing. He believed that mere commentary was not enough, but that the actual lives of the Jewish people must be deliberated on as well when discussing such an important topic as the Torah. The second thing that made him unique is his preoccupation with Christian exegesis and exegesites. He did not hesitate to borrow from Jerome, Augustine and others when there commentaries seemed correct to him. And interestingly enough, the Christian scholars of the 17th and 18th century actually quoted him. They went to the degree of translating his commentaries and they used him as a guide. So it was a reciprocal relationship. The next thing is he also took the time to include introductions. We’re going to see this all in this week’s commentary. He’s making this accessible. As academic and as knowledgeable as he was, he was very invested in making it available to the normal person. And finally, his commentaries, as you said a second ago, are preceded by a list of questions or difficulties that he sets out to explain over the course of the chapter. Not only did this make it easier for scholars to find the answers they were looking for, but these lists of difficulties aided the average student in studying his work. But for us, as we gaze to the side and we see Rashi saying mountains in a sentence or two, as you say, your eyes can get glazed over when you look at his list of questions. One fascinating thing of interest is in researching him, I found one of the seminal books on Don Isaac, Arbrabanel is written by none other than Ben Zion Netanyahu, the father of the current Prime Minister of Israel. I am traveling on this trip with my friend Andy Boas, who went to Cornell. When I brought this up over dinner, he said he took a course from Ben Zion Netanyahu at Cornell. It wasn’t on the Abarbanel, it was on Zionism. But this was a scholar who was very passionate, very opinionated. Maybe he believed his way was the only way. But again, fascinating that here we have a prime minister whose was a scholar in Spanish Jewry, Portuguese Jewry, and also a Abarbanel.

Adam Mintz [00:11:35]:
That’s amazing. Yeah, but seeing Netanyahu, that’s funny. So it all comes around. All comes around. Back to Lisbon.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:41]:
There we go. So here we are, we’re studying a Parasha. We’re in Leviticus 16 and in verse seven. And this is the core of the Yom Kippur ritual, I guess it says, the kohen, Aaron is to take two hairy goats. This is the way Fox translates for lokach et shneh ha’si’irim. The word for hair is sa’ar. So his translation emphasizes the fact that you take two hairy goats.

Adam Mintz [00:12:11]:
That’s funny, by the way. You could just say that si’rim means goats, because goats have hair. But he thinks there’s special kinds of goats, which is hairy goats. Okay, great.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:21]:
And we’re gonna get to the connection in a second. So he says he is to take two hairy goats and stand them before the presence of God. At the entran of the tent of appointment, Aaron is to place upon the two hairy goats lots, one lot for God and one lot for Azazel. So as Everett Fox says, the identification of this name, Azazel, has been a subject of debate for centuries. Proposals include ez azel, meaning a goat that escapes. Hence the English word scapegoat. We’ve dealt with this in other episodes and another reading signifying a fierce reading. So we are going to find a unique new commentary by Abarbanel that revolves around both this hairy goat as well as his interpretation of Azazel. But before we get there, this is how Abarbanel starts. He said, since this section deals with the service of the great and awesome day of the Lord, the Day of Atonement, it is fitting to examine it in depth. Therefore, I will now undertake an explanation of that Holy servants, in its entirety and in its proper order, what he does. And I went ahead and I took his commentary and I put it into one of those online engines that counts words and pages. He spends the next four pages of his commentary, Rabbi. Giving his reader an exact, I guess, synopsis of what happens on Yom Kippur. And so this is kind of getting at what I was saying in the introduction in terms of how he approached the Torah different. He felt that he had to bring it to light. He had to make it into a narrative. He says, I am going to tell you all of this as an attractate Yoma, all of this by way of exposition and narrative. I think only a Barbanel does this. And I think it speaks to his feeling that he has to make this meaningful and understandable to his readership.

Adam Mintz [00:14:29]:
Okay. I mean, that’s fantastic. And again, his strength is his weakness. Right? So the fact that he writes at such length is what makes him amazing. And also is the reason, like you said, that you and I are a little afraid to tackle a Barbanelle.

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:46]:
Perfect.

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:49]:
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Geoffrey Stern [00:15:56]:
So now we’re skimming forward and we’re getting to the next section of a Abarbanel where he’s going to ask his questions. So he says it is now appropriate to raise regarding each of these services three question so altogether there will be 21 questions. And although I will mention here matters that have already been mentioned earlier, there is no fault or deficiency in doing so, for the proper order of investigation and clarification of the subject requires it. So again, this is how he introduces week in, week out, chapter by chapter, he’s going to ask his questions. We are going to focus on only the questions that he asks regarding the scapegoat to Azazel. So question number six how could Israel offer that goat to Azazel? Whether Azazel refers to the celestial forces, as Ibn Ezra says. So again, these commentaries are trying to associate these two paired goats, and Ibn Ezra seems to be comparing it to the stars, to the powers in the sky, or evil angels, as Ramban says, it’s certainly not fitting to offer a sacrifice to anything other than God or alone, says Abarbanel. One who sacrifices to other gods shall be destroyed, except to the Lord alone. If you remember in an earlier episode, Rabbi, we talked about Ramban saying it’s a Shohad le’Satan. It’s like Azazel is to the Satan. He’s saying this sounds wrong. No matter who you associate these two goats with, they take away, they detract from the oneness of God. Good question. Question.

