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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. If you like what you hear or what you read, why don’t you give us a few stars and say something nice.

This week’s Parsha is Shalach. This week, the state of Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, an operation already being hailed for its strategic brilliance and no doubt will be dissected in military academies for years to come. In light of the planners’ boldness and their ability not just to read reality, but to shape it, we turn to the story of the biblical scouts. But this time, our focus isn’t on the failure of the majority; it’s on Caleb Ben Yefuneh, who defied the consensus more forcefully than even Joshua and who, the Torah tells us, was gifted by a “ruach acheret.” A different spirit. So, Rabbi, welcome. What a week this has been since.

Adam Mintz [2:11 – 2:18]: Wow. Yeah, it’s hard to believe. And I, please God, everyone should be safe, and it should come out with a good outcome.

Geoffrey Stern [2:20 – 3:19]: Yeah, yeah. And you know, I… One podcast I love is Call Me Back by Dan Senor. I was listening to it this morning, and his mother is an elderly woman from England, and she draws references to being in London as a young girl when, what was it? The War of London? The Battle of London? When the missiles were coming in and the English had a stiff upper lip, were making tea and just knowing that, as uncomfortable as it was, their troops were doing what needed to be done. I think this is so different than what happened on October 7th, because, as I said, in the intro, this was a brilliant surprise attack that read so many of the facts in a disruptive manner that no one thought of, and that added to the surprise. So it’s truly fascinating.

Adam Mintz [3:19 – 3:27]: Absolutely fascinating. And we’re praying that it should have a good outcome. Just like those people who made tea in London had a good outcome, this is gonna have a good outcome, too.

Geoffrey Stern [3:28 – 5:39]: Amen. Anyway, let’s get to the parsha, because the parsha is here. Week in and week out, we are in Numbers. And this is a story that pretty much takes up the whole parsha. So every year, we basically are talking about the scouts, the spies, those 12 individuals that were appointed to scout out the land.

Numbers 13, it says, God spoke to Moses saying, “Send agents to scout the land of Canaan, of which I’m giving to the Israelite people. Send one participant from each of their ancestral tribes, each one a chieftain among them.” So Moses, by God’s command, sent them out from the wilderness of Paran, all of them being men of consequence, leaders of the Israelites, and these were their names.

We are in the Book of Numbers, where counting is a big thing. So it goes ahead and lists the names, mostly without anything remarkable about them. The only commentary is in verse 16, where it says, these were the names of the participants whom Moses sent to scout. But Moses changed the name of Hoshea, son of Nun, to Joshua. Rashi comments, why did he change his name? By giving him his name, Yehoshua. In other words, adding the “Yah,” which is God, God’s name, in front of Savior. It’s “God may save.” He, in effect, prayed for him. May God save you from the evil counsel of the spies. Fascinating.

Joshua was the one who conquered the land of Israel. He was a warrior. There were many obstacles and challenges he had in his life that he could use God’s help for. But what Rashi punctuates is the fact that he’s given the name change here, Rabbi, is he really needed help? Not listening to those who were misinterpreting the facts, not to be led astray in the world of ideas as opposed to the actual battlefield. I found that fascinating.

Adam Mintz [5:39 – 5:50]: That is fascinating. And obviously you see here that Moshe changes his name because he’s obviously Moshe’s favorite. And if you’re going to be Moshe’s favorite, probably good things are going to happen to you.

Geoffrey Stern [5:50 – 7:26]: Okay, I like that. But of course, some of the commentaries that we’re going to see in a few minutes, reference or contrast, I should say the difference between Yehoshua, who had a name change, and Caleb, who did not. Caleb’s name could be considered a dog. I mean, a “Celev” and a “Caleb.” So let’s dive in a little more. We’re going to just go over the basic story because there are some interesting nuances.

So in Numbers 13:18, it says that you should go and see what kind of a country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they live in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? And take pains, continues the verse, to bring back some of the fruit of the lands. Kind of like going to the moon. We want to see some hard facts. Now, it happened to be the season of the first ripe grapes. So it talks about them going, and it mentions a bunch of the geography. They passed by from the Negev to Hebron, and they went into Wadi Eshkol and they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes. And there it says, and at the end of 40 days, they returned from scouting the land.

