madlik

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.

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Jeffrey 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 always included in the show notes. This week is just a week before Passover, and we have the distinct pleasure of visiting with our friends at the Shittim Institute. In past pre-Passover episodes, they have shared with us Haggadot from the kibbutzim, and we have explored something we call Yahadut Yisraelit, which is the organically grown secular but culturally rich Judaism created by pioneers on Israel’s kibbutzim starting in the ’20s and the ’30s. Today we are catching up with Eran Yaarkoni, the CEO of Shittim Institute, and Anton Marx, of all places, Congregation Adat Israel in Philadelphia. They are visiting the US with a traveling exhibit called Haggadot of Help. The exhibit emerges from the cultural and spiritual world of the Gaza border kibbutzim deeply affected by October 7th. For decades, these communities have created and read their own Haggadot, texts that reflect their values, struggles, and hopes. Today, these Haggadot stand as a living legacy, carrying voices of creativity, responsibility, and moral courage in the face of profound loss. Bringing them to the U.S. is an act of connection, linking Israeli and North American communities Through shared memory, ritual, and story. At its heart, this is an invitation to reflect together on what it means to be Jewish right now, which stories we choose to tell, and how we carry them forward across oceans, across differences, and toward a shared visit. This is our first live visit to an exhibit, and although we will try our best to describe everything we see, we encourage you, our listeners, to watch this on YouTube YouTube and Spotify. So, Eran and Anton, it is an absolute pleasure for me to, uh, to be here with you today. I visited in Israel, and now you are in Philadelphia, the city of, uh, liberty for America, and you are bringing us the, uh, the hope of the Haggadot. Welcome to America.

Eran Yarkoni [00:04:03]:
Thank you, thank you. Thanks for having us.

Anton Marks [00:04:05]:
Thank you very much.

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:07]:
So tell us, tell us, I just walked into the show and I’m seeing my old friends. Tell me about the exhibit.

Anton Marks [00:04:15]:
So we’ve got this incredible exhibit, as you say, “Haggadot of Hope: Stories of Freedom from the Gaza Border Kibbutzim,” which includes excerpts. We’ve got here a map of the kibbutzim on the Gaza border. We’ve got 17 kibbutzim here whose haggadot are represented in this exhibition. We’re traveling around the East Coast of North America, from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and then up to Massachusetts. 14 locations in 13 days. And we’re happy to be here to share this amazing treasure trove of excerpts of Haggadot from these kibbutzim. The kibbutzim, most of these kibbutzim were established in the 1940s, 1950s, and up until today, they have been rewriting and revisiting their Haggadot, incredible pieces of art and creativity and messages of unbelievable messages of hope and optimism, which is, you know, even we’ve got Haggadot here represented from 2024, 2025 communities that have experienced incredible amounts of trauma, incredible amounts of loss, and yet their Haggadot, when you flick through the pages, of expressing their hopes and their dreams for a better future, for peace. So yeah, the exhibition is here in North America. We’ve already done a couple of events. We’re now in our third community. The response so far has been fantastic, and we’d like to share some of the excerpts with your listeners.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:57]:
Fantastic. You know, we are commanded in the Haggadah to act as though we are going out of Egypt, and it It seems to me that every time, every generation that celebrates the Seder, we’re actually living in different periods. Sometimes it’s a golden age. I think most American Jews and maybe some Israelis are used to the Seder being a celebration. We live in good times. We have so much to be thankful for. Our predecessors might have suffered. You can say sometimes we forget that for many of our forefathers, whether in the ’20s and ’30s and ’40s in Israel or in 2,000 years of Jewish history, Passover was a tough time. It was a Leil Shemurim. And I think to have us look at Haggadot from that time period, people that we can really associate with, I mean, the ’20s and ’30s and ’40s weren’t that long ago. We can still see kibbutzim in Israel. The message has to be so powerful. I was wondering before we begin, if you could just tell our listeners a little bit about Shittim and how it is that you, your institute, has access to these Haggadot. Tell us about the amazing trove, the amazing archive of Haggadot, but also in general, the daily rituals and communal cultural events and texts of the Kibbutz movement.

Anton Marks [00:07:41]:
So I can tell you that Shittim Institute was established by Aryeh Ben-Gurion, the nephew of the famous David Ben-Gurion, and he was an educator on Kibbutz Bet HaShita up in the north of Israel between Afula and Beit Shan, Kibbutz Bet HaShita. And he was looking for materials that he could use within his educational work with the kids of the kibbutz, and he started collecting materials that had been put together on his kibbutz for different holidays and festivals, whether it was programs for Bar/Bat Mitzvah, whether it was for Pesach, whether it was for Yom Hatzma’ot or other festivals. And at a certain point he was like, okay, I’ve collected these materials for my kibbutz, but surely there are other kibbutzim that need, that are creating materials and that there are other educators on other kibbutzim that would like materials similarly to me to work with the kids. And so he started wandering around the neighboring kibbutzim and he started collecting these materials. And first of all, he put them in a milk crate underneath his bed. And eventually that milk crate wasn’t big enough. And he was given a room on the kibbutz and he filled the room with materials from the kibbutzim. And eventually today, what we have all these years later is the archive. It’s a nationally officially recognized archive with over 1 million pieces from all of the kibbutzim, around about 250 kibbutzim from all over the country. And it’s cataloged. According to theme, according to festival, according to holiday, according to life cycle event. All of these materials, they say that if you put them end to end, it will reach a third of a mile in distance, most of which is available, accessible digitally on our website, which exists today in English, Hebrew, and Spanish. And around the archive, it’s an educational center where we run programs for school principals, for teachers, and programs all over the country in Israel, bringing these materials to life because they are educational materials. And we’re putting together lots of programs. On top of that, we’re today mentoring, working together with the cultural coordinators of kibbutzim on the Gaza border, now also communities in the north that have been evacuated. And that’s all part of our work to make these materials accessible and to delve into the content here because it’s absolutely incredible stuff. And Israeli society is looking for inspiration and materials for which to use during our holiday celebrations. And now for the first time, we’ve crossed the pond and we’re here in North America in order to bring these materials to a new audience that we feel can benefit from seeing this 100-year creativity of kibbutz Judaism.

Geoffrey Stern [00:10:28]:
You whetted our interest, so please show us around the show or take us to a sample of what the Haggadah that the kibbutz created is unique and how it has a unique message for us.

Eran Yarkoni [00:10:44]:
So as for example, so let’s start with the main idea or the main unique approach that the kibbutzim developed for the Haggadah. They looked after how to tell the story, not as a historical story that finished 3,000 years ago, but as a continuous story that we are still a part of it. Because they wanted that the story of the Exodus will be the inspiration for their own journey. And so, and this is, the main entrance, let’s say, to understand the secrets of the Haggadah of the kibbutzim. So we can see like here in the Kibbutz Givim, when they talked about Behol Dor Vador, so they draw a painting of a woman that came out from Egypt. And it’s like a chain of people and continuity till their days in the 1950s when the last chain is the pioneer who arrived to establish kibbutz Gvaram in the Gaza border. So this is an interesting example. Another one.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:13]:
So, Eran, let me stop you for a second because for those of us who cannot see the video, it kind of reminds me of sometimes you see when people describe evolution where they have a primitive, whether it’s a monkey or whatever, and then slowly it evolves through Neanderthal man and then through the caveman up until present-day man. And that drawing kind of captures that. And what that means is evolution is not simply a way of understanding what you’re looking at, but the word actually works. That for the person who drew that image, Judaism had evolved. And when you evolve, where you are today is critical, but you can never forget your past. Your past gives more meaning to where you are today. And so in every generation, the Bechol Dor Vador reminds us of L’dor Vador. It’s both a mesorah, a tradition, but it’s also an evolution. Things change. I I love it.

Anton Marks [00:13:23]:
So just to continue what you said, I will show you another example, a fabulous or very, very exciting example. Just I want that you will be able to see it from before we talked about Gvar Am from 1950. And now I want to show you the same approach that you talk about it from 2024, 2 years ago, half a year after October 7 massacre, in kibbutz Neer Oz, one of the kibbutzim that had the worst hurt in this massacre, they sat around their Haggadah that they wrote a few days before the seder, and they wrote for themselves like this. As we face the challenge of creating memory, how will Neer Oz and its people be remembered in the eyes of history? This book is being written now. The task is ours. So they took the mission to be the history, not just to learn about the history. And as they say to themselves on these days, Half a year after October 7th, now we are the history. People will learn about us and we will need to know it now to remember it and to be like symbol, like a lighthouse for others.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:01]:
And now a word from our sponsor. If there’s one thing we value at Matlik Podcast, it’s reading texts. And talking about them. That’s why I’m excited to share something I created called VoiceGif 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. VoiceGif 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’nei mitzvah practicing their laning, capturing grandpa’s favorite tune, or recording Chad Gadyar 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. I think most students of Judaism would normally take the concept of bechol dor v’dor and the idea of chayev kol adam to look upon himself as though he had experienced the Exodus as looking backwards, as re-experiencing something in the past. And I think you’ll agree with me that what the kibbutznikim did, not only in the ’20s and ’30s, but 2 years ago in the Haggadah that you show, is that in every generation, generation, we are required to rewrite the Haggadah, to write it afresh. If you could just talk to our listeners a little bit about what the traditional kibbutzim Haggadot did in terms of almost including a little almanac or diary of the past year, what soldiers had fallen, what milestones the kibbutz had gone through. That was part of their experience of rewriting the Haggadah, every Seder.

Eran Yarkoni [00:17:14]:
Yes, if I understood what you said, that I will say like this, that the right way to use the Haggadah is like a framework, like a vessel that you can fill it with your story and your values that you want to resonate and the things that you want to reinforce. And this is the, I think this is the right way to celebrate the Passover is that you need to think, what do you have to bring to the world? What is your own story? And what is your unique part in the long chain of the Jewish peoplehood.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:05]:
Yes, I think we’re all touching upon the same subject. Let me ask you this. The picture that you have of the Niroz Seder, or the Seder that they wrote that, where did they hold it? Were they in Niroz or they were still?

Eran Yarkoni [00:18:23]:
No, on this time they were evacuated to Eilat. It was a set in a Malone, in a hotel. And I think only 3 or 4 months ago, we’re talking about 2 years later, they started to go back to their homes.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:48]:
I’m wondering if the fact that they were in Galut when they had that Seder, impacted their Seder?

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:57]:
We in the real Galut are used to sitting here and saying, “B’Shana haba b’Yerushalayim.” But I wonder if it entered into their Seder, “B’Shana haba b’Nir Oz.” So I will ask Anton now to take you to another board with a blessing of Kibbutz Nirim next to Nir Oz in the same region council that were They were evacuated to Beersheva, and let’s see their Haggadah.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:29]:
Fantastic.

Anton Marks [00:19:30]:
Okay, so as Eran said, Kibbutz Nirim 2024, again, only half a year after the 7th of October massacres, to our return to Nirim, to the kibbutz, to the community, to our land, and to the home we have always loved. So here they are. Within their Haggadah. The end of the Haggadah is about hope. It’s about looking to the future. It’s about looking forward and being optimistic. And here is what Kibbutz Nirim are asking for next year, that they will return to their kibbutz after being evacuated, return to their home.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:05]:
Now, was that integrated into Koso Ravi’i, into the actual prayer?

Anton Marks [00:20:10]:
Exactly, exactly. That is their fourth cup. In their Haggadah from 2024. That is part of their fourth cup’s blessing.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:19]:
Could you read that in Hebrew, please?

Anton Marks [00:20:21]:
I could try. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:32]:
And, you know, had they made that blessing without that, it wouldn’t have been authentic. The beauty of these kibbutzim Haggadah is you could argue that they are diverging from the traditional Haggadah, but on the other hand, they are taking the Haggadah more seriously because it is impacting their life. And I think part of what you’re doing in this tour is uniting our communities in the United States with those in Israel. And it’s at a moment like this when in fact all of us, or at least the kibbutznikim, were in galut, that we have now a special connection that we never had they had before. And what they read and wrote into their blessing now gives us more meaning to us and potentially helps them have an insight in what it is, 2,000 years of Jewish yearning and the way we live, hoping to come to Israel. It’s an amazing— by reliving and rewriting the Haggadah, they actually bring it to life and bring our communities together. It’s so wonderful. I was actually at Nerim 6 months after October 7th. And I think what a lot of people don’t realize is many of the kibbutzim were celebrating the night before their anniversary of their founding. I don’t know whether it was 70 years or 80 years. They were actually doing a seder, if you will. And the next morning, this all happened. Just amazing history.

Anton Marks [00:22:11]:
I think you’re right in terms of what we can learn and what we can take from this. I think the beauty of the Kibbutz Haggadah is that it’s not a historical document. It’s not a historical document that’s set in stone, that ends with the Exodus from Egypt, and that’s it. We’re just sitting and we’re having a history lesson about what happened. For them, Exodus didn’t end with the Yitziat Mitzrayim. It’s continual. It’s a continual process of what is our Mitzrayim now, What was it when we wrote our Haggadah 5 years ago, when we wrote it 20 years ago, when we wrote it 40 years ago? It’s something that’s real. It’s something that tells the current situation, the current story, and the current dilemmas that we have. It’s set in the present as well as in the past, and it’s also looking forward. That whole process of rewriting and renewing, we ask on Passover, Manishtanat, What has changed this year? And if we ask those questions, we’re asking about what our current reality looks like. And therefore, we can always respond and say, how do we respond and how do we understand our current reality to give us an idea and understanding of what we should be doing?

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:26]:
So I’m glad you mentioned the Ma Nishta now, because in the kibbutzim haggadot, that’s the first thing I go to. I’m a collector of kibbutzim haggadot, and the first thing I go to is to look at how they changed, how they modified, how they personalized the Ma Nishtana. Do you have a place in the exhibit that you focus on the Ma Nishtana?

Anton Marks [00:23:48]:
So yeah, Ma Nishtana is an opportunity to look at the current reality and see how it has changed from the previous year. And so here we’ve got an example, actually an old example from 1958 at Bor Chayil that I think is interesting. Before we get on to answering your question about after October 7th. And here, Bor Chayil said, on all other nights, we worry about the youth in the diaspora and their struggles. On this night, we trust in their strength and in their role in building the state and our kibbutz home. So what you see here is the connection between Israel and the diaspora, that Israel needs the diaspora and the diaspora needs Israel. And this is what Bor Chayil are putting inside their Haggadah from 1958. I thought that was nice. A nice excerpt to share with you.

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:35]:
Do you have that in Hebrew that you could read to us? Is that on the side there?

Anton Marks [00:24:39]:
So in Hebrew, we’ve got— Beautiful, beautiful. And so that was written in the ’30s or ’40s? ’50s, ’58. In the ’50s. ’58 by Kibbutz So they’re looking at the diaspora, they’re looking at their responsibility towards the diaspora, and they’re understanding that the diaspora also has a responsibility to the state.