Adam Mintz [00:17:41]:
Very good question.

Geoffrey Stern [00:17:42]:
The twin goats. Why did the Torah command that the high priest cat slots over the two goats, and that they be equal in appearance, height and value, and that they be taken together as is taught in the Mishnah and Yoma, it is as if the Holy One, blessed be he, and Azazel, were equal in status. So he’s kind of piling on his earlier question. Not only do you have, what in the Talmud would be called, Shtai Reshuyot, two powers, but you’re making those powers identical. And therefore their offerings must be equal and determined by lot without preference. Would it not have been sufficient to designate one goat verbally to Azazel without casting lots, without requiring such equality? Something quite astonishing. So it’s both the fact that they have to be equal and this thing of chance, Rabbi, that you’re just rolling the dice. And finally, finally, question number nine. Why does the High Priest confess the sins of Israel over the scapegoat and not over the goat, whose blood is brought into the holy of holies, just as he confesses it over his own bull? So here we have. Remember that Cohen puts his hands on that scapegoat and confesses the sin of the Jewish people on the scapegoat. You would expect that the goat that is going to God, that would be like all the other sacrifices that are brought in the Mishkan or the Temple upon which he gives his declaration of confession. So I think, Rabbi, you’ll agree that these are good questions. Anybody can start a Devar Torah with questions. We’re not going to lose any great sleep over them. I think the key is going to be where he’s taking us and the fact that he’s kind of bringing us. And let’s assume that we’re typical Portuguese Jews. He’s bringing us into the study hall, he’s asking these questions, and now he’s going to give us his thought process. And this becomes fascinating.

Adam Mintz [00:19:44]:
This is fascinating, and it’s great. And again, you’re sitting there in Lisbon, so where you are is the study hall. The Lisbon, the Portuguese study hall of Abarbanel. So take it away from the study hall.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:58]:
Great. So he goes to the trouble of giving us his hav emina, his first explanation. He says the two goats represent the two famous twins of the Torah, Jacob and Esau. As for the goat, for Azrazel, my view is that these two goats symbolize Esau and Jacob, who were both brothers, children of one man and one woman, twins born at the same hour. Remez la esav soyushnem achim b’ neisa echad v’ issa achat t’ umim noldim be’ sa achatשהיו שניהם אחים בני איש אחד ואשה אחת תאומים נולדים בשעה אחת. They were born at the same hour. Therefore, the goats were to to be equal in every respect. And their taking was together, as the Mishnah teaches. They were goats. Because Esau was by nature hairy. Rabbi.

Adam Mintz [00:20:48]:
Now you know why I emphasize he plays on that. That’s important.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:52]:
As it says, behold, Esau, my brother is a hairy man. And the matter of the lots was that both were equal in nature and status. But the providence of God and his compassion. Jacob was set apart for the Lord’s inheritance and portion while Esau was distanced from the service and love of his Maker. As the prophet Malachi says. I have loved you, says the Lord. Yet you say, in what have you loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? Says the Lord, yet I love Jacob. And Esau I hated. So this is new. Now we’re starting to get a little vitriol towards Esau. Not that he simply wasn’t chosen. Remember, his father loved him, but that God hated him. Let’s go a little bit further, he says. And the goat of Azazel, which symbolized Esau, he is Edom. Rabbi, you and I both know what Edom stands for, right? It is Rome. It is Christianity.

Adam Mintz [00:21:58]:
And remember, the Christians are the enemy to Abarbanel because they were responsible for the expulsion from Spain in 1492.

Geoffrey Stern [00:22:07]:
We don’t know when this is written. Remember, on the one hand, he deals with Christians. He works in the government. He respects them, he studies their commentary. But on the other hand, as you say, the Christians that he was actually bumped heads with and the people were the ones that kicked him out.

Adam Mintz [00:22:26]:
The bad guys.

