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Today we’re diving into why some tribes were drafted and others weren’t, what are acceptable reasons for not serving, and whether the Torah supports the idea of sacred exemption. Because behind the headline debate—should Haredim serve?—lies a deeper question: what does it mean to be a Haredi today?

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. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. And if you do listen to us on YouTube or a podcast platform and you want to leave a good review or give us a few stars, go ahead and do it.

This week’s Parsha is Bamidbar. In English and based on the Greek Arithmoi, it is more properly called Numbers, and it starts with the head count of all able-bodied males over 20 who are all obligated to serve in the army. We explore the texts from the perspective of those so-called ultra-Orthodox who claim exemption from serving in the Israeli army. So join us for “Haredim Enlist.”

Well, Rabbi, we are recording on Memorial Day, so I guess there is no better time. In Israel, they celebrated—if that’s the right word—Yom Hazikaron a few weeks ago. But obviously, we all have to recognize the sacrifice of those who sacrifice to protect us. And I think it’s particularly important in these times.

If you read the press from Israel, this is very live. There are soldiers who have served in the reserves. Israel is a voluntary army. They’ve served for 240 days, and they’re being called back. Some of them are not going back, not because they’re conscientious objectors, but simply because they can’t; they can’t interrupt their life anymore. They’re carrying the whole burden. And there’s a segment, a large segment, close to 20%, called the Haredim, who aren’t serving. So it’s becoming a bigger and bigger issue, and I couldn’t think of a better Parsha to begin that discussion.

Adam Mintz [2:58 – 3:16]: I couldn’t agree with you more. And this is the issue. And what a good Parsha! The Parsha of Chumash Hapekudim, you had it in the Latin and the Greek. But the book of Numbers, the book of how the Jews traveled and how they served in the army. This is what it’s all about.

Geoffrey Stern [3:17 – 4:36]: So it’s called “Haredim Enlist.” The word enlist literally means to voluntarily join a cause or organization, especially military service. The word “list” is in there, and that’s really what Numbers is. It’s a bunch of lists. And we start with the list of Israelites over the age of 20. Bamidbar One says, on the first day of the second month in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, God spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the tent of meeting, saying, take a census of the whole Israelite company. My translator puts in parentheses “of fighters” by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. You and Aaron shall record them by their groups from the age of 20 years up, all those in Israel who are able to bear arms. So it says, “be yisrael tifkedu otam l’tzava otam” and “tzava” is the word in Hebrew that we use for the army, meaning the Israel Defense Forces. Here in the biblical Hebrew is the same word being used. And literally, this is a head count. The Parsha goes on later.

Adam Mintz [4:36 – 4:50]: By the way, that’s interesting that the army is named after “tzivotam,” which means their groups. That’s just interesting. I mean, that’s not an Israeli thing, that the word “Tzava” means army.

Geoffrey Stern [4:50 – 6:38]: Yeah. And I think, again, whether it’s a poll tax or a head tax, a lot of these words in not only our tradition had to do with counting people for what was ultimately the most meaningful service that they had to do. Which is, yeah, there might have been taxes at a certain point in time, but what the king did was he gathered together an army. He took the firstborn from every family. So all of these words are kind of related. Later on in our Parsha, in verse 45 in the same chapter, it says all the Israelite males aged 20 years and over enrolled by ancestral house. All those in Israel who were able to bear arms, all who were enrolled came to 603,550.

The Levites, however, were not recorded among them by their ancestral tribe, for God had spoken to Moses saying, do not on any account enroll the tribe of Levi or take a census of them. With the Israelites, you shall put the Levites in charge of the tabernacle of the pact, all its furnishings and everything that pertains to it. They shall carry the tabernacle and all its furnishings. They shall tend it, and they shall camp around the tabernacle. So at the very moment that we list who has to serve, we have our first deferment, if you will. The Levites are not to be counted. And the reason they’re not to be counted, it’s clear, is because they don’t serve in this army, they serve somewhere else also. Kind of. You cannot help but draw some lines to the current conversation, which is if you don’t serve in the army, you do need to serve somewhere else. I think that’s what they argue.

Adam Mintz [6:38 – 6:40]: We’re the modern-day Levi.

Geoffrey Stern [6:40 – 9:16]: Yes, and I was going to say that as well. And again, that’s an argument that is going to be kind of hard to make. But yes, it’s definitely. Just look a little bit at the commentaries. The Ibn Ezra says, but appoint thou the Levites over the tabernacle. Scripture explains here why the Levites were not counted. They were not counted because the charge of the tabernacle was upon them. Therefore, they did not serve in the army. So I think you make a good point that you could say, on the one hand, we have the original listing where the census is on everybody, and there is an exclusion, and that is the Levites who serve in the tabernacle.

The Rabbeinu Bahya says, and you are to appoint the Levites as in charge of the tabernacle of testimony. This whole verse is the explanation of verse 49, in which Moses has been told not to include the Levites in the census for the army. God now explains that the reason why the Levites were not to be counted with the other 12 tribes was not their ineligibility, but on the contrary, it was their superior position which required them to be counted. So here’s a commentary on that. I think you could make a very different argument.

The different argument actually comes up much later in the Book of Numbers. And if you recall, the Gadites and the Reubenites, as they approached the land of Israel, said, we want to stay right here. We don’t want to cross over the River Jordan. And Moses replied to the Gadites and the Reubenites, are your brothers to go to war while you stay here, will you turn the minds of the other Israelites from crossing into the land that God has given them? So here it becomes—so there’s definitely a connection between having a portion in the land of Israel and fighting. And I think it’s clear that the Levites, who did not have a portion in the land, they were not allocated in the 12 tribal allocation, didn’t have to fight. But again, there were arguments that we’re going to come to later on which will say, you know what, if you don’t want to fight, that’s fine, but then you can’t benefit from some of the rights of being a citizen. Maybe you shouldn’t be able to vote and send other people’s children to war.

Maybe you shouldn’t have money coming in to pay for your schooling and other such things. It’s amazing how relevant all of the issues that are being raised in the Torah with regard to the draft are to the present conversation.

Adam Mintz [9:17 – 9:43]: It really is. Now, that idea that if you don’t have a share of the land, you’re not going to fight, that’s not such a good idea. Meaning when they criticized Gadand Reuven, saying that they’ll go to war and you’ll stay here because you don’t have a share in the land, that’s a criticism. So if we say to Levi, you’re not going to work, you’re not going to fight, sorry, because you don’t have a share in the land, that would be a criticism of that.

Geoffrey Stern [9:44 – 12:13]: Yeah, yeah. And I think you can also, the flip side of that is we saw a little bit a second ago in the Ibn Ezra, and that the fact that they didn’t have to serve, you could say, was to give them shvakh to say that they were serving at a higher level. I mean, to extend your argument a little bit, also, what do you do to a landless person who maybe sold his piece of land? So there is nothing simple about this discussion. I agree.

But in terms of a deferment, the Torah in Deuteronomy, actually, it’s not as though it wasn’t aware that not everybody is gonna go. In Deuteronomy 20, it says, “for it is your God who marches with you to do battle for you against the enemy, to bring you victory. Then the officials shall address the troops as follows. Is there anyone who has built a new house but has not dedicated it, let them go back to his home, lest he die in battle. And another dedicated it. Is there anyone who has planted a vineyard but has not harvested, let him go back to his home lest he die in battle. And another harvest? Is there anyone who has paid the bride price for a wife, but who has not yet taken her. Let him go back to his home.” The officials go on addressing the troops and say, “is there anyone afraid and disheartened? Let him go back to his home, lest the courage of his comrades flag like his.”

So I also could make the argument, Rabbi, that because the text of the Torah was not blind to the fact that there were some people who were either not able-bodied enough to serve or who had other reasons for these exceptions are, they did make some exceptions. But I think if you’re going to get back to the Haredim, ultra-Orthodox, saying that they are the Levites, it doesn’t say if you’re a teacher, it doesn’t say if you are a Levi wannabe. It talks about serving in the Torah. So I do think it’s a little bit of, I would say, a chutzpah for someone to argue when it comes to a halacha like this, because it actually is a rule that we should be considered like a Levi. You know, you can’t make that argument when it comes to getting an aliyah on Shabbat. Either you are a Levi or you’re not a Levi, either you serve in the Temple, or you don’t serve in the Temple. So it’s all very fascinating.

Adam Mintz [12:13 – 12:21]: Good. I mean, that introduces the idea of arrogance in this whole thing. Who are we to say that we’re Levites?

Geoffrey Stern [12:21 – 12:21]: Absolutely.

Adam Mintz [12:21 – 12:34]: Who’s to say that our Torah study in Yeshiva is the equivalent of the Levite who works in the Temple? That’s right. That’s interesting. I mean, they don’t make a big point about that, but that’s a very important point.

Geoffrey Stern [12:34 – 13:05]: Okay. I think that is an amazing segue to the little quote that I’m. Now we’re going to come up into the present tense. And the present tense. In 1998, there was actually an adjudication in the Supreme Court in Israel regarding the deferment of military service for Yeshiva students. And the Supreme Court president was Aaron Barak. And he explained what the original reason was for the Yeshiva students not

Geoffrey Stern [13:05 – 13:36]: to go to the army. And this is a quote from his legal background, his context. “The original reason for the arrangement was the destruction of the yeshivas in Europe during the Holocaust and the wish to prevent the closing of Yeshivas in Israel due to their students being drafted to the army.” He says today this objective no longer exists. The Yeshivas are flourishing in Israel and there is no serious worry that the draft of Yeshiva students according to any arrangement would bring about the disappearance

Geoffrey Stern [13:36 – 14:06]: of this Yeshiva institution. So we’re going to go back a little bit in history, and this Aaron Barak context serves as to what happened in the early days of the state of Israel when they were discussing these issues. And I think if you had to go to one moment, and I’m showing a picture of it, if you’re listening to the podcast and not seeing anything, you can look at the Sefaria sheets. But it’s a picture of David Ben Gurion entering the house of the

Geoffrey Stern [14:06 – 14:37]: Chazon Ish. The Chazon Ish was the great halachic adjudicator of what became the Haredim. He was (Ben Gurion was) accompanied by a partner or a secretary or a sidekick named Yitzhak Navon, who ultimately became the president of Israel, but was a very knowledgeable traditional Jew. And so while there was no recording of the meeting, what seems to have happened is that Ben Gurion

Geoffrey Stern [14:37 – 15:08]: came in and said, how can we live together? And the first famous thing that the Chazon Ish told him was he gave him the story of the two camels. Actually, it’s from the Talmud, and in local nomenclature in Israel now, it’s called the story of the two Wagons. If two wagons are on a narrow road, which one gets precedence? The Talmud says, the one that has a full load, as opposed to the empty wagon or camel. So the Chazon Ish turns to Ben Gurion and

Geoffrey Stern [15:08 – 15:38]: he says, we, the religious Jews, are analogous to the camel with the load. We carry a burden of hundreds of commandments. You, secular Israeli, have to give way. You, secular Israel, have to give way. Meaning to say that we’re doing all the learning, we have all the mitzvahs. You have an empty cart. Ben Gurion was not a soft pushover, and he was not there as a secular Jew. He was there as a Jew who was starting the land of Israel. So Ben

Geoffrey Stern [15:38 – 16:08]: Gurion, according to Navon, attempted to mount a counter-argument. And the second camel isn’t weighed down with the burden of commandments. He asked rhetorically. The commandment to settle the land isn’t a burden? And the commandments to defending life are mitzvot. And what about those boys whom you are so opposed to, sitting on the borders and protecting you? This is not a mitzvah? We don’t have an answer from the Chazon Ish. But what’s fascinating is two things

Geoffrey Stern [16:08 – 16:33]: here. Number one, I think the context of what Barak, the Supreme Court justice, said is this is not necessarily. And at the time, it was not necessarily taken as a timeless argument. They were talking about a particular time in Israel, where those students numbered 300 or 400. And so that was one thing that I think, go ahead.

Adam Mintz [16:34 – 16:44]: With very little hope that that number was going to increase. Had you told the Chazon Ish that yeshivas would look like they do today. He would say, you’re crazy. Impossible.

Geoffrey Stern [16:45 – 18:51]: Let’s hold on to that. I think that’s a critical observation. The other thing is that Ben Gurion really argued, as Rabbi Kook or anybody, that what they were doing was an amazing commandment. It was settling the land of Israel. It was protecting Jewish lives. So that argument is with us even till today. And I would say if you had to characterize the argument of we have to act at a particular moment in time in order to save the whole yeshiva world that was destroyed in Eastern Europe, it would be a pasuk and a kind of a Talmudic guideline, which is eit la’asot. Most people talk about the first part, and then maybe they forget the second part. But it’s a time to act for the Lord.

… And normally the translation is for they have violated the teaching. The way the rabbis took it is there are moments where you have to violate the law in order to keep the law. So, in Mishneh Torah, which is Maimonides, Maimonides talks about there are times where you have to abrogate the words of the Torah as a temporary measure. I think you could make the argument that the Chazon Ish was implicit in his argument that we only have three or 400 would-be yeshiva students. He might not have imagined what we have today, which is thousands and thousands. But he might have also said, the moment has passed. We have now established a yeshiva world; it’s not going anywhere. Actually, there are more people learning Torah in yeshiva today than at any moment in Jewish history, as Maimonides says. They may not, however, establish the matter for posterity and say that this is the halacha. So this is the crux of the argument that we’re having now. And especially, it’s not a hypothetical argument, because as I said before, there are reserve soldiers who just can’t carry the burden anymore.

..Right? I mean, that’s for sure. And that Rambam is really interesting. When you start weighing mitzvot against one another, Ben Gurion said, we’re also doing a mitzvah: we’re protecting the land of Israel. They say, we’re doing a mitzvah: we’re studying. You know, there’s also an issue of what we call in Gemara language, “how does it look,” you know, when people are putting their lives on the line? Even if you think you’re carrying a heavy burden, you need a little bit of humility to acknowledge the fact that you’re protected, sitting in the beit midrash while they’re putting their life on the line.

.. So I said in the intro, I quoted a rabbi who said something that must have smacked to all of us when we heard it as audacious. It says if learning Torah protected Israel, then what happened on October 7? But the rabbi we’re going to get to in a few seconds is a rabbi called David Liebel, and he has an institution called Achvat Torah, and he’s Haredi. So rather than quote all of the people, and I have quotes from Rabbi Riskin and others about everybody should serve, what we are seeing now is a moment—and the reason I bring it up now is you talk about how other people are looking at the Haredim. Here is a Haredi who says, how can you look at the mirror? That is the seismic change that is happening. He is making an argument, and we’re going to kind of dissect it, that for the Haredim.

And he actually, to his credit, says on October 8, there were Haredim who were pouring out of their houses, asking what they could do. This is not necessarily something that has to be imposed on them. They are looking at themselves and saying, where do I stand? And that’s why I said in the beginning, maybe this is redefining what it means to be a Haredi. So, this Rabbi David Liebel, have you heard of him, Rabbi?

..Yeah, he’s well-known now as someone who, from within the Haredi community, is arguing for serving in the army. It’s a little like Rabbi Baumbach. There are some real pioneers, some very courageous rabbis within the Haredi community who are trying to change that reality, the facts on the ground.

.. I would venture to say that maybe the slight difference between him and Rabbi Baumbach is that Rabbi Baumbach is working with Netzach Yisrael high schools, maybe even chedarim. Here’s a 70-year-old Jew with a long beard who went to Panevezh Yeshiva and has the capability in terms of his learning to argue with his peers. And when someone says to him, how can you say this? There’s a 90-year-old Rabbi Shach, he says, you know what? I wasn’t born yesterday; I’m not a kid, and I can read the same text that you can read. He’s really making a philosophical argument at a very deep level.

I will also say there is a YouTube video that is included in the show notes that literally has masses of Haredim demonstrating outside of his house in the middle of the night. He is literally making some really large waves. But I think he’s coming back to our sources, and I think what he’s saying is that whatever happened in the past was an “eit la’asot laHashem” (a time to act for God). It was a momentary provision to preserve the Torah. Now we have to follow the Torah.

..I think that’s absolutely right. That’s an important distinction.

.. So as I said before, you know, he went to Panevezh Yeshiva. He also became a businessman. And what he’s been doing for the last 10-15 years is making kolelim. These are studies where people who are newly married will not work for the first multiple years of their lives. Instead, they will earn a living being paid to study Torah.

What he introduced were kolelim that also had education for high-tech training. So, he’s followed the modern, the national Zionists, in also arguing for having regiments and battalions in the army where they serve together, but they also learn together. He’sdir organizations, which have never been done for the Haredim. He has a lot of background in this, and you could say he’s in the right place at the right time for this initiative. But he literally takes apart the arguments that the Haredim have made.

The main argument, as you said right from the get-go about the Levites, was the argument that them learning Torah is protecting Israel. He goes back to the Talmud in Sotah 21a, and there it’s talking about how a Sotah, when she’s being judged for being unfaithful to her husband, shall be protected. The funny thing is, Rabbi, if you look at it in context, it says she’ll be protected by how much Torah she’s learned. And then they go to say, scratch that… then by how much Torah her husband has learned. Okay, which is another podcast that we could do. But the point was that it’s talking about how studying Torah, when one is engaged in it, it protects you. He says this applies to an individual. It never applied to the community as a whole. It never applied to the country as a whole.

So he goes to the trouble of dissecting the texts they are using to exempt themselves, and he’s taking them apart. He says if Torah study protects the Jewish people, then Torah students are culpable for the events of October 7th and for the deaths of soldiers in the war. He has a very sharp tongue.

..I mean, you need to have a sharp tongue because you’re responding to a group that is very, very strong and rigid in their denial of that responsibility.

.. And I think, getting back again to others, like Rabbi Baumbach, who are working inside of the system, he’s taking the system on. When he makes a provocative statement like that, he is a Haredi, he’s saying to the Haredim, it’s false what you’ve been told by your leaders.

There’s this word called “das Torah,” which is what the leadership has told us. He says, I have das Torah too, and I am telling you it’s wrong. This is just radical in terms of what’s happening.

.. So, your point is a very interesting point. The fact that Rabbi Baumbach works within the system, and this Rabbi Liebel seems to be taking on the system. We were at dinner a few weeks ago with an Israeli, a religious Zionist, what we would call modern Orthodox Israeli, and he was upset when we talked about people who work within the system. He says, what are you going to do? You’re going to change 10 people, you’re going to change 100 people? You know how many soldiers there are, and how many reservists there are, and you want to work within the system? He said, you need to take on the system. So I think that’s also a distinction and that also gives credit to Rabbi Liebel who’s taking the system head-on.

Geoffrey Stern [26:40 – 28:11]: I couldn’t agree more. And then, I think the biggest argument that is being made, and this is an argument that doesn’t have an expiration date. In other words, you could say the reason why yeshiva students aren’t drafted was because there were only 400. The bigger argument is, for every Haredi that goes into the army with a kippah, I’ll show you a Haredi that leaves the army without a kippah.

It’s this question of exposing our traditions and our youth in this very segregated, isolated community in the army; it will be the end of us. And again, what he says is fascinating because he says we just have to deal with it. If we need to have our own battalions, if we need to have prayer times.

I went and visited a battalion. I have a video at the end in the show notes of a soldier, actually a commander, who was a Haredi, who went through four years of training. They have study hours, they have rabbis teaching them, they have a higher grade of kosher food. There are no women allowed on the base.

It’s no excuse. They can be better Jews. Since when do we ever say you can’t do a mitzvah? Because at the end of the day, Rabbi, what is this? It’s a mitzvah. Ben Gurion said it. And guess what? So did the pesukim that I quoted at the beginning of the show. This is a mitzvah not in the sense of it’s a good deed, it’s a mitzvah in the sense it’s a requirement.

Adam Mintz [28:12 – 28:44]: I mean, the risk is not only to the charedim. Everyone has risks in the army, not just risks of life and death, but social risks. Everyone who serves in the army will say that they come out of the army different than when they go in. They’re stronger when they come out.

So the idea that we need to, you know, to baby, so to speak, the haredim, that they’re not allowed to have risks, that’s just that I think that’s a very immature argument.

Geoffrey Stern [28:45 – 31:40]: And I will add to that there is a growing number of haredim who are leaving the fold. One can make the argument that one of the reasons they’re leaving is they can’t make a living. Serving in the army in Israel is tied to making a living. You can’t get gainful employment unless you’ve done your time, so forth and so on.

The point is, you could make a case. This was the case I was trying to make before when you said, Marit Ayin, what will other people say? He actually says this. When you look in the mirror and you have eight kids at home and you’re not gainfully employed, and you look outside and see soldiers returning from the front to wives and kids who haven’t seen them, you look at yourself and say, this Haredi world might not be for me.

I think part of his implicit argument is that the haredim could lose people also by not joining the army, by not joining civil society. In the show notes, there is an interview I did with this Haredi. After three minutes of him telling what happened, I have to say, in the army today, especially in battalions like Netzach Yehuda, many of the haredim that are going into the army today are ones that aren’t learning or ones that haven’t been fitting in. They are being sent.

This one, when I said to him, after he told me his inspiring story, I said, you know, in a way, if you hadn’t been in the army, you might not be religious anymore. He looked at me and said, religious? I might not be alive. I might be overdosed on drugs.

The first group of people from the Haredi community were those who were actually leaders. That says something about the potential. I saw an article, we’re going to finish with this in Israel Hayom or I should say Times of Israel, about an atheist who set up, there’s no better word, almost like a Chabad type of table in the middle of Bnai Brak. He’s trying to convince people to be Chiloni, to be secular. People are smiling, not taking them that seriously.

But I think it’s representative of what could happen. I think the Haredi community is going through a metamorphosis. Today, it’s fascinating to watch, but I don’t think you can read the verses that we read in this week’s Parsha and not think in terms of this absolute commandment to serve in the people’s army.

Adam Mintz [31:41 – 31:58]: Remarkable. I mean, this is so important and, you know, the more Geoffrey people talk about it, the more important it is. Everyone needs to talk about this topic. Rabbi Leibel deserves a lot of credit. Rabbi Bombach deserves a lot of credit. There’s no one simple solution to this problem.

Geoffrey Stern [31:59 – 32:09]: Yeah. I reached out to Rabbi Leibel. I don’t know whether he speaks English, but I invited him to the podcast. I think there wasn’t enough time because I only prepare a day before. But I think…

Adam Mintz [32:09 – 32:10]: Did you get a response?

Geoffrey Stern [32:10 – 32:37]: I did. There just wasn’t enough time. So I think when we get to the story in Numbers, what is it, 20 something, Numbers 32? That gives us enough time to set out an invitation. We will revisit this issue either with Rabbi David Leibel or somebody involved in his organization. Stay tuned.

Adam Mintz [32:37 – 32:39]: Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Geoffrey Stern [32:39 – 32:56]: Shabbat Shalom and see you all next week. We have Shavuos. In the meantime, if you haven’t listened to it, listen to Kibbutz Shavuos and Kibbutz from last week. All the best, chag 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.

We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week we are counting the last days of the Omer as we get ready for Shavuot, or as it is known in the Torah, Chag HaBikurim, the holiday of the first fruits.

We have invited Eran Yarkoni, CEO of the Shittim Institute, to share with us the fascinating story about the renewal of the Bikurim ceremonies in the 1920s in Israel in the Jezreel Valley, with powerful cultural and historical significance resonating up until today.

So join us for the first fruits of Israeli Judaism. Welcome back, Adam. We missed you last week and welcome, Eran. For us, it is a reunion. This is the second Chag that we are doing. We did a podcast a few years ago on the amazing collection that you have at Beit HaShitim of the Haggadah.

But I think the story that we’re going to tell today is going to be even more reflective of what your institute is doing. And with that, I’d like you to introduce us to Beit HaShita, that you are the CEO of. And then we’ll delve into Chag HaBikurim.

Eran Yarkoni [1:58 – 3:39]: Hi. Absolutely. This is one of the most symbolized holidays of the kibbutz tradition and legacy. And a few words about our institute. Our institute started in the 40s of the last century by a man called Aryeh Ben Gurion.

He was the nephew of the first Prime Minister, and he was called to be an educator in the kibbutz during the 40s. As an educator, he wanted to connect the children of the kibbutz to the roots of their identity. He asked other kibbutzim what they are doing for Shabbat, how they are celebrating Hanukkah, how they celebrate Bar Mitzvah.

He collected all these answers and became an expert in Jewish Israeli culture. When Aryeh passed away in the late 90s, he left behind an archive with more than 1 million documents that document everything that developed in the kibbutzim around the life cycle and year cycle, including holidays, ceremonies, and things like this.

This is what we have. This is our treasure trove that we work with as an inspiration for educators these days.

Geoffrey Stern [3:40 – 5:34]: It’s unbelievable. I came to visit you, and truly there is an archive, and you can see whole sections about Pesach, Hag HaBikurim, weddings, and milestone events.

In Israel, there are many Jews who are secular. For instance, when the tragedies of the last two years occurred, many Jews were looking for rituals that they could use that resonated with them. Eran and his team would go into the archives and find memorial services, and Shiva services that were developed by these early pioneers.

We all hear about the pioneers creating a New Jew. What we don’t necessarily know is that they also created a new Judaism. When we go to Israel, especially as Americans, many of us think in terms of Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism. The truth is that those are all exports or imports, depending on which direction you’re looking.

But what we’re going to look at today is the genesis of how this group came up with a new reinvention of the holiday that we are about to celebrate. So let’s go back to the original sources.

In Exodus 34:22, it says, you shall observe the feast of weeks of the first fruits of the wheat harvest and the feast of ingathering at the turn of the year. Rabbi, there’s really no mention of giving of the Torah. On Shavuot, we count the Omer. The word Omer refers to, I believe, the omer of wheat; it’s part of the agricultural cycle.

If you look at the verses themselves, you see a true harvest agricultural festival. Am I right?

Adam Mintz [5:34 – 6:33]: You are 100% right. I’ll just add one thing. You know, Pesach has a dual aspect. It’s both agricultural and the time of freedom. Sukkot also has a dual aspect; we remember the Sukkah in the desert, and it’s agricultural.

Shavuot only has an agricultural aspect. The giving of the Torah, the Ten Commandments came later. I’ll just say an interesting little twist, and that is that, you know, in the days of the Temple, the months were determined based on the sighting of the new moon. So the months weren’t fixed.

So the idea that the holiday of Shavuot, that the Torah was given exactly on the sixth day of Sivan, which is the holiday of Shavuot, wasn’t always true. So actually, that’s only a later development that connected the giving of the Ten Commandments with Shavuot. It’s exciting to talk now about the agricultural element of Shavuot.

Geoffrey Stern [6:33 – 9:04]: Great. So in Deuteronomy, it ties it also, and I think this is going to become more and more significant as the discussion continues. As when you enter the land of Israel, it says when you enter the land your God is giving you as a heritage and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of the first fruit of the soil of the land which you harvest from the land that your God is giving you, put it in a basket and go to the place where your God will choose to establish the divine name.

That came to mean the temple. It could have been the local temple, but obviously, when the temple was centralized, it was in Jerusalem. You shall go to the priest in charge at that time and say to him, I acknowledge this day before your God that I have entered the land that God swore to our fathers to assign us. The priest shall take the basket from your hand, set it down in front of the altar of God. You shall then recite as follows before God.