Geoffrey Stern [00:25:14]:
It’s amazing to me that the diaspora made it into their Haggadah, that we were, that in itself is such a revelation that they were do’agim, they were worried about the youth of the diaspora. That in itself connects our two communities. Go on.

Anton Marks [00:25:33]:
Of course, of course. And then we’ve got, we move across here to Kibbutz Erez from 2024, and they’ve put in their Haggadah on all of the Seders. Again, what has changed this year? On all of the Seders, we sit among neighbors and on green lawns. On this night, we are displaced. Kibbutz Erez, displaced from their kibbutz, and they couldn’t be in their home in Erez, so they put into their Haggadah their longing to go home.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:02]:
Amazing.

Eran Yarkoni [00:26:03]:
Yeah.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:04]:
You know, I think most people think that asking questions at the seder, even including someone who’s contrary like the Rasha, or sharing with each other our troubles, our burdens, our questions, would detract from the power of the seder. But I think what these Ma Nishtanot show is that that actually by identifying the challenges of the moment, you put the challenges of the moment into the context of something that’s 2,000, 3,000 years old, something which in the context of everybody seated around the Seder. And so it gives you strength because at the end of the day, what your show is about, besides connecting the disparate communities of Jews and lovers of Israel around the world, it’s also, how does the Seder give us strength? How does it give us hope for the future? And I think it’s not by shying away from the challenges. If anything, what your various excerpts this afternoon have shown is by including them, by writing them into the Haggadah. Of the therapy and part of the exercise in terms of uniting us but also giving us strength.

Anton Marks [00:27:36]:
Most certainly, most certainly. It makes it immediate, it makes it real, it makes it about what we’re dealing with right now. And part of the idea of coming now, specifically now, to the US and to meet communities is about trying to grapple with the current challenges that we’re facing And we have many, many shared challenges and shared obstacles that we need to deal with. And to do it together will make us all stronger. So yeah, we’ve come across, traveled through several countries to make it here in a time of war in order to meet people and have that conversation about the now and about the things that we’re dealing with, but also about looking forward to the future and hopefully strengthening each other and giving each other the support that we need in these times.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:23]:
Wonderful. So before I put up the schedule of the show as it goes around the East Coast, what has been the response so far? How many days have you been here? Where have you been so far? And what has been the response? Maybe give us some anecdotes that impressed you or that made an impact on you.

Anton Marks [00:28:43]:
Yeah, I mean, this is the third day we’ve been here. We’re in Philadelphia. We’ve been in two communities yesterday and the day before. Today is the third. After today, we head towards New York. What can I say? We’ve had tears. We’ve had people where this experience, this exhibition, has been a very touching and very emotional. Passover has a place in, I think, every Jew’s heart. It’s a time for family and a time to think back. Again, that question we keep returning to of what’s different this year from last year. People have been recalling missing family members. Both in Israel, in the war, but also those that have passed away in the last 12 months. And people have really, really responded well and connected. It’s very different on a lot of levels, the kibbutz celebration of the seder to what communities, how communities celebrate here. On the other hand, yeah, there’s similar questions about the guests and about how we set up the tables, but also the deeper questions of where we are today and what does it mean to be free and what’s challenging us to be free right now. What are the things that we need to, what are the chains that we need to break out from? And I think the kibbutz Haggadah, the kibbutz way of asking these deep and meaningful and difficult questions is meeting people where they are right now in America. And I’m looking forward to meeting more people and having more responses and more conversations. Because it definitely sparks conversation. And for me, that’s what it’s about.

Geoffrey Stern [00:30:15]:
It’s so wonderful. So I have the schedule up. We will typically publish next week, but you will be in New Jersey up until the 26th. You’re going to be at Golda Och Academy and then in Massachusetts at the end of the month. And hopefully this can become something that’s ongoing because I reach out to you guys every Chag. I think your email address and maybe the URL of the Shittim Institute is Chagim. It’s holidays. Whenever there is a holiday, and we’ve done an episode on Shavuot last year, it’s just amazing how the kibbutzim members, some of them came from traditional backgrounds and were very learned, but how they adopted our traditions and made it relevant and made it their own. And I think as we all try to cope with the challenges that we’re facing and that we will face for many years to come. I think that what the Shittim Institute has is going to be an amazing resource for us to cope and to be inspired to create our own responses in our own ways. So I love what you’ve done. and I encourage all of our listeners to visit Shittim when you go to Israel and to make it your business to learn more about the kibbutz haggadot, the kibbutz Yahadut Yisraelit, unique blend of Judaism. And I want to thank you, Anton and Eran, for taking the time. I know you have to pack up and go to New York to spend some time with us, and I might even see you tomorrow. In New York. But thank you so much and take this opportunity to wish you a Chag Sameach, a spring full of growth and hope for all of us. Thank you so much.

Eran Yarkoni [00:32:26]:
Thank you, Geoffrey. To you and your listeners too, Chag Pesach Sameach.

Welcome to Madlik. 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 Vayikra. Join us as we trace the strange history of rabbinic authority, from sacrifices and smicha to Sanhedrin, Napoleon, and the modern idea of Daas Torah. Rabbi, I hope we have time for it all. We shall see.

Adam Mintz [00:01:46]:
Wowee, what a week this is going to be.

Geoffrey Stern [00:01:49]:
So I’ve always been really struck by smicha and the dual way it’s used. We’re going to start in Leviticus 1, and we just opened up a new book, everybody, Vayikra, where 4 verses in, it talks about a smicha in regard to the sacrifices. And then we’re going to start exploring, as we always do. So in Leviticus 1:4, it says he is to lean his hand onto the head of the offering, up that there may be acceptance on his behalf to effect ransom. Now, Fox, Everett Fox, already says that lean his hand, the meaning of this act has puzzled commentators. It might symbolize ownership, a statement of the reason for the sacrifice, or perhaps identification with the animal as a substitute for the life of the worshiper. And that, Rabbi, kind of links to the next problem that he has, which is is this question of what lekapar alav is, which he translates on to affect ransom. To affect ransom, Hebrew kapar. The aspect of ransoming mentioned here does not recur with the other sacrifices. Some have postulated an original non-priestly venue for this type of offering, but it certainly does remind us of the scapegoat of the Seel Azazel, where literally the sins of the Jewish people are transferred the goat. So we have both this smicha, which is putting the hands on the animal that’s going to be sacrificed, and we have this sense of somehow some sort of kapara or ransom, all in one verse.

Adam Mintz [00:03:38]:
That is, I mean, the whole thing is interesting. The relationship between kapara, meaning atonement, like Yom Kippur, and ransom is also interesting. Somehow ransom is a form of atonement. But okay, let’s go. Let’s leave it to smicha for today.

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:53]:
But we do have the kaparot with the chickens on top. You’re basically transferring by touching an animal your guilt. And that’s why I said both personal and societal. The Chizkuni says something very similar to what Fox just said. He says, and you will rest your hands. According to the plain meaning of the text, this is not a commandment, but the Torah describes the norm when people offer such an animal. It describes an activity. So it’s almost the rabbi, and I’m going to argue this, it’s almost natural. This is not necessarily Jewish or one of our innovations or introductions. It’s natural. And I, you know, I love when we integrate the movements of the body or the position of hands into our prayer gestures. This is clearly a gesture that the Chiskuni is arguing is almost natural and universal.

Adam Mintz [00:04:53]:
That is very— I mean, I think it’s right. But it is interesting that the Chizkuni says that that’s why we do it. We do it because that’s what everybody does. That’s how they prepare themselves for an important action.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:05]:
He says, כך מנהג בני אדם. It seems to be the minhag, the tradition of human life.

Adam Mintz [00:05:11]:
Now, it’s not only placing your hands on something, but probably shaking hands is related to that.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:18]:
I never thought of that. I like that. I like that a lot. Okay, so we’re introducing more ingredients to the mix. Now, I am now showing— if you’re watching this on video on YouTube, I am showing a picture of my grandmother blessing my father. And this is literally how she blessed us. She took both of her hands. She put them on our head. In her case, she held her mouth very close to us. She would whisper the blessing and end with a kiss, you could feel the transference. Is this a traditional way of blessing one’s children, Rabbi, putting the hands on the head, or was it just my grandmother?

Adam Mintz [00:06:01]:
No, no, no. That’s traditional. She seems very dramatic about it. But, but yeah, it’s very traditional. Where was she from?

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:10]:
She was from the Lower East Side. She was born in the Lower East Side. Her father was a chazan from Austria-Hungary. But I assume this was traditional. She did not make this up. This is the way she was blessed.

Adam Mintz [00:06:23]:
That’s what she got from her father or from her mother or from her grandmother, for sure.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:28]:
I think so. I think so. So this universality of this notion of this movement is fascinating. And our good friend Shlomo Freud, otherwise known as Sigmund, actually focused very much on transference. And he, in regards to psychoanalysis, it’s a technical term, but it represents a crucial concept in psychoanalysis, referring to the displacement of feelings, fantasies, and desires from past relationships onto the therapist. Uh, in modern, uh, listings of this in, in, in the academia, it says empirical research has shown that transference phenomenon occur in all close relationships, including therapeutic settings, and are influenced by factors like the patient’s attachment style. While the relationship between transference and therapy outcomes remain ambiguous, insights gained from transference work, particularly through its interpretation, are seen as beneficial. So again, what I’m saying is this concept of transferring, whether it’s onto an animal, whether it’s onto one’s child, it seems to be very natural and very potent. And analyzing it, as we are going to do today, will give us insights, I think. But I just love that this is such a minhag b’nei adam that we’re going to be looking at today.

Adam Mintz [00:07:57]:
And that’s interesting. And transference, I mean, you know, that’s taking it to the next level. That’s what you saw when your grandmother blessed your father. You saw a transference. Haskuni’s not talking about that. That’s your interpretation of what the experience is, what the ritual is.

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:16]:
Yeah. I don’t know what happens in Orthodox shuls. I know in my conservative synagogue, at a bar mitzvah, at a certain point in time, the rabbi will take his hands.

Adam Mintz [00:08:26]:
Correct. And give them the priestly blessing.

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:28]:
Priestly blessing. He doesn’t do the thing that Dr. Spock with his hands, but he gives him the priestly blessing by hovering his hands over. Is that— is there a mesorah? Is there a minhag for that?

Adam Mintz [00:08:39]:
I think that that’s the same tradition. That’s your grandmother’s tradition, which is transferred to the rabbi for sure.

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:48]:
Okay, let’s move on. Now we’re doing RabbiDavid Zvi Hoffmann. And since we are studying the Book of Leviticus, you all should know that this was David Zvi Hoffmann’s book. He picked Leviticus. There are many rabbis that cringe at the thought of Leviticus giving sermons, explaining anything. It’s all about sacrifices. But David Zvi Hoffmann actually took it upon himself to explain it. This is what he writes with our pasuk in mind. He says the word his hand, yado, must be understood as referring to both hands. This is especially clear in light of the explicit verse later in the Book of Leviticus, which cites, and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the goat. That, if you recall, is the scapegoat on Yom Kippur. Accordingly, our sages established the rule in Menachot. This serves as a general principle. Wherever the Torah says his hand, it means two hands. Further proof goes on, David Zvi Hoffmann, that the laying on of hands was performed with both hands can be seen in the following verse in Leviticus 8:14, 18, and 22. They lay their hands. So when it actually came to carrying out the rules, or actually, I would say, describing what we are prescribed here. It’s with two hands. And then he says, similarly, in the book of Numbers 27:18, God tells Moses, and you shall lay your hand upon him, Joshua. So I found it fascinating that there was the beginning of a segue between the smicha of putting your hands, maybe your sins, maybe your problems onto the animal that was going to be sacrificed and transferring leadership, as happened with Joshua. David Zvi Hoffmann does not see a disconnect when it comes to smicha. It is the same smicha that you do on sacrificial animals as you do in the penultimate transfer of leadership. When Moses transferred the leadership onto Joshua, It says, lay your hand upon him.

Adam Mintz [00:11:05]:
Right now, it’s interesting. He proves that the singular hand means hands in the plural, because in that story of Moses and Joshua, God says, place your hand. And what he does is he places his hands. And obviously he’s listening to God. So it must be that hand and hands are the same thing. So not only does he connect them, but he proves from there what it really And in the process, he connects them.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:35]:
So he’s helping me segue into leadership.

Adam Mintz [00:11:39]:
Correct.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:40]:
Now we go into the Talmud in Chagigah. And the Talmud, the Gemara raises an objection and it says, speak to the children of Bnei Israel. That comes from verse 1:2. We started with Leviticus 1:4, but in 1:2 says, this is for all the children of Israel. The word Bnei literally means sons of, and it states nearby and he shall place his hands on the head. He quotes our verse. Here he goes. From which we learn that the sons of Israel place their hands, but the daughters of Israel do not place them. So now we’re trying to say who gets the right to do smicha. And we have our heroes. Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Yishmael say it is optional for the daughters of Israel to place their hands סוֹמְכוֹת רְשׁוּת. They may place their hands if they so choose, although they are not obligated to do so. In Hebrew, it says, so it talks about smichat b’nasim. And of course, we’re taking a little bit of a tangent here, Rabbi, because I wanted to find out if any of the rabbis who are approving of smicha for women cited this verse. You’ll see that.

Adam Mintz [00:12:58]:
And what’s the answer? No.

Geoffrey Stern [00:13:01]:
Only at Madlik will we make that connection. But they come close. But meanwhile, I love their reasoning. In order to give pleasure to the women. And they go on. Rabbi Yosei said, the sage Abba Eleazar related to me the following incident. On one occasion, we had a calf for peace offering, and we brought it to the women’s courtyard, and the women placed their hands on it. We did this not because there is an obligation of placing hands in the case of women, but in order to please the women. Rabbi, you almost have— you do have a Talmudic parallel to taking the Sefer Torah and bringing it into the women’s section. It’s just beautiful. That is not an innovation. It’s right in line with the enlightened rabbinic thinking.

Adam Mintz [00:13:52]:
Fantastic. Okay, I love it.

Geoffrey Stern [00:13:54]:
So this is just a tangent, but I will say that luminaries like Rabbi Daniel Sperber and like Rabbi Avi Weiss do in fact bring this ruling, but they don’t bring it to justify smicha for nashim, but they do justify it to let women put on tefillin, let women study Torah, let women do a whole host of things because the rabbis clearly had no objection. To the contrary, it gave them pleasure to give women this availability. That was an aside, but certainly one worth taking.

Adam Mintz [00:14:31]:
I mean, that is interesting that women’s involvement in ritual is kidei lateit nachat ruach le’nashim. I mean, they make a very interesting point there.

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:44]:
And you could make the case, what happens when you do a good sacrifice? What does it give? It’s a ruach. It is a sort of— there is an expression in the Bible for what it does for God, that it’s pleasing to God. Is there not?