Geoffrey Stern [00:22:27]:
Bitter and fierce in power and wickedness. So what happened to Esau? He was sent into the wilderness, to a land cut off. So too was Esau in his youth. A man skilled in hunting. A man of the field. A violent man, I would add. And God distanced him from his inheritance, from the inheritance of the Lord. As the prophet said, I made his mountains of desolation. And our sages, in their wisdom, already alluded to this symbolism in Bereshot Rabbah, where they said, the goat shall bear upon it. This is Esau. All their iniquities. The iniquities of the innocent one. Tam. As it says, Jacob was a wholesome man, Ish tam. So anyone reading this in the 14 century knows exactly what our Abarbanel is talking about. If I said in the introduction that one of his ways of studying the Torah was to make it relevant, Rabbi. This all of a sudden becomes very relevant. He goes on. Thus, the scapegoat was not an offering to Azazel. Therefore, it did not merit slaughter or sacrifice upon the altar, but rather total removal and being cast into a land cut off, where there is no habitation. It was as though this was a prayer to God that so he should do to his enemy. Abarbanel, I am going to show, is quoting a tradition that we come across in the Passover Seder when we say Shafak hamatcha Al hagoyim, where we use prayer to curse Esav and our enemies. He is putting that right in the middle of the right at the center of the Yom Kippur liturgy, Ze tefillah le Elohim, and that they should become שלא יקטרג על ישראל. כלומר שלא יהי עו לישראל למכשול These are words that are being used that on the day of judgment sound very familiar to us. Therefore, those impurities and sins should fall upon the seed of Easu, not unto Jacob. So what he’s trying to do is the goat that went to God, that was Israel, and the goat that went Lazazel, this was our enemies. And, Rabbi, there is a book that, you know, I love very much, and it’s by a guy named Israel Yuval, and it’s called Two nations in your Womb. And he says that basically the biblical struggle between Jacob and Esau was not understood as a past event, but as an ongoing historical confrontation between Israel and Edom. That is the basis of his whole book. And he says that basically in Ashkenaz and Poland, it was customary, following the kedusha of the Morning prayer of Yom Kippur, to recite 15 liturgical poems based on Jeremiah. They include sharp condemnations and curses against the Gentiles and plea to God to bring destruction upon them. He says these are texts that demonstrates the abyss of hostility and hatred between medieval Jews toward Christians. This was a strong tradition. It uses verbs such as swallow them, shoot them, loop them off, make them bleed, crush them, strike them, curse them, ban them, destroy them. Rabbi, I think Abarbanel could have easily stopped at this point in his commentary, and he would have been standing very firmly within a tradition of associating the Sir l’Azazel with our enemy, the Christians. And we would have understood him. We would have contextualized him. We would have given him plenty of credit for having said that. But he has a second opinion. And the second opinion is fascinating because it is in his mind, the truth. And so what he says is as follows. He said, but the interpretation that seems most correct to me in this matter is that the two goats symbolize the congregation of Israel as a whole, but under two different conditions. When they are good and upright, walking after the Lord their God and cleaving to him. They are for the Lord Their fat parts and inward parts, which, as I explained, symbolize their inward thoughts, are offered upon the altar of God and their blood is brought within the veil and sprinkled upon and before the ark cover all this symbolizes cleaving to God and that they will merit the life of the world to come and to be tachat Kanfey Shechina. So now let’s get to the second goat. But if Israel is evil and sinful toward the Lord and does not keep his charge and the honor of his sanctuary, then its lot and portion is to be for Azazel that is to be distanced from the blessed God and his holy ones and to become a fierce people going into exile before an oppressor. So now remember, we said the word Oz can mean goat, but it can also mean fierce and strong. And he says, there’s a part of Israel, if they don’t believe, they don’t keep the laws. They’re going to be exiled, but they’re going to be fierce. And they are going to be distanced from the blessed God and his holy ones. And to become a fierce people going into exile before an oppressor. For Azazel is a compound name of two words, Az and Azal, meaning this people will go away and be sent off from its land because of its fierce faced people. Rabbi, he’s saying that the Sir L’Azazal represents us in the Golah, us in exile, us in Portugal. Its punishment in this world will be that it is dragged from land and distance from the delight of the righteous and from the radiance of the Divine Presence. All this is included in the name Azazel. The fierce one shall go away to shame and everlasting disgrace. And Aaron shall take the two goats and place them before the Lord. Why should the goat sent away stand before the Lord because he too is holy,. If not because both symbolize the congregation, whether holy or sinful. So this is the two arms of Judaism. Therefore both are brought near that holy place as if to say, here, O Israel, is the place of your holiness, if only you are willing and obedient. The Lord waits to be gracious to you. But if you turn away from him, the hand of the Lord shall be against you and he will send you from the land. So now he’s talking to his people. Then he says as follows. He says, the matter is equal in the goats, for both signify the nation. Now is the punchline how great is this statement and how mighty its promise for that sinful goat, symbolizing the congregation of Israel will not perish nor be consumed in exile, but shall stand alive before the Lord that is preserved in its religion and in the maintenance of its Torah until the time and moment come. At the end of its exile, well, he will atone for it because of the sufferings it endured in exile. He makes us into the seir lazazel. He gives us strength. For him, it’s not killed. It’s set live into the wilderness. But basically, he says that if they walked after the Lord and kept his Torah would be decreed into together with a promise of what would in the end be theirs atonement and redemption. Thus he says, I have answered my three questions. So I think it’s fascinating that, number one, he doesn’t go down the road of cursing the the Christians. He goes down the road of giving hope and inspiration to his fellow Jews in exile. He tells them that they have to be strong. And if you think about it a little, what he’s saying is, we are all brothers. We are all. A little bit of us is one of those two goats, and we are all connected. So I just found it so fascinating to read how he really does come up with an absolutely unique interpretation. He shows us a direction we could easily go down in terms of the blame game and the hate game. And instead, he provides a message of inspiration, of strength, and of hope.

Adam Mintz [00:31:22]:
This is amazing. Wow. And as you walk the streets of Lisbon, this, you know, this is kind of a call. The Abarbanel is talking not only to his generation, but to all generations. And this Shabbat we read Achrei Mot, we’re going to be thinking about this. Fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:39]:
Okay, well, Shabbat shalom, regards from Lisbon, and look forward to next week where we go back to regularly scheduled commentaries. He’s a long one, but he this week, it was definitely worth reading.

Adam Mintz [00:31:54]:
Amazing. Thanks a lot.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:55]:
Shabbat shalom. See you all next week.