So, Rabbi, you always fond of saying 40 is a big number, I think, because it means some sort of transition. Is that what you read into it?

Adam Mintz [7:26 – 7:44]: I would say that 40 is good luck because Moses spent 40 days on the mountain. So you expect at the end of 40 days they return from scouting the land, that they come back with a good report. So, the fact they came back with a bad report makes it even worse because it’s 40 days. That’s good luck. That’s good news.

Geoffrey Stern [7:44 – 8:49]: Okay, I like that. And at this point, we have no clue what’s going to happen. In verse 26, it says they went straight to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. And they made their report to them and to the whole community as they showed them the fruit of the land. So far, so good. This is what they told him. We came to the land you sent us to. It does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. They could have put a period on it. This is wonderful. They have the material evidence. They went straight to Moses. They got everybody there. And then in verse 28, it says, however, the Hebrew word is Ephes. The people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the Anakites there. Amalekites dwell in the Negev region. Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites inhabit the hill country. And Canaanites dwell by the sea along the Jordan.

Adam Mintz [8:50 – 9:07]: I just want to say, the right? The Anakites. I saw this also in Sefaria. They translate the word “anakim” as “Anakites.” We always grew up to say that meant the giants. It gives it more of an oomph, doesn’t it, that they saw giants there?

Geoffrey Stern [9:07 – 11:18]: I was gonna say, I think I’m sticking with the giants part because I think everything that they’re saying is full of innuendo. They are steering the facts.

They’re not just talking about who’s living where. But first, they go with the Anakites, the giants, and then an Israelite cannot say the name Amalekites without knowing that that is going to create shaking in the boots. So they are giving the facts supposedly, but they are leading the audience. And of course, they start with this, but this Ephes, this however, and they talk about hill countries and other formidable enemies.

Then in verse 30, we get to the star of our show. Caleb hushed the people before Moses and said, “Let us by all means go up and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it.” He too is taking up on the innuendo, and he says, if you’re going to take anything from these facts, let’s do it. Let’s act. Let’s act boldly. He understood they weren’t discussing facts; they were discussing the commentary on it.

This week, we were all looking at the same facts, and everybody was commenting differently. Nothing changes under the sun. But he definitely talks about we shall overcome. Let’s go. Go. But the other men who had gone up with him said, “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we.” Thus they spread calumnies among the Israelites about the land they had scouted, saying, “The country that we have traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there; the Anakites are part of the Nephilim, and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves. And so we must have looked to them.”

Adam Mintz [11:19 – 11:21]: And of course, that tells you the.

Geoffrey Stern [11:21 – 11:27]: Whole story because it was always. They were always just talking about themselves, whether they knew it or not.

Adam Mintz [11:27 – 11:50]: And if you’re. If you’re insecure yourself, then you’re not going to come across as strong to the enemy. You need to have a lot. You better believe that those pilots who flew into Iran on Thursday night, that they had a lot of self-confidence; they had Israeli bravado. You need to have a certain sense of bravado to scare the enemy. If you think you’re a grasshopper, you’re not going to scare the enemy.

Geoffrey Stern [11:50 – 12:52]: Yeah, I love that. So we really have this kind of interaction between facts and perceptions and then perceptions affecting the facts. It’s a cycle. And in terms of. We said in the introduction about the planners of this campaign made the facts, your perceptions of yourself also create realities. There’s no question about it. Our friend Shadal says that on the word Ephes, which we translated above as the but word, the exception word, they should have said, the inhabitants are strong and the cities are fortified, but they sinned in using the word ephes, except. And he quotes Nachmanides, who we’re going to see in a section. So what he’s really saying is what they were saying about the facts was no problem. They added the commentary to it that they added except.

Adam Mintz [12:52 – 13:01]: And that’s what you pointed out about this week. You always get in trouble in the commentary. The facts are never problematic. It’s the commentary that’s problematic.