Adam Mintz [00:14:59]:
Correct. Well, the whole idea of bringing the incense to God is supposed to be a sweet smell for God Rei’ach Nicho’ach. There’s very much that idea that we treat God the way we would want to be treated.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:14]:
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’nei mitzvah practicing their layning, capturing grandpa’s favorite tune, or recording Chag GadYa in a voice 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. Now we are going to go a little bit into looking at the Mishnah on this. And the Mishnah in Menachot 92a says, for all offerings, there is no mitzvah of placing hands on the head of the offering except for the bull that comes to atone for a community-wide violation of any one of the mitzvot that was perpetrated due to an erroneous ruling of the Sanhedrin, where the judges of the Sanhedrin are required to place their hands upon its head. And the second instance is the scapegoat brought on Yom Kippur. In both of those instances, we have smicha, even though it is not personal, it is societal. Rabbi Shimon says also in the case of the goat that comes to atone for a community-wide perpetration of idol worship that occurred. So Rabbi, I see this as another segue in understanding the smicha that we see in sacrifices towards leadership. And what I mean by is saying that is if the whole community sins, it is, in a sense, it has an ability to convey that sin upon the animal. But it’s a special type of sin. It’s when their leadership sins. It’s when the Sanhedrin makes a mistake and the Sanhedrin says it’s okay to do this. It turns out it is avoda zarah. And we see that in the Torah itself. It’s not as though everybody gets into a row like a receiving line and the animal that’s going to be sacrificed passes by and all 600,000 men put their hands on it.. No, it’s their leadership who is empowered to put their hands on the animal as a shaliach, so, so to speak, of the people. It says in Leviticus 4:13, if it is the whole community of Israel that has erred and the matter escapes the notice of the congregation so that they do any of the things by God’s commandments ought not to be done and they realize their guilt, when the sin through which they incurred guilt becomes known, the congregation shall offer a bull of the herd as a purgation offering and bring it before the tent of meeting. Here’s the kicker. The elders of the community shall lay their hands upon the head of the bull. So, Rabbi, I am making an argument that the connection between leadership and smicha when it comes to the karbanot is even stronger. Because when the community sins, the community’s designated leaders are the ones who, in a sense, the designated leaders are the ones who have smicha, are the ones who put their hands upon the animal. They’re kind of attached at the hip.

Adam Mintz [00:19:32]:
That’s interesting.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:34]:
Wow.

Adam Mintz [00:19:34]:
Okay, so the smicha is done by the zakainim, and that’s what smicha is. That the transference is done by the leadership. That’s really your point.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:48]:
Yeah. And what I didn’t say till now is even though Freud talks about transference in psychological terms, I think in religious, spiritual terms, I think we do have a sense of there is a power of spirit that can be transferred. Transferred and it can be accepted. And I think ultimately what the texts are showing is that just as possibly bad vibes or bad spirits can be transferred onto a sacrifice that is being made to expunge the guilt, it can also be transferred from a Moses to a Joshua and from a Joshua onto the next thing in a positive vibe. There is clearly a belief in this power of being able to transfer this spiritual power from person to person, from community to community.

Adam Mintz [00:20:48]:
That is very powerful. You’re right. And it’s right here.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:51]:
Okay, so the Ibn Ezra says the elders of the congregation, the elders are the leaders. They will lay their hands on their on behalf of all of Israel, for it is impossible for all of Israel to place their hands. So in a sense, what he’s saying is what I exactly just said, that we have smicha within smicha, that they are placing their hands because they have already been made. They have been vested with the power to represent the Kahal, the rest of Israel. So let’s look at Numbers for a second, because now we get to the crux of leadership. Numbers 27, it says, and God answered Moses, single out Joshua son of Nun as an inspired man and lay your hands upon him. Have him stand before Eleazar the priest and before the whole community and commission him in their sight. Invest him with some of your authority so that the whole Israelite community may obey. But he shall present himself to Eleazar the priest, who shall on his behalf seek the decision of the Urim before GOD. By such instructions shall they go out, and by such instructions shall they come in. He and all the Israelites and the whole community. Moses did as God commanded. He took Joshua and had him stand before Eleazar the priest and before the whole community. He laid his hands upon him and commissioned him as God had spoken through Moses. This is the mold, the template for leadership and transferring and authorizing leadership in our religion.

Adam Mintz [00:22:33]:
And of smicha. And the reason that we call the getting the rabbinic seal as getting smicha. I’ll just say that if you ever went to the rabbinical, the smicha at the Jewish Theological Seminary of the Conservative Movement, I think that the chancellor of the seminary actually puts his or her hands on each one of the rabbinic candidates. So they actually take it to that level. I was never there. I don’t know where, but someone told me that when I got smicha in YU, they didn’t touch me. I promise you.

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:11]:
And I can say in researching this, that is, the Talmudic says you don’t have to. It’s allegorical when it comes to smicha. We’ll see that there are other requirements. So first of all, we would be negligent if we didn’t quote the first mishnah in Pirkei Avot. Here is, I think, what could be considered the introduction of the whole Mishnah. It begins in, in Avot. And basically what it says is Moses received the Torah at Sinai, transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the men of the Great Assembly. And they said something really smart. Simon the Righteous was one of the last of them in the Great Assembly, and he said something smart. Antigonus, a man of Socho, received the oral tradition from Shimon the Righteous. And he said it goes on Mishnah to Mishnah, and it’s saying Yose ben Yoezer of Zeredah and Yose ben Yohanan of Jerusalem received the oral tradition from them, meaning from Shimon the Tzadik. And so every one of the initial Mishnayot in Avot is introduced by saying there was a direct line from Moses to Joshua. So this truly is the the basis of smicha and of rabbinic authority.

Adam Mintz [00:24:38]:
Fantastic. Yeah, that is the most important mishnah in all of Mishnah, of course. And the question you asked, which this isn’t the time to go into it, but that’s a very good question. That really should be the first mishnah at the beginning of all of the Mishnah. It’s funny that it’s put at the end of Avot. That’s a whole long conversation for another Madlik some other time. It’s the beginning of our Avot, but you’re saying that our Avot should be the beginning of Berachot. It should be the beginning of all the Mishnah. Okay, the commentaries ask that question.

Geoffrey Stern [00:25:08]:
It’s always good when we get material for another episode. So the Mishnah in Sanhedrin says the following. It says, smichatz kenim va’arifat agalah b’shloshad. The laying of hands by the sages and the breaking of the red heifer’s neck in a case where a person was found are performed in front of a panel of 3 judges. So now we’re getting down into the weeds a little bit. And the laying of hands of the sages, meaning to say when they give smicha, it has to be done by a beit din of 3. Is that the case nowadays, Rabbi?

Adam Mintz [00:25:50]:
No. I mean, this doesn’t— the smicha today is just symbolic. We don’t need 3. But that is interesting. That is what the Mishnah says.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:00]:
And of course, you get that in conversion. There you do have other requirements. Correct. In conversion, you need a bechted.

Adam Mintz [00:26:07]:
Absolutely. Yes.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:08]:
Correct.

Adam Mintz [00:26:09]:
Okay.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:09]:
But again, I just couldn’t get over the fact that they can talk about both of these smichot in the same breath, which just gives me fodder to say I’m not out on a limb here. And of course, Rabbi Yochanan says it is referring to the ordination of elders, meaning to appoint sages and grant them the title of rabbi. So that is in front of 3. When did smicha go into disuse? That was during the Roman period. The Talmud in Sanhedrin 14a says, at one time, the wicked kingdom of Rome issued decrees of religious prosecution against the Jewish people with the aim of abolishing the chain of ordination. Basically, what it says is they forbade it on the capital punishment. If you gave smicha, they realized, they thought this would destroy us. But the truth is, as you say, we continued the tradition, if not the halacha. There were laws that said that smicha cannot be done outside of Eretz Yisrael. And for a while they dealt with that. In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides actually addresses addresses the problem. He says that at first, whoever had received smicha would convey smicha on his students. Afterward, as an expression of honor to Hillel the Elder, the sages ordained that smicha would not be conveyed upon anyone unless license had been granted by the Nasi. So maybe it became a little political. But at the end of the day, what Rambam does is he suggests some solutions. And he says that basically there should only be— if there’s only one judge in Eretz Yisrael, he should call two other judges and make them smicha. Then they should get 70 judges and give them smicha. He should create a Sanhedrin. But at the end, he says, hadavar tzurich hakla. This issue needs resolution. Maimonides, in a sense, this was not recognized as one of the major challenges that we came up against. We survived just well and fine. But clearly there was a disruption here. And it’s fascinating in Maimonides’ time what happened. I will say in Napoleon’s time, in terms of allowing Jews to become citizens, Napoleon wanted to come to certain conclusions about laws of interest. He wanted to have some— he wanted to have an authoritative body that could let him know what was right or wrong so that they could join the mass. And they put it together. I don’t know how well that was accepted. Clearly, it was outside of Eretz Israel. Clearly, it was an accommodation. But even today, we don’t have a Sanhedrin in Israel. What is the status? Do we need a Sanhedrin?

Adam Mintz [00:29:19]:
We don’t have— what we say, Jeffrey, is we don’t have a pope. There’s no central authority in Judaism. And as you and I both No, that’s good and that’s bad, right? Sometimes it would be good to have a central authority, but we have thrived in the fact that we have a multiplicity of opinions. Shivim panim la Torah. My risket always used to talk about that, that there is no one set law for everybody. The law is kind of a tug of war between what the rules are and what people need. And that’s the role of the rabbi to try to resolve that tug of war.

Geoffrey Stern [00:30:04]:
But I love the fact that you said we don’t have a pope. I think this is a situation where most Jews would agree that we’ve evolved in a good way, that we ultimately found a golden mean or a way where rabbis are basically given authority by their followers, by people who are inspired by them. It’s not doctrinaire and it’s not dogmatic. I will say that in the Haredi community, there is this sense of das Torah, and we could have a whole episode just on that. But basically, they have gone back to a model where the rabbi knows everything, not only Torah, but they go to him for economic advice, for political advice, for social advice. And I think that the brilliance of the tradition that we follow today is that on the one hand, we honor the ability of our people. I won’t say unique, unique, but certainly something that we should be proud of. Our ability to transfer our traditions, our knowledge, our wisdom, our experience, our emotions from one to another, both on a personal and a societal level. But on the other hand, we have been able to contain it to the degree that it enables us to flourish. And I think that’s ultimately what we celebrate when we dive into this concept of smicha, is the ability and the magic of transference as something that we Jews have been able to master and to modify and to explore and enlarge.

Adam Mintz [00:31:48]:
Amazing. Fantastic topic. Shabbat shalom, everybody. Enjoy.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:53]:
Shabbat shalom. And see you all next week.

Welcome to Madlik. 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 Vayikel Pekudei. Join us as we explore the sources for a popular midrash about an enigmatic and seemingly trivial detail in the inventory report of the Mishkan. Rabbi, I’ve read this story. I’ve heard this story a million times before.

Adam Mintz [00:02:18]:
And you love it every time.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:21]:
I love it every time, but I never realized how enigmatically it was written. You know, it’s like sometimes we have the Midrash of Abraham knocking down his Terach, his father’s idols, and we assume it’s in the text. I didn’t assume the story was in the text, but at least I thought that the text would kind of have some synergy with it. I think we’re going to find that really, on the face of it, it’s hard to understand.

Adam Mintz [00:02:47]:
Yeah. Okay, let’s go. Let’s run with it.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:51]:
Okay, so we are in Exodus 38:8, and in this total inventory of all of the materials used, it says he made the laver of copper and its stand of copper from the mirrors of the women who perform tasks at the entrance of the tent of meeting. As though there were women standing by the tent of meeting doing their tasks. Some other translations are with the mirror of the women’s working force, which was doing their work at the entrance of the tent of appointment. So it was almost as if we had women seamstresses, like you would assume you were in a shirt factory in the Lower East Side. Another translation, JPS, is who perform tasks. It says the precise nuance of the Hebrew is uncertain. Tzavah at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And the the last one is a translation by Kehot Chumash. It says the legions of women who congregated in the courtyard outside the entrance of the tent of meeting. I think what’s really not bothering but kind of triggering everybody is it says, right?

Adam Mintz [00:04:12]:
So is a hard word.

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:16]:
So we all know the word tsava from army, from a group of workers, but it’s certainly makes it sound like anything that the Midrash that we all know. And it’s a tease. I’m not telling you what the Midrash is for a few seconds, but it’s almost a union, a group. And like, you and I, Rabbi, should know exactly who these women are.

Adam Mintz [00:04:36]:
I think the Kahak Chumash, which is the Chabad Chumash, legions of women is probably the most literal. But it’s hard to know what that means. I don’t know what legions of women mean. That’s why everybody translates it differently.

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:48]:
So as long as we’re doing translations, the earliest translation, of course, is Onkelos. And he says the women who had gathered to pray, in parentheses, it says at the entrance of the tent of meeting. But in the Aramaic, I think the praying is there, is it not? Nasi de’etian le’tzalah. So again, it’s a group of women coming to pray. And certainly, you know, we always focus on a minyan needs men, but there are plenty of places, maybe even a kever rochel or something that you do find that are specifically, or by self, I think, self-qualification, women go to pray. It seems to be one of those places as well. Now, again, what I want to do is say how different this is than everything else that we’re reading in the parsha. Because everywhere else in the parsha, it says, like in Exodus 35:29, thus the Israelites, all the men and women whose hearts moved them to bring anything for the work that God through Moses had commanded to be done. Rabbi, it is not alien to this parsha that women were giving. It’s almost— I almost wanted to do a whole episode on the amount of times that it says ish v’isha. I mean, there will be some takeaways from today’s parsha to see how women-friendly or women-inclusive it is. But even if you forget about the mirrors, there are so many times in our parsha that almost, almost nonchalantly, it talks about men and women were giving. So that’s not what is unique here.