Those of you who read the Haggadah a few months ago will recognize this. My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers. And then it goes on. Where the Haggadah ends is on verse eight, where it says God freed us from Egypt with a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm, with awesome power, and signs and portents.

That’s where the Haggadah stops quoting this. But in verse nine, it says bringing us to this place and giving us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which you, God, have given us. You shall leave it before your God and bow low before your God.

You shall enjoy, together with your family, the Levite, and the stranger in your midst, all the bounty that your God has bestowed upon you and your household. So I couldn’t help but emphasize the number of times it said land, Aretz. It talks about coming to the land.

So you can only imagine how this resonated with pioneers, halutzim, who were coming to the land of Israel after 2,000 years of exile. They must have looked at this. Adam, as you say, this was totally focused on coming to this new land. Very powerful if you just look at the Chumash at the psukim.

Adam Mintz [9:05 – 9:14]: Yeah, these are, I mean, obviously these are the most famous verses from the Haggadah. And now we’ve played them out. So let’s see what happens. The Mishnah now elaborates on what this is all about.

Geoffrey Stern [9:15 – 9:45]: So Eran, when we were discussing this a few days ago, you said to take a look at this Mishnah. It’s in Bikurim, the third chapter. Because not only are we going to read it, but we will see that the halutzim, these secular pioneers, read it very carefully as well. It says, how does one set aside bikurim?

A man goes down into his field. He sees a fig that ripened, or a cluster of grapes that ripened, or a

Geoffrey Stern [9:45 – 10:16]: pomegranate that ripened. He ties a red rope around it and says, let these be bikurim.

There’s almost a formula that needs to be said, and this is going to be something that’s going to come up at the end, and it’s very interesting. Rabbi Shimon says, even so, he must again designate them as bikurim after they have been plucked from the soil. So, of course, the rabbis always have to have a disagreement. Is it when you identify them, or is it when you harvest them?

Geoffrey Stern [10:16 – 10:46]: Then it says, how were the bikurim taken up? It says, to Jerusalem. That’s what the translator adds. All the inhabitants of the cities of the ma’am would assemble in the city of the maamad and spend the night in the open street, and they would not enter any of the houses. Early in the morning, the officer would say, let us rise and go up to Zion into the house of the Lord our God, quoting from Jeremiah. So notice that this is something that unites the country.

Geoffrey Stern [10:46 – 11:17]: In every city, in every town, this ceremony occurred. And it was a communal ceremony. It says specifically, they didn’t go into individual houses. They were in the public space and they were gathering. Those who lived near Jerusalem would bring fresh figs and grapes, while those who lived far away would bring dried things and raisins. An ox would go in front of them, its horns bedecked with gold and with an olive crown on its head.

Geoffrey Stern [11:17 – 11:47]: The flute would play before them until they would draw close to Jerusalem. When they drew close to Jerusalem, they would send messengers in advance and they would adorn their bikurim. The governors and chiefs and treasurers of the temple would go out to greet them. And according to the rank of the entrance, they would go forth. All the skilled artisans of Jerusalem would stand up before them and greet them, saying, our brothers, men of such and such a place, we welcome you in peace.

Geoffrey Stern [11:47 – 12:18]: I have never focused on any of this stuff. I went to a traditional yeshiva. I was focused on the giving of the Torah, eating cheesecake, staying up all night and reading. And whether it was this gathering of each particular town, notice how it focuses on that. When they come to Jerusalem, they kind of get announced. This is like the Republican or the Democratic National Convention. Let the delegates from Georgia come. Let the ones from Jaffa in the Galilee come.

Geoffrey Stern [12:18 – 12:35]: So this is an amazing backdrop. And what we’re gonna read next is from Yitzchak Michaeli. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about him before we read Absolute poetry, Eran?

Eran Yarkoni [12:36 – 13:28]: I will tell you. He was one of the pioneers from Kibbutz Ein Harod. And this quote is from a very unique protocol that we have in our archive. It’s a protocol of a conversation that took place during the 20s in Kibbutz Ein Harod in the Harod Valley or Jezreel Valley. During the 20s, Kibbutz Ein Harod held several discussions about the proper way to celebrate the holidays after returning to the land of Israel. Now, this excerpt is taken from one of the discussions that focused on Shavuot. And maybe you will read it.

Geoffrey Stern [13:29 – 14:44]: Okay, so for those who want to read it in the original Hebrew, please go to the Sefaria notes. It is beautiful. Here it is in English. Behold, this is a true revolution. Thus we have broken through and shall celebrate the festival in a manner different from that in which our forefathers celebrated it in the Diaspora. Now we have returned to the field in the Diaspora. It was a festival of the home, full of spiritual content, with hymns and prayers and holiday symbols as remnants of the physical splendor that existed in the past.

Geoffrey Stern [14:44 – 15:09]: Just as the work of the land today, where we drill wells and pierce the rock until we reach the clear subterranean waters, so are we commanded to delve and penetrate to the source of our festivals and to bring them up from the depths of the Jewish people’s life in the past, the purest subterranean waters of our ancient culture in order to return and flow them through the channels of influence that were blocked during the years of the Diaspora. Rabbi, is this amazing or is this amazing?

Adam Mintz [14:45 – 15:09]: I love the fact that we’re actually moving the holiday from the home to the field. That’s such a fantastic movement. And obviously, it’s not only this holiday, but that’s the Diaspora. We celebrate everything in the home, we celebrate everything in the synagogue, and he’s moving everything to the field. That’s such an early Zionist move, which is fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [15:09 – 16:05]: I also think he talks about in the Diaspora, when we celebrate holidays, we use symbols. We act as though we have remnants. We talk about the remnants of Israel, we have remnants of the physical splendor. When we get to the land, he talks as a materialist. We’re touching the ground. And I love the fact that he uses the metaphor of digging, which can only remind us of Pirkei Avot that says, “Hofach ba vahafach bah, dekula bah.” Dig in it, you’ll find everything. He’s going back to our sources.

Geoffrey Stern [16:05 – 16:39]: To your point, Rabbi, about moving from the home to the public space, or as you said, to the field. I saw that in the Mishnah, remember, they said, overnight, don’t go into the homes. It was all the public. Just amazing. Eran, thank you so much for bringing this.

Eran Yarkoni [16:05 – 16:39]: Yeah. Now, according, it expresses a cultural view that the past is a symbiosis between the person living in the land and the culture connected to the soil, to the landscape, to the seasons. And this is when last time we did together a podcast, you called it an Organic Judaism. And this is the origin of Organic Judaism, where it began.

Geoffrey Stern [16:39 – 17:02]: Now, what I’m showing on the screen now, correct me if I’m wrong, Eran, is the catalog page from your catalog. And we have Sichot al Hagim, Ein Harod, the name of the kibbutz. It has, I guess in section one, Al Pesach. It has it on Tishabov. It has it on… what’s the next one?

Adam Mintz [17:04 – 17:05]: Al Hagim.

Geoffrey Stern [17:05 – 17:35]: Al Hagim, yes. Unbelievable archive that you have. And now we get to the really exciting part, because you told me, Eran, that what they did is they translated that ox with the two horns that had gold edges on it to a tractor. First of all, Rabbi, I was surprised that we have the chutzpah to put an ox with gold on it. Eyn Kategor Na’ase Sanegor I mean, are we reminding…

Adam Mintz [17:35 – 17:37]: That’s pretty funny. That’s a different holiday.

Geoffrey Stern [17:37 – 18:06]: Yeah. But anyway, look at this tractor. Tell us what we’re looking at, Eran. And if those of you who are listening to this and not watching it on YouTube, I do apologize if you can look in the source sheet or watch it on YouTube, but it is the oldest tractor you’ve ever seen. It looks like the Omer, the wheat coming out of the front. They are driving, it looks like everybody is in white. Am I correct? Yes.

Eran Yarkoni [18:06 – 20:15]: Yes. First of all, we have to say that in the Mishnah, there is a precise description, like a movie script, that depicts how the people brought the bikurim to the temple. And all that remained was to recreate and renew the route on Shavuot. What you see here is in 1928, all of the kibbutzim of the Jezreel Valley gathered at one point; each kibbutz brought its fruits, and together they created a procession to a common assembly place.

Eran Yarkoni [18:06 – 20:15]: As you said, the ox that was customary in the Mishnah was replaced by a tractor and decorated with golden horns and an olive leaves crown. Something interesting, the remaining challenge was to whom to bring the bikurim. In the ancient ceremony, they were brought to the kohanim and Levites who served in the temple. Now here a new decision was made to sell the fruits and the bikurim and the produce of the various kibbutzim and to donate all the money collected jointly to the Jewish National Fund.

In the pioneer perspective, the Jewish National Fund, the tool of the entire Jewish people that redeems the lands of Israel, is what replaced the Temple. And the renewal of the holiday was heard throughout Israel. Every year, hundreds and thousands came to the valley to watch the bikurim procession and the ceremonial donation.

Geoffrey Stern [20:15 – 22:04]: And of course, there’s a sign there that says, which is obviously echoing what we saw in Deuteronomy, Asher tavi’em arzecha. They really felt that they were fulfilling what the Torah said in Jeremiah. It says, at that time declares God. So this is a prophecy of when we will come back to the land. I will be God to all the clans of Israel, and they shall be my people. Thus said God, the people escaped from the sword, found favor in the wilderness when Israel was marching homeward. In Hebrew, some of you will find this very familiar: matzah chen b’midbar amsa ridei charev hol’chu lehar giya Yisrael. They talk o titmu kamecha that again you shall take up your hand rubs and go forth to the rhythm of the dancers. You shall plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria. Come, let us go up to Zion. And here too, at the very end, it says, thus said God, cry out in joy for Jacob, shout at the crossroads of the nations, sing aloud in praise and say, save, O Eternal One, your people, the remnant of Israel. She’arit Yisra’el. This is truly tied into coming back into the land. We saw the verses in Deuteronomy coming back into the land. We see these words in the prophets. So what they did was so organic. You used that word before Eran quoting me. And here are some other pictures that you provided. What do they have here in terms of the sign here, are they saying how much crops they brought or what.

Eran Yarkoni [22:04 – 22:17]: Do they call, how many dunams? Like acres, like the yield. It said that two years ago in Taf Resh Zadik Heh

Adam Mintz [22:17 – 22:17]: Tz?

Eran Yarkoni [22:17 – 22:23]: Taf Resh Zadi Heh we had 80 dunams. And two years later, Taf Resh Zadi Chet

Adam Mintz [22:23 – 22:24]: .. we have 600.

Eran Yarkoni [22:25 – 22:26]: Yes, 600 dunams.

Geoffrey Stern [22:26 – 23:31]: It’s a progress report. They are saying we are growing, we are stronger. But again, I just, I never realized how this was a unifier. And if there’s anything that Israel needs, I drive through the highways and all I see is Yachad Nenatzeach. Together we shall win. Unfortunately, that lasted about five minutes. The country is totally divided. Here we have a chag that was designed to have everybody in the periphery, in the center, show what they’ve produced, come together, enjoy. These pictures are just amazing. So now you can’t do anything good without being criticized. I mean, that’s just who we are. We Jews build two shuls. The one we go to and the one we wouldn’t be caught dead in. So now we’re going to have the words that were written by Rabbi Yehuda Leib Maimon from the Mizrahi party. And he thought this was a terrible idea.

Eran Yarkoni [23:33 – 23:35]: He was the head of the Mizrachi movement.

Geoffrey Stern [23:35 – 23:35]: Okay.

Adam Mintz [23:35 – 23:38]: He was very influential in his day.

Eran Yarkoni [23:38 – 23:48]: Yes, yes, you’re also one of that. His signature is signed on the liberation.

Geoffrey Stern [23:48 – 25:58]: Declaration, the Declaration of Independence. Oh, wow. He writes as follows. We must relate with absolute negativity to this festival of the first fruits, the holiday which well-known activists fabricated some time ago and is becoming entrenched within us again. When I first read, read these, I didn’t understand quite where he was coming from. And it almost sounded as if he was saying, because everything that we’ve said is, this is what was written in the Torah. And he’s telling us this is not it in them, in the Torah, he says there is only room to fear that if it becomes a fixed custom whereby every city in the land of Israel will designate for itself a special holiday. He’s like saying, they made this stuff up, and if they made it up, it’s a slippery slope. People are going to be reinventing Judaism everywhere, has v’Shalom. The danger lies in that false tradition which includes both ignorance and a lack of knowledge, and also because of the destruction of religion and the lack of good taste, that tradition of bringing first fruits on the day after Shavuot, these male and female students who are used to adorn and exalt this “holiday” surely think that on the feast of weeks, they actually are bringing first fruits in the days of old. But the truth of the matter is that between the feast of weeks, the day of the first fruits written in the Torah, and the bringing of the first fruits in the temple in splendor and majesty, with blessing and prayers, there is nothing, there is no connection between what they’re doing and what was in the temple. To give him credit, I think his challenge is that they are making that statement from the Mishnah that we start. Remember I said there’s a formula. And the formula is you say, these are the bikurim. And like many other things, when you say that formula, these things become holy. And the challenge is, how can you say that when we don’t have a temple? But certainly the way the vitriolic nature of this. Adam, had you been aware of this whole controversy?

Adam Mintz [25:59 – 26:19]: Never. And it’s so interesting that he felt so strongly against it, because like you said, it’s only a wonderful thing. It brings everybody together. But they felt it threatened because it changes the nature. And the Orthodox don’t like to change the nature of things. This is a remarkable, you know, piece of our history that nobody knows anything about.

Geoffrey Stern [26:20 – 29:11]: Okay, so, Eran, you quoted from Rabbi Maimon. I looked up to see what Rav Kook said, and he said this a year later. So, first of all, the way he starts is totally different. He says, chaverim yekarim, my dear brothers. The commemoration of the Bikurim, which is customary to be celebrated in our country in connection with the holiday of Shavuot, in many ways inspires us and gives us a sense of clarity. Although it is not the Bikurim that we are celebrating now, but the commemoration of the Bikurim, we will not be among those who are content with little in the return of our homeland. As long as foreigners rule over the place of our life’s home, as long as we are torn apart by law, even, even within our national home, as long as we do not have the strength to gather the majority of our persecuted people to our holy land and to arrange it in worldly glory, as in the days of old, where the temple and the kingdom in all their fullness are the symbols of this complete life, we cannot say the full name Bikurim, which is associated with the holy, and the Temple, which is associated with freedom and self, kingdom and all our full glory. But a resting place for us is both the tiny subsistence and the tiny side of redemption. That is gradually being revealed through our building projects in which you beloved brothers, are active in your amazing pioneering dedication. Well, the commemoration of the bikurim. He wanted people to say zecher le’bikurim, not zeh ha’bikurim. He wanted to say as a remembrance of the korban Pesach, as a remembrance of the Bikurim, and beautiful for us. And you are blessed for your participation and the effort and honor that you give to the Jewish National Fund. So he really fills in the blanks that you raised Eran. He recognizes that they’re giving the money to an amazing cause. He’s calling them holy brothers. And really what he’s trying to say in a very nice way is here’s the compromise, please don’t call these bikurim, call these zecher le’bikurim. But at least he understands what they’re trying to do. And of course, if you know his philosophy, this was the Hatchalta de G’ulah. This was the beginning of the G’ulah. But there was still Jews suffering and there are still Jews being persecuted.

And he says, and there are still divisions amongst us. So I felt this letter, too, doesn’t detract from the revolutionary nature of what they were doing on the kibbutz, but it does paint a different side to some of our Orthodox colleagues.

Adam Mintz [29:12 – 29:22]: This is remarkable, Geoffrey. And to see the difference between Rabbi Maimon and Rabbi Kook, you’re right. Both in the substance, but just in the manner in which they speak, is remarkable.

Geoffrey Stern [29:23 – 29:54]: So what I want to conclude is about 10 years ago, I was invited to a Passover Seder in Efrat. And the person who was running the Seder, his father-in-law, is a great rabbi. And what I could not believe was that he had a barbecue, and he was roasting the lamb. And, of course, we Jews from the Gola are brought up thinking you can’t

roast the lamb. And it really resonates with this discussion here because someone might think this is actually the Korban Pesach and not Zecher le-Korban Pesach. But I think, and I haven’t found this in any Google search, that there are probably now some very nationalistic Jews who are not satisfied with Rav Kook and actually are acting in a similar way to the kibbutznikim. And they, too, are saying, we have to bring the

redemption. We have to start going to the Temple Mount, things that in the old days were forbidden. We have to start barbecuing our Passover lamb. And so, I did find a question that was raised, and the gentleman who raised it says as follows. He says, sometimes genius comes from the mouth of babes. And my daughter said to me, if we really believe the Mashiach can come at any moment, how come we don’t designate?

Because. And what he does is he brings a halachic ruling. And it’s based a little bit on that discussion we had from the Mishnah of is it when you determine that there are bikurim or when you reap them? There’s a little bit of a safek there. And he also believes that if the Messiah doesn’t come between when you identify the bikurim and when the day after Shavuot, the rabbis can be mevatel, just like they can be mevatel a neder (annul an oath) or

other forms. But the point that I want to make is we have Jews today that are very Orthodox, very religious, that are actually trying to reclaim the bikurim in a similar fashion as the kibbutznikim. They are not satisfied with 2000 years of pacifist and non-active Judaism. So, I found that just to be amazing. The real takeaway that I took from this. Yes. One of

the sources that you said is we can celebrate Matan Torah because the Matan Torah are those wells that the kibbutznikim were digging to find that living water deep in the ground. But we have to be able to celebrate the unity of this beautiful bikurim ceremony. And we owe such a token of thanks to these kibbutznikim who had very strong learning in our texts, who

reinvented this amazing ceremony.

Adam Mintz [32:32 – 32:46]: Fantastic. Thank you, Eran, for joining us. This is something that really is an education for me, and it’s a wonderful way to go into the holiday of Shavuot. And those photos, those photographs are absolutely fantastic. Thank you.

Eran Yarkoni [32:46 – 32:57]: Great. Thank you too. And I invite you next year to come to one of the ceremonies running in the kibbutzim here in Israel and to see it live.

Adam Mintz [32:58 – 32:59]: Thank you.

Geoffrey Stern [32:59 – 33:01]: It still exists till today, correct?

Eran Yarkoni [33:01 – 33:07]: Yes, of course. In a lot of kibbutzim, and more after October 7th.

Geoffrey Stern [33:08 – 33:10]: Amazing. Amazing.

Adam Mintz [33:10 – 33:11]: Okay.

Geoffrey Stern [33:11 – 33:21]: Wishing all of our listeners a Chag Sameach, Shabbat Shalom as we count the Omer and we grow in expectation for this beautiful holiday in front of us.

Geoffrey Stern [00:00:06]: What does the Torah really say about someone who can’t hear or see? Could understanding disability bring us closer to revelation? This week, we invite two Israeli experts who have dedicated their lives to empowering the blind and the deaf in Israel to discuss their work. 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. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

This week’s Parsha is Emor. For the second Parsha in a row, the Torah mentions those with so-called disabilities. We use this as an opportunity to explore the Torah’s perspective on the sight and hearing impaired and to interview two Israeli experts dedicated to serving this community. So join us for Blind, Deaf, and Chosen. This week, I’m in Israel, and I’m joined by Professor Kenneth Koslowe, Director of Professional Services at Eliyah Association for Blind and Visually Impaired Children, and Eliyas Kabakov, Director of Machsi Oz, the Center for Deaf-Blind Persons. Rabbi Adam is not with us due to a scheduling conflict, but he’ll be back next week.

I visited Eliyah and Machsi Oz this week in my capacity as a trustee of PEF Israel Endowment Funds and was so impressed by their institutions and personal stories that I had to share it with you, all our Madlik listeners. As I said in the intro, this week’s Parsha is the second in a row to reference the deaf and the blind. So, welcome Elias and Dr. Ken. It’s just an absolute pleasure to meet you earlier this week and now to talk to you. And I thought rather than diving into the Parsha, I’d love to hear from both of you, and we’ll start with Ken because you deal with the very young. So let’s start with the youngest. First, tell us about Eliyah, just so we know, and I will put a link to your website and your PEF webpage in our show notes. So, tell us a little bit about Eliyah.

Kenneth Koslowe [00:02:21]: Eliyah was founded over 40 years ago by a young teacher who had been in the United States, trained to teach the blind and visually impaired. She came back to Israel and found that there was no such facility. She started in a rented apartment with six children. We’ve now grown to five centers with 160 children all over the country. We basically take children, infants from age 6 months to age 6 years, who are either blind or severely visually impaired. They may have other handicaps.

We have a day center. They come to us at about 7:30 in the morning until about 4:00 in the afternoon. The transportation is paid for by the local communities, the local cities. The government subsidizes most of the tuition, depending on the parent’s financial status. We are a private organization. We get government support, about 70-80% of our budget, and the rest is by donors from around the world and in Israel. We provide both visual stimulation, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, dietary advice, emotional support for the kids, for the staff, and for their families. We like to say that we don’t treat eyes, we treat children. And we don’t just treat children, we treat families. When we’ve taken a family, we say we don’t take in an infant; we take in a family with an infant because the constellation of the entire family is as important as dealing with the infant. What we try to do is really epitomized by the sentence that you picked: Lo T’kalel Cheresh, ve’lifnei ever al titen Michshol

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:00]: Translate it, translate it.

Kenneth Koslowe [00:04:01]: “You shall not place a barrier,” or in this case, “a stumbling block,” before the blind. Fine. That actually sounds more reasonable than, “You should not insult the deaf.” Why shouldn’t you insult the deaf? They can’t hear you anyway. That makes less sense for them. Okay, I understand. Don’t put a stumbling block in front of the blind. But if I say, “Hey, you’re a deaf idiot,” the person didn’t hear me. I don’t mean to say that for real; I’m just using an example. So that makes a little bit less understandable. But they both prove my point, which the Torah. Just like, you know, when we read great literature, if you really want to understand great literature, you cannot simply read it. For instance, when I was taught Hamlet, there was a phrase in Hamlet, “Get thee to a nunnery.” Now, that seems rather clear. You know, it’s only a woman to go to a convent. Do you know what it actually means? It means go to a whorehouse. A nunnery at that time was a code word for a brothel. So even Shakespeare can’t simply be read, and certainly not the Torah. 

What guides us in this sentence? It means to us, don’t put any barriers before the blind and visually handicapped. You must allow them to reach their full potential.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:12]: I love that.

Kenneth Koslowe [00:05:13]: Putting a stumbling block means you have to open the world. You have to make it, as we say in Eliyah, we want the child to be the best them that they can be.

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:20]: Okay, I’m going to interrupt because we’re going to hear more about that. And two points that you made I really want to follow up later is that you treat a family, not just an individual or a kid, and that talks about the societal part of this whole thing. And the other thing is that you said that you embed and empower every aspect of the kid’s performance, whether it’s what they eat and what they see and what they touch. And we’re going to come back to both those two points, but I want to now segue to Elias, if you could tell us about Machsi Oz and what you guys do.

Elias Kabakov [00:05:57]: Okay, thanks. Machsi Oz is the name of the Amuta, the nonprofit. Our center is called the Center for Deaf-Blind Persons, and we set it up in 1989. We work with the entire Deaf-Blind population of the country, which means individuals with the dual disability of Deaf-Blindness, meaning that the individual has both deafness and blindness. We don’t work with people who are either deaf or hard of hearing or blind or visually impaired. Each person has to have both because there are other organizations that work with either or. Most of the people we work with are more adults, but we have certain services for all ages.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:45]: So I just wanted to say that when I visited with you, Elias, I was in a circle, and everybody started by introducing themselves. They either said that they were blind or they were deaf or they were both. We’ll talk a little bit more about the mix. But when it got to me, I thought to myself, what am I lacking? And what I felt profoundly that I was lacking was that I couldn’t sign. They were all signing. It was like watching a soccer match and seeing people use their feet in a miraculous way and feeling like you were flat-footed. And truly, the animation that was going on. Maybe you’ll talk a little bit later about what tactile signing is, but it was just absolutely amazing. So we have a lot to talk about because those impressions still live with me.

But I want to get back to this question of “Do not insult the deaf.” Clearly, it addresses a stigma. People, for whatever reason, might go ahead and curse, insult the deaf, or provide a stumbling block in front of the blind. In the verses that it’s entailed, it’s talking about doing good for people, leaving the corners of your field. It’s clearly social. It’s amazing to me that many of our commentaries look at it as a metaphor for misleading somebody with bad judgment. It’s clear the Torah is making a profound statement that we cannot stigmatize those who are blind and deaf. In your case, Elias, there were two Bedouin women who told us the story of how in the Bedouin community, a woman who was blind and deaf was totally stigmatized.

It was as though she was supposed to sit in the tent and have no life. And through you reaching out and showing them this whole universe, you were able to break through that stigma. And now people in the community are identifying others that have learning, hearing, and sight disabilities. Ken, I think when you were talking about it’s a family, it’s not just a child, maybe, were you at all alluding to this question of the initial shock that a family might have, discovering that their child is blind and having to go down that route of learning to not only understand it and engage with it, but maybe even embrace it?

Kenneth Koslowe [00:09:10]: It is a problem also of the family can sometimes be so overprotective of the child that they can’t let the child grow. We had a case where a mother who had no peripheral vision at all, she had an eye disease and her child had the same disease. But this disease only comes to an effect when you’re about 18, 19 years old. Up until then, it’s quite normal. I asked, okay, how is a child in the playground? She said, what do you mean in the playground? I’ll never let him go into the playground. He doesn’t have any peripheral vision. Now here, okay? The child had perfect peripheral vision because the disease hadn’t started yet. But she knew herself.

So that you have to see the family. Is the family embracing the child? Are they over-embracing the child? Are they being protective? Are they being overprotective? Or are they being embarrassed? I remember once I mentioned the fact that our date centers are rehabilitation centers. And the woman, rehabilitation. The word shocked her. She didn’t want her children to be rehabilitated. Okay, to me it was a nice word, but to her, it was a terrible word. So you have to understand where the people are, where they aren’t accepting. Are they blaming themselves? Are they blaming the child? Are they loving? Are they protective? Are they too protective? So you have to look at the family. It’s an essential part of dealing with the child.

Geoffrey Stern [00:10:31]: It’s amazing. So there’s both negative stigmatization and bias. And then there’s killing them with love, smothering them with love. It works on both sides. They should be treated normally. I mean, I think the verses in our parsha this week, clearly you could make the case that they are, in a sense, stigmatizing those with any sort of imperfection. It says in Leviticus 21, speak to Aaron and say, no man of your offspring throughout the ages who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the food of his God. No one at all has a defect shall be qualified. No man who is blind or lame. 

It’s wonderful that Maimonides comes up in the Moreh Nevuchim in the Guide for the Perplexed with an amazing explanation. And this goes in line with his whole concept of the tabernacle and the temple, that it’s almost a concession to man, that man is not capable of moving from being a slave in Egypt to having this Aristotelian concept of some infinite God. So you take them in small steps, and one of those steps is you give him a temple, and you dress the priests in these beautiful garments so they look beautiful. And then you say, and we don’t want any ugliness on the bima today, because again, we are dealing with the Hamon. 