Geoffrey Stern [13:01 – 15:23]: Yeah. And the alternate of that is Caleb didn’t even bother addressing the facts. Shadal says Caleb had to say, let us go up. Go up. He said it twice. Twice. Aleh na’aleh, which implies from the words of the scouts, it was understood that it was not possible to go up. So it really was just more talking about the commentary. The reaction to what was seen as much as anything else. Nachmanides is fascinating vis-à-vis this last week. There is, and we’re not gonna get into it, there are two, at least two, if not three or four, versions of this in the text. And one of the versions seems to imply that it was God’s idea to send out the spies or the scouts. The other, that it was Moses. So in the beginning of Nachmanides commentary, he’s trying to square that circle. But what’s fascinating to me is what he ends up and says. And what he says is, it appears they asked of Moses, “Let us send men before us that they may search the land for us,” which means spying out the roads and working out the strategy of conquest, similar to the expression from the Kephar, “the prey.” When you prepare to spy out your prey, this is the meaning of the words before us. For they, the Israelites, will follow them later on in their route, similar to the expression “the Ark of the Covenant went before them.” So Ramban is saying this was not to do some sort of travelogue, to plan out a vacation. What we’re seeing here was military planning. Right. The 12 leaders of each of the tribes were sent out to make detailed maps; that’s why it says the road in front of us. And to look, it wasn’t. People don’t plan a war and come back and say, no, we’re not going. They plan it to say, here is the fortification, here’s a clearing, here we have a blind spot, so forth and so on. I just found that very timely in terms of an interpretation of what this is all about.

Adam Mintz [15:23 – 15:51]: You mean what again, how you interpret the facts, how you interpret the whole story here? What did Moses send them for? It’s interesting that it’s clear, you know, here it makes it seem that God spoke to Moses and it came to from God in Devarim. In Deuteronomy, it seems to say that Moses sent the spies. So even that basic point of who sent the spies is not so clear.

Geoffrey Stern [15:51 – 18:49]: Yeah, I only quoted an excerpt from Nachmanides, but I think the way he tries to square the circle is there were different, I guess, motivations for them going. Some of them were to see how beautiful the land was, to look at agriculture clearly, sustainability, how are we going to. But what he focuses on is that God said, do it. Moses kind of tweaked it a little bit. And then the people came up and said, we are going to plan this war. We are going to come up with a plan. And that’s what this is all about. He goes, and then he goes back and he says, but however, they started to make choices. And I think the reference that Nachmanides brings is fascinating. He says a choice is made of those, like someone trying to buy something. He says, all of a sudden they become consumers and they start holding the tomatoes to see whether they’re going to buy them or not and whether it’s good or bad. They changed the goal of the mission. The mission was to plot out a line of attack, and they misunderstood the mission and they came back and said, nah, we’re not going to go for this purchase. Maybe we should look elsewhere to shop. Just a fascinating to me metaphor. But then later on, he starts to talk about this word Ephes. And this is what Shadal referenced before. He says, in all this they said the truth. They gave a report about those matters which they had commanded to find out. Therefore, they should indeed have said, as in fact they did, that the people that dwell in the land are fierce, and the cities are fortified, for it was their duty to bring back words of truth to them and sent them and Moses, as Moses has commanded them. But the wickedness of the spies consisted in saying the word Ephes. Nevertheless, nevertheless, the people that dwell in the land are fierce, which signifies something negative and beyond human capability, something impossible of achievement under any circumstances. Similar to the expression, and he quotes from another verse, ha’Ephes le’Metzach hasto, it is impossible that the mercy will come. So Ramban really focuses on the sin. He’s not so much the interpretation. What he’s talking about is, and this gets back to what you were saying about the grasshopper thing. They were reflecting on their own inabilities. Clearly, you could make the case, since they were a divine people. It’s also in a commentary on their faith in God. But Ramban doesn’t even go there. Something negative, beyond human capability.

Adam Mintz [18:50 – 19:04]: That’s absolutely right.

I mean, you know, again, that’s… do you believe in yourself? And that also is relevant to this situation in Israel. Now, you have to believe in yourself. Now, that’s not enough, but you have to start there.

Geoffrey Stern [19:05 – 20:19]: You have to believe in the possible, no question about it. So then it goes on bringing back our hero. And in Numbers 14:24, it says, “But my servant Caleb, because he was imbued with a different spirit and remained loyal to Me, him will I bring into the land that he entered, and his offspring shall hold it as a possession.” So interesting that this is where I got the subject matter of our discussion. It says in Hebrew that Caleb had a “ruach acheret.” Ruach is a word we know from the first set, verse or two of the Torah, that ruach Elohim, the spirit of God, hovered over the land. Ruach is typically associated with spiritual things, but I think here it really means his… what’s the word, his spirit, his… the way he looked at things, his approach. Absolutely, his approach to things.