Adam Mintz [00:06:32]:
Yeah, well, that’s for sure. I thought you were going to say that it tells you about philanthropy, that not only men are philanthropists, but women are philanthropists too.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:39]:
Let’s save that for the appeal this week, this Shabbat. But meanwhile, this kind of bowl of washing does come up later, and we’re going to see a reference in Numbers and a reference in the Book of Samuel are going to help us start to untangle this mystery. In Numbers 5:17, it says, the priest shall take sacral waters in an earthen vessel and take some of the earth that is on the floor of the tabernacle. The priest shall put it into the water. This was a trial by fire, a trial by some sort of a physical change where the sotah, the woman who is suspected by the husband for cheating, they go through this ceremony. And the assumption is that they’re taking the water from this copper vessel that we’re discussing, moving it into an earthenware vessel. And this is where, between this and our verse, we get Rashi quoting the famous Midrashim, which we will quote now. So we’re kind of going to go to the endgame, talk about the Midrashim that explain this strange situation, and then go back and try to parse it. So Rashi says, the mirrors of the women crowding. The Israelite women possessed mirrors of copper into which they used to look when they adorned themselves. Even these they did not hesitate to bring. Notice Rashi is already hedging his bet. He’s not saying that it’s made only from the mirrors, but he says, and included in the other contributions that they’re bringing is also from these. And it says they did not hesitate to as contribution towards the tabernacle. Now Moses was about to reject them since they were made to pander to their vanity. So this reminds one of all of those great Hasidic stories where it seems that the glutton becomes the most holiest. So here is the women who are vain and looking into their mirrors. Moses wants to shoo them away. And like that boy with the whistle on Yom Kippur and the Midrash— this is not a Hasidic story, this is a Midrash— says Godsaid to them, accept them. These are dearer to me than all the other contributions, because through them the women reared those huge hosts in Egypt. And now he’s going to explain. For when their husbands in Egypt were tired through the crushing labor, they used to bring them food. The women would bring them food and drink and induce them to eat. Then the women would take the mirrors, and each gazed at herself in her mirror together with her husband, saying endearingly to him, see, I am handsomer than you. Thus they awakened their husband’s affection and subsequently became the mothers of many children. As it is said, I awakened thy love under the apple tree, referring to the fields where the men worked. This is what refers to when it says marot hatsavaot, the mirrors of the women who reared the hosts. Really playing with the words here. So the hosts that we’re talking about are the progeny that they engendered by tempting their husbands, by seducing their husbands with these mirrors. And it was for this reason that the laver was made of them, the mirrors, because it served the purpose of promoting peace between man and his wife. Here, too, a little strange. You’d think it served the purpose of having a lot of kids, but now he’s already segueing into the other situation. So now they’re making peace between man and wife by giving of its waters to be drunk by a woman whose husband has shown himself jealous of her and who nevertheless has associated with another. So while she’s taking the woman’s side, it’s not that the woman is suspected, it’s the man who’s jealous. And they’re using exactly this basin, which is made from those mirrors that made Shalom Bayit, to bring them together and thus affording her the opportunity to prove her innocence. He says, Rashi goes on, you may know that the marot mentioned in the text were really mirrors. In the Hebrew it says, so what does the translator take that to mean? He takes it to mean that they do not mean something else that marot means. They do not mean visions or appearances. So the the translation and the commentary that Rashi throws out, actually, Rabbi, became almost a favorite of mine, that the marot nashim was the vision of the women. It was their sense of beauty. It was sense of appearance.

Adam Mintz [00:11:48]:
You like the rejected explanation.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:50]:
I do. And every rejected explanation has its day, right? So anyway, they make a point of saying that the contribution of the mirrored copper was so unique that it actually wasn’t tallied in the inventory. That is the actual subject matter of our parsha. Rashi does use the French to help us understand it. Miroir in old French. So we have a really nice Rashi. So really, this is the famous Rashi quoting the famous Targum. But again, Rabbi, once you read the verse and once you understand that there are multiple problems— one, what is this multitude? Two, what is this almost service that they seem to be serving regularly in front of the tent of meeting? There are so many questions here. The fact is, we’re just now inaugurating the tent of meeting. So how can they even make a reference to people gathering on a regular basis in front of a tent of meeting? But I did notice, Rabbi, that something happens here that I know you love, and that is a hapax legomenon, that this is the only time in the Torah that the word mar’ah is used. So we only have one instance to mirror. Maybe that says something about the lack of vanity in our culture. We have a lot of words we discovered last week for turning things upside down. Only one word for mirror.

Adam Mintz [00:13:31]:
That is actually great that that’s true. Okay, so what that shows is that you only know that it needs mirrors in context here. It’s not like you know it from somewhere else.

Geoffrey Stern [00:13:44]:
Yeah, absolutely. And there is an article in thetorah.com by a professor, Rabbi Rachel Edelman, and she says that the word mareh is similar to an Akkadian word, namaru, which comes from the word to see. But she also says, and I found I found this fascinating. Akkadian has a second term for mirror as well, mitsalu. I felt that had the word tzel in it, that had the word tzelem, that had the word image in it. It’s not that surprising, Rabbi, that we have an issue with something that has to do with showing an image. Right? Right. You’re looking at yourself and you’re looking at the image of God. Is that even allowed? So I think that it’s a strange object, It’s definitely— it’s a trigger for us to evaluate what’s going on here. And now a word from our sponsor. If there’s one thing we value at the 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’nei 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. So the second external quote in the Tanakh is absolutely fascinating. And a lot of the commentaries bring it. It’s from 1 Samuel 2:22. If you remember, who was, who was having trouble having a baby? Hannah. Hannah. So Hannah, who, who invented the silent prayer, is barren. And she goes to the temple and she meets with Eli and she promises that if she has a child, she will dedicate that child to God. That becomes Samuel. That part of the story is over. And now we get to Eli, who was the kohen who helped her. He was very old when he heard all that his sons were doing to all of Israel and how they lay with the women who performed tasks at the entrance of the tent of meeting. So you could make a case this is totally irrelevant in terms of subject matter, but very relevant. The word is there. There was this thing. There were women who performed tasks at the entrance of the tent of meeting. But you cannot ignore that there’s innuendo here that the sons of Eli were sleeping with them. So there was something amiss going on, it says. And many of the Jewish commentators all try to water it down. They said they weren’t sleeping with them, they were delaying them. These are women who had just given birth and wanted to give the sacrifice that you have to give 30 or 60 days after giving birth. They were delaying them. They were stopping them from going home and laying with their husbands. The rabbis have a real problem with this innuendo. But Josephus says that the sons of Eli were guilty of impurity with the women that came to worship God at the tabernacle, obliging some to submit to their lust by force. So Josephus probably did not make this up. This was a common interpretation in his day. So now things are starting to get a little bit more interesting. There’s a slight amount of innuendo, Rabbi, I would say, with just the the vanity of the mirrors that Rashi was talking about. But he flips it like the Baal Shem Tov would. You would think that they were grubber. You would think that they were vain. No, their intentions were good. Now we have a situation where they were actually part of— they were obviously on the receiving end. They were not the protagonist. But again, these women who were gathered were engaged in no right. It does become kind of fascinating.

Adam Mintz [00:18:29]:
Amazing. So it’s so interesting that you take a verse that is completely unconnected, but then you see that this idea that women had this role. And I just want to point out that in the Torah, that role is in the temporary tabernacle. By the time we get to Samuel, there still is no temple, but at least the tabernacle is more established. So if you have a role that was already in the Book of Samuel, that’s probably a role that continued to exist.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:02]:
Right. And of course, the biblical critics would say there’s a good possibility this is a newer text. So we get from the time of Samuel, they projected it back.

Adam Mintz [00:19:13]:
Right. I’m saying they borrowed the idea from the Torah. We don’t need any of that.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:18]:
You don’t need it. But there is a connection between the two. So there is. I’ll give you a number of different explanations for what is going on here. Roman de Vaux, who was a Catholic scholar, writes, these women— he compares them to the young women who in pre-Islamic Arab society would keep watch over the kibba containing a tribe’s idols. I guess I thought back to, was it Rachel sitting on her father’s teraphim? So he sees these women gathered there as, as gods. Shadal is very pragmatic. He says, that the reason they use copper of the mirrors is, first of all, very pragmatic, because to make a mirror out of copper, it has to be highly polished form of copper. Right. It can’t have any contaminants in it. So he wasn’t referring back to any other stories, any other narrative. They just said, oh, you got some mirrors, let’s use the copper from those mirrors. Then he goes, the women who assemble, but perhaps the meaning is similar to the phrase to serve in the service, to serve in the army, to serve in the service of God.

Adam Mintz [00:20:35]:
Well, it’s the same word.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:36]:
Tzovot is like the word tzava, right? So he says, meaning a fixed time to perform labor for a day, 2 days, or whatever period it may come from. So in his read, there were women who got together, who came as a group to contribute to building the tabernacle. Thus, some of the women established for themselves a regular practice of going to the entrance of the tent of Moses, which was called the tent of meeting. See, that’s also a problem because we’re at the dedication— we’re not even dedicating the tent yet, and all of a sudden there are women showing up. So he makes it the tent of Moses. There everyone would bring their contributions. He says there they performed work connected with the sacred donations, for example, spinning the goat hair or doing other kinds of work. These women donated their mirrors. So he’s trying to explain which group they were. So he says, similarly, the women who assembled in the days of the sons of Eli, quoting our verse from 1 Samuel, would bring offerings and remain there for a day or two, staying before the Lord. He goes, the verse that we started with related to the craftsmen that Bezalel made the copper bronze washing basin for the divine dwelling and the stand and the basin out of the mirrors of the women who served at the entrance. Copper was in fact the material out of which most mirrors in the ancient Near East were doing. So everybody is trying, in a sense, to explain what these groups of women were, what they were doing, what they were doing there. One of the commentaries explains that, in fact, the mirrors were not out of vanity. These Israelite women were adopting a pagan form of worship. Their mirrors might then have been taken from them and placed into to a more properly biblical cultic function.

Adam Mintz [00:22:34]:
That’s very important, by the way, right? That turns the whole thing around. It’s about something else. It’s about cults. It’s about religion.

Geoffrey Stern [00:22:43]:
And the truth is that we have many images of mirrors, especially from Egypt. I’m going to show you some in a second. And all of them are related to the gods. Maybe a god of childbirth, of virility, all that. I have to say, Rabbi, And here’s some of these pictures here that you can see. This is one, and you can see it is a deity who is involved with being able to give birth. And it is that deity who is attached to fertility is the word that I’m looking for. In the version on the right, which is from the Met, it’s Hathor, who is a major ancient Egyptian goddess of love, beauty, music, and fertility. And I’ll be honest, Rabbi, I was surprised that none of the commentators linked the story of Samuel with the story of Hannah. Meaning to say, Hannah went to Eli because she was looking to solve her fertility problem. Maybe there are women who were gathered outside of the tent of meeting who gathered there because they were having challenges giving birth, who like Hannah were trying to find a way to become fertile or to have an easy birth and that would totally make sense for women to be gathered to relate to the story of Hannah, but also to relate to very old pagan practices. Because you, if you know people who are having problems becoming fertile, they go everywhere, they look everywhere, they try They might as well go to the temple.

Adam Mintz [00:24:31]:
Now, that’s interesting. I think the reason they don’t connect it is because the word sovot doesn’t suggest it. But I think your explanation is very good.

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:41]:
So it’s a group of women. I think there’s a strong possibility that they were looking for fertility. They were coming to a holy site like we would see people coming to Kever Rachel or whatever. And the picture that I had at the side was of this Hathor, who was a goddess, a typical goddess of love, beauty, music, and fertility and joy, often depicted as a woman with cow horns holding a sun disk. When I went to the Met recently for their exhibit, the amount of women gods really surprised me, and the amount of gods with this sun disk on top. And of course, when we’re looking at these mirrors, it’s in the form of that sun disk. It’s kind of fascinating.

Adam Mintz [00:25:27]:
Fascinating. Yeah, that sun disk is a famous popular image. I don’t know why that is.

Geoffrey Stern [00:25:33]:
It’s because they worship the sun. Yes. Yes. Now, in Egyptian, according to thetorah.com, the word for mirror is ankh, which also means life. The ankh is an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol representing life and eternal life, often called the key of the Nile, a powerful emblem. It signified divine immortality, fertility, and protection. So again, I think that we’re kind of discovering different things. But I do love the fact that according to this one interpretation, they were taking something that had been used for idolatry and I say repurposing it into something holy. We do have another instance of that. I think the incest pans that were held by the Benei Korach were then beaten into a covering for the altar. So that would be almost a mussar haskel, an ethical lesson. Every time you look at it, you see not the greatness of the women as Rashi would have it, but the fact that they gave up their idolatry. Cassuto has the following. He says that the difference between our mirror episode and everything else in the Parsha is that only here is the matter of the construction mentioned. What relates to its use is omitted. Even the word for washing is not included. So he goes to the extreme. He goes, we are only interested in the construction of the basin. We’re not interested even in its functionality. And the exception is ours. He says the detail is obscure. Many explanations have been proposed. We’ve certainly seen a few of them. He says, according to some, the intention— it seems that the intention is to indicate that the lever and its base, the basin, were not made from the material of the Lord’s offering. Designated for service. This is because they themselves were not directed for the sacred service, but only for preparing the priest. He’s trying to say why the basin was not even included in the inventory. He says the mirrors that the women brought were therefore a unique category, not included among the sacred contribution. He says perhaps an ancient poetic tradition told that the woman, moved by generosity of heart, came in great numbers to present before Moses the objects most precious to them, such as their mirrors. And I must say, in all of the images of the mirrors that I saw, they belonged to wealthy people. These were like jewels. They would stand there in a long line, literally assembling in ranks at the entrance of the Temple of Meeting before the tent of Moses. And he says, since the matter was already known to the audience through poetic tradition, the hint would have been easily understood. So this is a typical Cassuto move. That we read the parsha year in and year out, there’s certain expectations of what the audience knows. There are times when the audience winks. He is trying to give some feet for the Rashi quoted midrash that people would understand some of the background, that they would wink and they would think about that, which is great. Yeah. So again, I just find all of this fascinating. But if you do buy into any of the explanations that relate to idol worship, that relate to Eli’s time where the women were maybe just hanging around the temple. Some commentaries even go so far as to talk about Kadeshah, a temple harlot. It seems that both the text of the Torah and the rabbis were going out of their way to hide it, perhaps on account of its unseemly nature. The details were omitted or expunged from the Torah’s account. So, Rabbi, the way I want to conclude is, you know, my dad was an art collector. And in the art world, there’s something called a found object. I mean, Andy Warhol might be the most famous. He took a standard can of Campbell’s tomato soup and he made it into a piece of art. And people said, what’s that? You’re just finding something. The idea of finding a found object and by putting it on a pedestal and knowing that it has a history in and of itself encourages people to think about what they know differently. The idea of dignifying commonplace objects in this way was originally a shocking challenge to the accepted distinction. It continues to arouse questioning. Rabbi, I am going to suggest today that we might have the first instance of a found object as relates to not so much art, although certainly B’Tzalel and the people involved with building the temple were considered craftsmen. But even with regard to holiness, and that the idea— and that’s why I love Cassuto’s argument, saying they don’t even talk of what you do here about the washing. What we are talking about is making something holy and making it holy from a found object. And the beautiful thing about a found object like Midrash is that everything is in the eyes of the beholder. Everybody comes and sees in it their own idea of where it came from.

Adam Mintz [00:31:19]:
That’s amazing. I want to tell you something. That’s amazing. Your father would be proud.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:23]:
So I’m going to finish with one more step. I am showing a picture of a Menashe Kadishman sculpture, and it’s a sculpture about birth. And he gave it to the town in Israel. And all of a sudden, a custom spread. This goes back 15 years amongst the Orthodox Jewish Jewish community of Israel. Young women have been reportedly flocking to the Ramat Gan National Park, national park in the suburb of Tel Aviv, where sculptures of Menashe Kadishman are lying. And what they’re doing is— one of the artworks in question is also titled Birth and shows an abstract figure which appears to be pregnant. Another sculpture shows a round hollow in its center where the womb would be. In recent weeks, visitors were stunned to see Orthodox women sitting on the sculptures or lying flat on their surfaces while reading Tehillim, while reading Psalms. The city had to issue the following edict. Rabbi, we inform the public that this statue has no special powers and is merely one of the many works of art on display in the park. So I just love it that this concept of imbuing something with powers, it comes from the people, not from the object. And that’s ultimately why it was so important, I believe, to mention the provenance of this wonderful basin in the Mishnah.