Adam Mintz [00:31:57]:
Shabbat shalom. Enjoy.

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 Parshat Tazria mitsora. It contains the strange laws of biblical leprosy, tzarat of the skin of garments, and even houses. So join us for when homes are torn open. Well, Rabbi, welcome back from Scotland. It sounds like you went from castle to castle and you must have seen a few walls yourselves. Maybe they were needing in renovations.

Adam Mintz [00:01:57]:
I would imagine that there were treasures inside those walls. We didn’t break them open, but I’m sure there were treasures there.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:04]:
Treasures, secrets you can imagine. Only imagine what those walls have heard, right?

Adam Mintz [00:02:11]:
That is for sure.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:13]:
So here we are back in Vayikra We took a few episodes off to get into our favorite subject matter, the Haggadah. We’re in Leviticus 14. And this is after, as I said in the intro, go this enigmatic leprosy tzarat, starting with on the skin, then going into clothing. And now we’re at the last kind of rung or use case for this leprosy, this tzarat. God spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, when you enter the land of Canaan, that I give you as a possession and I inflict an eruptive plague upon a house in the land you possess. Ki tavo el haretz kenan asher ani noten lehem la’ ahuza v’ netati neggat tzarat bebayit eretz ahuzat. So that is full of so many kind of conditions and explanations that we haven’t found in the other instances of this leprosy there it talks about if your skin is, well, white, if it has a hair. It more describes the tzarat itself. Here it almost seems like conditional. And our good buddy Rashi picks right up on it. He says, when you come to the land, I will put the plague of leprosy. This was an announcement to them that these plagues would come upon them because the Amorites concealed treasures of gold in the walls of their houses. During the whole 40 years, the Israelites were in the wilderness in order that these might not possess them when they conquered Palestine. And in consequence of the plague, they would pull down the house and discover them. I had never really focused on this before, Rabbi, but it certainly seems to be that it’s a little bit of a kind of exactly the opposite. A pumf va kert vina ha’apachu to what you would expect. Because there’s the benefits.

Adam Mintz [00:04:26]:
You say, it’s surprising. You know, they look at these laws of tzarat of leprosy and need to make it positive. So they twist it to get a positive out of it.

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:40]:
But correct me if I’m wrong, when it comes to getting tzurat of your skin or even your clothes, I mean, I was actually surprised how almost universal the explanation was that it had to do with speaking lashon harah, speaking badly of others. It was a punishment. This is a case of when bad things happen to people who are doing bad things. And that’s why it’s even more surprising that the rabbis, at least these rabbis, went out of their way to make this seem as though there was a good side to it. There was a benefit. In the Vayikra Rabba that Rashi quotes, it actually says besura hay lehem by itself, I guess, means we normally say besurah tovah, but. Right.

Adam Mintz [00:05:31]:
I was gonna say besora usually is positive, I think.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:35]:
Yeah. Commentary or the translator says this is a glad tiding to them, that it’s interesting.

Adam Mintz [00:05:42]:
The word glad is in parentheses. I wonder what that’s all about.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:46]:
Well, because I think it’s missing besura tovah.

Adam Mintz [00:05:49]:
Right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:50]:
And I think if we’re going to. It just dawned on me as we’re speaking actually besurah means more of a message. There is a message here, and they turned it into a good message. But I think maybe the direction that we’re going to be going is that there clearly was a besurah, a message here. The rabbis in Vayikra said, and it is written, I will place a mark of leprosy. Rab Hia taught, is this good tidings for them that leprosy will befall them? He’s asking a question. Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai taught, when the Canaanites heard that Israel was coming upon them, they arose and concealed their money in the houses and in the fields. The Holy One, blessed be, he said, I promised their ancestors, meaning the ancestors of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, that I will take their descendants into a land full of everything good, as it is stated in Deuteronomy. Houses full of everything good. What does the Holy One, blessed be he, do? He brings leprosy into one’s house and the owner demolishes it and finds the concealed cache within. So really, it’s. They go out of their way to say not only is it going to be a land of milk and honey, but they find a verse that says, houses full of everything good. But again, we’re starting. The word Naga is very similar to the word of plagues that were on the Egyptians. And I’m wondering if that was kind of one of the things that maybe piqued their creativity, where they said the plague was on the house, but not necessarily upon the Jew living in it. But it is just fascinating. And of course, like anything like this, Rabbi, you wonder whether there was a preexistent tradition or whether there was a problem here that this was meant to address.

Adam Mintz [00:07:51]:
Yeah, well, that’s the question, right? What? You know, that’s what we always were taught. What’s bothering Rashi? What’s the problem here?

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:00]:
So I think if we go back to the pasuk, it actually says, you know, tavo el ha’aretz. So first of all, it’s not clear that the other incidences of Tzarat are what we call mitzvah toluyat b’aretz, that they are dependent on being in the land of Israel. You could make a case, Rabbi, that you could be living in Babylonia and you could develop this skin condition. You’d travel to the Cohen in Israel and you’d get it diagnosed. There’s nothing about those laws that say they’re toluyat Ba’Aretz, but here it does clearly say the land of Canaan even more. So it talks when you enter the land of Canaan. So I think that made them. And then it goes further and it says, when it is your possession. So we’re gona see that the rabbis really are kind of struck by all of these conditions. And then it says, and I inflict eruptive plague. That’s the translation that we have natati Negat sarat. I don’t know. It certainly negat has the concept of a plague upon the house. And again, it gets back to Eretz ahuzat’hem, the land you possess. So I think the rabbis, if we had to ask what was causing this kind of surprising turn, certainly there are enough words in this verse to strike us as interesting or strange.