So he says, the multitude does not estimate man by his true form, but by the perfection of his bodily limbs and beauty of his garments. So whether Maimonides is an apologist or this is the true interpretation, it’s nice to note that there is someone out there of the stature of Maimonides who says, listen, this is our problem that we can’t see einu tsua tainu ha’amitut. We can’t see their beautiful essence. I think, Elias, you shared with me a story that you said was in the press a number of years ago. I mean, there is this stigma in the Talmud. It always says cheres shota ve katan. It links the deaf person to the ignorant, stupid person, dumb person, and a minor. All of them lack agency. And why don’t you tell us the story that happened in modern-day Israel? After all of the technologies we have to normalize people that have some of these impediments.

Elias Kabakov [00:12:54]: Right? Okay. I think you’re referring to the story about the deaf couple who went to the Rabbanut who wanted to get married. So that was about a little bit over 20 years ago. A deaf couple in Haifa went to the Rabbanut because they wanted to get married. And the ketubah they were offered was a ketubah that was similar to people who have developmental disabilities. And they weren’t happy about that because they were cognitively fine, this couple. And actually the Chatan, the groom, the man, he had just graduated Technion, which in Israel is the highest technological university in the country, a very high level and it was clearly not appropriate for him.

Today, fortunately, things have advanced and there is understanding and there are often deaf people. Deaf people are usually given a regular ketubah. And there also is actually today is a deaf rabbi who is a sign language who could be at the Rabbanut to accept the people as well, one in the country.

Geoffrey Stern [00:14:02]: So things have really, really progressed. And what you’re saying is, at least according to the Rabbanut, now the mashmaoot, the ramifications of a cheresh as it is in the Talmud, it’s understood that if you can sign and if you can communicate and if you can. There was a person in the group the day I came to visit you, Elias, who just got an MA. Did they say he was the first MA person for blind and deaf in the country?

Elias Kabakov [00:14:27]: Well, actually he was the first Deaf-Blind person who uses tactile sign language to get an MA. Uses tactile sign language. What’s the significance of it? In the class, if you’ve heard, you know, deaf people who go to university or colleges, they have a choice of using Afghani sign language interpreter or real-time captioning, someone typing what is being said in the lecture. And that’s the form of accessibility that they’re offered. Now a Deaf-Blind person can use, like you saw in our group, tactile sign language. Sign language that is used in the hands of a person, it can go at the same pace as speech. It’s all signing and fingerspelling and it’s not just spelling every word. Anyway, what I want to say is he is the first Deaf-Blind person who throughout his entire master’s degree he had tactile sign language interpreters in the class with him. And he was the first one who actually got an MA using that form of accessibility.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:33]: What was amazing to me that I learned with the tactile signing is not only is it amazing to watch one person signing and the other person has their hand over the signing and reads it, but you gainfully employ deaf people who know sign language to be able to communicate tactically with the other person. We’re really talking about empowering this community. Ken, I gotta believe when you talk about dealing with very young children, it’s at that moment that they’re given self-esteem and that you’re giving them the means to move forward in this world. You told me they’re too young to learn braille, so you just teach them to have a better sense of feeling things, touching things, moving things around, dexterity than normal kids. Talk to us a little bit about what you meant when you said whether it’s the music, whether it’s the food, whether it’s touch. How do you give these kids the extra skills they need and the self-esteem?

Kenneth Koslowe [00:16:35]: When you see our infants and children eat a meal at Elia, if they are blind, you will see that they actually dive into the food on purpose. We have them feel the feel. We have different textures. Now if they’re partially sighted or if they can see, we may use different colors. But for the blind, we use different textures of food, and we actually have them feel it. We’re not going to have them, we’re not going to waste time.

Teach them to use a spoon at the beginning. We want them to know what is a tomato, what is a carrot. Now how do they do it? They do it with their fingers. We want them to teach them. Look, I mentioned once that during the beginning of COVID, when people were wearing masks, I found that my hearing dropped tremendously because I couldn’t see people’s lips. I found out, much to my surprise—it shouldn’t have been—that I actually hear with my eyes, and I also see with my ears, and I see with my fingers. So, we’re teaching them to utilize these senses to improve the brain.

By the way, when we describe something to a blind person, if I were to describe a visual stimulus to a blind person, brain testing has shown that areas in the brain that are connected to visual imagery are activated. Now, how can a person who was blind from birth have visual imagery? I don’t ask that question anymore. I just know that that part of the brain works when it’s tied into their fingers. So, is that the visual imagery that I have? No, but it’s visual imagery. So, they’re seeing with their fingers. They have to be taught to use their fingers, to use their ears. This is a process, and the earlier we start, the more natural it becomes. And that’s what we’re doing.

The meals, everything. When the physical therapist works with these children, working the different limbs, they are working with them to improve, again, their sense of where they are, their internal imagery, which is also part. The very first thing that an infant organizes is their body, and then they project that out into space. So, we have to work on the image, the self-image, in order to allow them. We also introduce them to guide dogs. Now, they’re too young to use a guide dog, but we introduce them to the fact that there is such a thing as a guide dog, that there is a stick, a special cane that blind people use. Now, they can’t really use it, but they get to know it. They have to be acclimated. We want to give them the tools to succeed later on.

Well, here’s an example. When one of our graduates appeared on a TV program, “The Secret World of Five Year Olds,” he was with a bunch of other five-year-olds. They went into a kindergarten, they just had the kids talk, and one boy asked our graduate, “Can you help me find this?” And the boy, our graduate said, “Well, actually, see, I don’t really see well. I can’t help you do it. I may not be able to see well, but I know how to be a good friend.” He knew what he could do, but he knew what he had. He knew what he had gained. So, that’s the type of thing we want. We want to give them the self-confidence to not see what they can’t do, but to see what they can do. And that’s what we work on constantly.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:32]: Amazing.

Kenneth Koslowe [00:19:33]: Disabled, abled in different areas. They are actually super-abled in other areas.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:39]: So, as I said, when I was sitting with Elias’s group in the circle, I was feeling that I had to learn more. You’re talking about the very young Elias. Tell us about your program to take what you’re learning from the adults that you deal with for the elderly, who ultimately, a high percentage of them lose their sight, lose their hearing, and have to, at a much later age, learn what Ken was just talking about. What do you do when you can’t read lips anymore, so forth and so on?

Elias Kabakov [00:20:10]: Right. Okay. Yeah. A relatively newer program that we started in our center only about two years ago is for people who all their lives were hearing and sighted, and at the age—the average age of 75, which is young today—they have deafblindness. This is mainly a combination of the common eye diseases that older people have, whether it’s AMD or other ones, in combination with the natural hearing loss that 50 to 70% of the population at that age also has. So, they find themselves in situations where they are similar to deafblind people, who we only knew were younger until this point. And the numbers are growing exponentially because people are living longer. 

What we’ve found is that using technology for these people, and teaching them how to use technology in whatever way, is very, very successful. The stigma of elderly people not using technology is… well, we completely, let’s say we prove that it’s almost irrelevant. People can also enjoy and use technology even if they’re not the ones who are typing or not the ones who are using the mouse. Or they can ask other people to contact other people that they need in whatever they need, whether it’s social networks or however they need to do it through other people using technology, who know how to use the technology. Or they themselves can use, if they have residual hearing, use speech and amplification or any other possible technology for people who are visually impaired.

Geoffrey Stern [00:22:13]: So you’re really launching this now. And this is…

Elias Kabakov [00:22:17]: Yes. And we found an estimated 10 to 15,000 people in the country who have this type of deafblindness. And so it’s a huge, huge number.

Geoffrey Stern [00:22:32]: So, I find that all amazing in that on both ends, we, those of us who are blessed with hearing and sight, have so much to learn about what the human being is capable of, what we’re capable of. It’s inspiring and should be brought back into the community. I think that’s the best way of making sure it’s not a stigma when people who have these skills are shown as part of our community. So, I did a search and I was totally surprised by what I…

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:02]: found in the Nevi’im, in the Prophets talking about blindness and deafness. It seems to be high there on the scorecard for signs of the redemption. In Jeremiah, it says, “I will bring them in from the northland, gather them from the ends of the earth, the blind and the lame among them, and I will bring them streams of water.” I just thought it was amazing. And again, we mentioned before that it’s used as a metaphor as well as a reality. 

But what really blew me away, and I’m not one to say, “Ugh, the prophets are able to look into the future and prophesy about the future.” But listen to what Yishayahu (Isaiah)says. He says in that day, meaning in the future, at the redemption, “the deaf shall hear even written words.” What he’s saying is that we will have the technologies so that…

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:03]: the deaf will hear things that previously a hearing person couldn’t hear. And the eyes of the blind shall see even in the darkness and obscurity. I mean, if you were one who believed in the prophetic ability of our prophets to predict the future of technologies, this is a great case. To me, it’s just a very forward-looking statement of what’s possible, which is what we’ve been talking about this whole half hour—whether it’s new…

Geoffrey Stern [00:24:33]: technologies or new understandings in the new State of Israel. We are able to have deaf people use technologies so they can hear books talk, they can read braille, they can have sign. It’s just fascinating to me that most of the statements that I found, and if you look in the Seafaria notes, there are some amazing Midrashim that talk about what the blind and the deaf can say. It’s so positive. And the fact that in places like Hammurabi’s code, the…

Geoffrey Stern [00:25:03]: only time that it mentions the deaf is when it talks about when you incur damage to somebody or you’re cursed by the gods. So, I just, I invite everyone who’s interested in Talmudic and biblical references to look at the source sheet. But what I want to do as we close is I really want to get your personal stories, how you got to this place. And I found it so inspiring when you shared it with me that I think our listeners would be interested, too.

So, Ken, why don’t you tell us about your journey?

Geoffrey Stern [00:25:34]: To where you are today.

Kenneth Koslowe [00:25:36]: Well, my journey started really when I finished optometry school and I specialized in children’s vision back in New York City. At the time, I don’t know if anyone remembers it, but there was a very young journalist named Geraldo Rivera who blew apart a story called the Willowbrook Scandal. There was a terrible institution, a center for children with developmental delays or retardation. It was a horror story, like from the Middle Ages. When the parents sued New York State and the court case was decided, the judge listed the rights of children in these facilities. He noted that all children who needed glasses must have them, not realizing that no one was examining their eyes.

Well, I was a young optometrist at that time, looking for some Parnasa, some employment, and I became the consultant for New York City and Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, examining all these children. That’s how I got involved with what we would call special, unique populations. When I moved to Israel, I continued that work. I did some work with Aleh in Bnei Brak, which deals with multiple handicaps.

As I was continuing my university work and research, I specialized in children’s vision. A friend of mine said, “Look, Kenny, I know that you are looking to retire from university. There’s a place that’s looking for someone, actually for you, but they don’t know you exist.” That was how I got to Eliya They were looking for an academic educator with experience in children’s vision, and they were five minutes away from my house, but we never met. So, I ended up at Eliya at the tail end of my career. 

It’s been exciting, interesting, thrilling, and expanding. It’s been a challenge, which I didn’t really expect to have at my advanced age. But it’s been a joy to work with people who love children, work with children, and can move children from one place to another, from where they are to where we want them to be.

Geoffrey Stern [00:27:44]: Thank you, Elias.

Elias Kabakov [00:27:47]: So, anyway, when I was 26 in the United States, I was hired to come to Israel to start the center for Deafblind Persons. I’ll backtrack a little. When I was 18, at the University of Maryland, I was just a student living off-campus. Someone in the apartment taught a sign language course in the living room. I took the course and was actually the worst in the class. Over time, I excelled.

Elias Kabakov [00:28:17]: I went to Gallaudet College, a liberal arts college for deaf people. Everyone was deaf, except for me and a few others. It was a whole new world, everything was in sign language. I learned about deaf culture, and it gave me the incentive. When I finished my degrees, I was hired at 26 to start the center for Deafblind Persons in Israel.

Elias Kabakov [00:28:48]: The situation for deafblind people in 1989 was primitive; there were no services for deafblind adults. We started with a social rehabilitation club and moved on to creating other services. We teach technology and computers. We have a service called SSP – a support service provider, who describes the environment to the deafblind person wherever they are, whether at a supermarket, wedding, or home. This started as a pilot project, now adopted and funded by the state.

Elias Kabakov [00:29:19]: Most of our projects have moved from an idea to state funding, benefitting the entire population. I learned to believe in the expression that Israelis deserve things, not as charity but as a right. We teach them to demand the services they deserve, making us equals. Much like we expect services from a bank, this expectation is normal for our services.

Elias Kabakov [00:29:49]: We aim to provide sign language interpreters, SSPs, and other services not as favors but as deserved rights. This approach has led many to succeed. We often discuss accessibility, an important topic perhaps for another podcast. Accessibility enhances control over one’s environment, ensuring they are informed about what’s being communicated.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:34]: Amen. I think both of you are fortunate, lucky, and inspirational in that your professions and Zionism converge. How lucky and what a merit that is. You’ve made Aliyah, you’re passionate Zionists, contributing to the state you came to. It’s amazing and very inspirational. Thank you.

Kenneth Koslowe [00:32:06]: Thank you, Geoffrey, for giving us this opportunity.

Geoffrey Stern [00:32:10]: Ken, I want to know whether you’re willing to do a bonus for our listeners about your dad and the Rosenbergs.

Kenneth Koslowe [00:32:20]: Sure. When my father graduated from the Yeshiva University Seminary in 1942 as a young rabbi, he became a rabbi in Westchester County, seeking work beyond his small shul. He became a chaplain at Sing Sing Prison. In 1952, he had two famous prisoners, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He was their chaplain and confidant.

Kenneth Koslowe [00:32:52]: Though there’s no confessional in Judaism, whatever they said was private. He was with them during their last moments and helped arrange the adoption of their two boys. Our families remained close. The boys stayed in contact with my parents. The Rosenbergs’ granddaughter recently interviewed my mother for a documentary about her parents.

My personal take on what happened is probably over the years, probably Julius had done something, but it is entirely likely that Ethel did nothing other than be loyal to her husband. As a matter of fact, my father decided he had to decide who would go first, and he decided that Julius would go first in the hopes that when Julius was gone, Ethel, being only the mother of two children, would be orphans, would give something up that would allow them to delay her execution. 

The most unusual anecdote is that the original time for the execution was Friday night. My father, with the help of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, drafted a position that it would violate Jewish law to execute them on the Sabbath, so they should delay it till Saturday night. Because he said, even if you gain them one extra day, in Judaism that’s considered a mitzvah. Of course, he didn’t count on the fact that the judge was Jewish and not particularly religious.

So what did the judge do? He didn’t move it away to Saturday night. He moved it earlier on Friday so it wouldn’t violate the Sabbath. So that’s where my father was on that Friday. And that Friday happened to be my older brother’s birthday. So instead of my brother’s birthday party, he had to attend the execution. 

But again, the Rosenberg case is unusual. In the annals of Judaism and the United States, the only two civilians to be executed in peacetime were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. It has never happened before, never happened since. And does the fact that they were Jewish have anything to do with that? Well, I will leave that to other people, but my personal viewpoint, without a doubt, it had something to do with it. 

It was a time when being Jewish was not all that popular, sort of like today, how things change and how they don’t change. So again, the Rosenbergs were linked to my father. When my father passed away, there was a big article in the New York Times, a big obituary, which would have made him very angry because the guy who wrote the obituary wrote Rabbi Irving Kozlow, the rabbi who gave the Rosenbergs last rites. Now, of course, we don’t have last rites. That was it. He got that whole thing. So we were linked to them forever. Every number of books been written by people may mention my father. And that was it.

Speaker A: Amazing, amazing story. How old were you when this happened?

Speaker B: I was… when this happened. I was, like, too young to be. I was like 4 years old, 5 years old when they were executed. And I was a little bit angry later on because we were followed by the G Men because a communist newspaper wrote fabricated an interview with my father. He wasn’t allowed to talk as a state employee. And so we were investigated by the FBI to see if my parents were spies. And here I was, followed by the G Men. And I didn’t even know it. But that was it. It was a very different time in American life. And it’s sort of unique. 

My father had two congregations. One is a congregation in America, New York. And the other was the congregation in Sing Sing. Two slightly different populations.

Speaker A: Amazing. Well, thanks so much. That truly was a bonus. Elias, what do you think? That was a bonus, wasn’t it?

Speaker C: Yes, definitely.

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. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

This week’s Parashat is Achrei Mot Kedoshim. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is prime in it, and it’s often viewed through the lens of Christianity, which popularized it, and not through Leviticus, where it originated. We fix that flaw today with the help of books recently published by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and Shai Held. They challenge us to see biblical love in a new way.

We take the challenge with surprising and unforeseen results through the thought of John Rawls, described as one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century. So join us for the politics of love. It is kind of interesting. Love is in the air. Rabbi Riskin published a book that just came out, “Judaism: A Love Story,” and Shai Held, as we’ve discussed before, came out with a major book last year called “Judaism is About Love” Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life.”

So given that, there is no way we could read that iconic “Love your neighbor as yourself” and not read it all over again, and that’s what we’re kind of going to do today. I mean, both of the books, in their own way, celebrate God’s love for his people or humanity, but they also talk about the obligations of loving him back. So that kind of challenges us to look at love through a completely new lens, through the sources. And that’s what we love to do at Madlik, look at the sources. Right.

Adam Mintz [2:24 – 2:30]: And this is the week, right? Like you said, this is the real source of that verse.

Geoffrey Stern [2:30 – 4:25]: Absolutely. It’s amazing how many people you meet who think that “Love your neighbor as yourself” comes from the New Testament. It almost overshadowed where the source is, but the source is very clear. We’re in Leviticus 19:9, and we’re going to read it in context. All of a sudden, we’re in the book of Leviticus. We leave behind sacrifices, laws of purity, and we start talking about moral, ethical, even economic practices that one had to keep.

So in verse nine, it says, when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. So all of a sudden, we’re starting to focus on those individuals in need. I am your God.

You shall not steal. You shall not deal deceitfully or falsely with one another. Here it uses with people of your nation. You shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God. I am God. Notice it’s not just simply swearing falsely, like saying, “Oh, God, I did that.” It’s in the context of other people. You shall not defraud your fellow. You shall not commit robbery. The wages of a laborer shall not remain with you until morning.

You shall not insult the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind. You shall fear your God. I am God. So it has these little things about God is important, but it’s in the context of not acting in a dishonorable manner to your fellow man. Right.

Adam Mintz [4:25 – 4:31]: Now, that’s important that each one of these verses ends, “I am God.” Right. That’s also fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [4:31 – 5:35]: Yes. You shall not render an unfair decision. The word used is mishpat. Do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich. Judge your kin fairly. Do not deal basely with members of your people. Do not profit by the blood of your fellow Israelite. I am God.

You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Here it’s using re’echa. Reprove your kin, but incur no guilt on their account. You got to warn somebody about doing something wrong before they do it, but don’t do it in such a way that either makes him a blatant sinner or in any way compromises him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. And then it says, “Love your fellow as yourself. I am God.” You clearly cannot take this iconic verse by itself. It is in a heavy context. How would you characterize the context, Rabbi?

Adam Mintz [5:35 – 5:52]: Well, it’s as you know, the Parashat Kedoshim. Leviticus, chapter 19 is the ethical and moral code. It’s about how to deal with one another, and it kind of culminates in “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But this is the ethical code of the Torah.

Geoffrey Stern [5:54 – 7:42]: Yeah, absolutely. And it combines very practical, I think, things of being honest and doing the right thing and paying your worker. Very mercantile things. Swearing in a court of law with these highfalutin things like love and hate. But I do think that even just bringing in the hate part of it, it gives you a little bit of a sense of what we’re talking about. We are clearly not talking about romantic love, Rabbi. So the question is, what kind of love are we talking about?

So let’s give a little more flavor to some of these verses. Rashi talks about “Do not put a stumbling block before the blind.” This implies, do not give a person who is “blind” in a matter, advice which is improper for him. Do not say, “Sell your land, buy from the proceeds of the sale an ass.” So the point is, when somebody comes to you for objective advice, you shouldn’t pretend to be giving them objective advice, but ultimately deceiving them with ulterior motives.

The motive becomes very important. Here it says, you shall be afraid of thy God. Because in this case, it is not given to human beings to know whether the intention of this man, the offender, was for the advantage or the disadvantage of the person whom he advised. So there’s a little bit of mind game. You have to act and you have to think in terms of equanimity. If somebody asks you for advice, you have to give them fair advice. You can’t take advantage of them. I found that fascinating.

Adam Mintz [7:42 – 7:54]: Equanimity. There’s also this idea of the difference between God and humans. God knows the secrets. We as humans can’t know the secrets. So we need that equanimity. Right.

Geoffrey Stern [7:54 – 7:55]: That’s also.

Adam Mintz [7:55 – 8:04]: That’s what. It’s God’s ethical code. We can only do as long as we can do as human beings.

Geoffrey Stern [8:05 – 9:39]: Yeah. And I think the idea is this fear of God is an amazing tool because it says, don’t think that there’s not some greater being who knows where your thoughts are and knows what you’re doing.

So then there’s a little bit of a surprise here. It says, thou shall not respect the person of the indigent. You know, you expect it. It says, don’t favor the rich. You weren’t expecting it to say, don’t favor the poor. That to me is absolutely fascinating and very, I would say, modern in terms of thought. You shall not say, says Rashi, “This is a poor man, and the rich man has in any case the duty of supporting him. I will find in favor of him, the poor man, and he will consequently obtain the sum support of a respectable fashion.” Don’t start doing all of these calculations and that you can basically bend the law in order to be a do-gooder.

You cannot go ahead and make those meta-arguments. You’ve got to do right by everybody. And of course, it says, when it comes to honoring the person of the mighty, you shall not say, “This is a rich man or this man is of great noble descent. He has Yichus. How can I possibly put him to shame?” The idea is you have to treat everybody equal. And by everybody, it really does mean everybody.

Speaker A: It’s both the powerful and the poor. And you could find reasons to kind of put the finger on the scale for either one. You can’t do that. I found that fascinating.

Adam Mintz [9:39 – 9:41]: That is absolutely fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [9:41 – 10:32]: So the interesting thing is that we know that loving your neighbor as yourself is a biggie. And we might have thought it was like I said in the introduction because it’s in the New Testament. But the truth is, even in our own texts, Rabbi Akiva says this is a fundamental, fundamental principle of the Torah. Zeh klal gadol b’Torah doesn’t say that about every commandment. There’s almost a sense that this one little phrase has overarching importance. And Rabbi, you know, you could say that, oh, we’re just cherry-picking here. But I clearly do believe that from this statement of Rabbi Akiva, you have a leg to stand on to say, this is truly a momentous statement.

Adam Mintz [10:32 – 10:55]: Yeah. Now, zeh klal gadol b’Torah doesn’t mean that this is the most important law in the Torah. You know, the Torah doesn’t distinguish between important and not. This is a fundamental principle of the Torah. It means all of the ethical code kind of revolves around this idea that you have to treat other people the way we treat ourselves.

Geoffrey Stern [10:56 – 13:24]: I love that. I couldn’t agree more. And I’ll go even a little bit further. A klal gadol is almost not only a fundamental principle, but if you’re thinking in terms of creating a constitution or if you’re thinking in terms of structuring a society, this is a klal gadol. This is an overriding principle.

So it’s not just simply of importance. As you said a second ago from the social aspect, it is a fundamental rule that has to be followed throughout. I think you’re absolutely right there. So the next question becomes the words. In Hebrew, it says, we know what ahavah means. It means love. Re’acha is your fellow. Kamocha means like you, but it adds a preposition there. It says, you shall honor your fellow as yourself.

And so we’re going to look at a few of the commentaries to see how they struggle with that. The Ibn Ezra says that there are many people who just ignore it. They go, you know, they threw in a lamed. Not a big deal. But he says, I believe that l’reacha is to be taken literally. That is, the lamed of l’reacha, thy neighbor, is not superfluous.

Its meaning is that one should love that which is good for one’s neighbor as he does for himself. So again, by putting the “to” the neighbor, it takes away the personal relationship with your neighbor. It’s not saying you’re doing something to the neighbor. It says you have to do something that is good for your neighbor. Another of the commentaries says, it means your neighbor’s welfare.

So it’s the good of your neighbor, it’s the welfare of your neighbor. Now we’re talking about not so much loving the neighbor as a person, but loving the principle or what the neighbor needs or wants or has coming to him. And I think that’s kind of fascinating. Again, from what we were saying a second ago. If you’re building a constitution and you’re building a society, it’s much more important to say no. Everybody, we want you to all love each other as opposed to no, no, no. I’m talking about particular things here. The le makes it talking about things, whether it’s their welfare or their good.

Adam Mintz [13:25 – 13:42]: I mean, that is a great Ibn Ezra. You have to love reiaka. You have to love the principle, not only love your neighbor but love the principle. That’s also a moral and ethical code, that you have to love the action, not just the person. Fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [13:43 – 15:38]: So Nachmanides, he starts by saying something really cool. He says, love thy neighbor as thyself. This is an expression by way of overstatement. For a human heart is not able to accept a command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. He starts by saying, if you take this literally, it’s literally impossible. There’s no way that it could actually mean that you have to value another’s life over your own.

And he brings, again, Rabbi Akiva showing up a lot in today’s discussion. But he brings a famous Talmud of Rabbi Akiva where two people are walking in the desert. There’s a bottle of water. Only one can survive. His ruling, Rabbi Akiva’s ruling is if the water is yours, you have to drink, you survive. Because chayecha kodem, your life comes before the other one’s life.

So he is going to follow this whole trend of thought and say, so what does it mean if it can’t mean this exaggeration? He says, so a “to” or “for” your neighbor is teaching that which is good for your neighbor you should love as if it were good for yourself. Again, they’re playing on the le. It’s not as if you have to literally love your neighbor, but you have to treat that which is good for you as good for your neighbor.

It’s in a way, Rabbi, and we’re going to get into this when we get into John Rawls, is how do you know what to do? I’m giving you a tool. You can evaluate what’s good for you and project it onto your neighbor. …. It’s the best way for you to decide how do I deal with this situation? How do I deal with this person?

Adam Mintz [15:38 – 15:59]: Fantastic. You know, you think about it. What could it have said? It could have said, come over. Love the neighbor as yourself. But l’reacha, to the neighbor. It’s really a great point that you see, that’s why we learned the medieval commentators, because they pick up that extra letter that turns the whole verse around.

Geoffrey Stern [15:59 – 18:40]: Yeah, yeah. And, and, and he even starts talking about, you know, how sometimes we want to help our neighbor. You know, I want Adam to be smart, but not smarter than me. I want him to be rich, but not richer than me. So here, what you’re trying to do, and this is affecting how you think.

So we are talking about emotions here. But you have to get over this kind of sense and many of the commentaries, Rabbi, bring all of this discussion back to the Ten Commandments, the commandment not to be jealous, lo tachmod. And the whole idea is you need this as a tool to bring yourself to literally wish for your fellow what you wish for yourself. And I think that’s fascinating.

Now, one thing I started by saying is that I think if I would characterize Shai Held when he says that the love that we all associate with Christianity not only comes from Judaism but plays a big role in Judaism. I think he’s really talking about the emotion of love.

And what I want to say a little bit today is slightly different. And that is that the way I would characterize love that we read in the context of paying your worker on time, in terms of not swearing an oath in a court case, about leaving the corners of your field, is really a love that has to do more with doing the right thing, with tzedek.