Adam Mintz [00:32:52]:
That’s amazing. Really good today. Yashir koach. Shabbat shalom, everybody. Enjoy the double parsha, the end of the book of Shemot. Next week we’re going to begin the book of Vayikra.

Geoffrey Stern [00:33:02]:
Shabbat shalom. Amen. Shabbat shalom. See you all next week.

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Jeffrey 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 celebrated Purim and look with concern at the situation in modern-day Persia. Join us as we argue that the Purim mindset is essential to our survival as a people and as a species and should not be limited to an annual feast of fools. Well, Rabbi, it’s so great that you could join me on Erev Purim. But what historic times we are living in.

Adam Mintz [00:02:42]:
And it’s remarkable that it’s with Persia once again. So everything we talk about, like you said, we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to draw a line from one to the next. But you can’t help but wonder as we read these stories again this year.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:57]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I wonder if one of the reasons we surprised the Iranians is maybe they expected us to attack on Purim. I know it’s—

Adam Mintz [00:03:06]:
So we got them early, right?

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:08]:
I know attacking during the daylight was a big part of the strategy. Maybe even Shabbat. Maybe they thought that we wouldn’t attack on our Shabbat.

Adam Mintz [00:03:15]:
Well, it seems like they went after a specific meeting that was taking place.

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:19]:
Yeah. Anyway, let’s go to the text, as they say. So in Esther 9:1, it says, and so on the 13th day of the 12th month, that is the month of Adar, when the king’s command and decree were to be executed, the very day on which the enemies of the Jews had expected to get them in their power, the opposite happened, and the Jews got their enemies in their power. So it really— hafuch means to turn something upside down. In Esther 9:22, it says the same thing over. We visited this the other day, the last episode, when we talked about gifting. The same days in which the Jews enjoyed relief from their foes and the same month that had been transformed for them, one of grief and mourning to one of festive joy. They were to observe them as days of feasting and merrymaking, as an occasion for sending gifts to one another and presents to the poor. So here again, it says, נֶהְפַּ֨ךְ לָהֶ֤ם מִיָּגוֹן֙ לְשִׂמְחָ֔ה וּמֵאֵ֖בֶל לְי֣וֹם ט֑וֹב So it wasn’t enough, Rabbi, that things got better. It was precisely that they got better on the day that they were going to be worse. There’s no question that there is. And you could say, and you could stop and say, okay, so it’s narrative irony. It is something that makes the story more compelling. It’s staged drama. But we are going to argue that this word, nahapech, actually has a very long history in Jewish tradition, in learning. And that is what we’re gonna dwell on. I wanna just quote from Yitz Greenberg, who has a wonderful book called The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays. And in it he writes, part of the dizzying paradox of Purim is the extraordinary and capricious reversal it reflects. Vashti is deposed as queen for showing modesty. Esther wins favor for the queenship because of her modesty. Mordecai in one day is raised from gallows candidate to prime minister. The very name of the holiday Purim, meaning lottery, suggests the absurdity and vulnerability of historic events when a turn of the wheel, a night’s insomnia, a moment of jealousy on the part of a drunken king spells the difference between degradation and exaltation, between genocide and survival. So again, he even kind of stretches it even further by bringing in, I think the beautiful— the thing that I took from it was this Purim is that it’s chance also, but really this way of flipping things and taking advantage of the crisis at hand and maybe reading the data that you’re given as opposed to just hitting your head against the wall and doing the same thing over and over again. What’s your read?

Adam Mintz [00:06:21]:
No, I mean, I think that’s right. I mean, Yitztz Greenberg, he makes it— it’s all about opposites. Means that it’s the opposite. It’s turned on its head. Hafuch means the opposite. Right. And so here he points out the fact that’s the whole holiday of Purim. The absurdity of Purim is that it’s all about the opposite.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:45]:
And I might say, and this we all know, is that God’s name is not mentioned. Yes, it’s the last book of Tanakh. There are those that argue that this is Greenberg’s world where we have to find the divine. The divine is hiding, so to speak. Hester Panim. But again, I think it gives us a little bit of a license to take some secular lessons from this, to take some practical lessons from this way of thinking. So we’re going to kind of explore, as we love to do on Madlik, the word nahapech, which means to turn over. There is an iconic mishnah in Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Father. It’s in 5:22, and it says, Ben Bag Bag said, turn it over, turn it For all is there were in hapich bo vahapich bo dekulo bo. I once went to Herodian where there was this wonderful archaeologist (Ehud Netzer) who spent his life digging and exploring Jewish past, and he died tragically. He fell into the pits, and they had a kind of a book there for people to write something. And I just decided that the most cool thing that I could write was the hapich bo vahapich bo dekulobo. Because you can also say, means to dig and dig in it and dig in it for everything is in it. But the truth is, it doesn’t mean so much as dig as turning over, taking that spade and turning over the soil. And I’m not sure that the interpretation that I’m kind of suggesting would be in line with the intent of the writer. I think the writer probably believed that you have to spend your life learning these texts. Even at the end, he said, never leave them. The commentaries say, don’t go and study Greek philosophy. Keep to the Jewish texts. But I’m taking a little bit of license in this idea of turning things upside down, looking at them from a different perspective. But it is an iconic and wonderful turn of phrase, is it not? Hapech bo v’Hapech bo d’kulo bo.

Adam Mintz [00:09:07]:
It’s the best. Yes. And that’s interesting, right, that you use that as your inscription. But that’s exactly the same thing for the Hapechu, right? Turn it over and turn it over. Everything is there.

Geoffrey Stern [00:09:19]:
So now we’re going to talk about a phrase in the Talmud that I think only you always say we come from the yeshiva world, but this is a yeshiva world expression. And I searched for it and I couldn’t believe how much it conformed every time it is is mentioned, it starts with the word matkif. And what it says is, in the instance, and it’s truly one of hundreds of instances in Brachot 45, it says Rav Ashi strongly objects to this. On the contrary, the opposite is more reasonable. Matkif lei Rav Ashi adaraba ivcha mishtavra. And that formulation is repeated over and over again in the Talmud. Matkif is translated here strongly objects. Rabbi, I almost feel like whoever’s saying this is jumping on his feet. He’s in your face. I don’t know what the shoresh is for matkif, but there’s this emphasis. It puts everything else to the power of 2 and it goes adaraba. It’s the opposite. Ivcha, that comes from our word haphach, the opposite. It says it twice. Opposite, opposite. Mistavra is logical. And this is just a wonderful beautiful formulation, and you cannot read it without feeling the emotional impact that it has. And I think when we study the Talmud and we come to one of these things, it’s hard not to smile because whoever is saying it is turning things on their head.

Adam Mintz [00:10:58]:
There’s no question. Two things I want to say. Number one is, as we all know, that’s a part of the yeshiva jargon. If somebody says something to you, and you think the opposite is true, you say, ipcha b’stabra, the opposite is true. So that’s a phrase. And actually, there’s a Yiddish word which is fakert, which is the Yiddish way of saying ipcha b’stabra. So it became part of the English yeshiva jargon and the Yiddish yeshiva jargon. Now, Sfaria here does a really interesting thing. He doesn’t say the opposite makes more sense, he says the opposite is more reasonable. That’s really an interesting twist on that, right? It’s more reasonable. Not right. So we should consider it because it’s more reasonable.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:49]:
Yeah. For our listeners, you have to trust us on this one that these words are never said leaning back in an easy chair with a pipe in your hand. You are jumping to your feet. Think of it as an Oxford debating moment. And we’re going to parse each one of these words. Matkif, one who raises an objector, attacker, assailant is what the Klein Dictionary says. Raised an objection, assailed, attacked. So it really is pregnant with, resonates with this strong response.

Adam Mintz [00:12:29]:
Means to assail, right? The word takaf is a verb. To mean to assail, right? To grab. So that’s what it is. So it’s a great word. You’re right. And that’s the same thing. It’s not when you’re relaxed, right? It’s a hard word. I think the term we use, it’s an aggressive word.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:49]:
Yeah. And so the next word is adorabah. Turn to the stronger side. Wench as a dialectical term. On the contrary, we are going to see a little bit down. I actually have a memo from, or a footnote from the Hebrew Institute in Israel that breaks it down even a little bit more. So let’s wait on Adaraba a second. And then it says Ifcha, the reverse, the opposite. And here, of course, he references Hafakh, the exact word that we have used to start this conversation. So here’s the Adaraba, which I absolutely love. Its literal meaning is upon what is greater. If you heard the word Raba in Adaraba, raba. That’s what they’re focused on. As if the smaller thing had been below and now the direction is reversed and rises above what is greater than it. I have never seen a definition, a linguistic definition that works for my drash better than this. He literally is saying adaraba, that the smaller thing should go over the larger thing. The thing that was below should now be on top. Just fascinating how these words carry such emotional baggage. Here we get to your Yiddish. So fakert, that is Yiddish. And again, trust me, my loyal listeners, when you say fakert or if you say pumpt fakert, you are doing it in the same manner that we discussed a second ago. You are standing on your face, you are in the other person’s face, and you’re saying you’ve got it all reversed and backwards. It comes from the German Wirkheit, and a Punktverkehrt means exactly the opposite.

Adam Mintz [00:14:49]:
That’s right.

Adam Mintz [00:14:50]:
Good.

Adam Mintz [00:14:50]:
That word Punkt makes it even better. Right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:54]:
So here is the one takeaway that you are all going to remember, kind listeners. When you order a latte in Israel, do not ask for a latte. Ask for a Caffe’ Hafuch, because the coffee is poured on top of the milk instead of the milk being poured on top of the coffee, the Israelis take this as you are drinking hafuch, upside down. But when Israelis argue and they say on the contrary, they say lehepech. No, you are absolutely wrong. Lehepech. What I’m trying to say from a linguistic point of view is that these words are baked into our language of discourse. I think I’ve said this in the past. If Eskimos have 50 words for snow, we have 50 words for disagreement. I would say for vehement disagreement. It is baked into our logic. And that’s why I think we have a license today to talk the day after, post-Purim, what this V’nahapachu modality of thinking did to the Jewish people and how it changed the way they approach crisis and life.

Adam Mintz [00:16:16]:
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Geoffrey Stern [00:17:06]:
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Adam Mintz [00:17:22]:
Now, let me just say about Cafe Hafuch, the reason that they call it Hafuch is because it makes it more attractive. Because sometimes when things are upside down, they’re more attractive. And that’s always an interesting thing, right? Means the that which is forbidden is more attractive. That which is upside down is more attractive. That which is pumt fakkert is also more attractive.

Geoffrey Stern [00:17:48]:
There is a taiva. There is a glimmer of excitement for the Jew, the heir of the Israelites, when he finds out that the opposite is the case. There is emotional content here. It was a marketing tool to sell a cup of coffee. Because they knew just the idea of having a cafe that is upside down would be of attractive nature.

Adam Mintz [00:18:20]:
What would be interesting is to see whether the person who made up Cafe HaFuch was actually a coffee seller.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:28]:
We’re going to have to do some research on that. So just to give you two other kind of insights into how this worked out in the Purim halachot and story itself, we all know in Deuteronomy, it absolutely forbids cross-dressing. A woman must not put on a man’s apparel, nor a man wear women’s clothing. It’s called written in stone, Rabbi. You can’t get any clearer than this. But lo and behold, there is a strong custom. We’re now going to read back to the Rama and the Shulchan Aruch. It says the custom of wearing masks on Purim and of cross-dressing is totally permitted, says the Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish law, because of its innocent and joyful purpose. I love the fact that it uses the word gay, joyful. But in any case, as is the wearing of shatnez. So that I hadn’t even thought of, that you could break the laws of Kelayim and shatnez in your costume. While some would prohibit it, the mainstream Halacha is that you can break the laws on Purim. Again, I’d like to think that this is a modality of turning things upside down. A modality. And this is a day where we explore situations where we can look at them totally different. Maybe we explore looking at gender slightly differently. Maybe it’s for a day, maybe it’s for Sushan Purim, 2 days. Maybe it stands with us afterwards. But certainly the invitation is there to look at things differently. The last thing that I’ll say that is baked into this concept of breaking the rules is with Esther herself, there’s a big discussion about how Esther was able to break the law and sleep with Achashveirosh. And the main commentaries say that when she says to the Jewish people before Taanit Esther, we’re going to fast the day before Purim, she says, if I perish, I perish. She was talking from both a physical sense and a spiritual sense. She was saying, I am going to break the law. Until now, I was ba’ones. I was forced to live with this king in order to save the Jewish people. I am going to do it beratzon. I’m going to do it willingly. And therefore you need to pray for me. But again, Rabbi, I think what it does is it interjects into the purim modality a sense of sometimes you have to turn things upside down, even to the point where you have to break some laws and break some rules. Nothing is totally without an exception. There has to be an exception to every rule.

Adam Mintz [00:21:26]:
Now, that’s interesting that turning it upside down even allows you to break rules, because generally speaking, the whole year we never break rules. That’s always the red line. You can do things, but you can’t break any rules. But on Purim, we’re allowed to break rules.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:45]:
So I want to quote from Thomas Kuhn, who was the greatest philosopher of science. He wrote wrote a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And when you hear somebody flippantly say, oh, that’s a paradigm shift, the concept of paradigm shift was brought by Thomas Kuhn. His first study was about Copernicus. How do you change the perspective of science to think in terms of the universe does not orbit around the Earth, but the Earth orbits around the sun? That is what we call a paradigm shift. It changes everything. And what he says was, normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of the basic commitments. To have this paradigm shift, Rabbi, sometimes you have to turn things on their head. Sometimes you have to break the existing rules. Scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately. And finally, what he says is the transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one from which a new tradition of normal science can emerge is far from a cumulative process. It’s a disruptive process. So what made me thinking about this, Rabbi, is in ancient Persia at the time of Purim, we’re talking about a crisis with a capital C. This is what they meant when they said that in the same day, in the same month that was supposed to be our destruction, we flipped it and it became our victory, so to speak. It really is describing a paradigm shift. And what Kuhn forces is sometimes you need to get to a crisis to realize that we have to think differently. We would hope that the Iranians of today would use this current crisis to think differently. We would hope that the Middle Eastern countries would say, how has this being anti-Israel actually worked out for us in the last 75, 80 years? Was this a growth strategy? Was this something that helped? But I will go even further and I will say that we, Israel, Israelis and Jews, we’re very good at strategy when it comes to wars. Maybe not so good in terms of what happens to us internally. And this is a moment where we all, I think, could benefit from a v’nahapachu, mentality of seeing in a moment of crisis as a moment that we can think differently.

Adam Mintz [00:24:33]:
Yeah, that’s no question. I mean, that’s right.

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:36]:
V’nahapo’chu.