Adam Mintz [00:09:32]:
Yeah, well, that’s for sure. And you got to go back to the fact that the very idea of Tzarat is so strange, right? I mean, the fact that there’s a disease in the Torah and that, you know, when you get the disease, you go to the priest, you go to the kohen. You know, instead of going to the doctor, you go to the kohen, and if it comes back, you go back to the kohen. It’s like you go to the doctor and the doctor says, if you’re not better in two weeks, come back to me. So the same thing with the Cohen. The Cohen says, here, you know, here’s what I see now. And if you’re not better in a week, come back to me. So this is really a story about pre penicillin medicine and how they dealt with illness, illness that they didn’t really understand. So they put it in kind of religious terms.

Geoffrey Stern [00:10:22]:
But of course, here it’s not so religious because it doesn’t seem, we’re going to find out in a few seconds that those, they were commentaries who saw it as a punishment, a spiritual type of thing. But if you follow the train of the rabbis that we’ve just picked up on thanks to Rashi, it was almost a reward. It was a basura. The Iben Ezra says as follows, he was struck by the language of that I will give you. So what he’s saying is, since it is contingent upon going into the land that God will give us, there must be something positive about this. And he says, and it must be based on providence. You know, getting back to what this actually is, I think the consensus, Rabbi, you would agree with me. We’re talking about some sort of mold which we moderns can associate with. If you ever know somebody who has a house that has mold, it’s very difficult to get rid of.

Adam Mintz [00:11:29]:
And also, by the way, it’s white. So the whole thing that, you know, you see white and it’s the same white, that’s the white of this seharat, by the way. You know, it’s not really leprosy because leprosy is not white. Leprosy, you know, disforms you. That’s why they had leper Colonies and leper hospitals. But it probably is closer to what we call today psoriasis, some kind of skin disease that turned white. So absolutely right. The mold is right in line with what we’re talking about.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:02]:
I mean, in the previous verses, where it does talk about this quote unquote, leprosy of the body, it does have that sense of when you walk through the street, somebody calls in front of you that here comes this person with this disease. So there definitely is some social disgrace (stigma), and there is this sense of it’s contagious. But let’s continue with the house. So the Sifra says as follows, Then he shall raise the house. So what we haven’t really gotten into is what the Cohen does. And as you said before, he comes, he pokes around, he says, let’s wait a week. He comes back, he sees if it’s gone away, they remove some stones, and at the end of the day, if they can’t get rid of it, they do rip down the house or rip down the wall. But in our verses it says, then he shall raise the house, its stones, its wood, and all the mortar of the house. So says the Sifre, the Midrash, we are hereby taught that a house is not subject to plague, spot, uncleanliness, unless there be in it stones, wood and mortar. And so some of the commentaries point out here, this is why it had to be in the land of Israel, because in the in the desert they lived in tents. Again, it was fascinating to me, given the direction that the rabbis went, in terms of finding things inside of your walls that would only happen if you have stones, wood, or mortar. I think.

Adam Mintz [00:13:33]:
I think that’s right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:13:34]:
The Hizkuni, a later commentary says as follows, when you will come to the land of Canaan. A different explanation. The reason why when a plague breaks out on a house, it must be destroyed is that the earth of the land of Israel is holy, and its does not gladly suffer ritual contamination. So there still is this element of why only in the land of Israel. The midrash that we studied was Canaanites hiding things in it. But clearly there is this level of getting to some level of purity. The Kli Yakar says, when you come to the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as a possession, when it says, and I will place a plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession, it should have simply said, in your houses. Why does it say in the houses of the land of your possession? So he says, according to Rashi’s explanation that the Amorites hid treasures. This is not a difficulty because it specifies your possession to exclude houses that the Israelites would build there, which would not relate to this reason. So as they would say in the yeshiva, there’s a halakhic difference here. If Rashi is correct, then if you built a new house, you wouldn’t have to go look for Tzerat. It must not be Tzarat.

Adam Mintz [00:14:58]:
Right. That’s interesting. You’re right. I mean, he kind of plays with the midrashic idea to teach you a law, which is fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:06]:
But again, it focuses on the fact that whether there are treasures or secrets hidden in the walls, it has to be a house that has a history. If you built it last week or even a year or two or three ago, if it’s new construction that you built, maybe according to this understanding, there is no law of Tzarat. And I think that this focus on a history is fascinating in terms of what the rabbis bring. I was talking to you before the show about walking through Scotland and going into these old castles. And you know what those walls would say? Because we do have a phrase in if these walls could talk. It’s an English phrase. I did a little bit bit of research and it’s first found in the 19th century. Variants of the conceit asking what objects would say if they could speak appear in English literature and periodicals in the 1800s. But, Rabbi, there is a sense that whether the walls can talk, whether they have ears, or whether there is a history in them. I think that’s what fascinated me about this midrash, that the midrash captured the. That you were being, I guess, compelled to get into the history of those walls somehow.