And I think if you look at our Psalms and you look at your prayers, you can see that there is a strong connection between love and doing the right thing. In Tehillim, in Psalms 33, it says, Ohev tzedakah u’mishpat. He loves what is right and just, again, talking about God. And I think there’s an association with God, as we said before, that God loves tzedek. This is the love we’re talking about here. We on the Upper West Side have a congregation that’s called Ohev Tzedek. Love tzedek.

Well, that comes from a prayer, a part of the Shmona Esrei. In the Shmona Esrei, we say, restore our judges as before, we talk about bringing back the judges, and it ends with the blessing, Baruch Ata Hashem, Melech, Ohev tzedakah u’mishpat. There is this passionate love for doing the right thing. And I think if you miss that in v’ahavta l’re’acha kamocha, you’re really missing out on it. And I think, you know, the shul.

Adam Mintz [18:40 – 18:43]: That I grew up in is called Ohev Shalom.

Geoffrey Stern [18:44 – 18:44]: So here you go.

Adam Mintz [18:44 – 18:49]: It’s Ohev tzedakah u’mishpat.

And it’s also, oh, ohev shalom, the lover of peace.

Geoffrey Stern [18:49 – 21:49]: And I think that kind of bears into what this re’ah means. It’s the other. It might be your neighbor next door, but I think from the commentaries we’ve just looked at, it also means the principle of your neighbor. Just as ohev shalom and ohev tzedek is loving justice and loving peace, we’re loving our other. I think that puts it in a very nice category and characterizes what we’re trying to get at here.

So I thought for a second, I want to look quickly at the New Testament only because I think it was written at the time of the rabbinics, and many of the traditions that they were quoting were either a step away from our tradition or actually was another way of preserving our traditions. So in Matthew, chapter seven, it says, do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. We have a word for that. It’s called mida k’neged mida. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when all the time there is a plank in your eye, you hypocrite?

So the next thing that he brings in is, don’t be a hypocrite. Don’t be someone who is false to the other. And then it goes on and says, ask and it will be given to you. Seek it and you will find. I think we’ve heard about that before. It’s called yaga’ata u’matzata tamin. These are rabbinic sayings that come right from our tradition. Knock and the door will be opened for everyone who asks receives. And the one who seeks finds. And to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? So now we’re talking about, in a society, people are able to receive and to give. And if somebody asks for something, the point is you give him what he’s asking for.

And then it goes on to say, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him? So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you. This sums up the law and the prophets. So Matthew does two things. He quotes Rabbi Akiva saying, this is a klal gadol in the Torah. He says, this sums up the laws and the prophets. He quotes, do unto others as they would do unto you. But again, Rabbi, there’s a part of this that has to do with adjudicating between people, doing the right thing, and not being a hypocrite. And then there’s the gifting element. And that is going to become fascinating.

Adam Mintz [21:49 – 22:23]: Let me just tell you one thing about Matthew. Do unto others what you would have them do to you. For this sums up the law and the prophets. Rabbi Akiva said zeh klal gadol batorah. And this is an important principle; it doesn’t sum up everything. This is important. But in Christianity, they rejected all the ritual law. This is it. This sums up the law and the prophets. This is all that there is. So there’s a little bit of a difference between Matthew and Rabbi Akiva, which is the difference between Judaism and Christianity. And that’s what Shai Held talks about in his book.

Geoffrey Stern [22:23 – 23:51]: It could be. We can’t put too much on the English translation of the Greek, which was probably, who knows? But there are differences. But what’s amazing is there are so many similarities that you can see. They’re all kind of playing with the same tradition and talking to people who knew these traditions. So in Luke, it says, if someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you. And if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do unto others what you would have them do to you, Rabbi. There’s a lot about giving and taking and gifting here, and that to me is fascinating.

I am going to move ahead a little bit to Rabbi Riskin’s book. He talks about the word ahava, and he says that the root is hav, H-A-V. It’s hey vav. Hav is the imperative form of the Hebrew root yud, hey vav, a less common synonym for the root nun, tav, nun, to give. Natan and hav are related. So Rabbi Riskin makes sense that ahava is talking about giving. He talks about Rachel in Genesis asking God to give her a son, a child. He quotes Jastrow, who at length talks about how it is used in Aramaic as well.

Adam Mintz [23:51 – 24:04]: I think that’s an interesting word. I remember Rabbi Riskin talking about this 40 years ago, 50 years ago, maybe. On the topic, it’s an interesting word, yah, because it’s in Aramaic, but it has its root in Hebrew.

Geoffrey Stern [24:04 – 25:43]: But what’s amazing is it says to give. And Rabbi Riskin does not reference the New Testament, but the words that we just said from Matthew and especially Luke are all about giving and taking and deserving and seeking and finding. It’s kind of fascinating. It helps us understand these traditions. But the takeaway is the idea provides a new meaning to what Rabbi Akiva declares, says Rabbi Riskin, that the greatest biblical commandment is, you shall love your fellow human being like yourself. I am the Lord of love.

If the essence of God indeed is love, and the essence of love is giving to others, then it follows that every human being created in the image of God must try in some way to help other human beings. This will automatically create a more perfect world in which every human being loves and gives to others. I thought that this, Rabbi Riskin, was fascinating because again, it takes us down this pathway that we’ve been going. Yes, it’s doing the right thing. Yes, it’s judging. But as we saw in the New Testament, also, it’s also about giving, giving to the other person what they need.

And this concept that God will provide, that we live in a world that ultimately we need to make sure that the lowest and highest amongst us all have the basic needs in order to live, and that is the love of God. I found this fascinating in the context.

Adam Mintz [25:43 – 25:48]: Of after meetings is always great in terms of his formulations. This is a great formulation.

Geoffrey Stern [25:49 – 26:32]: So Shai Held has a whole chapter on love your neighbor as yourself. And if those of you who are listening to this podcast, the Shai Held book is a gigantic book. The Rabbi Riskin book is a love. It goes through all of the holidays in the Jewish calendar. It talks about how they all manifest God’s love for the people of Israel and humanity and obligate us to love each other back in that regard. But the Shai Held book, Rabbi, I almost think it’s not a book. It’s a sefer. You can open up and read four pages and put it away and think about that for a few days and then come back.

Adam Mintz [26:32 – 26:36]: It’s like a resource book for a course, for a year-long course.

Geoffrey Stern [26:36 – 27:06]: Absolutely. So this is just a little taste. But he asks, so what kind of love is the Torah talking about? Can we really love the other as much as we love ourselves? Even if it were possible, would it be desirable for us to do so? He talks about concepts like emotional agency. In other words, the question is, can I command love, Rabbi? Can I command hate? He brings examples of, you know, if somebody gets angry a lot, we look

Geoffrey Stern [27:06 – 27:37]: at them and we say there’s something wrong with them. So we do demand that people are in control of their emotions. So he says the flip side of that is we should be able to agree that someone who is loving and acts in a loving manner is something that you can be praised for. So, yes, there is emotional agency. He talks about what this can possibly mean. And what I would like to do in

Geoffrey Stern [27:37 – 28:08]: the few minutes that we have is go in a totally different direction than he goes. And even then, Rabbi Riskin goes. Although there’s part of Riskin in this. There was a great 20th-century philosopher named John Rawls.

And John Rawls really wrote an ethics and a philosophy that came up against what was everybody believed in utilitarianism. Utilitarianism’s ethical theory proposes that actions are morally right if they promote the greatest happiness or utility for the greatest number of people.

Geoffrey Stern [28:08 – 28:38]: So if 90% of the people are happy, we have a wonderful society. And what Rawls says is, there’s something wrong with that because it doesn’t care and it doesn’t focus on those who are left out. What he did was he created, just like I said a second ago, loving your neighbor as yourself is a wonderful tool that we can use to try to figure out, am I doing the right thing? He created an amazing tool.

Geoffrey Stern [28:38 – 29:09]: And what the tool was is it’s called the original position. You have to go behind the veil of ignorance. Rabbi, when you start a society, a community, everybody has to go behind that veil of ignorance. They have no knowledge about who they are. They don’t know if they’re rich. They don’t know if they’re poor. They don’t know if they’re smart, they don’t know if they’re stupid. They don’t know if they come from a good family or a bad family. They don’t know their ethnicity.

Geoffrey Stern [29:09 – 29:40]: They don’t even know what their philosophy is. They don’t know if they’re a Hasid or a Presbyterian. And they have to be able to decide on a world that they would want to live in not knowing if they’re going to come out rich or come out poor. That changes everything. Rabbi, because on the one hand, you might say, I want a society where if you’re willing to be an entrepreneur and take chances, you can succeed. But it might also mean that if you’re born without any chance or tools to become successful, there is what they call that net that can save you because, oh, for the love of God, it might be you.

Geoffrey Stern [29:40 – 30:10]: It’s a fascinating tool to be able to determine what the just society is. And, what’s fascinating about it is that he believes that every society should do this. It’s not a universal law. He came out of the American tradition of a constitution and the Constitutional Congress. So your people, if you’re starting a group, you have to come up with this.

Geoffrey Stern [30:10 – 30:41]: And every so often you have to re-go over it and say, are we there? And what that theory made me think about when I said you love your neighbor as yourself is, first of all, this whole way point, is it another Jew or is it anybody? The answer to this is it’s someone who’s part of your community. It might be only other Jews. It might be Jews and Druze. It might be the people who are living in your country who have decided we’re living together. And you don’t know whether you’re going to be born as a Jew or a Druze. You’ve got to make the right society.

Geoffrey Stern [30:41 – 31:12]: It says Kamocha. The whole idea, the Ibn Ezra said that we have to create this concept of another. It’s a thought game. And I think that you can look at v’ahavta l’reacha kamocha as a klal gadol, as John Rawls did in creating a just society. And I think, again, one of the things that he said is, and it’s not a new idea. We’ve heard of the Golden Rule. You find walking in somebody else’s shoes in every society. You find dan l’kav zchut that you have to judge somebody as if you would have them judge you in every society.

Geoffrey Stern [31:12 – 31:43]: But I think what he did and I think what our Torah did, is they made it into a klal gadol. They took a very short sentence and said, this is the measuring stick that you need to use when you create your society. And for me, this really changed the way I looked at this. What could be pithy and trite, little ethical thought away. That’s great.

Adam Mintz [31:59 – 32:11]: So we have Rabbi Riskin and we have Shai Heldand we have John Rawls. We really have a whole spectrum of understanding. Back. Rabbi Akiva, what it means. This is fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [32:11 – 32:17]: Shabbat shalom. Next week I will be in Israel, and I will hopefully be able to talk to you from there.

Adam Mintz [32:18 – 32:21]: Looking forward. Fantastic. Shabbat shalom, everybody.

Geoffrey Stern [32:21 – 32:22]: Shabbat shalom.

Adam Mintz [32:24 – 32:24]: Ra.

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. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s Parasha is Tazria-Metzora.

The book of Leviticus introduces the laws of personal purity with the laws of childbirth, and we explore the unique perspective that the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic sources have on gender and sex. So join us for the “Second Sex.” A few weeks ago, we did a personal care episode. It’s only natural that we should do a sex episode. It was bound to happen. You know, I was thinking back to our rabbi, Rabbi Riskin, and the lectures that he used to give at Lincoln Square Synagogue. Once, before Shmuli Boteach wrote a book that we might reference later called “Kosher Sex,” Rabbi Riskin gave a five-part series, I believe, on sex in the Bible. So we are following a good tradition.

Adam Mintz [1:58 – 2:04]: I remember those lectures. We all ran to listen to Rabbi Riskin.

Geoffrey Stern [2:04 – 4:43]: That’s right. It was a catchy title. So we are in Vayikra 12, and we have finished with the Laws of Sacrifices and we’re moving to the purity, the personal purity of human beings, of people. And it says, speak to the Israelite people. Thus, when a woman at childbirth it says, “isha ki tazria ve’yalda zachar,” bears a male, she shall be impure seven days, she shall be impure as at the time of a condition of menstrual separation.

In prior episodes, Rabbi, we’ve talked about why there is a difference when you have a girl child or a male child. But I just got stuck on the first word, which is the name of the parasha, “Tazria.” “Tazria” is kind of superfluous. It says when a woman gives birth, it could say “isha ki yalda zachar.” But it adds this extra word of “Tazria.” Fox, in his translation, says at childbirth, “Hebrew tazria” brings forth seed. “Zerah” is the seed of something.

If we go to Rashi, Rashi says, if a woman has conceived seed, Rabbi Simlai said, even as the formation took place after that of every cattle, beast, and fowl when the world was created, so too the law regarding him is set forth after the law regarding cattle, beast, and fowl that were in the previous chapters. So what they’re doing, Rabbi, is they’re saying, just as in Genesis, the creation of man, man and woman followed the creation of the animals, so too in Leviticus, the treatment of purity regarding men and women follows the treatment of animals.

But in so doing, they really link what we’re reading here today to what would be called “Maaseh Bereishit,” to Genesis creation, the genesis of human life. And I think that is kind of fascinating because we’re going to find that the rabbis focus on just this pasuk to talk about what is. Is it the seed of the male? Is it the egg of the woman? This is the pasuk that they use as a launching pad to discuss embryonics. It’s kind of interesting.

Adam Mintz [4:43 – 4:46]: Fantastic. Okay, I’m ready now.

Geoffrey Stern [4:46 – 6:33]: I noticed in Sefaria they introduced a new commentary maybe a year or two ago, and it’s called the Torah, a woman’s commentary. I look at it from time to time as I look at all of the other commentaries that we use. But I thought in this particular instance, I really should give it a hard and close look, because who better than women should be talking about the purity of woman, childbirth of women, the menstrual cycle?

So they write Hebrew “tazria,” which is the name of the parasha, the verb refers to a woman producing an offspring. They too go to Genesis 1:11. It means produce seed or bring forth seed. In that case, it’s regarding trees. The collective noun “zerah” from the same root refers to offspring when used for persons. We all know about “Zerah Amalek,” the seed, the children of Amalek, to seed when used in agricultural contexts.

And they bring examples of women where the word “zerah” is used. They notice that typically in the Bible, when it talks about “zerah,” as in “Zerah Amalek” and others, it’s a male-focused term, but the truth is, it is gender-neutral. Then it quotes Baruch Levine, one of the scholars that we’ve been quoting throughout the book of Leviticus, and it says he translates the clause with “tazria” as when a woman is inseminated.

That rendering, says this commentary by women, however, does not sufficiently highlight the active role of the woman in this parasha. So, Rabbi, let the games begin. We already have…

Adam Mintz [6:33 – 6:36]: Oh, that’s a very interesting little comment there.

Geoffrey Stern [6:36 – 7:07]: Well, it’s all here. What they’re pointing out is that we are talking about the purity status of human beings, or Israelites, if you will. And we start with a woman; that needs to be recognized. Number two, the woman is doing something. Something is happening to her. She is anything but passive in this regard. So I give them credit for pointing that out to us. And again, so many of the rules that have to do with personal purity…

Geoffrey Stern [7:07 – 7:38]: Relate to women. So I like where they focus us. I want to pick up for a second on this agricultural metaphor for “zerah.” In Psalms, it talks about letting men sprout up in towns like country grass. There is clearly an association of mankind growing, rebirthing, and sprouting that the Bible loves to use.

In Ezekiel, where it’s talking about the politics of the state of the Israelites, and it talks about when you dwell on your own soil and they defile their ways and their deeds, that you became like impure, like a menstruous woman. It makes the association between perverting the soil and menstruation. It talks about that my wrath is on you…

Geoffrey Stern [7:38 – 8:08]: And you become scattered, scattered amongst the nations. Here, interestingly, “scattered amongst the nations,” Rabbi, is “vayizrub’aritzot” k’dar kam. You are sown like seeds around the world. That’s the metaphor of sowing one’s seed, so to speak. On the flip side, when we come back to the land of Israel, it says, then you will dwell in the land that I gave your ancestors, and you shall be my people, I will be your God.

Geoffrey Stern [8:39 – 9:09]: And when I have delivered you from all your impurity, I will summon the grain and make it abundant, and I will not bring famine upon you. So not so much is the focus today on just having food to eat; it’s the rebirth, the regrowth on the land using agricultural motifs. My favorite is the prayer when we say in the Shmone Esrei three times a day, “mechalkel chayim bechesed.” This

Geoffrey Stern [9:09 – 9:40]: Is the prayer that has to do with rebirth. It has to do with the dead coming alive. But it has in it this amazing phrase of “Umatzmiach Yeshua,” which is to give deliverance should sprout like a plant. So I think that this concept of giving seed, planting seed, and a woman giving birth is not only a continuation of Genesis,

Geoffrey Stern [9:40 – 10:10]: But it’s also a continuation of the future and the potential to be redeemed. So I’m setting the stakes very high as we look at this one verse, and we try to understand how the rabbis understood this sense of birth and what it means, where the impurity comes from, possibly the difference between having a boy or a girl.

So what are your thoughts before we start delving into the minutia?

Adam Mintz [10:10 – 10:33]: Talk about. Right. I mean, the fact that it makes it into the liturgy shows how fundamental. And it doesn’t only make it into the liturgy; it makes it into the liturgy in the first two blessings of the Amidah. So I think umatz miyakishua, you’re right. The deliverance to sprout forth. That’s an amazing phrase. So that’s great that we start off that way.

Geoffrey Stern [10:34 – 11:04]: Fantastic. So the Ibn Ezra work focuses on ishaqi tasriya, a woman be delivered. That’s an interesting translation right there. But he says, after Scripture concludes the law of clean and unclean food, it deals with human uncleanliness. The Torah starts its regulations of human uncleanliness with the woman who gives birth because human life begins at birth. And I would say human birth begins with women.

Geoffrey Stern [11:04 – 11:35]: Many say that if the woman produces the seed first before the male, then she gives birth to a male. However, when the male produces the seed first, the result is a female. We will get to Rabbi Riskin’s interpretation later. We’ll get to that later. But the point is that the whole definition of the child is defined at that moment of procreation and at that moment of birth.

Geoffrey Stern [11:35 – 12:06]: So it says, scripture therefore states and bear a man child. And then he starts doing something interesting. And many of the commentaries do this, start going into the science of the day. The wise men of the Greeks similarly believe that the seed is of the woman. The seed of the male congeals. All of the child is created out of the blood of the woman. Note the meaning tazria. To be delivered means will give seed for a woman is like the ground.

Geoffrey Stern [12:06 – 12:37]: So we’re starting to characterize the contribution of the male and the contribution of the female. We’re starting to characterize the woman as the ground, something that we saw a second ago. It becomes kind of fascinating. And we also start looking at science because what they’re trying to do is take this very biological moment and draw theological understandings from it. So Nachmanides says, with regard to the implication of the verses, the rabbis have said, and again, he quotes this, the women amidst seed will bear.

Geoffrey Stern [12:37 – 13:08]: So the intent of the rabbis was not that the child is formed from the woman’s seed. For although the woman has generative organs, like ovaries, like those of the man, yet seed is not formed by them at all. Or if it is formed, that seed is not thick and does not contribute anything to the embryo. Rabbi, the rabbis use the term she emits seed with reference to the blood of the womb, which gathers in the mother at the time of the consummation.

Geoffrey Stern [13:08 – 13:38]: He starts getting into and quoting the rabbis’ understanding of who makes what contribution to the birth and the characteristics of every child. He says, in the opinion of the rabbis, the child is formed from the blood of the female and the white semen of the man. And both of them are called Zerah seed. Thus the rabbis have said there are three partners in the formation of man. The male emits the white semen from where are formed the sinews, the bones, and the white substance in the eye.

Geoffrey Stern [13:38 – 14:09]: The female emits red section, with which are formed the skin, the flesh, the blood, the hair, and the black substance in the eye. So it’s fascinating. This is a color-coordinated explanation. Anything that has to do with white is male. Anything that is red, and maybe when blood congeals, it gets darker, it starts to turn black, is the woman. Here again, the opinion of the doctors as to the formation of the embryo is also the same.

Geoffrey Stern [14:09 – 14:40]: In the opinion of the Greek philosophers, however, the whole body of the child is formed from the substance of the blood of the mother, with the father only contributing that generative force that is known in their language as hyly. I would say catalyst. He is the catalyst which gives form to the matter. The reason I kind of quote these is that all of the rabbinic tradition, and I would say even non-Jewish, scientific, mythological tradition, puts a lot of baggage on how the child is formed in how that characterizes the sexes, how it characterizes, you know, he said there are three partners.

Geoffrey Stern [14:40 – 15:11]: He didn’t mention God, the soul. This is a kind of a pivotal moment in understanding who we are. Before we open it up to discussion. In Genesis, the same Ramban who says, it’s not good that man should be alone. It says, it does not appear likely that man was created to be alone in the world and not beget children. Since all created beings, male and female, of all flesh, were created to raise seed. The herb and the trees also have their seed by them.

Geoffrey Stern [15:11 – 15:41]: But it is possible to say that it was in accordance with the opinion of the rabbi who said, Adam was created with two faces, male and female persons combined, and they were so made that there should be in them an impulse causing the organs of generation to produce a generative force from male to female, or you may say seed, in accordance with the known controversy regarding pregnancy. And the second phase was a help to first in the procreative process.

Geoffrey Stern [15:41 – 16:12]: And the Holy One, blessed be He, saw that it was good that helpmate stood facing him. This is the meaning of what is said. I will make him a helper otherwise to him. So what Ramban is saying, Rabbi, is it’s spring outside, and you and I are walking, and we’re seeing bees that are pollinating plants. Plants have both male and female inside of them. Procreation does not need necessarily different sexes or different beings. So Ramban here too is saying there could have been different ways. The way God wanted it was to have us to be distinct and then to come together. But it didn’t have to be that way.

Adam Mintz [16:38 – 16:39]: Right.

Geoffrey Stern [16:39 – 16:49]: Fascinating. So this is kind of interesting. How important do you think? I mean, I think in modern terms, we don’t find this discussion all that important.

Adam Mintz [16:49 – 17:08]: Well, I was going to say that this is not a modern discussion. This is about creation. This is about what God intended male and female to be. The idea that du partsufim, that there are man was made with two faces is an amazing idea. Right?

Geoffrey Stern [17:08 – 17:39]: Yeah. And I think what it does is where we kind of talk about this in terms of theology or philosophy or conduct, is we say, yes, we could have been one, united. But so much about life is finding your other half, is uniting that which is broken. We do look at this and draw and extrapolate. I think those of our listeners who are into the Kabbalah, there’s so much in the Kabbalah. Whether it’s the Shekhinah is the female force, or if you’re Tefillin, the long one (strap) is the male, the short one (strap) is the female.

Geoffrey Stern [17:39 – 18:10]: In many of our traditions, these gender definitions do have an impact. And I think what’s fascinating is, number one, that Ramban is showing that there were other alternatives, there were other traditions. And I think you’re right as a modern. But I think we’ll find that the rabbis, too, took with a grain of salt what other people were saying, which is drawing very hard and solid, I would say, lessons from this. So let’s go on a little bit more. We are talking in our parsha.

Geoffrey Stern [18:10 – 18:40]: First, it says if a woman gives birth to a boy, she’s impure what, for 60? And if she gives birth to a girl, it’s only 30 days. That’s been a discussion that we’ve had in episodes past. But it does raise the question of what determines the sex of the child. So the Gemara in Berakhot says, is prayer effective for that purpose? Can you pray? I hope my child is a boy.

I hope my child is a girl. Rabbi Yitzchak, son of Rav Ami, said the tradition teaches that the gender of the fetus is determined at the moment of conception. If the man emits seed first, his wife gives birth to a female. If the woman emits seed first, she gives birth to a male. As it is stated, quoting our verse, when a woman omitted seed, tazria zerah and bore

Geoffrey Stern [19:11 – 19:42]: a male, from what are we dealing here? We are dealing in a case where they both emit seed simultaneously. So when can you pray? Only if. So I don’t know if there are any other interpretations of this, but Rabbi Riskin, in that lecture that he gave many years ago, he was talking about when do climax? And he was saying that the rabbis pinned onto this pasuk a really revolutionary approach to sexuality, where

Geoffrey Stern [19:42 – 20:13]: way before the modern psychologist invented or discovered the G spot, so to speak, the rabbis understood that women had sexual needs as well. And whether they believed that that was determining, a determining factor, or I think, Rabbi Riskin, whether they wanted men to be cognizant, men who they assumed would want to have to sire a boy, a male. This way they would pay more attention

Geoffrey Stern [20:13 – 20:17]: to the needs of their wife.

Adam Mintz [20:17 – 20:28]: See, that last piece is Rabbi Riskin’s. That was his creative thing, that since men want boys, they need to be concerned about their wives.

Geoffrey Stern [20:29 – 20:38]: So do you think that was his chiddush (innovation)? And let’s go back a step further. Is this talking about climaxing, or was it.

Adam Mintz [20:38 – 20:52]: I don’t know. It was very creative on Rabbi Riskin’s part. I don’t know if it’s in the Chumash or it’s just in Rabbi Riskin’s head. That’s why Rabbi Riskin was so creative because you’re not quite sure, but it was a very creative idea.

Geoffrey Stern [20:52 – 20:57]: Well, I mean, we’re talking about the Brachot, what Brachot learns, right?

Adam Mintz [20:57 – 21:01]: Yeah. What it means. Right, but it’s Brachot on the pasuk, right?

Geoffrey Stern [21:01 – 21:01]: Yes.

Adam Mintz [21:01 – 21:03]: Playing on the verse.

Geoffrey Stern [21:03 – 23:19]: Isha mizraat techila. You know, maybe it has to do with, you know, what came first. Did the sperm impregnate the egg? Did the egg impregnate the sperm? I gotta believe. I couldn’t find in any of the commentaries that they actually questioned what it meant. So I’m just gonna go with Rabbi Riskin’s interpretation of it. And therefore I opened up the book called “Kosher Sex” by Shmuley Boteach, and I wondered, what did he have to say about this subject? But before we go into what he’s saying, again, I want to make the point that what the rabbis are doing here, if they’re doing what Rabbi Riskin attributes to them, is they are not describing necessarily what they feel happened. What they’re trying to do is lead the discussion. What they’re trying to do is impact the way we live. And that becomes kind of fascinating because this is not written in stone. These are myths, these are suppositions, and it’s really a question of how we take them and what we do with them. So Shmuley Boteach writes, under Jewish law, a wife’s contentment is the key to sexual harmony, as sex is the most central element of marriage. The Bible in fact records three fundamental unqualified rights a woman possesses; food, clothing, and conjugal rights. But only if either husband or wife withholds sex from the other over a period of time are they immediately dubbed to be mored or moredet. It is a cause for divorce. You can get divorced if either one of the partners in a marriage says the other one is withholding sexual relationships. This is because ona, sexual rights, is the essence of marriage, says the rabbis. And to withhold romance and sex is the cause of physical pain, full destruction. So I think what he is correctly arguing is that in rabbinic law there was a sensitivity, I think, way before its time, towards the needs, the sexual needs of both partners. Would you agree with me on that?

Adam Mintz [23:20 – 23:30]: I would agree with you on that. And that is more kind of the simple explanation. The pshat to Rabbi Riskin. Rabbi Riskin has a chidush. Boteach is just telling you what it says.