Adam Mintz [00:24:36]:
So you say that this Purim is a Purim, we hope, of a nahapo’chu, but in a bigger sense, a kind of a global sense of rethinking the paradigm, questioning the assumptions and saying, what happens if I look at this altogether differently?

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:53]:
And the other thing that occurred to me is that there ultimately develops a consensus around the paradigm shift. So you would think that this type of thinking would separate us. You would think that if I’m in your face arguing, ifcha Mistabra, Pumpt Vakert, that we then have this rift between us. You’re going to start your shul, I’m going to start my shul, I’m going to be caught dead in your shul and vice versa. But that’s not how it happens. And I’m going to quote a little bit from Startup Nation. And Startup Nation is this book that kind of tries to characterize why Israeli tech has been able to create more IPOs, more patents per capita than any other country. And Dan Senor and Saul Singer make a few different projections and concepts. They go, in Israel, you call your boss by his first name, you argue with him, you shout at him, then you go out and have a beer together. Together. Israelis have an informal way of interacting that can appear abrasive to outsiders. They interrupt each other, challenge authority, and argue loudly, but it is not personal. Rabbi, I think in Israel today, unfortunately, that is too much lacking. There is the argumentative part of it. There’s not enough of going out for a beer afterwards.

Adam Mintz [00:26:25]:
And it is personal.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:27]:
And it’s become personal. And I think we have to rediscover our mojo and we have to rediscover Rediscover the smile that comes at the end of Ivcho Mestabra and Pumt Vakert. Of interest, he also talks about the Israeli army, which I think has not lost its mojo. In the Israeli army, soldiers are divided into those with a rosh gadol, a big head, and those with a rosh katan, a small head. A rosh gadol soldier does not just follow orders. He uses judgment, takes initiative, and if necessary, challenges his commander. So I think there’s enough in our legacy of Talmud, there’s enough in the way the IDF, when it’s at its best, acts that not only permits but encourages rule-breaking and independent thinking. I really do feel, and of course in the IDF and in Israel Tech, you have this strong sense of simpatico and of social connectivity. That’s as important. Anybody can break the rules and everybody can change the paradigm, but to have the beer afterwards is what we desperately need. And I’m just hoping that that can be some of the takeaway that we have from this kind of Purim thinking and not sense just a sense of, oh, look, what happened in the Megillah is happening all over again. And this sense of triumphalism, because at the end of the day, if it is going to be a new Middle East, we all have to live in it and we all have to build what I think is a rosy kind of golden future ahead of us if we handle it properly.

Adam Mintz [00:28:16]:
That’s great. So the paradigm shift is we should have to be able to go out with, have a beer together.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:23]:
That sounds good. That sounds like a L’Chaim moment. That’s exactly right. Anyway, I pray for the citizens of Israel who are back in their shelters. Those of you who follow know that the ballistic missiles that are being shot from Iran are getting through. It’s no, there is no magic to Iron Dome and David’s Sling. It’s a great system, but this is real war. Israelis are fearful. The Iranian people, they are celebrating, I hear, in the streets at the Ayatollah’s demise. But there’s a lot of work ahead for them. And we all have to find the courage and the passion and the Vinehapechu thinking, I think, to get through this moment and to take this destruction and change it into building and to a future and creativity.

Adam Mintz [00:29:20]:
Amen. We are praying all together. Happy Purim or happy post-Purim to everybody and Shabbat Shalom. And we look forward to seeing everybody next week.

Geoffrey Stern [00:29:28]:
Shabbat Shalom.

Welcome to Madlik. 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 Clubhouse every Thursday at 8 PM Eastern and share it as a Madlik podcast on your favorite platform. Today we’ll explore the Torah’s preeminent use of a hue of blue called tekhelet in the construction of the Tabernacle and in the priestly garb. This rare and dear dye extracted from a non-kosher mollusk was also used on the four-cornered tallit of every simple Jew. So get ready to decorate and take out your color strips as we ask, why blue and white? Well, welcome. I think last week I said stay tuned for our fashion edition. Maybe it’s going to be more like the Pantone edition or the pick your— the color for your wall edition. But in any case, here we are. We’re starting to decorate our Tabernacle. Last week, we had a lively discussion of about why after saying, build me a temple, God said, v’shachanti betocham, I will live in them. And over the week I’ve been thinking about it, and I started to think that, you know, maybe it foreshadowed a time already when you built the temple, when you built the mishkan, the tabernacle, that you wouldn’t have it. And I think that foreshadowing thought is going to come through a little bit in our discussion of the emergence and history of this wonderful hue of blue called tekhelet, how it starts and how from the way it starts and its history, it foreshadows its later development. So we are in Exodus, 26, and I am just going to pick those verses that mention our color. And you’ll see that I’m, I’m not really, looking for a needle in a haystack. This tekhelet, this blue, is actually featured throughout and grows with importance. So Exodus 26:1, it says, as for the tabernacle, make it of 10 strips of cloth. Make these a fine twisted linen of blue, purple, and crimson yards. Tekhelet v’al g’man betolat shani. And then in Exodus 26, it says, make loops of blue wool on the edge of the outermost cloth of the one set, and do likewise on the edge of the outermost. So at first it’s mentioned amongst another palette of different colors, and now all of a sudden It’s the edging color. In Exodus 26:31, it says, you shall make a curtain of blue, parochet techelet. Those of you who know about synagogue architecture know what a parochet is. It is, the frontal canopy in front of the holiest place in the synagogue. So you shall make a curtain of blue, purple, and crimson yarns and fine twisted linen. It shall have a design of keruvim worked into it. In 26:36, it says, you shall make a screen for the entrance of the tent, petach ohel, and it shall be blue, purple, and crimson yards. So blue is being featured, regularly. And in fact, on this, if you look into the notes, I actually have some illustrations from a wonderful book called The Tabernacle, Its Structure and Utensils. And the, the figurative elements of the parochet are actually the cherubim themselves are in blue. In Exodus 28:31, it says you are to make the tunic for the ephod completely of this blue, khalil techelet. And of course, the ephod was almost a royal garment, a smock. it was the,— it looked almost like an apron. So it was frontally— it’s what you saw when you saw the high priest. In Exodus 28:36, it shall— it says, you shall make a frontlet, this tzitz, on the pure gold. And this is that, of course, what, what the Kohen wore on his forehead. And it was made of gold. And engrave on it the seal of God, suspended on a cord of blue, a p’techil techelet, so that it shall remain on the headdress. So if you start to actually visualize this use of blue, it is, I would say, the preeminent color. I’d love to know what you think, Rabbi, but certainly when you look frontally at the Kohen, it’s the smock, it’s what he’s wearing, and it’s that, that golden name of God that sits on his forehead, is tied with these, petil techelet. So are you struck as I am by this use of this, uh, this blue? Yes, I am.

Adam Mintz [00:07:51]:
And obviously the blue is also in the tallit, so it goes beyond the priest. But there’s no question that blue— this blue, this techelet— is the most significant color. It’s not only in the Kohen’s clothing, but I would say in the entire Torah. If you were to ask me what is the color of the Torah, I would tell you the color of the Torah is Techelet

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:17]:
so the official color of the Torah, of the Israelites, of the Jewish people, becomes blue. And you’ve already begun our journey because you referenced the tallit. In Numbers 15, it says— and we say this every day as the third paragraph of the Shema— and Hashem said to Moses as follows: Speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves fringes —on the corners of their garment. V’asu lahem tzitzit al kanfei bigdeihem. Throughout the ages, let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each corner. Al tzitzit ha’kanaf petihil techelet. There shall be for you a fringe. Look at it and recall all the commandments of God and observe them, so that you do not follow your heart and eyes in your lustful urge. Thus you shall be reminded to observe all my Commandments and to be holy to God. I, God, am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am God. So, so that’s almost— is it a fast forwarding? Is it a similar parallel to what we had last week where, with this direct connection between what happened institutionally in a tabernacle and what happens to individual Jews? I was kind of struck by that. Do you think there’s, there’s any, anything there? I wonder.

Adam Mintz [00:09:53]:
And, you know, what’s the connection? But well, first of all, let’s say like this. There clearly is a connection between the tallit and the clothing of the kohen because they’re both clothing. You have to remember, this is an important thing to remember. We wear the tallit as a special garment. We wear it over our clothing. That’s not what the Torah has in mind when it talks about a tallit. When the Torah talks about a tallit, it means that they used to wear these kaftans, and the kaftans had four corners, and they used to put tzitzis on the bottom of the kaftans. So it actually was their clothing. So there actually is a much closer connection between the description of the, of the techelet in the tallit and the clothing of the kohanim.

Geoffrey Stern [00:10:48]:
Absolutely. And again, there’s, there’s, forgive the pun, there’s a thread that connects what happened in the Tabernacle in terms of the, the aesthetic choice of color for the edifice itself, for the wearing of the high priest, and the way that a simple— any Jew could wear. In a sense we are going over some familiar territory. For those of you who have been with us for the past year we had a fashion episode where we talked about Korach, who led a rebellion against God. And his argument, according to the rabbinic sources, was that he was wearing a talit shekulo techelet. And according to the Midrash, he didn’t just bring an argument, he actually showed up with a bunch of kohanim, and they were wearing this garment that was fully techelet. What I was struck by as I read this and I considered what the ephod actually was actually very close to the garb that we are describing right now. If you looked at the Kohen, the predominant color would be this techelet. So, in a sense, again, maybe foreshadowing a later time, but at the time that this was written The kohanim were set aside by wearing this, blue. And if anything the thread on the corners of the tallit reflected the total effect, if you will, the total look fashion. But you can’t get away from the fact that there has to be a connection. This is the first time that Techelet, to my mind, is actually mentioned in the Torah, and it’s mentioned with regard to the Tabernacle. And here every Jew, later on is commanded to simulate that in some regard. And I think that’s kind of a powerful, a powerful message. I would agree with that.

Adam Mintz [00:13:16]:
I mean, let’s, let’s think about the Do you think the fact that it’s blue is significant? I mean, like, it could be any color, and in the Torah this week there are other colors. Why is blue such an important color? So I’ll tell you what the Midrash says. The Midrash says that when you look at the blue on the tallit, you’re supposed to think of the sea. When you think of the sea, then you’re supposed— the blue of the sea, then you’re supposed to think of the blue of the heavens. And that reminds you of God. So the blue is actually a color that reminds you of God. It’s a little indirect, but it reminds you of God. Isn’t that interesting?

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:01]:
I think it is. And of course, if you add to that that the, techelet itself comes according tradition from a dye— we’ll get into the history of the dye in a few minutes— but from a Mollusc which is in the sea. So form follows function type of thing. You look at the blue, it inspires you to think both by way of its origins, and its color of the sea, then the sky, the firmament, and then God. And those are great associations. Those associations are in the Talmud, in the rabbinic literature. I think if you were to ask me, reading the text itself, what the association is, I would put it into the context of everything else that’s in our parsha, which is very rare materials, beautifully selected stones that create this urim vetumim, the very best, the hidur of the thing. And I would add, and this will come up in our discussion, very dear in the sense of very rare, very expensive, very exclusive, by the laws of supply and demand, hard to come by. And so I think there’s also, if you look at, for instance, the word ephod, this smock that I was describing, that was worn by King David and and by King Solomon. These were royal garments. And to me, the most— I would say straightforward association is in exclusivity, something that is of a very, very high value, hard to come by. Do you, do you think there’s any merit to that, as opposed to the associative thinking of what it reminds one of? Good.

Adam Mintz [00:16:06]:
I think that there is absolutely something to be said for that. Now, it’s interesting when you think about supply and demand, JeGeoffrey, where they get this mollusc from in the desert, how they have the color of techelet in the desert.

Geoffrey Stern [00:16:23]:
Well, you know, I wasn’t in your synagogue last week, so I didn’t hear your sermon. But if I recall, you were going to talk about how many of the materials, by tradition, rabbinic tradition, for the mishkan were brought with the Jews down into Egypt. And I, and I added to that that there’s much talk about when the Jews left Egypt, they were given riches, that worked for them and against them. When it came to the golden calf, they all seemed to have jewelry to contribute. But it is an issue. And, you know those who would question the how this could have been done in the desert. Either you believe in miracles or you don’t. So I do think it’s a good question. And obviously part of that is a mollusk, it comes from the sea, and here they are in a desert. That makes it a little bit more challenging. Specifically here is because the mollusk comes from the sea and here they are in the desert. No question about it. And, and again, I think that whether it’s the Tabernacle, the mishkan, or the temple, you know, one can, can make many cases that there is foreshadowing of what would become a mishkan or what was to be a mishkan. But I think that, you know, it comes down to, to belief and perspective. But I think if you get over that, there is no question that the kohanim in the tradition of giving honor to God and building cathedrals and beautiful edifices, were decked out in the best. And that there’s no question that tekhelet, to me, has level of royal blue to it. and that comes out, I think, a little bit in Korach’s argument as well, where he’s looking for authority, he’s looking for exclusive, power grabbing, so to speak. So I think from that perspective, it becomes fascinating if one traces the history of the use of tekhelet directly from being used by a kohen gadol, a high priest, and then ultimately, being part of— if even with a thread— of a pashuta Yid, so to speak, of this. So I want to— of the simple Jew—

Adam Mintz [00:18:51]:
something that reminded me. You said royal blue, and I thought to myself, where does royal blue come from? And let me read you from Wikipedia. Royal blue is a deep and vivid shade of blue It is said to have been created by clothiers in Rhodes, Somerset, a consortium who won a competition to make a dress for Queen Charlotte, consort of King Charles III. So isn’t that interesting? Means even in England there was significance to blue as being the royal color.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:30]:
Well, absolutely. And in some of the readings that I’ve gone through this week, you know, there was talk about during the Roman period period already, only the Caesar was allowed even to wear it. So one cannot help but think of Exodus 19, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, that ultimately this, seamless, transition from the Kohen wearing tekhelet, the Tabernacle, the Temple of God being really accented heavily in tekhelet, and then the simple Jew having that Techelet. It seems to me overwhelming that the message is that you are a kingdom of priests in a sense. And that to me is, you know, is very similar, like I said from the beginning, to the message that we might have taken last week, which is God says build the temple, but I’m going to live in each one of you, right? I think that’s beautiful.

Adam Mintz [00:20:31]:
And of course that relates to the fact that it’s not only the Kohen, but it’s also in the Talit. So we are a a kingdom of priests, and therefore it starts with the priests and then it goes to each and every one of us. It’s such a nice idea, right? It flows so beautifully.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:49]:
It flows, and you could say it’s hermeneutics and parashanut and, and giving d’rush, but the truth is that the temple, the tabernacle, did not last. Techelet as a part of a temple and part of a priestly culture did not last. The remnant of of it was in that thread. And so it’s less of a commentary. But yes, I know when you look at it, you’re supposed to remember the sea and the firmament and then God, but you can’t help but also remember the rich history of it in the Torah itself, and that, that history carries on in each Jew. And I don’t think that’s hermeneutics. I think that’s actually— that’s what it really It was a material, a material signification in a sense. And that is kind of fascinating.