Adam Mintz [00:16:35]:
Yeah, I mean, that’s great. The idea of if the walls could talk, if the walls could talk, if you knew what was behind every wall. Right. We also have the idea, you know, what’s behind the wall, what’s in the hidden compartments. Somehow walls, you know, you know, hide things from us.

Geoffrey Stern [00:17:00]:
And of course, that would be the major connection to Tzaras of the body, because everybody, as I said before, associates Tzarat with lashon Hara. About speaking badly of somebody, it would be very easy to say that the walls have ears and they are the first place that is going. They’re going to hear your lashon hara and the berkat Asher actually says one who speaks Lashon haru are first. The walls of his house begin to change. If he repents, the house is purified. If he persists in his wickedness until the house must be demolished, then the leather items, then it gets to your skin. So he connects them all. But again, what I’m starting to argue is that the two are not that far apart. Because if your walls have history, they have history that you’ve created. And maybe they have prehistory before you moved into. But the walls have ears. We are going to say on Madlik is much older than the 16th century. Clearly the concept of your walls have ears goes back to the rabbinic period where they associated tzara’at of a house, of a wall to Lashon Hara and what those walls might have heard.

Adam Mintz [00:18:22]:
Fantastic. That is really fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:26]:
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 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. So now I said in the intro, we’re going to talk about archeology. There is a word in archeology, and I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it correctly. It’s called spolia and spolia from the Latin for spoils, meaning things that were cast away. And we’ve had another episode where we talked about found art or found objects. So spolia are stones taken from an old structure and repurposed for new construction or decorative purposes. It is the result of an ancient and widespread practice, spoliation, whereby stone that has been quarried, cut and used in a built structure is carried away to be used somewhere else. The practice is of particular interest to historians, archaeologists and architectural historians, since the grave monuments and architectural fragments of antiquity are frequently found embedded in structures built centuries or millennia later. You find this on Har Scopis (and Zaytim). Where the Arabs took tombstones from Jewish homes and from Jewish graves, and they used them for building. It’s almost like those Ancient books that Sharon gets to where sometimes they bound a book with paper from another book

Adam Mintz [00:20:54]:
book they reach out, has an amazing thing. She found a Samaritan Ten Commandments. And they found it. An Arab had used it as a stone in their front, you know, in the entrance way of their house. And only then they realized they’re actually with the Ten Commandments on it. It’s exactly what you’re describing. That’s great. She’s going to love this.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:18]:
So again, I found a whole study from a city in the ancient near east where it’ all about this spolia. And it says and I wanted to bring it up to current state of the art. Originally regarded as not deserving much attention and seen as simply epitomizing the decline of urban communities, reused architectural and sculptural elements are now generally considered important pieces of evidence to shed light on building processes. Besides these structural functions, reused material could be used for aesthetic or ideological reason. So what I’m trying to argue, Rabbi, is I’m taking the license to look at what the rabbis thought about of people living in Canaan were hiding things. But again, it’s a bigger story. It’s the story of coming to a home and finding a history there and discovering something about your predecessors and maybe something about yourself. So I did a little comparison here between an archaeologist and a Cohen, you know, it says the Cohen sees discoloration in the. In the wall. The archaeologist notices a structural anomaly. The Cohen orders the house emptied. The archaeologist clears the site. The Cohen scrapes or removes stones. The archaeologists excavate layers if needed. The Cohen dismantles the house. The archaeologist conducts a controlled demolition. Listen. The Cohen reveals what is batoch hakir, what’s inside of the wall. And the archaeologist reveals artifacts. Bartoch hakir. It’s a funny way. So it’s really. The Midrash becomes radical if you look at it this way. And so the plague is not a destruction, it is a gift. And it’s diagnostic. It’s kind of an excavation, just like archeology. You don’t discover the past by preserving. You discover it by breaking it open. And these foreign materials show, you know, they raise moral questions. They raise questions about yourself. Unresolved ownership, moral residue, otherness embedded in Betoch Hakir. It becomes something that is fascinating. Especially Rabbi, if we listen to the Kle Akar and we say this doesn’t work in new construction. This is only so. So you cannot live in a house that doesn’t have a history in it. And the foreign materials can show all sorts of things. Past wealth is where the midrash takes us. But you cannot live in a house without confronting what it contains. Just like spoila, the walls are never neutral. They are composed of a prior life. And it just opens up a whole new way of looking at what even in the Bible is clearly a process. The person who owns the house is going through a transformation as this happens. And it’s why only in Israel, because holiness in the Torah is not escape, you could say it’s intensification. This is our land. And I’ve always argued that the brilliance of our Torah, especially when you get into these debates about colonialism and all that, is, first of all, we recognize there were refugees, there were movements (migrations) of people. But the Torah never neglected the fact it advertised the fact that we came. We might have left the land and go to Egypt. We came into the land again, there were other people there. It becomes part of taking possession. You don’t just move in. You have to reckon. Biblical leprosy of houses is not about disease. It’s about a historical consciousness, especially as

Adam Mintz [00:25:29]:
well, I would say conquest is a big deal in the Torah. Right. The fact that they conquered the land of Israel, they took the people who were there, and they took over their houses and they took over their cities. So this very much fits into that.