Geoffrey Stern [23:31 – 24:23]: Yeah. Because we all know for those of you who have been to a Jewish wedding, you can also get married in three ways; Shtar, kesef, v’ona. You get married with a ketubah, that’s a contract. You can get married with money by a purchase, by the transfer of ownership, that is the ring and ona. If you notice, at an Orthodox wedding, after the ceremony, the couple goes into yichud, they have to be alone long enough time that if they wanted to, they would consummate the marriage. So this really is not a supposition, not theology. This is written into our rabbinic law and rabbinic texts. And I give Shmuley Boteach a credit for popularizing this, especially when 20 years ago, when he wrote the book, it was still part of the kind of sexual revolution. People were talking about these things.

Adam Mintz [24:23 – 24:24]: Right.

Geoffrey Stern [24:25 – 24:56]: So I think that becomes fascinating. And what I’d like to do is to segue to this book by Simone de Beauvoir about “The Second Sex.” And it was written in the 40s, as I said, the Vatican felt it was threatening to the biblical concept of what the static roles of men and women are. What I was blown away

Geoffrey Stern [24:56 – 25:27]: with was that the first chapter in the book is, and I have a link to it in the show notes. It says, “Facts and Myths, Part 1, Destiny. The Data of Biology.” That even in the 40s, Rabbi, you and I can say it’s not a modern conversation. But even in the 40s, people were trying to define the role of male and the role of female based on the perception of how consummation,

Geoffrey Stern [25:27 – 25:58]: how birth, how a child is conceived, and what she writes, that the respective functions of the two sexes have entertained a great variety of beliefs. At first, they had no scientific basis, simply reflecting social myths. It was long thought, and it is still believed in certain primitive matriarchal societies, that the father plays no part in conception. Ancestral spirits in the form of living germs are supposed to find their way

Geoffrey Stern [25:58 – 26:28]: into the maternal body. With the advent of patriarchal institutions, the male laid an eager claim to his posterity. It was still necessary to grant the mother a part in the procreation, but it was conceded only that she carried and nourished the living seed. This is this metaphor of Haaretz. You just planted the seed. The man sowed the seed into the ground. She quotes Aristotle. Aristotle fancied that

Geoffrey Stern [26:28 – 26:58]: the fetus arose from the union of sperm and menstrual blood. Maybe this is what our rabbinic commentaries were quoting. Woman furnishing only passive matter, while the male principle contributed force, activity, movement, life. Hippocrates held to a similar doctrine, recognizing two kinds of seed, the weak or female, the strong or male. The theory of Aristotle survived through the Middle Ages and into modern times. Then she quotes the Platonic myth

Geoffrey Stern [26:58 – 27:29]: and I really encourage you to read the whole chapter. It’s a PDF in the show notes because it’s fascinating because here is a woman who is trying to move us from ancient mythology into modern times. She pretty much quotes some of the stuff that our rabbis are quoting. And she says that St. Thomas proclaims women as incidental beings, which is a way of suggesting, from the male point of view, the accidental or contingent nature of sexuality. So

Geoffrey Stern [27:29 – 28:00]: really, these did have an effect to the point where a book such as “The Second Sex,” that would question that could throw all of these things askew. And she starts to talk some amazing different ways of thinking about this.

And she says, I can only suppose that in such misty minds there still flow shreds of the old philosophy of the Middle Ages, which taught that the cosmos is an exact replication of a microcosm. The egg is imagined to be a little female, the woman a giant egg. So there is this. What is it? Ontology recapitulates cosmology. This sense of what happens between the personal, a man and a female, extrapolates the whole bereshit, the creation of the world, as our commentary said. She says, the truth is that these notions are hardly more than vagaries of the mind. And here’s where she starts to talk.

Geoffrey Stern [28:30 – 29:00]: I think that her midrash is just fascinating. She says there are two interrelated dynamic effects of life: it can be maintained only through transcending itself, and it can transcend itself only on condition that it is maintained. We may conclude, then, that the two gametes play a fundamentally identical role. Together they create a living being, which both of them are at once lost and transcended. So the male sperm is on the move, but it only can transcend itself by planting into the static seed.

Geoffrey Stern [29:00 – 29:31]: The static seed is static; it’s not going anywhere. It can only transcend itself through the growth created by the sperm. She is obviously a French philosopher who is deep into the dialectic. But the point is, she uses this explanation and this kind of commentary on how the fetus is created to say the following. And this is how I would like to end. And this is the idea that I think Rabbi Riskin put into that rabbinic text, and that we are left one. And that is basically that it’s up to us to draw our own conclusions from how we are formed. Who are the authors of who we are.

Geoffrey Stern [30:01 – 30:32]: But in those mythologies, we are talking about creation of the world. We’re talking about redemption. We’re talking about where impurity comes from, is impurity When we stop producing, is it a punishment? When we just sow our seed in Galut, all of these things become kind of fascinating. But I think the takeaway is that we start with when we talk about human purity and human holiness. We start with the woman conceiving and giving birth, and then how we interact with that and how we kind of characterize that in terms of growth, which means moving from impurity to purity.

Adam Mintz [30:45 – 31:04]: It’s fantastic. I mean, what you see here, you talk about Rabbi Riskin, Shmuley Boteach, and a French philosopher from 1949, and you see, they’re really all sensitive to the same thing. And the source of all that is the Chumash. You can’t beat it.

Geoffrey Stern [31:04 – 31:06]: Chumash and ancient man.

Adam Mintz [31:06 – 31:12]: We study ancient texts because rabbinic tradition is interpreting that. Ancient, ancient man.

Geoffrey Stern [31:12 – 31:18]: Yeah. And we have the power, and I would say, the obligation to interpret it and reinterpret it.

Adam Mintz [31:18 – 31:26]: Amazing, amazing topic. Fantastic. Everybody, enjoy the parasha. It’s a double parasha this week, and we’ll see you next week. Shabbat shalom.

Geoffrey Stern [31:26 – 31:28]: Shabbat shalom. All the best.

Adam Mintz [00:01:23]: Well, that’s a big question. And we spent part of the holiday in Israel, and in Israel, of course, since the country is split between Ashkenazim, Mizrachi Jews, so a majority of the country is eating rice. And a lot of the restaurants have kitniyot, and a lot of the ice cream stores are kitniyot. So therefore, it’s everywhere. This question is everywhere in Israel. So we also dealt with this question.

Geoffrey Stern [00:01:48]: I’m glad you brought that up because I wanted to work into this segment a story that occurred to me maybe 10 years ago. I was in Israel, and as you know, the favorite pastime during Chol Hamoed, the intermediate days of Passover in Israel, is to go for a hike. So we had a great scholar leading us on a hike. We rented a bus and there was a daughter of a great rabbi who you and I both know, and we stopped at a snack place and

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:19]: I am looking at the packages of potato chips to see if I could eat these potato chips, me and my kids, as exactly the point that you raised because so many times in Israel it says kosher lePesach-leshomrei kitniyot. And this daughter of a rabbi absolutely cracked up laughing at me. And she goes, you don’t understand. We made aliyah to Israel. And once you’re in Israel and your kids go to the local school and they have playdates and all that, it’s game over. This is

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:49]: one homogeneous society. And she just couldn’t get over the fact that I was looking at this, the detailed print, to see whether we could eat it. So you’re absolutely right, and we are going to end up today talking exactly about that situation in Israel. But before we go there, let’s get back to the Parsha. We are in Leviticus 11, and it says, speak to the Israelite people thus. These are the creatures that you may eat from among all the land animals. The

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:20]: word it uses for creatures is hachayah. And Rashi picks up on that immediately because it doesn’t use the word behemot. And chayah comes from the word life. And he says that this focus on diet is basically a great advocacy for the Jewish and the Israelite love of life and improving one’s life, and that we, in a sense, are separated from other

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:51]: nations, other cultures, by separating ourselves from what is impure. So he really, if we’re going to talk about diet and how it affects the Jewish kind of look at life, he picks up on it right away. And then the verses go on to start saying that an animal, a mammal, has to have split hooves to chew cud twice. We all know that. And then I was a little surprised that

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:21]: the word it used was not kasher, velo kasher, kosher and not kosher. But it kept on using the words of purity, that these animals that are not edible are tameh, unclean. Usually, we would see a word like that which would have to do with the priests and maybe that they couldn’t participate in the services, they would have to go dunk themselves in the mikvah, wait a prescribed amount of time. And then

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:52]: if that wasn’t enough, in verse eight, it says, you shall not eat of their flesh or touch their carcasses. They are impure for you. So I said, I can’t believe I. I’ve never noticed this before. But really, they’re talking about the laws that you and I would normally associate with kashrut, which, first of all, has to do with the whole Jewish people. And they’re

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:23]: using the technical terms of tumah, and not only what you can eat, but also what you can touch. Rashi says he picks up on mib’saram, of their flesh. With respect to their flesh, one is placed under a prohibition to eat, but not in respect to the bones, sinews, horns, and claws. So those of you who were afraid that you wouldn’t be able to play football anymore because a football is made of pigskin, or you

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:53]: tennis aficionados that have your racket strung with catgut. Rest assured, Rashi is to the rescue. We can still touch these things, but it’s only their flesh. But what I’m getting at, Rabbi, is we’re already getting into the minutiae of what you can eat, when you can eat it, who you can touch. I was struck by this use of impure tameh, that’s for sure.

Adam Mintz [00:06:20]: You know, part of it has to do with the fact that in the time of the temple, everything was talked about in terms of being pure and impure. It wasn’t just what you could eat, but if you couldn’t eat it, then you couldn’t deal with it because it was considered to be impure. But you’re 100% right. There seems to be something beyond eating and not eating. It’s something that we don’t deal with. You know, it’s related to the fact that in Israel, there’s a question whether you’re allowed to, you know, to have pigs, to own pigs, because maybe pigs are tameh. It’s not just that you can’t eat them, but you can’t be involved with pigs. Right? You shouldn’t own them in Israel.

Geoffrey Stern [00:07:00]: But again, we’re walking a fine line. The next Rashi talks about not touching, and he is struggling with, are these rules for the Kohanim only, or are they rules for all of Israel? And, of course, following the rabbinic sources that he’s aware of, he says, you know, when all of the Jews come on a pilgrimage festival, like we would have done on Passover just now, they all have to be in a sense of purity, so everybody can touch at that point. But what I’m trying to get at is, as we always say in Madlik, it’s never what it appears to be, and it’s never as simple as one might think. And already we’re starting to see that there are nuances here of what you can eat, what you can’t, which part of the animal can you touch. It becomes a kind of fascinating. Then it gets to sea animals, fish in particular. And of course, there it has the famous scales and fins. Here it doesn’t say Tumat that it’s impure. Here it says Sheketz Heim Lachem, that they are detestable to you. The great academic Milgram is bothered by this, and he goes, maybe because fish are in the sea and so much of the purety laws have to do with going to the mikvah and dunking in the sea. It couldn’t use the word tameh and lo tameh, but it used detestable. I’m really not buying his answer, but I am loving his question because again, we’re trying to figure out what categories things go in. And you can’t say the word sheketz, Rabbi, without bringing in. It’s like a miskite. It’s really a visceral reaction. Those things are swarming stuff. They’re disgusting. Who would want to eat them? So it also is more than necessarily just ritual. It’s also a question of habit and comfort level. What thinks you?

Adam Mintz [00:09:06]: Yeah, there’s no question that that’s right. That’s interesting about Milgram.

You say you don’t buy his answer, but his question is definitely right on the mark. I mean, you have to be able to answer his question. Whatever answer you give, you have to be able to answer his question.

Geoffrey Stern [00:09:18]: Yes, yes. So here too, he says from their flesh, one, however, is prohibited in respect to fins and bones. But you’re not prohibited from fins and bones. You can’t just eat their flesh. So again, all sorts of different bifurcations. I looked up in the OU, and the OU asks a question: Can you eat the bones of non-kosher animals? You know, there used to be, when we were growing up, Rabbi, there was a whole question about gelatin. There are issues of whether it is mosif ta’am, whether it adds to the taste or not. But in any case, in this source sheet, you will see that, number one, those steak knives that you have that have little bone on the side of them, you can continue using them. They can be used.

And again, what I’m trying to get at, because I want to get to the kitniyot as soon as we can. What I want to get to is it doesn’t always as simple as it seems. There are other issues that relate to these dietary standards that always come up. And then as we get to the end of the chapter, it gets into the reasoning behind it. And in Leviticus 11:41, it says all the things that swarm upon the earth are an abomination. They shall not be eaten. So it’s using this word, sheketz, you shall not be eaten among all the things that swarm. You shall not draw abomination upon yourselves with anything that swarms. 

And then in 44, it says, for I, God, am your God. You shall sanctify yourselves and be holy. This is like, that’s the bumper sticker: You should be holy because I am holy. You shall not be.

Adam Mintz [00:11:13]: That’s not our topic, but that’s a very… I mean, that appears all over in the Torah. It’s hard to know what that means. Why should we be holy? Because God is holy. I know that we should be kind because God is kind. But what does that mean? We should be holy like God is holy? Anyway, just pointing out that’s something for a future class.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:32]: It is the one connection, I think, that the rabbis would say, because we started with the Rashi that says this is to divide you. They would say “kedoshim tihiyu perushim tihiyu,” that being holy is to be separate, to separate something, to segregate it. And I think that aspect of it does, kind of, part of the dietary laws, there’s no question about it, is to separate you from others, other communities possibly, but also for another way of life. So that’s definitely there.

And then it says, you shall not make yourselves impure through any swarming thing that moves upon the earth. For I, God, am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God, you shall be holy, for I am holy. These are the instructions concerning animals, birds, all living creatures that move in water, all creatures that swarm on earth, for distinguishing between the impure and the pure, between the living things that may be eaten and the living things that shall not be eaten. So there are two things that are distinct here. One, I made reference before, it’s about that havdalah. It talks about “l’havdil bein hatamei u’bein hatahor.” And I think that’s where there would be a sense of holiness.

And then the other thing is, and Rashi notes this, it uses a different verb for coming out of Egypt instead of what it would normally say. Rashi points out here, it says, I am the one who brought you out. Again, there’s an academic scholar (Everett Fox) who says maybe he’s mimicking the word of chewing one’s cud (ma’aleh gera) where one brings up. That’s fantastic.

Adam Mintz [00:13:33]: Somebody says that? That’s great.

Geoffrey Stern [00:13:35]: I don’t like that too much. But again, I give them credit for picking out the verb choice. What Rashi says again is, this is a different type of yitziat Mitzrayim. This is elevating one’s lifestyle. And that’s ultimately what the dietary laws were supposed to do, elevate us above the people of Egypt. So again, a recurring theme here is using one’s dietary restrictions to separate one and/or a community from other communities.

Adam Mintz [00:14:09]: Really good. I mean, okay. I mean, so let me just review this for a second. It’s interesting that the laws of kosher, the laws of kosher animals have all these different elements to it. They have the idea of holiness: You shall be holy. It has the idea of tamei, that these things are considered the opposite of holy, which is tamei. And it goes back to the land of Egypt, the idea of being separate. That’s what you said. What does it mean to be holy? To be holy means to be separate. The fact that God took us out of Egypt, we just finished the holiday of Pesach. The fact that God took us out of Egypt means we’re separate, we’re different, we’re not like everybody else. That’s why God took us out of Egypt. And the first thing he did was he gave us laws. Because leaving Egypt isn’t enough. If you just take us out of Egypt and we’re the same as the Egyptians, that’s not really very interesting. But the fact that we have laws, that’s “Hama’ale,” right? He elevated us because he gave us the law that made us holy because God himself is holy.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:10]: And it’s a fascinating way to look at dietary laws. And I would say, and this is an aside, that when I was made fun of for looking at the fine print on the side of that package, you could make a case that for 2000 years the Jewish people have been doing something that nowadays is very trendy. It’s trendy now to say: Is this lactose available for lactose intolerant people? Was this made in a factory where they also do peanuts? Is it organic? But we Jews have been understanding the importance of diet for a long, long time. And the world is kind of catching up to us. You know, the old thing of you are what you eat, that is something that is part and parcel of this.

I think the other thing that we have to recognize is what’s missing is that those who would argue that the kosher laws have to do with being healthier. I think what we’ve come up against is there’s a sense of purity, there’s a sense of distinction, there’s even a sense of this disgust. This is ours. We eat these kinds of things. We don’t eat grasshoppers or we don’t eat frog’s legs. You’re in France today, so I think that it’s very cultural, it’s very social. And yes, it’s ritual. That spiritual level to it is the dietary. And I think we owe the ancient Israelites great credit for focusing so much on that. And as we’re going to talk about now, the tradition did not stop in the desert of the Israelites. Laws of diet are with us even till today.

And so what I’d like to do is to kind of segue into this question that I was asked over and over again for Passover, which is, what is this deal that Eastern European Jews don’t eat kitniyot, legumes, they don’t eat rice, they don’t eat corn, they don’t have hummus, whereas Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews do. And I took most of the material from the responsa, a Rabbi, that was written by the Conservative movement about ten years ago where they decided — drumroll please — to permit Jews to have kitniyot. And my first comment was, don’t they have anything better to work on? Like, what about a two-day Yom Tov now?

Adam Mintz [00:17:45]: What do you mean? Now that you just spent the week of Pesach, you understand how important kitniyot is?

Geoffrey Stern [00:17:50]: It is. And, you know, I think it’s kind of like saying you’re permitted to have chicken instead of turkey on Thanksgiving. That’s not going to affect. It doesn’t feel right to me. We’re used to not having rice on the table. It has to be a little difficult, Rabbi. It can’t be too easy, right?

Adam Mintz [00:18:06]: Well, and say it even better than that. It’s part of the tradition. Our parents never had rice on the table and our grandparents never had rice on the table.

So we maintain that tradition. It seems too easy—not so much too easy to allow rice, but too easy just to say, okay, you know, it’s a different world, we’ll just change the customs. If we do that, there’ll be nothing left unless there’s a compelling reason.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:24]: So now we’re going to look a little bit at the history and some of the back and forth. It all starts with the Talmud, the Mishnah in Pesachim, and then the Talmud that comes after it. The key thing, Rabbi, is that what determines what you can’t eat is the flip side of what you must eat. So if there is a mitzvah to eat matzah on Passover, the thing that you’re not allowed to eat has to be able to be used for matzah.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:54]: And what the rabbis in the Jerusalem Talmud say is that if you don’t have to take challah from it, if you don’t have to separate that piece of bread when you make it, then not only can you not use it for the seder or for the mitzvah of eating matzah, it can’t become chametz. It can become sour. They say, you know, if you leave your corn standing or if you leave your rice standing, over time, maybe it’ll become spoiled. It can never really rise. And that’s their point.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:25]: And it seems to be a pretty dry case that rice, for instance, there should be nothing that is not permitted for it. The Rambam in Mishna Torah says the prohibition against chametz applies only to the five species of grain. However, kitniyot, rice, millet, beans, lentils, and the like do not become leavened, even if it needs rice flour or the like, with boiling water and covers it with fabric until it rises like dough. That is not becoming leavened. It’s permitted to be eaten.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:56]: And I always thought, you know, it was like a Sephardic thing, maybe because Mizrahim liked their rice so much. But it seems to be a pretty straightforward case. I think, in this instance, Rabbi, besides what you said a second ago about it’s what we’re used to. You can’t find a good reason to prohibit it. We have Talmudic sages. Jacob bar Asher writes, there are those who prohibit eating rice and all sorts of kitniyot in a cooked dish because varieties of wheat mix into them. This is an excessive stricture, and it’s not customary to do so.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:58]: So I put this into the category of was it produced in a factory where they also produce peanuts? So they’re kind of like pulling threads here to try to figure out why you can’t have them. There were others who said, and this is kind of interesting, he says, concerning kitniyot, our rabbis customarily prohibit eating them on Pesach, but many great sages permit them. So this is Rabbeinu Peretz speaking. He says, my teacher, Rabbi Yechiel would eat the white bean called favas. He ate fava beans and said, in the name of great sages, and he cited as a proof that even rice you can eat.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:28]: He says, nevertheless, it is very difficult to permit a thing that everyone, since the earliest sages, treats as prohibited. So he’s saying exactly what you said.

Adam Mintz [00:21:39]: Right?

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:40]: They can’t find a reason, but they simply make it prohibitive. And I think that’s why it was kind of interesting to start in Leviticus because we have presuppositions, and we also have practice. And I have a feeling that practice dictates more than anything else what ultimately ends up in the law. They looked around. They knew what Tefillin looked like. Then they had to go to the sources and figure out where they knew it from. But there were certain unbroken traditions.

Adam Mintz [00:22:08]: I just find it interesting that he moves from rice to fava beans, you know? I mean, because generally, when you think about kitniyot, you talk about rice. You should know that there are some cultures that eat rice but don’t eat other kitniyot because, you know, rice seemed to have been, you know, kind of a distinctive thing, right, Sharon? There are some. Some people eat rice, the Turkish Jews, or they eat other things, but they don’t eat rice. Sharon corrects me. They eat everything else, but they don’t eat rice. That rice. Because rice looks so much like wheat flour, not that it was grown next to the wheat, but because rice looks like wheat flour. Therefore, people were strict on rice, but they weren’t strict on string beans. You see that? I don’t know if you’re going to get to that. That’s a jump. One thing is rice, one thing is fava beans, and one thing is string beans. And then one thing is peanuts and peanut oil, right? How far afield are you going to get? And mustard seed and all the things we didn’t eat on Pesach, you know, is there a limit?

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:16]: Yeah, and it’s a slippery slope. I remember I once belonged to the Jewish Center, and Rabbi J.J. Schachter, he says, I’m giving the lecture you never heard. Usually, a rabbi gets up and says all the things that are prohibitive. I’m going to give you a list of all the things that don’t need a hechsher. And he says, orange juice produced before Pesach doesn’t need a hechsher. And so, you know, it’s just a different gisha, a different approach. The other thing that does come up, and we kind of discover so much about the laws of kashrut just by looking at this one issue, is that they used to make some sort of porridge out of rice, and it looked kind of identical to a porridge that you would make from oats. So he says the Talmud permitted rice. This was specifically in their day when all were fluent in the laws of prohibition and permission. But in these later generations, it’s clear that one should be restrictive. So here they’re kind of blaming it on the decline of the generation. But, Rabbi, it smacks a little bit of marit ayin, where somebody looking at you eating that rice pudding would think, oh, look, Rabbi Adam is having chametz, or it’s permitted to have oatmeal. So again, it’s what will the neighbor say that comes into it. And Rabbi Moshe Isserles says the custom in Ashkenaz is to be restrictive. One should not diverge from this. And another rabbi says all this is nothing but an added restriction, but one should not diverge from it.

Adam Mintz [00:24:55]: Because they were accustomed to behave in a certain way, I just want to say one thing here. There’s a difference between Rabbi Moshe Isserles and the next one, the Taz, and that is Rabbi Moshe Isserles thinks that you actually need to be strict. The Taz doesn’t think you need to be strict. He just says that our parents were strict and our grandparents were strict, therefore we should follow in. You know, and that’s a very interesting thing. You know, I just want to say that generally we just got out of Pesach. There’s a tendency. And this is true, you know, I deal with a lot of different kinds of people. This is true about Jews who are not always so strict. All year long on Pesach, they’re strict. Now, that’s because that’s part of a tradition. But there actually is a halakhic, a legal reason for that as well. And that is that if you eat non-kosher food, it’s no good to eat non-kosher food. But the punishment for eating non-kosher food is that you get 40 lashes. The punishment for eating chametz on Pesach is that you get kareit, that your days end early. So, you know, sometimes the severity of the punishment reflects the severity of the prohibition. So all year long, ah, you know, it’s only 40 lashes. So you want to make sure you eat kosher. But you don’t have to be strict about kosher, you just have to do it right. But when it comes to chametz, you’re afraid, you can get kareit. Now that’s big time, that’s serious. And therefore, you want to be extra, super duper stringent. So I just want to say that the Rama’s coming from a legal place. Not only from a marit ayin place, but from a legal place also.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:35]: Absolutely.

And that’s very true. So I want to end. We’re kind of in the world of responsa literature, which is always fascinating. I want to end with two responsa on this subject. One was from the son of Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi, known as the Chacham Tzvi. He said, “I testify that my illustrious father, that sainted man, suffered greatly on account of this, on account of forbidding Kitniyot throughout Hag HaMatzot. He would rant and say, ‘If I had the strength, I would abolish this terrible custom, a stringency which causes harm and error. Because types of Kitniyot are not available for the masses to eat their fill, they must bake matzot. Instead of having one piece of matzah, which is the only thing that could become chametz that you have at your seder table, and then for the rest of the week you stay very far away from matzah,’ he says. Because they can’t eat all of these other grains, they have to. There’s a matzah industry because of this. They are not as careful with the dough as they should be. They certainly err in a matter of kashrut.” Interesting. He turns your argument kind of on its head. Fantastic.

Adam Mintz [00:27:48]: Right?

Geoffrey Stern [00:27:48]: “And matzot are expensive. Not everyone can afford as much as they need. But Kitniyot are available cheaply and easily and permitted.” He talks about the joy of the holiday.

Adam Mintz [00:27:59]: That’s, by the way, something we didn’t see yet. The economics of it is something that we don’t see till now. Very good.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:06]: So there’s the economic hardship and the joy of the holiday. And he goes as if I wish I had the koyach to do this. I wish I had the gumption to go against the grain a little bit. So I want to fast forward because we started talking about the situation in Israel, and as I said before, you can only try to redefine a law or take away a prohibition if there’s a compelling reason. Now, there’s an amazing source of teshuvot from a scholar named David Golinkin. He’s at the Schechter Institute. He has volumes and volumes of these responsa, and he writes as follows.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:38]: He says that since there is a compelling reason to bring all of Israel to the land of Israel, Aliyah, olim la’aretz—we have that word, aliyah. Again, you don’t want to create these distinctions. You want to bring people together, and you want it to be easy. He calls it kibbutz galyot, to bring the ingathering of the exiles. And I want to finish by reading a little bit from him because it’s an amazing commentary on what’s happening in Israel today. Lastly, we would like to briefly address an important point of view vis-a-vis this custom. Is it desirable to perpetuate the differences between Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Italians, and Yemenites in Israel and the diaspora?.

Geoffrey Stern [00:29:39]: True. Perhaps it is preferable to eliminate these differences, distinctions and create one united Jewish people. This is a worthy topic, deserving of a book of its own, indeed an entire book. And he talks about the beautiful thing that says on the one hand, you’re supposed to listen to Toraht Imecha your own particular customs, but on the other, he talks about who is like your people, Israel. Goy echad ba’aretz—one people. And then he starts to say that in 1950, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel enacted several takanot regarding marriage intended to unite the Jewish people. They changed the sidur so that there was a special nusach made for the IDF.

Geoffrey Stern [00:30:11]: And he goes on to say that the IDF tried to permit Kitniyot in the army because they wanted to bring our people together. Hence, the issue under discussion has the potential to unite the Jewish people. But this was rescinded. There was so much pressure, they couldn’t do it. Nonetheless, and this is Golinkin talking, we should adopt this ruling in Israel and the Diaspora. In so doing, we will differentiate between halacha and a mistaken custom, enhance the joy of the festival, ease the burden on those with limited means, and move another step closer to uniting the Jewish people throughout the world. So it’s just fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:12]: Through this discussion of diet, we have a commentary on who we are as a people. And isn’t that at the end of the day how we started by saying for the Jews and for the Israelites, diet reflects on who we are.