Adam Mintz [00:21:46]:
You know, it’s also interesting that for centuries the techelet was lost. You know that, right? We didn’t have techelet. About 25 years ago, there were two people, students of Rabbi Riskin in Efrat, who actually went diving in the sea off of Haifa, and they found what they claim to be techelet. And today you can actually buy a tallit with techelet in it.

Geoffrey Stern [00:22:16]:
So you’re— again, you’re, you’re pushing us forward, rabbi. I love it. We’re going forward in the history of this— I wouldn’t say idea, but a color. And yes, the Talmud does say that in, in the Midrash Tanhuma, it says, that— that when there was real blue, but now we only have white because the blue has been hidden. She’Hatechelet nignaz. I always thought that it was obviously something that was extinct, and I always loved the concept of we are guardians of God’s world, and if we don’t take care of it, not only can we lose a species, we can lose a commandment. I mean, that’s a big deal. When one of the 613 commandments, you can’t fulfill it anymore. That’s right. So, I always think there’s a lesson there. And I was at the (Jerusalem) aquarium, and like any aquarium and any museum in Israel, during Chol Hamoed, Hasidim come and everybody comes. And I said, you have to have a whole area of this on techelet, because it’s some— it’s an aspect of Judaism that is connected to the (antrural) world that we are the guardians of. So there’s a whole separate mission there. But again, it’s related because just as the temple was lost, just as the Mishkan was lost, just as the Kohanim were lost, so the mollusk was lost. And I almost regret the fact that we, quote unquote have refound it because looking at the simple white tallit reminds you as much of what is there as what is not there. And I think that’s a beautiful message as well. But you’re correct, that this is an area where science impacts Judaism, discovery, in academics. It’s fascinating. It’s a beautiful, beautiful narrative arc of history, so to speak. One other aspect of how it quote unquote was hidden was that because it was very expensive— on the one hand, it’s a wonderful lesson that even though it’s expensive, even though it’s quote-unquote royal blue, every Jew can have it. But at the end of the day, when the rubber hits the road, it’s expensive. And what that meant was it created a situation for fake tekhelet. And I mentioned this a little bit when we discussed Korach, but Yigal Yadin, in a book on Bar Kokhba, was excavating a cave and he found, balls of wool that were blue. And he says, wow, this is amazing. Not only have I found tefillin, but I also found tekhelet. And it was clear that the Zealots were keeping all of these commandments. And then he sent it to a lab, and the lab came back— and this is all in his footnotes, this is a general, an archaeologist, but he’s tying it all into the Talmud— he says it was clear that this was not tekhelet, it was fake tekhelet, and that that probably the Zealots were duped along with many other Jews in buying this from incorrect sources. And in the source sheet, I have, places in the Talmud where it talks about this. But ultimately, it is very possible that the rabbis, in order to stop corruption and to snuff out these black markets for fake tekhelet, said there’s no mitzvah. And that’s an amazing lesson to take from this color. And again, it’s the absence of the color that teaches us, but it is an amazing lesson. That is an amazing lesson.

Adam Mintz [00:26:15]:
That’s right. I mean, let’s just take a step back. The fact that the Talmud knows about fake tekhelet, so that kind of points to your idea that it was, it was expensive and it was special, right? Because you only make replicas of things that are worth it, right? You only make replicas of things from Tiffany’s, right? Things that are really worth it. So, so techelet obviously was something that was very, very special. And it’s also interesting that it shows how important it was, how important people, you know, that people could be duped. You know, people aren’t duped for just anything. People are duped for things they want, and what they wanted was techelet because that was the royal color.

Geoffrey Stern [00:27:03]:
Yes, so that is definitely a fascinating aspect. So I want to get back to kind of the verses that we talked about at the beginning when we were describing the fashion, so to speak. And it says, ‘va’asita tzitz,’ that you should make this frontlet. And then it talked about a patil techelet, a cord of blue. And those two words also are pregnant with, with fascinating meaning in history. So tzitz, can mean, wings. In Jeremiah it says, ‘Tenu tzitz leMoav’— give wings to Moab. And of course, those who know about the Hebrew for the commandment of tzitziyot, it’s ‘an kanaf’— the corners. But kanafayim is wings as well. So, uh, it kind of—

Adam Mintz [00:27:57]:
and explain What does tzitz mean in this week’s parasha?

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:01]:
So in this week’s parasha, it means, ‘V’Asita Tzitz zahav tahor,’ you shall make a frontlet. Everett Fox says a flower or a gleamer, perhaps alluding to its shining quality or its shape of some kind on his forehead. Absolutely. Very similar to maybe where tefillin is.

Adam Mintz [00:28:26]:
I always thought that the tzitz was a funny thing. Can you imagine wearing a gold flower on your forehead?

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:35]:
Well, I mean, again, it’s very similar to tefillin, and it’s very similar to the headdress and the helmet that the Egyptians and many Sumerians wore. With the Egyptians, it had this snake coming out, but, maybe it’s the third eye. This seems to be— the forehead seems to be a place where there was embellishments, kamiyot, magical things. So yes, to us it’s probably strange, but I think it’s a frontlet. It’s, not your license plate in the back.

Adam Mintz [00:29:16]:
It’s, it’s the way you go forward. Look at the picture. The picture of the tzitz seems to be— it’s very narrow. So it may be— it’s like the tefillin. Maybe they have the same idea that it’s kind of just a more elaborate type of tefillin made out of gold.

Geoffrey Stern [00:29:35]:
No, no, no argument there for sure. But tzitz has another meaning as well. In Numbers 17, it says, the next day Moses entered the tent of the pact, and there the staff of Aaron of the house of Levi had sprouted. It had brought forth sprouts, produced blossoms, and borne almonds. So this was a particular situation, but there it talks about v’ya’tzitz— tzitz— produced blossoms. So we have the first image is one of soaring, of wings, of something that’s shiny and translucent. And then we have this other aspect of tzitz as a blossom of life.. And these— of course, you can’t ignore the connection between tzitz and tzitziyot, as a, a sprout from the four corners of the garment. So the— we’re, we’re playing with language again, how that commandment of tzitziyot for the civilian Jew, if you will, connected with many of these concepts that we see regarding the priestly garments. And that to me is fascinating and, and kind of exciting.

Adam Mintz [00:31:00]:
That is really exciting. I think it’s interesting because you start with something as kind of mundane as the color. Doesn’t sound like it’s going to be interesting, but there’s so much richness in trying to figure out the color that it really brings the whole thing to life and it really adds a different element. You know, usually when you learn Tetzaveh, you talk about the different articles of clothing, the things themselves. But thinking about the colors is really so much more striking because that’s actually what people saw. Well, well, absolutely.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:33]:
We’re getting— we’re getting towards the end of our half hour, and, the, the subject of tonight was why blue and white. And we’ve talked a lot about the blue. We’ve even talked about the white, where the rabbi said once the blue was hidden, it’s all white? But as you know, and you could probably sense when I quoted Yigal Yadin, the general and the archaeologist who knew his Talmud, somehow the Zionists, as secular as they were, understood this message, all the messages that we’ve talked about, tonight. And when they picked the colors for the flag of Israel, which really, if you think about it, looks like that tallit, it has those blue stripes on it. We call the tzitzitz. When Rabbi Herzog made the prayer for the State of Israel, and in it he played with that— this idea that we say every day, 3 times a day when we, when we pray, and we talk about umatzmiach Yeshua, that the deliverance should sprout. I just love that word, that, you know, deliverance, you can say, could explode, it could come out, but that deliverance should sprout is amazing to me. And of course, he said, ‘Reishit tz’michat gu’ulatenu.’ I was going to say, that’s the same thing, right? Took the same concept. So we’ve really— we’ve taken, the history of a simple color and traced it through the ancient texts all the way to modern-day Israel. And it’s an inspiration, hopefully, to us all. May you glow in the shine of the tekhelet this Shabbat. And join us next week.

Adam Mintz [00:33:32]:
What do we have next week, Rabbi? Next week we have the sin of the golden calf. There’s so much next week. Wow. This, you know, the breaking of the tablets and the sin of the golden calf.

Geoffrey Stern [00:33:42]:
We’re going to be busy all week preparing for next. I can’t wait. Shabbat shalom to everybody and have a great Shabbat. And see you all next week.

Welcome to Madlik. 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 Terumah. Most sermons this week will focus on the obligation of charity, tzedakah, but we dig a little deeper and explore the often overlooked language of exchanging gifts. So join us for No Free Gifts. Well, Rabbi, welcome. You are 13 hours ahead of us in Hong Kong. And my recollection of Hong Kong, I once went there for a wedding and there was a whole tea ceremony before with exchanging of things. There’s this red envelope that they exchange on Chinese New Year, which is happening right now. The whole ritual of exchanging gifts is highlighted in the Far East. I’m wondering, are you exposed to any of the festivities going on?

Adam Mintz [00:03:09]:
So I’m going to tell you something. Last night we went to the flower market. One of the gifts they exchange for Chinese New Year’s are flowers. Literally, there must have been 50,000 people who were at this flower market last night at 10:00 at night, buying flowers to exchange. Chinese New Year actually begins on Tuesday. So on Monday night, they’re actually— the flower market is open all night long so that people are there all night long buying flowers that they exchange. So I was thinking about that. It’s exactly the same tradition, this idea of exchanging gifts. So here, being in Hong Kong is just perfect for this.

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:58]:
You know, normally you read Terumah and I don’t focus on the gifting part. It’s always, you know, everybody has to provide their Terumah, their, their, their tzedakah. But we’ll see in a second that there definitely is a very strong gifting aspect. And of course, the only mitzvah that we have, to my knowledge, of gifting happens on Purim. Shalach manot is not gifts for the poor. That is matanot la’anim. This is literally to peers. So I think we’re going to have a fascinating little visit to the world of gifts in the Torah. We are in Exodus 25:1, and it says, God spoke to Moses saying, tell the Israelite people to bring me gifts. You shall accept gifts from me from every person whose heart is so moved. And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them: gold, silver, and copper. Our buddy Everett Fox is a little bit closer to the Tikchu et Terumati. He says, Speak to the children of Israel that they may take me a raised contribution from every man whose heart makes him willing. He says, and this is the contribution that you are to take from them: gold, silver, and bronze. So I, I read in between the lines there, Rabbi, that there’s something a little bit more complex about the gift giving than we would think as a triviality or maybe even a character trait. No, this is— we’re going to see the laws of, of of giving. What, what are your impressions of this?

Adam Mintz [00:05:37]:
Yeah, no, that’s right. You shall take a truma. I’ll just tell you a really interesting thing. The word natan in Hebrew, to give, is one of those words that is, that is whether you read it forwards or backwards, it’s the same word. Nun, tet, nun. It’s natan. And Rabbi Lookstein always liked to say that that’s the reciprocity of gift giving, that it’s about exactly what you said, is about creating relationships. And I’m going to send him this Madlik because he’s really going to enjoy the fact that the whole topic is based on that little dvar Torah that I heard from him many, many years ago.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:19]:
That is fantastic. So Rashi says the following, yedavnu libo, the word yedavnu, that his heart kind of, our English translation was that his heart His heart makes him willing. Rashi says is the same root as nidava, and that is a goodwill gift. Goodwill. And then he’s going to start talking French, and we’re going to have quite a little French today because we’re also going to visit Marcel Mauss. But in Rashi’s words, it is apaisement in Old French. And Rashi is correctly referenced in two other Rashis that we’re going to visit because this apaisement, which, you know, could be translated to appeasement, Rabbi, is really saying something about gift giving already, that there is an ulterior motive, that there is a, I would say, a sociological and anthropological utility to this gift giving. He quotes two other times that Rashi uses this. In Genesis 33, it says, but Jacob said, no, I pray you, if you would do me this favor, accept from me this gift. So if you recall, this is where Jacob is leaving the house of Laban. He’s going to be reunited with his brother Esau. He is very concerned. They did not leave on good terms, and he’s sending gifts in front of him. And so Rashi on that says, and thou wast pleased with him, you are reconciled me. Whatever the term ratza, the verb or noun for ratzon, willing, occurs in scripture, it means propitiating. Old French, apaisement. English, appeasing. So here too, the, well, actually this is really a thing for him. It doesn’t even use the same Hebrew terms as we were using for Nadav. Here it is just willing Ratson, and he really understands at many different levels. He goes even further. He says, it shall not be l’ratson, acceptable as a sacrifice to you for the purpose of one of the purposes of the sacrifice is to conciliate and to propitiate. I really have to look that up in my SAT list.

Adam Mintz [00:08:47]:
Propitiate, I think. Yeah.

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:48]:
Propitiate. Okay. But again, he brings it even to God, that when you give a sacrifice to God, you are, in a sense, appeasing. You’re creating a conciliation with God. So, so Rashi is very— he really has focused on this in Leviticus. When you sacrifice an offering “l’ratzonchem”, this means as much as appeasement in Old French, favorable acceptance. This is the literal meaning of the verse. Our rabbis, however, taking the word in its primary sense of will, intention, learn from here as regards one who is handling a sacrifice that he does everything with intentionality. Either way you look at it, gifting or giving a sacrifice, no big surprise there, is not something that is unintentional. It has clear teleology. You want to achieve a certain end. But clearly, this is a Rashi thing.

Adam Mintz [00:09:49]:
Yeah, well, I mean, this is super fascinating because usually, Geoffrey, we don’t look at the French in the Rashi. Usually when we were in yeshiva, when Rashi quotes French, that was like a sign to say, skip this, don’t worry about it. Right. And what we’re really pointing out here is that Rashi connects it by using the same French word. That shows that Rashi has the same explanation. That’s absolutely fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [00:10:20]:
And you could maybe go out on a limb and say that when Rashi has to dig deep and go to his native language of French, it’s because he thinks there’s something potentially missing from the standard translation, maybe in terms of language, but maybe also in terms of cultural baggage. And I clearly feel that Rashi has a very strong strong sense of gifting. He would— I will argue today that he is the Marcel Mauss of the rabbinic, of the classical rabbinical commentaries. So I reference Marcel Mauss.

Adam Mintz [00:10:57]:
That’s an interesting question. You know, scholars have spent a lot of time talking about that, and we don’t know the answer why Rashi sometimes uses French. You know, obviously sometimes he uses French and sometimes he doesn’t. When does he use French? And he doesn’t tell us. And, you know, that’s interesting. So you say that he uses French when he feels sometimes that the French can do a better job than the English. That’s why we always talk about Rabbi Riskin. Every once in a while, Rabbi Riskin would use a Yiddishism because Rabbi Riskin would say that word, the idea is only captured in Yiddish. There’s no English word for whatever idea. We would say it’s like chutzpah, right? There’s no English word for chutzpah, or chutzpah is an English word. So that’s a similar thing. Big means I can’t— this Rashi says I can’t say it in Hebrew. I need to say it in French, in something that we all understand.