Geoffrey Stern [00:25:45]:
Yeah. And it can be something that’s a gift, and it can be something that’s a challenge. So I wanted to segue to an Israeli artist named Elit Azoulay, and I actually have one of her paintings. It’s a photograph, and I’m showing it on the screen right now. And everything that she does, Rabbi. She associates the story behind objects and what she noticed. She used to pass by demolition sites in New Tel Aviv, and she found out that when they building in the 40s, the 30s and the 40s, construction materials were very scarce. So if there was a button factory next door or a factory that had a surplus material, they would mix that into the cement. And just as Sharon could find artifacts within a book cover, you could find artifacts of the Halutzim and the life they lived. Lived only 30, 40, 50, 60 years old. And what happened was she went to a brutalist structure. I’m showing it here on Zichon Yaakov. And, Rabbi, this is the only time in my life that I had a visceral (negative) experience inside of a building. My wife said we were going to a new concert hall, and it was in Zichon Yaakov and I Picture Zichon Yaakov as vistas of seeing out in the beautiful vista of Israel. We got inside and there wasn’t a window in the structure. They call that Brutalist. They call that Brutalist. And if it sounds brutal, it is. And so I just happened to have that in my mind and I couldn’t get out soon enough. And so when I really, I really don’t know what happened to me, but when I came to this artist and I said, we bought this painting from you two years ago. Could you describe it? She told me it comes from that building. And she says that building was originally built as a place for a sanitarium. And then after the Yom Kippa war, they did interrogations of soldiers who were captured. And then it became a concert hall. It had a whole history. And in the photo that I bought, she was peeling away the different levels of it. There’s a Hieronymous Bosch on the right, which might have been part of, of when it was a rehabilitation center. But she kind of opened up my eyes to a modern day house that had Tza’arat house, that had stories in it. And there was a show at the Jewish Museum where all she had on the wall were objects, found objects, and you would put on a headset and you would listen to the story behind each object. So this really is a kind of continuation of what we discussed in a prior episode when we talked about found objects. But clearly there is this sense that she has brought to the fore, that maybe in every country, every wall has a story. But certainly in Israel, where you only have to dig just a little bit below the surface and you come to different strata of Byzantine or Roman or other types, layers also in the walls, there are all sorts of stories heard. And I think as we conclude, if you think about what happened and what is happening today in Israel and the pictures, you know, on the one hand, I was in a building in Bat Yam that was hit by a missile six months ago. And what was striking to me was on the one hand, how the feeling of anguish in seeing people’s belongings scattered all over. And then I saw the Miklat (shelter) and Rabbi, there wasn’t a piece of paint missing from the Miklat, it was on the same floor. So on the one hand, when we see what the destruction is, we can be proud of the fact that the state of Israel invested so much time, effort, coding in protecting its citizens. But I think also there are so many stories that have to, to be preserved in the buildings, in these, in these buildings. And I think if you do go back and you start finding those buttons and those surplus manufactured goods, you realize that this wasn’t the first time that our people have gone through trouble, that we have had to live by our wits to be opportunistic. And I think as desperate as you might feel when you look at your beautiful city of Tel Aviv or in the south or in the north, I think there is a little bit of Basurah Tovah that we can potentially not only preserve the stories of those who were before us, but also the fact that they had hope and they had resilience and that they built those houses against great odds as well. I think there are stories there. That’s my takeaway from the Tzarat.

Adam Mintz [00:31:02]:
That’s beautiful. That’s amazing. Connection from this idea of Tzarat. That’s beautiful. That’s great. Enjoy the parsha, everybody. This is also Rosh Chodesh. Chodesh Tov to everybody this weekend, and we look forward to seeing you next week. A whole new story. Thank you, Geoffrey and I hope to

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:23]:
make it, and if I do, I will be in Portugal, so you never know if we can pull that off. All the best. Shabbat Shalom. See you all next week.