Adam Mintz [00:31:21]: Fantastic. Wow, great topic. We have to archive it away for next Pesach. We’ll review it before Pesach next year. Thank you so much. Shabbat Shalom everybody. And we look forward to seeing you. We begin the post-Pesach period. We look forward to seeing everybody next week. Shabbat Shalom.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:40]: Shabbat Shalom. Safe return from Paris and we’ll see you all next week. 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 your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria and a link is included in the show notes. This week, at the end of Shabbat, we will light the festival candles and gather for our Seder.

Today we explore Arthur Waskow’s Freedom Seder Haggadah, placing it into context and suggesting rabbinic sources. We discover that it is far more nuanced and complex than radical progressives would have us believe and that it is too rooted in rabbinic texts for traditionalists to totally ignore. So join us for the Freedom Seder, a radical midrash on the Haggadah.

So, Rabbi, I went to the Center of Jewish History where one of my booksellers actually has an open house every Thursday. I didn’t know it and I was looking for my regular kibbutz Haggadot, and I did buy a few books, but I also bought this Freedom Seder. This is the first edition. It is the size of a Mao Tse Tung red book. So you really feel, you feel like a bit of a revolutionary holding it. And I had always been intrigued by this Seder.

I think, you know, some people would say this was the beginning of the interfaith Seder, of the Seder where we used more universal terms. But as I said in the intro, I think most of the people that are using a version of it, I didn’t see that it was reprinted, redone on Amazon. I don’t know if there are new editions of it or whatever, but I said, why don’t I take a look inside of it and see what we can glean, possibly, possibly what we can find in terms of his sources, his inspiration.

And as I said in the intro, I think if you hear it quoted today, it’ll probably be. And by the way, it is a real manifesto. It’s got a lot of pages and a lot of verbiage in it. But I think the most famous part that progressives and radicals will quote is the Dayenu. The first Dayenu says, for if we were to end a single genocide, but not stop the other wars that kill men and women as we sit here, it would not be sufficient.

And the Dayenu goes and talks about arms proliferation and the environment. And then it says, at the end of the day, how much then are we in duty bound to struggle, work, share, give, think, plan, feel, organize, sit in, speak out, hope, and be on behalf of mankind, for we must end the genocide. And then it has a parentheses. In his version, it said Vietnam, but there’s an asterisk insert that is current, such as Biafra, black America, depending on the situation. And we should end the genocide in blank. Stop the bloody wars that are killing men and women as we sit there.

So I just thought that this Haggadah might be more than just that. And I was pleasantly surprised. Rabbi.

Adam Mintz [4:04 – 4:07]: Who wrote the Haggadah? Is there a name?

Geoffrey Stern [4:07 – 4:38]: Yeah, so it says Arthur Waskow. And as we’ll see, he at that point was a scholar in international relations and politics. He even goes on in the introduction in this Haggadah to say that although he grew up in a home that was Jewish, he had no use for his Judaism. He had wandered to other places. And so this was a departure for him. And the fascinating part of this departure is that because of his desire to create this first Seder, he went on and became a rabbi.

He joined in the renewal movement, which, as you know, was with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. And this Haggadah was written in 1969. It took him until 1995 to get semicha. So we are reading a Haggadah that was written by somebody live now. He is. He is. We are reading Haggadah by someone who used this Haggadah to begin his journey into our texts, into our studies. And that by itself has to be fascinating.

What happened was he lived in Washington, D.C. and as I said in the intro, Martin Luther King Jr. Was literally assassinated a few days before the Seder. I looked it up in a calendar, and you’re going to see why in a second. And that year, the Seder was not like this year on a Saturday night. It was Friday night.

But in any case, he found himself preparing at the Seder that occurred a few days after King’s assassination for the next Passover. Even that I found intriguing, Rabbi. We all spend so much time preparing for The Seder, we might think, as we’re sitting on the Seder, that we’re preparing for next year’s Seder, that we have to remember comments and thoughts that we had. So he found himself preparing at that Seder right after King was assassinated.

And he dug out his old Haggadah and he started going through it. And he wrote this, I would say Midrash Commentary Manifesto. And when he finished, he sent it to a Rabbi, Harold White, who was a rabbi in D.C. and he says, is this a crazy obsession or a good idea? And this Rabbi White answered him. It’s an activist midrash on the Haggadah. You have taken this story into your own hands, as the Rabbi said God wanted the fleeing slaves themselves to do.

Do you know that Midrash? He says, talking about the Nachshon Midrash, the one where God refuses to split the Red Sea until one activist has gone into the water up to his nose, about to drown. So Waskow claims he didn’t know the word midrash. And this rabbi explained to him that what you have done in this booklet is created a midrash. And so today we’re going to take a look at the midrash that he started.

I have to say that the Freedom Haggadah was not the only book that I purchased. I also purchased this book by Yosef Yerushalmi, which has all the Haggadot. Good. So you will find on folio number 193, he has from Santiago, Chile, a third Seder. And what Yerushalmi writes is that there was a tradition that people, communities would have a third Seder most of the time after the State of Israel was formed, it was an activist seder to send money, collect money for the State of Israel.

So even here, the year after, the one that this Haggadah was written for was a third Seder. Rabbi, he made a third Seder. In a sense, he was part of that tradition as well. And he writes in the beginning. And I think this kind of summarizes the tension and the nuance that he has throughout the Haggadah. He says, for us, this Haggadah is deeply Jewish, but not only Jewish. In our world, all men face the Pharaohs who could exterminate them any moment and so enslave them all the time.

Passover, therefore, fuses for an instant with the history and the future of all mankind. But it fuses for an instant, and in the fusion, it does not disappear. Pay attention. The particularly Jewish lives within the universally human. At the same time that the universally human lives within the particularly Jewish. I think we’re going to find throughout this Haggadah, at least the sections that I identify that he has as a commitment to the particularity of the Jewish people and our story, as he does have, to the universalism.

And I will argue that those who take this freedom Haggadah—

Geoffrey Stern [9:14 – 9:34]: and his Freedom Seder and can only see the universality have lost what was part of his struggle and part of what makes this Haggadah so great. So, first of all, were you at the Seder? Did you ever meet this guy, Arthur Waskow? Can you add?

Adam Mintz [9:34 – 10:42]: Rabbi, so I don’t know Arthur Waskow, but I’m going to tell you the following. Growing up, I grew up in Washington, D.C. and my parents hosted the Seder every single year. And during these years, the 60s, the 70s, the early 80s, we had a Seder. My aunt and uncle were members of the SAJ, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. It was the Reconstructionist community. And they were involved, at least adjacent, at least tangentially, to the renewal movement.

And they used to bring these different Haggadahs to the Seder every year. They brought the Freedom Seder Haggadah. They brought the New American Haggadah. Right? That’s another renewal or Reconstructionist Haggadah. And I remember that my father would always… my father was Orthodox, but he was always fascinated by these new takes on the Haggadah. So I feel, Geoffrey, as if you’re bringing me back to my youth.

Geoffrey Stern [10:42 – 11:13]: Oh, wow. That’s a privilege. So the first thing I noticed is he gives a list of things that you need at the Seder, and he says two unlit candles. And that kind of raised something in my mind because, of course, we did a whole episode just on lighting the Friday night candles and the meaning of it, how it was a revolution in and of itself. And I think what we’re going to find is either you’re going to accuse Waskow—

Geoffrey Stern [11:13 – 11:44]: of coming in and looking at the Seder and not doing what you do when you read an ArtScroll, which is it says, “Include this for Shabbat, don’t say this on Friday night, say this on Saturday night.” And you could accuse him of just going through it and including everything and throwing in the kitchen sink, because you’ll see in a second that the kiddush that he has is the one that we are going to say on Saturday night, this coming Saturday night.

But I think that actually his third Seder that he had was on a Friday night, and the year before, it actually was on a Saturday night. And these prayers of introducing havdalah into the kiddush affected him deeply.

Geoffrey Stern [11:44 – 12:14]: And I also think we’re going to see in a second this concept of lighting the candles, having to wait for the seder to begin to light the candles, which I think you’ll confirm we have to do this year. We can’t light them early because it’s Shabbat. So we have to wait for Shabbat to be out. We’re going to have two unlit candlesticks, and only when Shabbat is out can we transfer a light from a candle that we have sitting on the side and do exactly what he has. So I think even from that perspective, we’re in for a little bit of a treat.

Geoffrey Stern [12:14 – 12:45]: I put in the Hebrew here from Sefaria. He doesn’t have any Hebrew in his Haggadah. It’s all transliterated Hebrew. But as you know, we start “Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Haolam,” king of the world, who has chosen our people, “Asher bachar banu mikol ha’amim v’romemanu mikol lashon” and made us different with every language.

Geoffrey Stern [12:45 – 13:15]: And he goes on and assumes that we’re using the one that we’re going to say on Saturday night. But now I want to read his translation. And here we are. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has made of one earth, one flesh, all the peoples of the world, who did exalt mankind by breathing the life of the mind and the love of freedom into him, who did sanctify us so that we might know and say what was holy and profane.

Geoffrey Stern [13:15 – 13:46]: So, Rabbi, I looked at the original prayer, and I said, where did he get all of this from? And my interpretation is he focused on the word “Melech Haolam.” It’s a word that we pass over, no pun intended, much too quickly, that God is the universal God of the whole world. And of course, “olam” can mean eternal, and “olam” can be peoples of the world. I took this to be Waskow’s meditation and stopping us in the middle of the bracha to talk about the universality of every blessing that we make, which at the end of the day is “Melech Haolam,” king of the whole world. What do you think of that?

Adam Mintz [14:15 – 14:28]: First of all, that’s great. Now, obviously, “Melech Haolam” is not special for the kiddush. The “Melech Haolam” is in every bracha. So what he’s saying here actually applies to everything that’s Jewish.

Geoffrey Stern [14:29 – 17:03]: I agree. I agree. And it wakes us up to that. Then he goes on. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who with love has allowed us to give ourselves and the solemn days of joy, festivals and seasons of gladness. Blessed art Thou, our Lord, who didst allow Israel to imagine this day. Now, the word imagine I had a little trouble finding because I think that in the Hebrew it would be “asher hinchaltanu.” And “hinchaltanu” is more of a nachala. It’s more of something that you inherit. But I do believe that what he is arguing here is that in terms of how God created man, he created man, and this gets back to our discussion of Harvey Cox, with the ability to imagine the future and remember the past, to celebrate holidays. And that is truly human.

So it enables Israel to imagine this day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the season of our freedom, our holy convocation, a memorial of the departure from Egypt. Blessed art Thou, our Lord, who sanctifies mankind, freedom, Israel, and the seasons. Blessed art Thou, our Lord, our God, King of the universe, who makes a distinction between holy and holy, between the holiness of this festival and that of the Sabbath, between the holiness of light and the holiness of darkness, between the holiness of the Jewish people and the holiness of other peoples. And then he comes up with this blessing, blessed art Thou, O Lord, who has made all peoples holy and has commanded us, even against our will, to become a beacon for justice and freedom for them all.

So, as I said in the intro, he’s not shying away from the fact that this is an intrinsically, passionately Jewish document. But he also doesn’t flinch from including in that the universality. So he says, we are a chosen people, but we, even against our will, have to be a light unto the nations, a beacon for justice and freedom for them all. I really. And as I said before, he chose to use the full kiddush with the havdalah in it, either because that was the one he read that night after King was assassinated because that Seder was the same, Saturday night was a Saturday night, or he just found it so beautiful. But we will be saying this exact kiddush, please God, on Saturday night.

Adam Mintz [17:03 – 18:07]: So I want to talk about distinguishing between the holiness of the festival and that of Shabbat. In Hebrew, you say “hamavdil bein kodesh l’kodesh.” That’s a very strange notion because, you know, we make havdalah every Saturday night. When we make havdalah on Saturday night, we say we distinguish between holy and mundane. That means distinction. That means havdalah.

It’s funny to distinguish between holy and holy. Why does holiness need a distinction? Why don’t we just say everything is holy? One thing is holy this way, one thing is holy that way. The answer, I think, is that everyone is holy in a unique way, and Jews are holy in their way, and other people are holy in their way. And I think that’s the point that he’s making. I think that’s the point that Waskow is making; it is true that everybody is holy, but we’re not all holy in the same way.

Geoffrey Stern [18:07 – 18:38]: I absolutely love it. And I think that’s exactly what I was going to say. He’s coming at here. He kind of, you know, the Reform have changed this bracha of making us chosen.

And they kind of water it down, who has chosen all mankind. And he doesn’t shy away from saying that all of us are holy. You know, Shlomo Carlebach used to say, and Adam, my holy brother, and Joseph, he called everybody holy. But being holy doesn’t mean that you can’t be holy in a different way. And I love that.

Geoffrey Stern [18:38 – 19:08]: And it doesn’t mean that some of us don’t have a mission that we have to do. So, I do absolutely love that. Later on in the Seder, he tells an amazing story about a Rabbi Mendel. He’s quoting Buber. He must have been influenced by Buber’s book, that I was influenced by at the same time, “Tales of the Hasidim.” And he says, make all of us tonight, when we speak, inform our speech from the silent stillness, the depth of Rabbi Mendel.

Geoffrey Stern [19:08 – 19:39]: He tells the story about a rabbi who wouldn’t speak. The only night of the year that he would speak would be at the Seder. So he compares and contrasts this Rabbi Mendel the silent. And when we are silent, may we inform our silence from the speech, the conversation, the sharing of Rabbi Akiva, Tarfon and the rest. So he has these two contrasting images of a rabbi who doesn’t speak normally and the rabbis who are in B’nai Brak talk about the exodus from Egypt till the morning.

Geoffrey Stern [19:39 – 20:09]: And then what he does is he creates a new ritual. Before we light those two candles, he says there shall be a few minutes of quiet in which all the lights are doused. And the reader says, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates darkness and commands us to meditate in silence.” So he’s about to start the Seder. He’s now going to light the candles, but they’re not lit yet. And he takes advantage of the darkness.

Geoffrey Stern [20:09 – 20:40]: Then the reader lights the candles and says, “Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates the light of the fire and commands us to converse with each other about the departure from Egypt.” So he takes light and darkness as an analog for silence and speech in a beautiful way. And I have to say, Rabbi, every week I publish the notes of our discussions on Sefaria. The most popular note that I’ve ever published is where I say that Ha Lachma Anya tells us to start the Seder with the sound of a ha.

Geoffrey Stern [20:40 – 21:10]: And I talk about God created the world with a hey, and all we have to do is breathe out. And something about it has 6,400 views. And I think what he’s doing, it’s right here. I took a screenshot. So, I think we’re adding a new one today. Another nonverbal ritual that we can add for especially those of us who love to meditate, who think that there’s more to the Seder than just words. We can pause a second before we light those candles. We can savor the darkness and the silence of the darkness.

Geoffrey Stern [21:10 – 21:41]: And then we can light those candles and let the games begin. The discussion begins. Thank you, Rabbi Waskow. Okay, so I thank him for that. Then what he does is he says, everyone then eats this piece of parsley, then breaks the Afikoman. And when he does the Ha Lachma Anya, he says, “Let all who are hungry eat thereof. And all who are in need come and celebrate the Passover.” He opens up the door. At that moment, as our door is open, may not only the hungry come, but also the spirit of the prophet Elijah.

Geoffrey Stern [21:41 – 22:11]: Rabbi, it makes a lot more sense that you fill the cup of Elijah at the beginning of the Seder and you open up the door to your fellow Jews. So I Googled. I said, is there a custom? And sure enough, I found, according to the Abarbanel, Ha Lachma Anya should be recited at the entrance of the house with the door open so that paupers can hear the invitation. Enter. See ArtScroll Rabbi Chaim Volozhin. I found it. Now.

Adam Mintz [22:32 – 22:34]: That’s great. Okay.

Geoffrey Stern [22:34 – 22:37]: Have you heard that tradition? Have you ever seen that tradition?

Adam Mintz [22:37 – 22:41]: That’s great. I’m going to share it in our Seder this year and say it again.

Geoffrey Stern [22:41 – 24:16]: Thank you, Rabbi Waskow. We are just picking up new rituals, new ways of doing our Seder. Then he gets to next year in the land of Israel. And by the way, if you do look at that Chaim Yerushalmi book, you will see that there are haggadot that say next year in Jerusalem. And there are haggadot that say next year in the land of Israel. So Waskow, as the tradition says, hashta hacha leshana haba ba’ara d’Yisrael. This year we celebrate here, but the next year we hope to celebrate in the land of Israel.

And as another tradition says, UBI liberatus ibi patria, where there is liberty, this is my country, this is my Israel. For where are we sitting tonight? In Jerusalem, we would still say next year in Jerusalem. For this year, not only we, but all men are slaves and aliens. Next year we hope that all men shall be free. This year all men eat as aliens in a land not wholly theirs. We hope all men will celebrate in, quote, unquote, the land of Israel that is in a world made one and a world made free.

So here too, I will argue, Rabbi, that he’s retaining the actual land of Israel, and he’s also talking about a metaphoric land of Israel. And he makes an argument. He says, if you’re reading the Haggadah in Israel or in Jerusalem, you still say bashana haba b’ara di Yisrael. Now, some of the Haggadahs change that, and they say bashanna haba b’yerushalayim habanuya. But they do it for this problem.

Adam Mintz [24:16 – 24:24]: Now, Yerushalayim habanuya comes at the end of the Seder. So, you know, we have. But we don’t start with Yerushalayim.

Geoffrey Stern [24:25 – 26:32]: So I think he makes a good point. And when you’re in Akko, you’re going to say this, I assume you’re going to say at this point in time, which means that there’s more than just the stones and the mortar, that it represents something. And I think that is a fascinating point. But again, I will argue that he does that not at the expense of Israel, but to complement Israel. There’s a real Jewish people, there’s a real land of Israel, and there’s something that it is more than that.

So now he starts telling the story of the Exodus, and he actually quotes another reader. But he gets to the point where Moses is a prince of Egypt and discovers what he determines to be his brothers fighting amongst themselves. There’s a taskmaster who’s hitting them. So he goes ahead and he kills the taskmaster. He buries him in the sand. And the next day, when he sees two fellow Jews fighting, he approaches them and says, what are you fighting about?

So, in this reading, he says when they come back to him and they go, what are you going to kill us too, the way you killed the Egyptian yesterday? He says, then he learned meaning. Moses learned two things that those who try to help their fellow men often discover. He found first, that slaves often spend as much time and energy fighting each other as they do fighting their common oppressors. And second, that slaves do not always welcome their deliverers.

This is spoken as a revolutionary who’s not afraid to let down his guard. To say, you know, this business of changing the world, it’s not as simple and straightforward as we make it sound to be. We fight amongst ourselves. We’re the first and the most. We are the most, I would say, passionate about fighting amongst ourselves. And we don’t always really want to be delivered. We could rather be a radical than to be delivered. I just found that to be so honest and also fascinating.

Adam Mintz [26:33 – 26:39]: It’s great. And it really gives the, you know, the flavor of the ’60s, which we don’t feel now. Maybe we need more of that now.

Geoffrey Stern [26:39 – 27:10]: Yeah. So the burning bush again, his interpretation of that is that Moses had fire kindle in his heart once, but it went out. He said, I’m out of here. I’m going to be a herdsman with Jethro.

He sees the bush that does not stop burning, which is the sign from God that God says, I have seen the affliction of the people, they are in Egypt and have heard their cry. It was the physical, economical, spiritual suffering. And what God is saying is the voice that came out of the bush said, I am burnt up about this, and I’m never going to stop being burnt up about this. Waskow goes into a long thing that says the whole purpose of religion is to make sure that we always stay burnt up about the bad things in the world.

So the last thing that I want to talk about, Rabbi, we were privileged to be at a lecture at Hadar early last week. And there is a famous saying in the Mishnah that says that you need to start the Haggadah by talking about genut, which translates to be disgraceful, and you have to messayem bishvach, and you have to conclude with glory. The amazing lecture that we heard focused on the Joseph story as being our disgrace. And the argument of Rabbi Tali Adler was that we can talk about our failings at the same moment as we talk about redemption.

So this is what Waskow does. First of all, he focuses us on the word Tzeh U’lmad, go out and learn. He uses that as an excuse that we can not only go out and learn; he says, search further and inquire what our own fathers, Moses and Joshua, intended to do to our brothers the Canaanites. So he brings up not only that we were once idol worshipers and that the world has done terrible things, but also that we wanted to conquer the land. He uses this Tzeh U’lmad as a license for us to discuss things that aren’t so great about us.

I think in the context of hearing the lecture last week and this, it adds a whole new aspect. We know we always say, and I do, when we start a Seder, every question is, okay, you can say whatever you want. There’s nothing off the table. But what does it happen when we talk about our own misgivings, our own shortcomings? I think what he’s done, and he has a whole list, they really, not so much only the Jewish people, but the shortcomings of society. He does it all from this concept of Tzeh U’lmad, which I will argue is an extension of what the Talmud says, starting with genut or. I just think it opens up a whole conversation.

These classes that we do every year are the best classes of the whole year. I don’t blame the people who like them.

Fantastic. So the last thing that I’m going to do, and this might be the most surprising, is he talks about a lot, and this is quoted by the progressives about nonviolence and how nonviolence is the only answer. But I think what they fail to miss is about seven pages where he talks about the plagues, and he says, freedom is not bloodless. He talks about the prophets who say, when we do bad things, bad things are going to happen to us. He talks about Shofet Nat Turner and Judge Lincoln, that if every drop of blood be vast. Then he talks about Emmanuel Ringenblum and the Warsaw Ghetto. He talks at length, saying that we had to stand up and defend ourselves, and there is a time where you have to take up arms to defend yourself and even to go down fighting.

May we remember and honor tonight and at every Passover, the bleak and hopeless courage of those who, during the week of Passover in 1943, began the Ghetto uprising in Warsaw. So we’ve run out of time, but we should do that because it’s a Seder, we could go on all night. I encourage you to try to, as there is a link in the show notes to the full Haggadah. There’s a PDF, I encourage you to study this Haggadah, learn some lessons. You won’t agree with everything, but I think you will be surprised. Just keep in mind that the guy who wrote this then took on a journey to discover his own Judaism and become a rabbi. This was the starting point. He was so inspired by not what he said, but what he studied.

Fantastic. This is amazing. I believe, Geoffrey, that everyone should remember when they say “halakhma anya,” to just go, huh, to exhale and take everything in from there. Enjoy your family, enjoy everyone’s seders, and we look forward. Next week we’re off for the holiday, but in two weeks, we look forward to seeing everybody. Be well. Amazing.

Rabbi, the spring is in the air, and Passover must be just around the corner.

Adam Mintz [1:36 – 1:37]: Amazing.

Geoffrey Stern [1:38 – 3:03]: I’m ready. So we always think of matzah. Why do we have matzah? In Deuteronomy of all places, It says in 16, you shall not eat anything leavened with it for seven days. Thereafter you shall eat unleavened bread, bread of distress, lechem oni. For you departed from the land of Egypt hurriedly so that you remember the day of your departure for the land of Egypt as long as you live. Now, even in the translation here, it’s not quite lechem oni. It says bread of distress. I think the traditional Hebrew school understanding of affliction, why we eat matzah, bread of affliction, it has something intrinsically to do with the slaves. And they didn’t have enough time to bake. They ran out. And that’s why we eat matzah. And then we start with the Ha Lachma Anya, as I said in the introduction, and it really doesn’t talk about we didn’t have enough time to bake this. It talks about all who are hungry, come and eat with us.

So we, as I said in the intro, are going to dive into, of all places, Vayikra, the book of the priestly code, to see how matzah was used in the sacrificial cult and glean from there, hopefully, some new insight into this whole tradition of matzah.

Adam Mintz [3:04 – 3:06]: Okay, let’s go. I’m excited.

Geoffrey Stern [3:06 – 4:38]: Okay. So we’re in a new book. It’s spanking clean. Vayikra. It says, 1, 1 to 2, speak to the children of Israel and say to them anyone. In Hebrew, it says, adam that brings near an offering to God from domestic animals, from the herd, or from the flock. You may bring near your near offering. So the first kind of sign that I got today that our reading was going to be is this is fairly rare that it doesn’t talk about an Israelite who comes. It says Adam, a human being, a person who comes. Rashi picks up on it immediately. And it says, why is the term man employed here? Since Adam also means Adam, its use suggests the following comparison. What was the characteristic of the first man? He did not offer sacrifice of anything acquired by way of robbery, since everything was his. So you too shall not offer anything acquired by way of robbery. Other explanations are it’s a man or a woman. But clearly, all of the commentators saw that this was something kind of more universal than you would have expected. And the question is, what did it come to include? Or in this case, what purity or intentionality was it going to wake us up to start thinking about? Not what you’d expect when we start talking about the Israelite temple and the Israelite sacrifices.

Adam Mintz [4:38 – 4:43]: No, that’s great. I mean, that’s right. It’s an interesting verse. Okay, let’s keep going.

Geoffrey Stern [4:44 – 7:22]: So in Leviticus 2, 1:3, it says, When a person presents an offering of meal to God, the offering shall be of choice flour. So now we’re talking about an organic, non-meat, vegetarian offering. And it starts to use va’nefesh. It means just a soul. Mincha doesn’t mean the afternoon service. Yet what it means is it’s a gift. And it says that the priest shall scoop out of it a handful of its choice flour and oil, as well as all of its frankincense. And this token portion, this az karata, he shall turn into smoke on the altar as an offering by fire of pleasing odor to God. So he’s taking part of the grain offering, and the remainder of the meal offering shall be for Aaron and his sons. And to add one more level, it says, this is as holy as it gets. So what we have is it’s a meal offering, which is not your typical offering, it seems to be not obligatory, but something that comes from just the soul of the person. It’s a gift. And then you have this dividing of it, where the Cohen takes a part, a handful of it, and the balance, the remainder of the meal, shall be for Aaron and his sons. And it’s extremely holy. And it’s a token. It represents something.

So in this one paragraph, we have so many fascinating touch points that are not only an introduction, I think, to the sacrificial cult, but because we have Passover on our mind, we have to start thinking about holding up the matzo, about breaking the matzah, about the matzah being a simple grain offering. And I think that is ultimately going to make this extremely interesting. So Rashi says the nefesh ki takriv. And when a soul or a person will offer. Nowhere is the word nefesh employed in connection with freewill offerings, except in connection with the meal offering. For who is it that usually brings a meal offering? The poor man, the Holy One, blessed be He, says, I will regard it for him as though he brought his very soul as an offering. Powerful, just powerful.

Adam Mintz [7:22 – 7:35]: Amazing. Now, of course, it shows that there’s a sliding scale when it comes to sacrifices, right? The poor person doesn’t have to bring an animal. It’s good enough for the poor person to bring flour.