Geoffrey Stern [00:12:00]:
And maybe I’m no expert by a long shot in French language or culture, but it seems to me the French have this ability to do things that some of us might consider very utilitarian, but they make it seem like it’s graceful. They make, make it seem like it’s beautiful. And in a sense, this Marcel Mauss argued that gifting is not what it appears to be. And on the one hand, we’re going to see in a second that he makes it very transactional, meaning to say that it has social function built into it. But the background is he is arguing against a form of economics and philosophy called utilitarianism. And what that believed was that everything is done for economic reasons and that it’s all a question of supply and demand and need and goods. And what Marcel Mauss was arguing in this is that if you look at the world only in that way, you’re missing a whole language of reciprocity, of social interactions. And that’s what he tried to bring out in the book called The Gift. And basically what he says is the name of the book, and it came came out in 1925, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. And according to Marcel Mauss, that is what is wrong with the free gift. A gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is a contradiction, he wrote. Even the idea of a pure gift is a contradiction. By ignoring the universal custom of compulsory gifts, we make our own record incomprehensible to ourselves. Right across the globe and as far back as we can go in the history of human civilization, the major transfers of goods has been by cycles of obligatory returns of gifts. You know, Rabbi, if last week we talked about the dependencies and the codependencies that were baked into Mishpatim and the code of law, I think here we’re starting to look at the, the whole gift mitzvah is one that is designed to manipulate and navigate these reciprocal relationships. And so therefore, it’s part of this glue that brings us all together. You know, when I first heard of Marcel Mauss, the most famous and strange ritual that he talks about is something called the potlatch. And in the potlatch, there are great king or tribal head. He doesn’t even give you something. He invites you over to his house and he goes, you see that Rolls-Royce out there? I’m gonna burn it. You see that valuable painting over there? I’m gonna burn it in your honor. It was a way of transferring not so much to you, but showing something about yourself. And it had no, um, a visible rationale to it. And he came along and he says, no, everything that is done is done for a reason. The potlatch is an example of a total system of giving. Read this too fast and you miss the meaning. Spelt out, it means that each gift is part of a system of reciprocity in which the honor of giver and recipient are engaged. It is a total system in that every item of status or of spiritual or material possession is implicated for everyone in the whole community. The system is quite simple. Just the rule that every gift has to be returned in some specified way sets up a perpetual cycle of exchanges within and between generations. In some cases, the specified return is of equal value, producing a stable system of statuses. In others, it must exceed the value of the earlier gift, producing an escalating contest for honor. Think of me taking you out to a restaurant where it’s $30 a plate. You take me out to a restaurant that’s $40 a plate. That doesn’t sound so strange anymore. That’s potlatching. The whole society can be described by the catalog of transfers that map all the obligations between its members. The cycling gift system is the society. Sacrifice, in an earlier work he wrote, is a gift that compels the deity to make a return. Do ut des. I give so that you may give. He builds a case for a foundation to human society based on collective versus individual exchange practices. So here too, it goes against utilitarianism, but it also goes against this radical individualism that we were talking about last week. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Adam Mintz [00:17:10]:
It’s absolutely fascinating. So let’s talk about sacrifice, because this week we talk about the, the temple. But obviously that’s just an introduction to sacrifices. And he makes an amazing point, which is that sacrifice is a gift that compels the deity to make a return Do ut des means I give so that you may give. Now, that’s one thing when we do that with other human beings, but he’s saying you do that with God also. That’s amazing.

Geoffrey Stern [00:17:44]:
You know, it is. But also, if you look at it from the perspective of potlatching, and this will not seem very strange to you, Rabbi, where Mr. Shapiro gives $500,000 to dedicate the social hall and Mr. Levi gives $1,000,000 to dedicate the sanctuary, and all of a sudden we are giving to God, but through that God, we are creating these reciprocal relationships. But you’re right, it ties directly into everything that we’ve been talking about. There is no, I would guess, disconnect between giving one human to another and giving to God and so forth and so on.

Adam Mintz [00:18:25]:
Yeah, I mean, you, you raise the point about what God gives back to us. What humans give back to one another sometimes is honor, what we would say coveted, right? If you put your name on the main sanctuary as opposed to the social hall, so you get more coveted than the other guy. I don’t know that that’s when with, with God, that’s not exactly what God gives back to us. So that’s the example you gave is interesting. The reciprocity between humans is not the same as the reciprocity between, between man and God.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:05]:
Okay, I’m going to grant you that. And now a word from our sponsor. This week we’re talking about the art and language of gifting. So I want to share something I created called VoiceGift Tag. It looks like a simple gift tag, but it records up to 60 seconds of your voice. Press record, say something you actually mean, a bracha, a joke, a memory, and attach it to your mishloach Manot. Long after the hamantaschen have been eaten and the wine drunk, they can press the button, hear your familiar voice, and say.

Adam Mintz [00:19:44]:
L’chaim!

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:44]:
L’chaim! Visit voice.gift. That’s http://www.voice.gift and use code Madlik for 15% off. And now back to our podcast. So we are now going to move into the only place that I know within Judaism and within our halacha that there are halachot of how to give a gift. Because on Purim is the only time I think— maybe I’m wrong— that we are required to give a gift. Not, as I said before, to someone who’s in need, not to someone who’s poor, but simply to exchange gifts. Something that our Christian brothers and sisters do on Christmas. They don’t have halachot for that. You know, there’s an amazing comic thing by Elon Gold where he talks about, thank God we Jews don’t have Christmas trees. And he goes into the halachot that we Jews would probably create if we had Christmas trees. How short is it? How long? How long does it stay in the water? How do you bring it in? Is it top down, bottom up? But in a sense, Rabbi, we’re going to start looking at the halachot of gifting because we do have that one moment in the calendar where we have to give. Are there any— are you struck in the same manner that it’s the only time we have a mitzvah?

Adam Mintz [00:21:05]:
Yeah, it’s very interesting, right? I mean, and the idea of Purim is an idea of reciprocity, is that I think that since in the kingdom of Achashveirosh, the reason the Jews were successful at the end is because there was unity among the people. Everybody fought for everybody else. So that’s expressed by, number one, taking care of the poor, but even reciprocity of gifts, because we’re all part of the process.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:37]:
Absolutely. I did question for a second why we don’t make a bracha on Mishloach Manot. And I did find in some of the commentaries that they say you should not deliver your Mishloach Manot before you read the Megillah because it’s going to be covered under the Shekhiyanu. But it is interesting that there isn’t a bracha.

Adam Mintz [00:21:57]:
If you want to give a dvar Torah, here’s the dvar Torah. Why doesn’t charity charity get a bracha. Right? What an amazing mitzvah. But you don’t make a bracha. You don’t recite a blessing on charity. So there are two explanations that they give. One explanation they give is that you only make a bracha when there’s a fixed amount. Meaning you’re supposed to eat matzah, but you eat a certain amount of matzah. You’re supposed to take the lulav and etrog on Sukkot, but there’s a certain, you know, there’s a certain amount, the amount of times that you do it. The same thing with blowing the shofar. But there’s no amount of charity means the more the better. So therefore, you can only make a bracha on something that’s fixed. That’s number one. The second explanation, which is kind of a little more amusing, is that you can’t make a bracha on charity because charity is dependent on somebody else. If I give charity to a poor person, I can’t recite a blessing because what if the poor person doesn’t want my money? So therefore, I wouldn’t fulfill the mitzvah. So therefore, we don’t make a bracha. Something that’s dependent on someone else, we don’t make a bracha. But either way, that’s very good. And you’re right, that is absolutely the tradition. And in some shuls on Purim morning, they’ll announce that everybody should have in mind during the Shechianu the other mitzvot of Purim day. So that’s very good. Okay, great.

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:21]:
I love that you say that it’s dependent on the receiver, which again is that reciprocity.

Adam Mintz [00:23:28]:
Right. That’s a good— right. That’s approved.

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:30]:
So in Esther, Megillat Esther 9:19 It says, that is why village Jews who lived in unwalled towns observe the 14th day of the month of Adar and make it a day of merrymaking and feasting and as a holiday, an occasion for sending gifts to one another. Usually, you know, we always say you lose things in translation. In the Hebrew it says, al ken hayyudim hapruzim. Getting back to what you were saying before, that therefore the Jews that were spread out came together by giving these gifts one to another. Kind of emphasizes that in Esther 9:22, a few verses later. It says, the same days in which the Jews enjoyed relief from their foes, in the same month they had been transferred, they were to observe them as days of feasting and merrymaking, and as an occasion for sending gifts to one another and presents to the poor. So this is the point that I made earlier, that mishloach manot is by definition not charity. There are two separate mitzvot here. Mishloach manot sending gifts to a peer, to someone who is a friend. No economic utilitarian need. This is not the purpose of this gift. And there is an amazing article that I quote from the OU. It’s by Rabbi Dr. Ari Zivatovsky. We have quoted him.

Adam Mintz [00:24:58]:
We come back to him, right?

Geoffrey Stern [00:25:00]:
But if you want to see, uh, the real version of what Ari Gold was saying about what would Jews do to a Christmas tree, you see 2 or 3 pages of him breaking down the laws of how do you give shlach manot? I mean, it seems pretty easy. It says I have to give you a gift. So he says as follows, and I’m just quoting a little bit. I certainly recommend you all take a bigger look at it. Rav Shlomo Alkabetz, who lived in the 16th century and is best known as the author of Lechado Dodi, provides another reason in his work Manot HaLevi, which he sent to his father-in-law as Shaloch Manot. So here already we See, it’s not only foodstuff. I can send you a good, a good sefaria source sheet, and that will do us fine. He explains the mitzvah is intended to engender friendship and brotherhood among Jews. The other opinion is that it was a practical way to ensure that everybody will have sufficient food for the meal. So we have a utilitarian and we have a reciprocal relationship. And he bases it on the earlier verse Esther 3, where Haman said to King Achashveirosh, there is a certain people who are scattered and dispersed among the other people. Usually you and I take that to mean they were just living apart. The way he’s taking it is that Haman made a mistake. He thought we weren’t united. He thought that we were not talking to each other, and therefore the, uh, the cure was— and maybe We weren’t. Maybe we were so assimilated we forgot the ties that bind. So according to this Rabbi Alkobaraz, that’s what Shalach Manot means to do, to argue or to make a case that we are together by giving gifts one to another. According to Rav Alkobaraz, sending non-food items is acceptable because such a package also engenders friendship. It has halachic ramifications. While the Terumat Hadeshen rejects any item that cannot be used for the meal. And so this is all fascinating. The Mishnah in Megillah says the gifts are distributed to the poor. Rav Yosef taught a beraita that says, and sending portions one to the other, because it says portions in the plural, two portions to one person. The verse continues and gifts to the poor indicating two gifts to two people. So, so again, they start getting into what everybody sent to everybody else. So we have this two. So I think the tradition, you will agree, Rabbi, is you have to send at least two different foodstuffs to two different people, uh, to fulfill the, the commandment. Again, I love this two-ness because it has this reciprocity built in. You have fulfilled two mitzvot through us, our teacher that said the mitzvah of sending portions one to another and the mitzvah of gifts to the poor. To Rabbi Oshaya who was poor. So sometimes if you give a gift to a poor person, you get a double.

Adam Mintz [00:28:13]:
He doubled.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:14]:
Yeah. So now we get into the narrative. The Gemara relates that Rabba sent Purim portions from the house of the Exilarch to Marei Bar Mar in the hands of Abaye, who was his nephew and the student. The Purim portions consisted of a sack full of dates and a cupful of roasted flour. Abaye said to him, now Marei will say the popular expression, even if a farmer becomes the king, the basket does not descend from his neck. So Rabbi, they are exchanging foods, but with those foods they’re exchanging expressions, they’re exchanging, uh, a different cultural baggage, right? Rabbi was named the head of the yeshiva in Pumbedita, and nevertheless he continued to send very plain gifts because he was impovished.

Adam Mintz [00:29:06]:
Now that’s interesting, right? So the type, the type of gift you send is also significant, right?

Geoffrey Stern [00:29:15]:
They were expressing themselves through the gifts. I just find it absolutely amazing. Mari Bar Mar sent back to him a sack full of ginger and a cup full of long papers, a much more expensive gift. Abaye said to him, the master Raba will now say, I sent him sweet items and he sent me pungent ones. So again, what I love is they are exploring the language of gifting, that by picking the particular gift, you are saying something. In describing that same incident, Abaye said, when I left the house of Master Rabba to go to Maribamar, I was already satiated. However, when I arrived there in Maribamar’s house, they served me 60 plates of 60 kinds of dishes. And, uh, he goes on, this explains the folk saying that people say the The poor man is hungry and does not know it. That reminds me of my grandmother who grew up in a tenement in the Lower East Side. And she said, we were poor, but we didn’t know it. I just love that they are communicating through these gifts, these handpicked gifts that they give. The Gemara relates that Rabbi Bar Avin and Rabbi Chanina Bar Avin would exchange their meals with each other to fulfill their obligation of sending portions on Purim. Combine the two traditions.

Adam Mintz [00:30:42]:
Well, that’s actually the most logical thing, because if you— I mean, that’s, that’s real reciprocity. That’s real friendship, is to exchange meals. That’s, you know, that’s not just symbolic, that’s real.

Geoffrey Stern [00:30:56]:
But I love the fact that, uh, at a minimum, so it’s nothing out of your pocket, I take what I was going to eat and I give it to you, you take what I was going to eat and I give it to me. Uh, there’s also, I believe, a Midrash that in, in, in heaven, everybody is seated next to somebody else and their hands are tied straight. So what they do is they simply feed the person sitting next to them. And in hell, they have the same association, but they can’t figure out to feed the person sitting next to them.

Adam Mintz [00:31:32]:
So that’s amazing. Yeah.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:34]:
So I love this. I just I just love this. In Mishnah Torah, Maimonides writes, what is the nature of our obligation for this feast? A person should eat meat and prepare an attractive feast as his means permit. He should drink wine until he becomes intoxicated and falls asleep in a stupor. Similarly, a person is obligated to send 2 portions of meat, 2 other cooked dishes, or 2 other foods to a friend, as implied by Esther sending portions of food to one to another. So Rabbi Riskin took this reciprocity and this fact that the Shalach Manot was meant to address the m’fuzar, the disparate nature of the Jewish people. He says you have to send a cooked food because we have— we think normally, Rabbi Riskin said, of kashrut as something that divides us. I don’t eat in your house, you don’t eat in my house. And what Shalach Manot requiring a cooked food was saying is that you will eat food from my kitchen and I will eat food from your kitchen, and therefore Kashrut will bring us together, not send us apart. But again, just another language of gifting.

Adam Mintz [00:32:46]:
Fantastic. That’s so good.

Geoffrey Stern [00:32:50]:
So I want to wish everybody a Shabbat Shalom. You, Adam, in Hong Kong, and no matter where you are, discover as we approach Purim this wonderful language of gift giving and what is hidden in our texts and in the language the halacha.

Adam Mintz [00:33:08]:
Fantastic. Shabbat shalom, everybody, and happy almost Purim. Enjoy.

Geoffrey Stern [00:33:13]:
All the best.