What’s bothering me is where is the stranger? Everybody asks why Moses is missing from the Haggadah. It’s a good question, but I don’t think it’s the right one. Because if the Exodus story is meant to shape our moral imagination, then maybe we should be asking something else. Where is the stranger? The Torah could not be clearer. Not once, not twice, but over and over again. Some say 36 times. You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. And even more radically, ve’ahavtem et hager ki gerim hayitem be’eretz mitzrayim. You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. This isn’t a side note. It’s the moral center of the Torah, or what those in marketing called a cta, a call to action. And yet, on the night when we tell the story of being strangers, on the night when we relive oppression, on the night when we celebrate liberation, the stranger is missing. No section, no voice, no seat at the table. I hear you objecting. Wait, don’t we begin the seder with kol dichfin yetie vyechol? All who are hungry, come and eat. Beautiful. Open, generous. But let’s be honest. Is that really the stranger? Or is it an invitation to those already inside our circle and community? So I think the answer is hiding in plain sight. Especially if you study the Mishnah. The Mishnah in Psachem tells us how to tell the story. Matkhil be’ genut umsayim bishvach. Begin with disgrace and end with praise. And here’s what we all remember, this oddity, and expound from my father was a wandering Aramean. Continues the Mishnah until you complete the entire section. Ad sh’yigmor kol ha parsha kula until the end. So this is the parasha we call Bikurim. We start to count the Omer on the second night of the Seder that leads till Shavuot. Which is the harvest festival par excellence. And we bring the bikurim, the first fruits, to the priest. And we follow a very ancient formula. And it’s starts literally with, my forefather was a wandering Aramean. And this is what, according to the Mishnah, is the crux is the core of the Magid section of telling our story. As I said before, it begins with our humble beginnings and ends with a crescendo of how great we are. And as the Mishnah says, you have to read it. Call Parsha, Kulo, the whole parasha until the end. And we don’t. So let me read it to you so you really remember where we are. In the seder. My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers. We stop, we read a commentary. And sojourn, then we read a commentary. But there he became a great and very populous nation. We stopped there. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us. We stopped there. We are conducting a Mishnayic learning session. We are quoting these verses that the Mishnah says are really important for Magid. And we’re parsing each one and telling each one, and we go on. And then it says in verse 8, the Lord freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand. We stop there. By an outstretched arm and awesome power, we stop there. And by signs and wonders. And that’s where the Haggadah stops quoting. It doesn’t quote verse nine that says, he brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. We don’t quote verse 10. Therefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which you, O Lord, have given me. You shall leave it before the Lord your God and bow low before the Lord your God. And we don’t read the next verse because if we read it to the end, we would land here. He brought us to this place and gave us this land. And you shall rejoice, you and the stranger in your mist. Ata v’halevi, V’hager Asher, B’ kir, bechar. That’s it. Hager Asher be kira, Becha is the punchline. It’s the end. It’s what the Mishnah says we have to read until that’s the punchline. Not just liberation, shared joy, not just leaving Egypt, creating a society that includes the Ger, the other. So why was it removed? Why was it cut? Because the rabbis who shaped the Haggadah lived in exile. They couldn’t bear to say we are in the land. They couldn’t celebrate shared prosperity and the ending with the ger the stranger. When you’re at the bottom of the social order, you don’t talk about how to treat the stranger. You are the stranger. So they stopped the story early and in doing so they removed the ger. But the Torah had already warned us before Egypt, before redemption with Abraham and Sarai, the first Jews, they are vulnerable, displaced, dependent, and then they have power over Hagar the Egyptian, the stranger. And what happens as Rabbi Shai held in a lecture called An Exodus for Egyptians Reading Genesis and Isaiah together, Rabbi Shai held in the Jerome L. Stern Pre Passover lecture in 2021. Quoting Tikva Frymer-Kensky writes with regard to Sarah’s statement of her slave Hagar, we like to believe that suffering makes us more sympathetic to the suffering of others. It does not. Sarai’s own experience as a slave does not make her more empathetic to the slave in her own home. On the contrary, it makes her want to assert her dominance and authority so she won’t lose it again. As usual, the biblical narrator does not comment on the actions. It is left to the reader to note how easily the oppressed can become oppressors. When God raises high the lowly, how will the newly empowered behave toward those who lack power and autonomy? That’s the end of the quote that Shai Held brought of Tikva Frymer-Kensky and it made me think when we talk about humble beginnings, is it truly going far back enough to My ancestor was a wandering Aramean? Or might we not go back to Sarai and Hagar? The first slave in the Bible was not a Jewish slave to Egyptians, but as Shai Held points out, it was an Egyptian slave to early Jews. 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 Had 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, which brings us to now, for the first time in 2000 years, we are no longer only telling the story, we are living inside of it. We are back in the land of Israel, which means the part of the Haggadah ommits is no longer theoretical and frankly should not and no longer be omitted. And that changes everything, because now we can no longer stop at Vayotzanu Hashem miMitzrayim. God took us out of Egypt. We must continue. And he brought us to this place and he gave us this land, Eretz zavat halav udvash, this land of milk and honey. And then the Torah says in verse 10 va’ atah. “And now” this is the exclamation, the blessing, the affirmation of he who is truly celebrating and bringing the first fruits. And it goes on to say that, you gave me these fruits, you gave me this bounty. I am going to bow before God. And you shall enjoy and be happy with all the good that God gave you. That should actually be part of the hagaddah. And we should be parsing every word in those verses the same way we do with the prior verses. And when we get to Vahager Asher bekiubecha, we should be telling a midrash very similar to what Shai held and what Tikva Frymer-Kensky has told. Because redemption is not just about leaving oppression. It’s about what you do with power. And this is not an abstract thought. Rabbi Kenneth Brander, the Rosh HaYeshiva of Ohr Torah, recently wrote clearly and courageously against extremist violence by Jews against Palestinians in the West Bank. His argument is not political, it is Torah based. That violence against the vulnerable betrays the very story we tell at the Seder. And this exposes a real struggle within religious Zionism, because religious Zionism tells a story of return, of redemption. But the Torah’s story does not end with return. It ends with. With responsibility. So the question is not, did we make it back to the land? The question is, what do we do now that we have power? We spend the night telling a story. But the Mishnah tells us how to tell it. Start with shame, end with praise. So what is the real praise? Not that we made it to the land, but that we learned the lesson that we remember we were strangers, and therefore we make space for the stranger. Because the true test of leaving Egypt is not how we remember the past, it’s how we treat the other, the ger. Now that we are no longer strangers. Moadim l’Simcha.