Geoffrey Stern [7:35 – 9:49]: Absolutely. And this is like the most pleasing to God. So Rashi doesn’t invent this stuff. He brings it from Menachot 104B, which is the Babylonian Talmud. Amar Rav Yitzchak. Rav Yitzchak says, for what reason is the meal offering different? Rabbi, look at the Aramaic. Ma Nistanah mincha. So here we have, folks. If you thought that Ma Nistanah is just something that was in the Haggadah, no. This is how the rabbis of the Talmud talked. He wants to know what’s the difference between this meal offering and he is the source for what Rashi says. Rabbi Yitzchak goes on, what is the reason that the meal offering is differentiated from other offerings in that the rabbi says there are five types of preparations. He says it’s a parable of a flesh and blood king whose friend made a festive meal for him. But the king knows that the friend is poor. The king said to him, make for me foods from five types of fried dishes so that I may benefit from you. If you recall, Rabbi, when we brought the original verses, it talks about all sorts of fixings, all sorts of ways that you can bring this simple meal offering.

And what they were getting at is, you can do it as frankincense, you can pour oil on it. You can take your choice flour. What he’s saying again is kind of rubbing it in. This is the sacrifice of the poor and God says, you can fix it for me Creole style. You can fix it for me in batter. You can do it with oil. Because This is my favorite dish. But again, it’s the association with the poor person that I think is so profound and would have not only registered with a participant in the seder, but it had to also register with those rabbis who were creating this seder. It just struck me this year.

Adam Mintz [9:49 – 9:59]: Of course, that’s right.

And of course, I don’t care how you make it. The key is who makes it. And since the poor person makes it, I love it however you make it.

Geoffrey Stern [10:00 – 12:01]: Yeah, yeah. It’s just going to make us read at the very end the whole Ha Lachma Anya in a new fashion. The Ibn Ezra takes up the chord with Nefesh. He goes, Nefesh means a person. Scripture mentions Nefesh because the meal offering is a free will offering. And Nefesh is called willing. This is kind of like free choice. Compare it to Psalms that it says, “Tichret nedivah ruach,” let us a willing spirit uphold me.

So they’re talking about the free gift. It’s coming from the person themselves. The Rabbeinu Bahya says when a person offers a meal offering, it is remarkable that the Torah introduces the subject of the meal offering by writing “Nefesh ki takriv.” What kind of person volunteers a meal offering? A very inexpensive offering. It is the poor. By introducing the subject of the meal offering with the word Nefesh, the Torah teaches that in God’s eyes, a poor man who offers a meal offering is considered. Again, he brings the same piece of Talmud.

And then he goes on to say, the Torah also describes this offering here as a fire offering of sweet-smelling odor for the Lord. This expression occurs with all kinds of offerings to teach that quantity does not determine the value of an offering in the eyes of the Lord. All that matters is the intention of the donor to dedicate it to God. “Echad hamarbeh, v’echad hamamit.” Both the one who offers a great quantity and the one who offers a small quantity. There’s a lesson here, and that’s why it says it’s a token. It’s an azkarah. It’s just profound in this one paragraph, how much extra material it’s putting on it, it’s embellishing it.

Adam Mintz [12:01 – 12:12]: Yeah. I mean, it just, it’s emphasizing again the idea that if somebody who has trouble is able to bring something, that’s what’s really loved by God. It’s beautiful.

Geoffrey Stern [12:13 – 12:33]: And the Shadal says, what does Mincha come from? The primary root is pleasing. Take out the “mem,” and you have “nachat.” We talk about nachat ruach from our children. “Re’ah nichoach” is a beautiful aroma, a pleasing smell.

Adam Mintz [12:33 – 12:34]: He says in English.

Geoffrey Stern [12:34 – 14:08]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What I didn’t mention is, I think inherent in what they’re saying is the placement of this. You would expect at the end of all the sacrifices, it would get to the poor man’s sacrifice. But here we are in chapter two, it’s a headliner.

Rabbi, so this idea of Mincha really means a gift. If you look in Genesis 32, it says, after Jacob spent the night there, he selected from what was at hand these presents for his brother Esav: “Mincha le-Esav achiv.” Mincha is a free will offering, but it’s also a gift. And again, when we talk about gifts, what do we always say? It’s the thought that counts. It’s not how much the gift can cost. In Genesis 43, when Jacob is sending down, or Israel is sending down his children to see the viceroy, he says to them, “If you must go, do take some of the choice produce of the land in your baggage. Carry them down as a gift for the man.”

So again, Mincha is not yet the afternoon service. What it really is, is a gift to create a relationship, a reciprocal relationship with the recipients. Now, I’m going to quote a little bit from Baruch Levine, who wrote the JPS Torah Commentary and he’s a first-class academic scholar.

Adam Mintz [14:08 – 14:13]: He was a professor of Bible in NYU, so he’s a local also.

Geoffrey Stern [14:13 – 15:31]: Good for him. So he says, like the burnt offering of chapter one, it was appropriate for a variety of occasions, this grain offering, and often served as a less costly alternative to animal sacrifices. Like the burnt offering, the Mincha was also considered a most sacred offering. And this status imposed special restrictions.

And so, the other thing that I encourage us to keep in mind is that, yes, there were other religions and traditions of sacrifices. What we need to do when we study the Torah is to ask what’s different. And my argument today is this was something radical, this concept of not only was there an avenue for a poor person to give a gift, but that it was on the highest level. It was Kodesh Kodeshim.

He goes on to say, the Mincha could be prepared on a griddle, in a pan, or in an oven. He’s echoing what was said prior, and he says, actually the term Mincha has an interesting history. It does not relate to substances used in preparing the sacrifice. Its basic sense is that of a tribute or a gift.

Adam Mintz [15:31 – 15:32]: Like with Esav.

Geoffrey Stern [15:33 – 16:06]: Like with Esav that we just read about and going down to Egypt for the viceroy. Like many names given to sacrifices, the term Mincha was appropriated by priestly writers from the administrative vocabulary because it effectively expressed the subservient relationship of the worshiper toward God. At the same time, it conveyed the duty of the worshiper to present gifts to God, often in the form of sacrifices. And so what he’s starting to segue into, Rabbi.

Adam Mintz [16:28 – 16:37]: I never thought of that. But that’s so right. What a funny word for a gift, a present. But of course, it’s because you present it.

Geoffrey Stern [16:37 – 17:53]: So what he goes on to say is the term Mincha would signify what was set before or brought to a deity or ruler. Biblical evidence indicates that from early times, offerings of grain and fruit were not burned on the altar, but rather placed or set before God. Rabbi, we have a great example of the first fruits, where you simply hold up the Bikurim. You don’t burn them. So what he is saying is that there was a gradual adaptation of presentation offerings to the prevailing mode of the burnt offerings. So we have this kind of parallelism. And again, getting back to the Seder, where we start by holding up the matzah and presenting it, there was that type of a history to this special sacrifice, and if anything, it was integrated. It was an adaptation into the sacrificial cult.

He says that the older, unadapted method of presentation accounts for the name Mincha in the first place. And it is understandable that the term Mincha should refer to sacrifices of the evening or late afternoon, since grain offerings were customary in evening rituals.

Adam Mintz [17:53 – 17:54]: I don’t know what that means.

Geoffrey Stern [17:54 – 17:58]: Means he’s the professor. We gotta take his word for this.

Adam Mintz [17:58 – 18:01]: I think so, because I don’t know what that line means, really.

Geoffrey Stern [18:02 – 18:17]: We do know that in Psalms 141, it says, “Take my prayer as an offering of incense, my upraised hands as an evening sacrifice.” So, there was a correlation between giving.

Adam Mintz [18:17 – 18:19]: This and the Mincha offering.

Geoffrey Stern [18:19 – 18:46]: Okay, maybe, Rabbi, it was left for the end of the day because, let’s face it, this was not the wealthy giver. This is not the person who came with the red carpet. But again, I encourage us all to think in terms of what happens on Passover. As far as I know, sacrifices were not given at nighttime. The exclusion, the exception, was the Paschal sacrifice, possibly unless it was given at the.

Adam Mintz [18:46 – 18:51]: It was given during the day, but it was eaten at night.

Geoffrey Stern [18:51 – 19:22]: And you have this offering of grain, which was also done towards the end of the day. I just was reading this through the lens of what we do at the Seder. And it gave a whole new light to what had in the past been something totally unrelated in terms of the biblical matter to the concept of a poor man’s bread and what the implications were. So we have these unleavened cakes,

Geoffrey Stern [19:22 – 19:53]: chalot matzot. I once baked matzah with Sephardim. And when we were finished, they were cakes. They weren’t hard. You could fold them.

When Hillel made the Hillel sandwich, he literally was able to fold the matzah over the haroset, again breaking another preconception that we have. One of the things that the Rabbi said that threw me for a real loop was he compared the word matzah to the Greek matzah or barley cake. And he doesn’t give any reason why the Greek and the Hebrew or the Semitic languages should use a very similar word. He just kind of throws it out there. But maybe this was fairly universal. Who knows?

The other thing that happens, Rabbi, I already talked about the fact that the process is where the kohen takes part of it to sacrifice. Kind of like we do today when you take, when Sharon takes challah, she takes a part off and she throws it into the fire, but the rest gets eaten. Those are called patot ototopitim. This is where Pitta comes from. These are pieces. This was made to be shared, was made to be broken. I just found it fascinating, this idea of breaking. Rashi says this is including all the meal offerings that are baked. And it is the law of breaking into pieces.

It includes the lechem mishneh. This idea of breaking it was part and parcel of the grain offering. And I went to an amazing book written by a sociologist named Marcel Maus, and it’s called “The Gift.” It talks about all different types of relationships and the way we create relationships by gifting. It says one way of gifting is where we’ve seen this with the Brit Bein HaBetarim, the covenant between the pieces. An object generally of little value and azkarot is given to the other contracting party. It will be returned. It’s part of making an oath. This life token, the thing passed on in this way, is indeed very much infused with the individuality of the donor. The fact that it is in the hand of the recipient stimulates the contracting party to carry out the contract to redeem himself by redeeming the things, it includes meals.

So I think there’s also a universal aspect of this gift-giving ceremony where you break something in half. It’s kind of like making a covenant, like making a reciprocal relationship that I found doesn’t occur with any other of the sacrifices. And then, of course, the last thing.

Adam Mintz: What do you make of that, by the way?

Geoffrey Stern I mean, we always talk about why do you break the matzah? And a lot of us say that poor people, they save something for the next day, right?

Adam Mintz: Well, they can’t afford a whole loaf. They just have a piece, right. I come from Europe. In Europe, you buy loaves of bread, but, you know, if you’re poor, you just get a piece, not a whole loaf.

Geoffrey Stern I think so. But after I read Maus, I was thinking more in terms of establishing a reciprocal relationship. You know, when the power goes down in New York or in Connecticut, Con Edison sends their trucks here. The way you create that net, so to speak, the social net, is you make sure to give to your neighbor so that when you’re in need, your neighbor gives to you. And I saw that kind of in this breaking of the poor man’s bread as a gift. It was creating these reciprocal relationships that bind us all together. That’s how I read it kind of this year because clearly, this was different from other types of burnt sacrifices.

As we finish, I want to save time to read a Haggadah that was written in 1941 by Mordecai Kaplan. But before we do, I think this question of Leaven and Unleavened. It seems that Leaven was forbidden on the altar for anything that was burnt. That’s right. Leaven, the academic scholar, says a connection between the prohibition stated here and the Passover laws is certainly to be assumed. And yet nowhere is the matzah of Passover explicitly associated with the requirements of grain offerings.

Adam Mintz: So, Rabbi, that’s fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern We are going down new territory here. We are trying, and we’re not going to connect all the dots. But if we’re successful, we’re giving a new lens to see this whole ritual of why it’s called lechem oni. So I want to finish. We go back to the seder now. You hold up the matzah, you break it in half, just as you do with the grain offering, and then you say this amazing statement, Halachma Anya. And,

I am going to read, based on the research that we just did, how Mordecai Kaplan, who wrote the new Haggadah in 1941 while World War II was on before the State of Israel. This is how he interpreted this ritual. He said, “Behold the matzah, symbol of the bread of poverty our ancestors were made to eat in their affliction when they were slaves in the land of Egypt. Let it remind us of our fellow men who are today poor and hungry. Would that they could come and eat with us. Would that all who are in need could partake of this Passover feast.

Let us resolve to strive unceasingly for that blessed day when all will share equally in the joy of the feast, when poverty will be no more, when Eretz Yisrael will be upbuilt, and when all mankind will enjoy freedom, justice, and peace. Let my people go reading that. So this I’m reading out of the original New Haggadah that I grew up with because before I became very religious and told my parents to use a traditional one, he says, “We have dedicated this festival tonight to the dream and the hope of freedom. The dream of hope that has filled the hearts of men from the time our Israelite ancestors went out of Egypt.”

People have suffered; nations have struggled to make this dream come true. Now we dedicate ourselves to the struggle for freedom through the sacrifice be great and hardships many. We shall not rest until the chains that enslave all men are broken. But the freedom we strive for means more than broken chains. It means liberation from all those enslavements that warp the spirit and blight the mind, that destroy the soul. And even though they leave the flesh alive. For men can be enslaved in more ways than one. Men can be enslaved to themselves when they let emotions sway them to their hurt. When they permit harmful habits to tyrannize over them. They are slaves when laziness or cowardice keeps them from doing what they know to be right.

When ignorance blinds them so like Samson, they can only turn round and round in meaningless drudgery. They are slaves when envy, bitterness, and jealousy sour their joys and darken the brightness of their contentment. They are slaves to themselves and shackled by the chains of their own forging. This resonated with me in terms of the stuff we were talking about. A poor person is pure. He’s not a slave to all these addictions. Men can be enslaved by poverty and inequality. When the fear of need drives them to dishonesty and violence, to defending the guilty and accusing the innocent, they are slaves. When the work men do enriches others, but leaves them in want of strong houses for shelter, nourishing food for themselves and their children, and warm clothes to keep out the cold, they are slaves.

He’s really focused on the imperfections of poverty in a way that I think reads so beautifully and directly from this simple offering of grain. Men can be enslaved by intolerance. When Jews are forced to give up their Jewish way of life, to abandon their Torah, to neglect their sacred festivals, to leave off rebuilding their ancient homeland, they are slaves. When they must deny that they are Jews in order to get work, they are slaves. When they must live in constant fear of unwarranted hate and prejudice, they are slaves. How deeply these enslavements have scarred them.

The world, the wars, the destruction, the suffering, the waste. Pesach calls us to be free. Free from the tyranny of our own selves, free from the enslavement of poverty and inequality, free from the corroding hate that eats away the ties which unite mankind. To me, this is the simple grain offering. This is the message in spades.

Geoffrey Stern [28:48 – 28:51]: This is the message in spades.

Adam Mintz [28:51 – 29:01]: That’s remarkable. I know the Haggadah, but I never. I don’t remember this explanation of Ha Lachma Anya. That’s the best. I’m going to use that in our Seder this year.

Geoffrey Stern [29:01 – 29:23]: I put it in the show notes. It’s all there, as well as a link to a PDF that describes the excommunication of Mordechai Kaplan for making a new Haggadah. So I wish you all a great start to the Book of Vayikra and preparing for the Seder in the week and a half ahead. Have a Shabbat Shalom. See you next week.

Adam Mintz [29:23 – 29:25]: Shabbat Shalom. See everybody 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. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Pekudei. The tabernacle and its priests are ready to be dedicated, and we explore the makeup, context, and history of the anointment oil, as well as the generally neglected recognition of the significance of skincare and aromatherapy in the Torah. So join us for the Bible’s secret source. So, Rabbi, are we ready to do the first-ever health and beauty episode?

Adam Mintz [1:34 – 1:39]: I’m not ready for this one. Parashat Pekudei has never seen anything like this before.

Geoffrey Stern [1:39 – 2:09]: Okay, well, here we go. So, first of all, I just had to point out, and we all know it, but we probably don’t focus on it, that anointing oneself in oil—I mean, we know the Greeks do it, we know how important growing olives is in the Middle East—but maybe we should just review a few of the verses in Tehillim (Psalms) and elsewhere where it shows how important anointing oneself with olive oil was. In Psalms 104, it says, Wine that

Geoffrey Stern [2:09 – 2:40]: cheers the hearts of men, oil that makes the face shine, and bread that sustains man’s life. I mean, it’s right up there with wine, oil, and bread. That’s the Middle Eastern diet. That’s what made life. And of course, the famous one, Tov Shem M’Shemen Tov. A good name is better than fragrant oil. So here it’s a little bit of a play on words, Rabbi. I figured shemen is the word for

Geoffrey Stern [2:40 – 3:10]: oil and shem is the word for name. So when you read it in Hebrew, you really get the flow. But clearly a good name is really important. And how do we prove that? By comparing it. Anointing oneself with good oil in Deuteronomy 28, it says, though you have olive trees throughout your territory, you shall have no oil for anointment, for your olives shall drop off. So if you are being cursed, it’s not only the harvest, it’s not only the

Geoffrey Stern [3:10 – 3:41]: wine. Right up there is this important element of living, which was to have the oil from the olives. In Ruth, she is getting ready to meet Boaz. So bathe, anoint yourself, dress up, and go down to the threshing floor. I mean, it clearly was part and parcel of life in those days. In 2 Samuel 12, it says, thereupon David rose from the ground, he bathed and anointed himself.

Geoffrey Stern [3:41 – 4:11]: He changed his clothes, he went into the house of the Lord, and he prostrated himself. I remember as a kid, I once woke up and my grandfather saw me from Glasgow, Scotland, and he said, did you wash your face? And I always, whenever I wash my face in the morning, I think of my grandfather. But you got to anoint yourself, you got to start a new day. Some general said somewhere, you got to make your bed. Well, you also got to anoint your face. And then, of

Geoffrey Stern [4:11 – 4:42]: course, we have in 2 Samuel where it says, pretend you are in mourning, put on mourning clothes, and don’t anoint yourself with oil. So I would say that probably the only time we think of anointing is on Yom Kippur, where we know the five things that we can’t do is we can’t eat, we can’t do this, and we can’t anoint ourselves. But it’s really not that critical a part of our life. But it clearly was a critical part of the life of the Israelite.

Geoffrey Stern [4:42 – 5:12]: And right up there with not eating was not being able to anoint oneself with oil. So anointing is a big thing in studying this, because we’re not only talking about anointing a person, as we’ll see in a second with the Levites, the priests, we’re also talking about anointing the building, anointing the accoutrements of the tabernacle. We see in Jeremiah, he talks about, I will build me a vast palace with spacious upper chambers provided with

Geoffrey Stern [5:12 – 5:46]: windows paneled in cedar, and painted (anointed) with vermilion. So anointing buildings, anointing things is also something that we should be aware of. If we think back to Genesis and we remember that Jacob was fleeing, he fell asleep, he saw the ladder going up and down. And he says, I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar, a Matzevah. So

Geoffrey Stern [5:46 – 6:17]: anointing things was part and parcel of the ancient Near East, but clearly also our tradition. And, Rabbi, a few weeks ago, if you recall, we had an episode on the tribes, and there was a part of a midrash that I quoted that had something about anointing in it. And I kind of skimmed over it, and I didn’t know really how it fit in. And so part of what we’re going to discuss today, maybe to kind

Geoffrey Stern [6:17 – 6:48]: of solve that puzzle. If you remember, the Rabbi said, the Holy One, blessed be he, said to Moses, go and appoint a high priest for me. Moses said before him, master of the universe, from which tribe? He said to him, from the tribe of Levi. Moses asked, with what will I anoint him? He said to him, with the anointing oil. At that moment, Moses was joyful. He said, my tribe is so beloved before the Holy One, blessed be he. The Holy One, blessed be he, said to him, your

Geoffrey Stern [6:48 – 7:18]: life, Bechay. It is not your tribe, but it is your brother. That is what is written. And you bring Aaron, your brother. And we focused on the fact that Aaron was a tribe that didn’t have a portion, wasn’t one of the 12 tribes, and he was appointed to serve the other tribes. But then it says, and it is written, his anointing with the anointing oil from where it is derived. It is as stated, you shall take the anointing oil. So it was a little bit of a puzzle

Geoffrey Stern [7:18 – 7:44]: to me, Rabbi, how this anointing oil fit into this kind of dialogue. And maybe we’ll get a better sense of how the anointing oil worked from this. But anyway, before we start our portion, Rabbi, what thinks you about anointing oil, cosmetics, daily routines of health for one’s body and soul?

Adam Mintz [7:45 – 8:03]: Well, I mean, I love it, because this daily routine of anointing oil is also the way that they appointed things and they’re appointing the Messiah. So, you know, you take what you do is you take a daily routine and you elevate it to a status of holiness. That’s a great image, isn’t it?

Geoffrey Stern [8:03 – 10:28]: I like that. I like that. Because clearly we’ve drawn that, we’ve connected the dots. It was something that was part of daily life, right? So here we are in Exodus 40. And by the way, we’re finishing the book of Exodus today. And it says, In 49, you shall take the anointing oil and anoint the tabernacle and all that is in it to consecrate it and all its furnishings. So it shall be holy. Then anoint the oil of burnt offering and all its utensils to consecrate the altar so that the altar shall be most holy. And anoint the laver and its stand. You shall bring Aaron and his sons forward to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water. Put the sacral vestments on Aaron and anoint him and consecrate him that he may serve me as a priest. Then bring his sons forward, put tunics on them, anoint them as you have anointed their father, that they may serve me as priests. This their anointing shall serve them for everlasting priesthood throughout the ages. This Moses did just as God had commanded him, so he did.

And it says, so this was something that lasted forever. Whether it means that it lasted forever in terms of this ritual or whether it means that the craft of oil lasted forever, we shall see. But certainly, this was something that was very important. And you mentioned a second ago the connection with the Messiah.

So, if you go, just to put a little bit of context on this, if you go to the translation of Targum Yonatan, he actually fills in the dots of what it was like for a reader in the 12th century to read this. And he says, thou shalt take the consecration oil, anoint the Tabernacle and all that is therein, and shall sanctify it on account of the crown of the kingdom, of the house of Judah, and of the king Mashiach, who is to redeem Israel at the end of the days.

So he fills in the blank pieces. This was the beginning of the traditions of two religions, Judaism and Christianity. In terms of the anointed one, it all begins here.

Adam Mintz [10:28 – 10:37]: That is. That’s a great Targum Yonatan. Right. Because he. He actually puts together all the different pieces that you’ve brought up to now.

Geoffrey Stern [10:37 – 11:27]: Absolutely. And if you want to bring it into the future, I did a little Google search to find out what this same word is used for in modern Hebrew. There’s a beautiful little blog post that I quote. It says the word “mashka” means ointment – cream, which is smeared on the body sometimes to soothe and other times to cleanse.

Hebrew speakers also borrow the word “kerem” cream from English, and she talks about “meesh-KHAH lah-OHR” in modern Hebrew meaning cream for skin, “mishat yadayim” hand cream, “mishat shinayim” is toothpaste. Rabbi, the same word that is used, as I said in the intro, for the anointed one is used for toothpaste. How good is that? In terms of taking that routine.

Adam Mintz [11:27 – 11:28]: So good.

Geoffrey Stern [11:30 – 12:47]: And of course, she says the root of “Mashkah” is “mem shin ches,” the same as that of the word “mashiach” Messiah will, literally the anointed one. It did not evade this Hebrew blog that talks about these words.

It is really wonderful how this goes from the holy to the profane, to the mundane, to the transcendent. Here we are now in Exodus 29. It says, take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him. Rashi says the anointing also was in the form of an X. He put a drop of oil on his head and another drop between his eyebrows and joined them with his finger in this shape.

So, this now becomes a little bit of interest, I think, for our Christian brothers and sisters. I would assume most of them think that the sign of the cross comes from the crucifixion, but it seems from here that the rabbis thought that the way that the anointment was made was on the forehead of the Kohen, and it was done in the shape of an X.

Adam Mintz [12:47 – 13:13]: That’s interesting. In Rashi, he says, “ahma shechazu” can mean “chi.” I think “chi” is a Latin, is a Greek letter, which is an X. There’s an English word called “chiastic structure,” which means like a tie, like a chi.

And it means that, what, A goes to D and B goes to C. So that’s what a chi. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that in Rashi, that Rashi has a Greek letter in it. That’s great. I love it.

Geoffrey Stern [13:13 – 14:30]: Okay, so I did a little bit of searching, and I found that “chi,” as you say, is this X. Now, of course, it is a cross, but it’s not configured as a cross. And we shall see that in the Talmud itself, it talks about it is the sound of a “tav,” and T is much more like a cross.

In the Encyclopedia Judaica, it says, and this is from the Jewish Encyclopedia, which is, I actually have a first edition of it. It was written in 1904. But anyway, what it says is that it is not unlikely that owing to their opposition to the Christian cross, the Jewish interpreters adopted the chi form instead of the X, the original tav of Ezekiel.

So the rabbis, of course, in the Talmud, this is after the birth of Christianity, are already sensitive to the fact that this is in the sign of the cross. So I think what they did is they picked this chi, which orients it slightly differently, more like an X than like a T. But clearly, that’s all very interesting.

Adam Mintz [14:30 – 14:42]: Right, then I would love that letter though. Rashi borrows the letter because obviously the Torah didn’t know about a Greek letter. But Rashi borrows it and then it becomes a whole discussion point. That’s a fascinating history.

Geoffrey Stern [14:42 – 15:20]: Well, it comes from Quitote and it is literally in a Christian thing. The point is that there was a discussion of whether the oil was poured around the head like a crown or was it in the shape of this X. They were just picking a sign that could be conveyed to the reader so that the reader would understand what it looked like.

So, I think it’s probably based on an earlier tradition that that’s what was done. The X sign was made on the forehead of the Levite. But again, it’s just by the way.

Adam Mintz [15:20 – 15:30]: You know, there is no X in Hebrew. So it’s not surprising that he doesn’t say like in Hebrew, there is no sign like that. So he had to borrow it from the Greek.

Geoffrey Stern [15:32 – 18:16]: Fascinating and interesting. In Exodus 29:30, it already makes reference. Well, earlier in our parasha, it talks about how they made the frontlet of the holy diadem of pure gold and incised upon it the seal inscription “Kadosh la Hashem.”

And so what I’m trying to say is it’s not only the focus is not only on the oil, and the focus is not only on the sign that was made, but there is also this interest in the forehead.

We already have with this frontlet that is also mentioned in terms of the clothing of the Kohen, this focus on the frontlet. And of course, it reminds us of the tefillin. It reminds us of, if you look at Egyptian hieroglyphics, you see this kind of snake thing coming right over that same spot.

I think in the Talmud it talks about it’s the sort of soft spot where when a baby is born, that’s very soft. There clearly, again, was a general tradition that this was, whether it’s called the third eye, whatever, this was a place on the body, on the face, that enabled kind of some sort of transmission, easier transmission. So we have that as well. Then there is something that I found to be absolutely fascinating.

In the same Sugiya in Kuitot 5B, it says, the master said, one anoints the kings of the house of David with the anointing oil. But one does not anoint the kings of Israel.

The Gemara asks, from where do we derive this halacha that you only do the kings of the House of David. It is derived from a verse, as it is written, with regard to the anointing of David, “Arise, anoint him. For this is he,” this king. That is, any king from the house of David requires anointing. But another king from the kingdom of Israel whose kings were not descendants of the house of David does not require anointing.

What the rabbis learned from this, and I never knew this before, is because if you recall the story of David where he was shunned, it wasn’t obvious that he was an heir to the throne. It’s only the descendant that is not quite in line. If you have a king who has a son who is heir to the throne, there’s no anointing. And I never realized that that passes automatically.

Adam Mintz [18:16 – 18:20]: That passes by, right? So there doesn’t need to be an anointing.

Geoffrey Stern [18:21 – 19:36]: So that concept that you only need the anointing oil when there’s a disruption, you don’t need the anointing oil when things follow in their pattern. I read that into that initial midrash that we started with when God said to Moses, it’s not only going to be your brother, but it’s going to have to be using anointing oil.

What I took that to mean, and maybe it’s a stretch, Rabbi, is what God was saying to Moses is, first of all, don’t get all excited. This is a disruption. Your brother is not being chosen.

His tribe is not going to get a portion in the land or whatever. He’s going to serve the other tribes. And there is a disruption here. We’re going to use the shemen that was my read. But I think what I take away from that, from the holy to the mundane, is that this idea of anointing is a way of changing oneself, whether it’s waking up in the morning and putting a smile on your face. This idea of anointing was to trigger, to make a change, a disruption. That was my read this year.

Adam Mintz [19:36 – 19:42]: I think that’s great. Now, the question is, why is anointing? What makes that change?

Geoffrey Stern [19:42 – 19:42]: Right.

Adam Mintz [19:42 – 19:57]: That’s the next question we have to look at. Anointing is a transitional moment, what you call making a change. Now we have to figure out, of all the things you can do, why is anointing the way in which we represent?

Geoffrey Stern [19:57 – 20:54]: Absolutely. And again, part of the question becomes, are we supposed to take notice of this? Is this something extraordinary or routine? The interesting thing is that the Talmud teaches that in that Ark of the Testimony that we’ve talked about in previous episodes, there was a tradition that there was sequestered in there a jar of the original manna, a flask of the anointing oil, and Aaron’s staff with its almonds and blossoms.

Rabbi, somehow our tradition took this anointing to be magical, to have some potency to it. It wasn’t just routine. They didn’t keep a part of the karbonot (sacrifices). This was extraordinary.

Adam Mintz [20:54 – 21:02]: Yeah, right. So that’s interesting. Okay, take it further. I’m not going to say anything. Take it further.

Geoffrey Stern [21:02 – 22:05]: Yes. The question becomes, what is it actually made of? In Exodus 30, it talks about myrrh, cinnamon, aromatic cane, cassia, olive oil. I quoted Estee Lauder before. This was a real formula, Rabbi. There was a secret sauce here. It says, this shall be anointing oil sacred to me throughout the ages. It must not be rubbed on any person’s body, and you must not make anything like it in the same proportions. It is sacred to be held sacred by you. Any party who compounds its like or puts any of it on a layperson shall be cut off from the kin. So it really was considered a secret source.

We’re going to go to our buddy Cassuto. I said earlier that we are finishing a book today of Exodus. Unfortunately, we’re also finishing Cassuto’s commentary on the Bible. That’s it. He only did Bereshit and Shmot.

Adam Mintz [22:05 – 22:08]: He commented on the best two books of the Torah.

Geoffrey Stern [22:08 – 22:39]: He did Bereishit and Shemot. True to form, he says this paragraph dealing with the anointing oil was placed here possibly due to the connection between washing and anointing. He says anointing with oil for consecration was customary among neighboring peoples. Since the practice is in no way contrary to Israel’s faith, it continued among the Israelites. According to this custom, instructions are given to Moses to prepare oil for anointing.

Geoffrey Stern [22:39 – 23:09]: The first thing he says, true to form, if you recall, he talked about different types of mitzvot. When we talk about a code of Jewish law, there’s plenty of things that we accepted from the general ambiance of other cultures. This was one of them. Here is a picture of an Egyptian anointing. You can see on both sides, they are pouring oil onto the head of the king.

Geoffrey Stern [23:09 – 23:41]: He goes on to say some commentaries found it difficult to understand why the quantity of the oil is so small. I mentioned the other ingredients. The other ingredients are much larger than the oil. What he concludes is there was a whole process these other herbs and spices went through. Ultimately, this wasn’t really an oil; it was more of a paste or a cream, Rabbi.

Geoffrey Stern [23:41 – 24:11]: That’s the first thing he says. He talks about Akkadian documents describing something similar. It wasn’t only oil in terms of texture. It also had a distinct smell. He gets into how it was applied to objects and people. He says it was like a branding mark. It was not poured because it was a paste. You would see on a piece of fabric used in the temple a little dot. You would know, therefore, that not only was this consecrated, but it was unique. I referred to it as branding. This was tagging objects to ensure they lasted. It was a permanent substrate, a way of tagging things to ensure they were understood to be holy. I found that very fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [24:43 – 25:11]: I think the lessons we need to learn from this are to open up our eyes and minds, number one, as you were saying before, to the daily routines of another generation. As we’re about to do the Passover Seder, where we do things like dipping and washing and leaning, I think it’s a good time to focus a little on this element of anointing. What are your takeaways from our discussion today?

Adam Mintz [25:11 – 26:08]: That’s interesting. You know, anointing, putting oil on the forehead, first involved a ritual. If you just dabbed your forehead with oil, it was straightforward. The fact that they got caught up in how it should be like a cross or an X shows it was a ritual. The idea is that this daily, like your grandfather said, wash your face. This daily practice became a ritual, something prevalent in religion where things you do naturally become rituals, like washing your hands for bread or a meal. You wash your hands for a meal to clean your hands, but it becomes a ritual where you sanctify your hands. Isn’t that the same kind of thing?

Geoffrey Stern [26:09 – 26:47]: You just made me think, do we have a blessing for anointing? As you were talking, I was thinking about Havdalah, where we have a blessing on smelling incense, on Besamim. I was thinking about after Ein Keloheinu; every Shabbat, we talk about the Pitum Haktoret, the incense that was burnt in the Temple. But I’m not sure we have a blessing for anointing one’s hands. You would think there would be a Birkat HaNehenin.

Adam Mintz [26:47 – 27:01]: You would think it would be a mitzvah. That’s a good question. Since it’s not relevant anymore, it’s hard to know where you would look that up. But that’s a fancy yeshiva question. In Torah Vodaas, you could ask the mashgiach or the mashiach that question.

Geoffrey Stern [27:01 – 27:27]: Again, the blessings we make over food and Besamim are because we derive joy and benefit from it. If you think we’re not allowed to anoint ourselves on Yom Kippur or during mourning, you would think when we do anoint ourselves, there would be some blessing. That is an open question we pose here on Madlik.

Adam Mintz [27:27 – 27:29]: We leave it with a fancy question.

Geoffrey Stern [27:29 – 28:29]: But I think that, and I’ve talked about many times, things in our ancient past that may have gone into disuse. But certainly, this concept of anointing, this concept of smell, this concept of putting on a new face and washing oneself is personal care.

I think that if you study the Talmud, there are plenty of places where it talks about makeup on Shabbat. It mentions men going out with perfume might attract the wrong types of people. It’s kind of fascinating how we have five senses; we only have five senses. Here is clearly one sense. It’s not only smell, but it’s also the sense of touch that I think sensitizes us to this.

It also introduces this whole idea of Messiah and Mashiach. And when you compare that to a cream, I think it makes it more tangible.

Adam Mintz [28:30 – 28:32]: This is a great topic.

Geoffrey Stern [28:32 – 28:40]: So anyway, you are off to Scotland. I wish you Tnesiah tova. Bring back this to your ancestors.

Adam Mintz [28:40 – 28:41]: I can’t wait to share it with you.

Geoffrey Stern [28:42 – 28:49]: Bring back the smells and the flavors of that country to us. Shabbat Shalom. Thanks for joining us for another week.

Adam Mintz [28:50 – 28:53]: As we finish the book of Shemot, we’ll see you next week with the book of vayikra.

Geoffrey Stern [28:53 – 28:54]: You got it.

Adam Mintz [28:55 – 28:55]: Bye.

In today’s episode, we explore how observing the seventh day continues to change over time and up until the present age of heatless LEDs and electric vehicles. So 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. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

This week’s Torah portion is Parshat Vayakhel. The explicit prohibition of the lighting and enjoyment of fire is unique amongst the forbidden activities on Shabbat. And we explore how the interpretation of this taboo affects Shabbat observance up until today. So join us for Electric Sabbath. Well, Rabbi, we survived Purim, and here we are. We’re talking about another holiday, one that comes 52 times a year.

Adam Mintz [1:37 – 1:47]: It’s great. Vayakhel is a great Parasha. A lot of it is repetition of the building of the tabernacle. But at the beginning, we have the laws of Shabbat, and let’s take it away.

Geoffrey Stern [1:48 – 2:52]: So in Exodus 35, it says, Moses then convoked the whole Israelite community and said to them, “These are the things that God commanded you to do. On six days, work may be done, but on the seventh day, you shall have a Shabbat of complete rest, holy to God. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire throughout your settlements on the Sabbath day.”

So, Rabbi, the Shabbat is mentioned throughout the Torah, but the reference to it here, right before we get into the actual construction of the Mishkan, is taken to somehow connect keeping Shabbat with the work done in the Mishkan. And that would have been good enough of itself, but it takes this question of lighting fire, kindling fire, and puts it on a separate heading. It’s something that I think the text wants us to recognize.

Adam Mintz [2:53 – 3:13]: It’s for sure, right? You know, this isn’t the only place, but it’s one of the two or three places in the Torah where the Torah tells you exactly what’s not allowed on Shabbat. Generally, the Torah just says, you can’t do work on Shabbat. So this is extremely important in terms of the evolution of the prohibited and permitted activities on Shabbat.

Geoffrey Stern [3:14 – 4:25]: Absolutely. So Rashi says, “You shall not kindle a fire throughout your habitations on the Sabbath day.” There are some of our Rabbis who say that the law about kindling fire is singled out because in order to constitute it mere negative command, thus indicated that like all other negative commandments, its infringement is punishable (only) by lashes, but does not make the offender liable to death.

Basically, what he’s saying is there are two opinions. One is the one that I think would be a knee-jerk reaction, which is it singled it out because it’s more important. But the first thing that Rashi says here is actually it comes to tell you that while you might be liable for death for doing any of the Melachot, the works, the labors that were used to construct the Mishkan, the tabernacle, fire is just a mere negative command. That really struck me this year. In a sense, he was downplaying lighting a fire. When I think my knee reaction was the one thing everybody knows you can’t do on Shabbat is light a fire.

Adam Mintz [4:25 – 4:30]: It is good. I mean, those two opinions are basically polar opposites. So it’s interesting.

Geoffrey Stern [4:30 – 5:36]: So anyway, it says in the Midrash Lekach Tov, “The seventh day shall be to you holy,” so that Israelites should not say, since it is permissible to us to do work in the temple, it is also permitted in our domain. Therefore, it is written to you holy: to you it is holy, but to God, it’s a normal day with regard to sacrifices.

So, Rabbi, here again, this was novel to me. Normally, we think in terms of how does Shabbat relate to the temple or the tabernacle. Any work that one does to build the tabernacle cannot be done on Shabbat. Here he flips it on its head and says, and if with regard to the temple itself, meaning the sacrifices that are done in the temple, it’s just a normal day. The sacrifices and the music and everything that went on in the temple continued. It was the work that was done to build it that you can’t do on Shabbat. That was new to me this year, by the way.

Adam Mintz [5:36 – 5:53]: You know that sacrifices are given on Shabbat, which is kind of striking. How can you give sacrifices on Shabbat? But obviously, on Shabbat, the sacrifices were allowed, correct? Right. The sacrifices involved slaughtering. Involved all these different things that are not allowed.

Geoffrey Stern [5:53 – 6:15]: Yes. So we have this tension between, on the one hand, I think the knee-jerk resolution is even building the temple. Shabbat comes first. But then you have this midrash that says, you know, for you it’s holy, but for God, it’s just another day. You’ve got to provide the sacrifices. It’s an interesting dialectic, I would say.

Adam Mintz [6:15 – 6:18]: Very interesting. That’s a very interesting midrash.

Geoffrey Stern [6:18 – 7:13]: There is this oral tradition that everybody seems to agree on: that there are 39 principal types of labor that one cannot do. How do we know it? I think most people would respond, we know it because of the proximity of what we just read to the actual building of the temple. Well, that’s only one opinion. Rabbi Yonatan, son of Rabbi Eliezer, said that corresponds to the words “labor.” Malacha is used 40 less one times, less one in the Torah.

So I wanted to point that out because it’s not so obvious. It’s the tradition that we all kind of take, but the only thing that there is a consensus about is that there are these 40 less one melachot. But some learn it from the labors associated with the temple, and some learn it from other places.

Adam Mintz [7:13 – 7:26]: Now, let me just say, the fact that there are 39 prohibited activities, that’s not so obvious, right? I mean, where do you know that from? So even that, they kind of take that as a given, but that’s not so obvious.

Geoffrey Stern [7:26 – 7:47]: Yeah. I mean, you know, and it ends up by saying that really it’s an oral tradition. And that’s what I pointed out. It wasn’t. The rabbis can distinguish between how we know it, but there seems to be a consensus that was passed down that there were 39. It’s a funny way of saying it, 40 less one. But nonetheless, that’s also interesting.

Adam Mintz [7:47 – 7:58]: 40 less one. That’s because 40 is one of those round numbers. 40 days on the mountain, 40 years in the desert. 40 is one of those round numbers in Jewish tradition.

Geoffrey Stern [7:59 – 10:31]: Yep. So what I’m trying to get at is that we all assume Shabbat observance is like there’s a consensus about it. It’s always been the same, certain things you can do, certain things you cannot do. But the truth is, it is extremely fluid. If you look at Josephus, for instance, the Roman historian, he says that the Essenes, who were living in the desert and were ascetic and were very, I would say, had high requirements, they were more strict than the Jews. In terms of the seventh day, they not only get their food ready the day before. And I think the assumption there is they heat the food the day before and they eat it cold, they may not be obliged to light a fire on that day.

I think we’re gonna see that there are opinions that believe that whether it’s the Essenes or it’s the Karaites, they were very rigid in their Shabbat observance. I think if we looked at their Shabbat, we would find it very unshabbosdik. We would not recognize ourselves at all. Along with not lighting a fire, in Exodus 16:29, it says, let everyone remain in place. Let no one leave the vicinity on the seventh day. Again, Josephus says they may have stayed inside their domain in pitch darkness. Totally strange to us.

What I found fascinating was in the Ibn Ezra, under “you shall kindle no fire,” he says, since scripture earlier mentioned with regard to the first and the seventh day of the festival of unleavened bread, no matter of work shall be done. So, he says, what it teaches us is you’re allowed to prepare food on Yom Tov, but you are not allowed to prepare it on Shabbat. He also says Rabbeinu Saadiah Gaon composed a very important work refuting those who dispute with the ancients regarding the Sabbath lights. The translator says the reference is to Karaites who prohibit a candle that is lit before the onset of Shabbat from continuing to burn on the Shabbat. I found this before in academic sources, but never in classical rabbinic sources.

Adam Mintz [10:31 – 10:42]: Ibn Ezra is the one source who talks about it. That’s amazing. Okay, so you want to explain the Karaites forced everyone to sit in the dark on Friday nights.

Geoffrey Stern [10:42 – 11:39]: It’s unheard of to us. It is totally unheard of to us. And I said a little bit of this in the intro. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, in an episode of Madlik, it makes us look at things we do on a regular basis differently. This week, when my wife lights the Shabbat candles, I am saying to myself, the rabbis instituted this lighting of candles right before Shabbat to refute the Karaites, to refute their concept of a dark Shabbat.

When I go to synagogue, and say “BaMeh Madlikin” right before we start, the whole idea of lighting candles is nowhere contained within our ancient texts. But if you look at it from the perspective of this dispute with the Karaites, the rabbis were making a statement by lighting those candles: there has to be light in the Shabbat home. It’s profound.

Adam Mintz [11:40 – 11:49]: The fancy word for that is polemic. They were responding to a view of the Karaites and they were fighting against it. That’s why they introduced Shabbos candles.

Geoffrey Stern [11:49 – 13:09]: But again, what it goes to say is we take Sabbath observance as a given, and the truth is we can travel and see different customs. We’ve said in a previous episode how taking out of the Torah and raising it is different in various congregations. But the Sabbath itself, the way it’s observed, has been fluid and different.

We were exposed a little bit to this rigidity on the part of the Essenes, maybe. Shaye Cohen, a great scholar of ancient Judaism, wrote a beautiful monologue, saying dancing, clapping, meditating, Jewish and Christian observance of the Sabbath in Pseudo-Ignatius. He says that people used to dance on balconies: men danced downstairs, women on balconies. They swam and even went to theater in observance of the day of rest. If I try to transmit one concept today, it is that we know that Shabbat is different, but that doesn’t necessarily give us a license to assume how it’s different. We can do different things, we can experiment in different ways, and we become part of this rich tradition of a living Shabbat. It changes over time.

Adam Mintz [13:09 – 13:13]: It’s fantastic. That article by Shaye Cohen is a classic.

Geoffrey Stern [13:14 – 15:33]: So in the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, it says, you shall not kindle a fire. Why is this said? Since it says a perpetual fire shall be burning on the altar, not to go out. Here we get to this dialectic, this contrast with what was going on in the temple; I should say the Mishkan, because the Mishkan was a placeholder for the temple.

We are being told that we can’t light a fire, but we’re also told that the fire on the altar can never go out, including Shabbat. One might think this applies both on weekdays and on the Sabbath. How then do I fulfill, ‘Whoever does any work shall be put to death?’ It is referring to all other forms except arranging the wood on the altar.

Or even arranging the wood, ‘how do I fulfill not to go out in all other days, excluding the Sabbath, or even on the Sabbath?’ The scripture says, you shall not kindle a fire in any of your dwellings. In your dwellings, you shall not kindle, but you can, and I would add, must in the temple. So, again, each commentary is picking apart the verse that we started with, and it talks about in your dwellings, in your abode.

The Essenes and the Karaites said, ‘you’re stuck in the dark in your Moshevotaychem, in your domicile.’ The rabbinic texts are saying it’s different in your domicile than it is in the temple. You cannot do certain things in your domicile, but they can be done in the temple. This year, I had another insight.

In a different account of the Shabbat, called the Book of Jubilees in the Apocrypha, it talks about what can and cannot be done on Shabbat. It says, amongst other things, a man that does any work on it shall die. Whoever desecrates the day, whoever lies with his wife… I believe that in our tradition it’s a mitzvah to lie with one’s wife on the Shabbat….

Adam Mintz [15:33 – 15:34]: That’s interesting.

Geoffrey Stern [15:34 – 18:11]: Or whoever says he will do something on it, that he will set out on a journey, or in regard to any buying or selling, whoever draws water thereon which he has not prepared for himself. So we find things that are similar but also different.

Then it goes on to say, “great is the honor which the Lord has given to Israel, that they shall eat and drink and be satisfied on this festive day, and rest from all labor which belongs to the labor of the children of men, save burning frankincense and bringing oblations and sacrifices before the Lord for days and for Sabbaths.”

This work alone shall be done on the Sabbath day in the sanctuary of the Lord, that they may atone for Israel with sacrifice continually. Maybe I’m reading a little too much into the text, but it seems that in this text, the activity is focused on the temple.

They are almost transforming Shabbat into a Yom Kippur; it’s a day where all the activity is in the temple. The rabbis, however, focused it on Moshevotaychem, your abode. We won’t discuss it today, but all those laws of carrying, the rabbis spent time trying to ameliorate them, saying you can set up a partition, a symbolic fence, an eruv.

Adam Mintz [18:11 – 18:55]: Right, well, let’s first.

So, first of all, the Book of Jubilees was written around the year 200 BCE, and basically, it’s a review of the laws of the Torah. However, it reflects how they were observing the Torah then, and it’s exactly what you said. It seems Shabbos was a day that was totally temple-focused, which is fascinating because you’re also right that we don’t see that anywhere in the Torah. The Torah says everybody, even your animals, has to observe Shabbos. So it’s very much home-oriented, but they turn it towards the temple. I don’t know why that is, but you’re 100% right.

Geoffrey Stern [18:56 – 19:48]: And again, if we’re correct, it changes the way we read the Torah. Because when in Leviticus it says, “You shall keep my Sabbaths and venerate my sanctuary,” Et Shabtotai tishmeru umikdashai tira’u ani Hashem, it puts it into context. You could make a conflict between Shabtotai and Mikdashai, or you can say they complement each other. This whole discussion and dynamic concerning the position, the proper place of the personal Shabbat, and the Temple is in this short verse that I think we read differently as a result of diving into this polemic, as you said before.

Adam Mintz [19:48 – 20:22]: Yeah, there’s no question. That’s very good. And what you’re really arguing is that this verse is the source for the Book of Jubilees. That’s an additional twist here, right? It’s not made up. The Book of Jubilees gets their idea because they read this verse. You shall keep my Sabbaths and venerate my Temple means you should keep my Sabbath. And through my Sabbath, you’re going to venerate my Temple, my sanctuary, because you’re going to observe Shabbos in the sanctuary. It’s like a dvar Torah.

Geoffrey Stern [20:23 – 20:53]: Yeah. And you could see the other, the rabbinic source saying, no, no, no, no, that’s not what it’s saying. The two are separate. But again, it brings this word polemic that you introduced into the discussion of Shabbat, and so much of how we define Shabbat is how we don’t define it. What we’re allowed to do is what we’re not allowed to do. So, I went ahead and looked. I had not been aware that the Rabbinical Council of America, the halachic arm of the Conservative movement, had written some serious and fascinating responsa literature on using electricity on Shabbat, on using EV, electric vehicles on Shabbat.

Geoffrey Stern [20:53 – 21:24]: There’s one that I have a link to. It’s 75 pages long. It literally surveys all of the traditional sources. It’s a fascinating read for those geeks amongst us who are fascinated by this type of stuff. But what it talks about is that electricity in and of itself is not altogether clear that it is fire. It goes into great lengths to say, obviously there are those in the Orthodox community, they say the knee-jerk reaction is you don’t turn on lights on Shabbat. It’s kind of the definition, the threshold of Sabbath observance.

Geoffrey Stern [21:55 – 22:25]: Again, if we’ve learned anything till now, there are different thresholds, there are different things. But this has seemed to have stuck. They quote and talk about the other issues involved. In other words, it’s not simply a question of what we can do and what we can’t do. It talks about when you’re dealing with elderly people, for instance, if there are accommodations that can be made. Knowing the law is important. Preservation of the environment. You know, I walk out of a room every day, I turn the lights off. I don’t want to waste energy.

Geoffrey Stern [22:25 – 22:56]: There are different values. And then of course, there is the joy of Shabbat. It’s again, a great read in the fundamentals of the laws of Shabbat. It talks about what malacha is, what something is. Mutar is when it’s patur. The most important concept that it really talks about is this concept of Shavut or rest. Because, Rabbi, I’d love to know what you think about this. But more and more, you get responsa or you get rabbis commenting on what’s permitted and what’s not. At the end of the day, the expression is, yeah, but it’s not Shabbosdik.

Geoffrey Stern [23:27 – 23:35]: In other words, you probably can do this, you can take a swim, you can ride your bicycle, but it doesn’t fit into a certain conception of what Shabbat is. So it becomes a little bit of an exercise of our perception of what Shabbat is that drives what we perceive in the law. What’s your impression of that?

Adam Mintz [23:35 – 24:22]: There’s no question. I mean, take electricity. It’s not Shabbosdik. You know, you quoted the Rabbinical assembly. But the truth of the matter is that the Orthodox also, there’s a famous article by Rabbi Michael Broyde, who’s a rabbi in Atlanta, and he also goes through all the possible explanations about why electricity should be forbidden. And at the end of the day, he says it’s not really forbidden, but it’s not Shabbosdik meaning. And it’s so smart because if we were allowed to use electricity on Shabbos, it wouldn’t be Shabbos. Because if you could, you know, what do we always say? What do I tell all the converts? You have to put away your telephone. That’s what it’s all about, putting away your telephone. And that’s what you have to do. If you were allowed to use your telephone, it wouldn’t be Shabbos anymore.

Geoffrey Stern [24:22 – 25:21]: So where it becomes interesting is when I started doing some soul searching myself. I love this idea of unplugged. There are people who have accepted the concept of unplugging, and not even Jewish. It’s just a great thing once a week to unplug, no question about it. But then I look at a specific device like my Kindle. I read a lot of my books on the Kindle, I don’t waste a lot of paper, I don’t cut down a lot of trees, I don’t print things out. It’s not a connected device. I’m not getting emails and texts and stuff like that.

Geoffrey Stern [25:23 – 26:20]: Those of us who live in rural areas or suburban areas, we live a distance away from our kehillah. Getting into an electric vehicle on Shabbat now becomes something that is all of a sudden possible if you believe there’s no fire involved with an electric vehicle. A regular car is actually much, much more problematic than just flipping a light switch. Flipping a light switch is electricity. But actually driving a regular fuel-driven car, you’re actually burning the fuel. That’s why you need to fill up on gas because you’re burning the fuel. The electric vehicle doesn’t have that problem. So driving a fuel car is in violation of the verse at the beginning of this week’s parsha. But an electric car is just like flipping a switch, which again, is only a problem because it’s not Shabbosdik.

Adam Mintz [26:20 – 28:37]: What you’re pointing out, Geoffrey, which I think is interesting and really needs to be considered, is that Shabbosdik needs to be balanced against observing Shabbos better. If you can get to shul by driving an electric vehicle, maybe that outweighs the fact that it’s not Shabbosdik because, in your case, it is Shabbosdik. There’s a group in Israel called Yisrael Chofsheet, Free Israel, and they argue there should be public transportation because they want to have Friday night dinner with their elderly parents or with their grandparents. They find that very Shabbosdik. They find the fact that only people who own a car can, quote-unquote, break the Sabbath in order to get together with their families is inequitable. So what I’m saying is it makes discussions. We are living in a kind of new era.

We are permitted, and I would say almost empowered, to ask these because we have the ability, number one, we might socially live more disparate from each other. So there might be things that used to be taken for granted on Shabbat that are no longer taken for granted.

But then there are also possibilities of having your cake and eating Shabbat and being able to visit Bikur Cholim or whatever. I think that it’s such a fascinating conversation. And I think the biggest, biggest takeaway for me is that it would be very easy for every Jew to believe in this litmus test of Shemirat Shabbat.

Either I’m a Sabbath observer because I don’t turn on lights, or I’m not. And I think that takes the onus over those of us who might turn on lights from saying to ourselves, no, I’m still a Sabbath observer. How am I going to make my day different? You never want to call a child a robber because he’ll act like a robber.

And what I’m arguing today is that every Jew and every human created in a world that was created in seven days has the obligation to look at that seventh day and say, how it is going to impact my life? The key is, and this I think you find everywhere, is don’t make plans, don’t do the types of calculations that you do all week, do things differently. And I think that’s an amazing mandate that the spectrum of how these traditions have evolved gives us and compels us.

Adam Mintz [28:38 – 28:44]: Fantastic. This is really a good topic, and it’s so relevant not only to how we observe Shabbat but how we look at the world.

Geoffrey Stern [28:45 – 28:50]: Amen. So have a Shabbat shalom and look forward to seeing you next week.

Adam Mintz [28:50 – 28:52]: Great parashah. Thank you so much.

Geoffrey Stern [28:52 – 28:53]: All the best. Bye.