Adam Mintz [20:19 – 20:36]: He had a different… but by mistake, your connection to ruach Elohim Mi’rachefet is important because he had a different spirit. You’re supposed to understand that was a Godly spirit. He was the good guy.

Geoffrey Stern [20:36 – 21:26]: Yeah, yeah. I love that they had a spirit too. It just wasn’t a very good spirit. It was ruach ra’ah, I guess is another phrase in Hebrew. The other thing that’s interesting is the verses do focus on Caleb and not Joshua. In the beginning, it was Joshua, as Rashi said. And as you said, he was Moses’s favorite, his chosen leader. But the day really belongs to Caleb. He was the one who had that “ruach acheret.” And the distinction then between Caleb and the other ten spies is significant. But also there was a difference between Caleb and Joshua. And I think that this verse shows, and maybe through the commentaries and reading the text, we’ll maybe have a better sense of what was the difference between the two good guys.

Adam Mintz [21:26 – 21:38]: Right. Well, what you suggested was Caleb had it in his gut. He had a different spirit. Joshua needed some help from Moses to give him a different name.

Geoffrey Stern [21:38 – 23:15]: I love that. And that’s certainly, I think, where Rashi was coming from. And those are the traditional texts. So in the book of Joshua, it does recount this story again. And there, it says, and we’re talking about Joshua, Chapter 14, verses 6 through 15. In verse 8, it says, “While my companions who went up with me took the heart out of the people, I was loyal to my eternal God.” In the Hebrew original, it’s “him, sivi et lev haam.” Just a beautiful turn of phrase. They stole the heart of the people. This is all about stealing the spirit, spirit from other people. And the flip side of that is… it doesn’t use a word that we normally, I think, associate with faith. mileyti means fullness. And he was full. He was secure. He was complete. I would, I would, I would suggest. But again, even when the story is recounted in the Tanakh, it comes down to the perception of the facts, how one looks at it. And stealing the heart of the people is just profound. We came across that a little bit last time when we were discussing what happens when you have draft dodgers or people that don’t show up in the army. It takes away the spirit. And if you need anything in your fighting force, it’s that positive spirit.

Adam Mintz [23:15 – 23:17]: Absolutely right.

Geoffrey Stern [23:18 – 24:06]: So let’s get into this “ruach acheret,” this other spirit. Rashi says another suggests that he was filled with a twofold spirit, one to which he gave utterance, literally one in his mouth and another which he concealed in his heart. So this is fascinating. The commentaries are going to go in multiple directions. Rashi’s is that Caleb was able to hold one truth within himself and deal in subterfuge. We’ve come across this with Aaron dealing with when they sinned with the Golden Calf, you know, trying to guide them. Maybe they didn’t even know he was disagreeing with them on the trip. I thought that was fascinating. And of course, that comes into battle too, right?

Adam Mintz [24:06 – 24:06]: Very good.

Geoffrey Stern [24:07 – 25:13]: I mean, the planning that we had this week was the Israelis and the President speaking out of two sides of their mouth, which made it all possible. They were engaged in negotiation. So I liked that a lot. Another one is the Malbim. And what many commentaries say is “ruach acheret” really reflects more of an evolution. Caleb initially was with them, and then he went off to Hebron by himself. He went back to the ancestral burying ground and maybe meditated upon it. He thought about it, and he changed his spirit. So whereas the first Rashi talks about him holding the two spirits at the same time, one close to his chest and the other speaking it out loud, here other commentaries talk about a metamorphosis, an evolution in his thinking. He was adaptable. I think that’s a key element in terms of a good plan which could correct.

Adam Mintz [25:13 – 25:19]: You have to be able to adapt to different situations. A rigid leader isn’t going to get you anywhere.

Geoffrey Stern [25:20 – 28:13]: Yeah, you’ve got to be able to absorb new facts. And that’s, interestingly, the word that we talked about before that comes from being full is he decided. So there are a lot of commentaries that talk about this. Really, it’s almost as though when we had Abraham and “Lech Lecha,” it has one verse, and it’s left up to the commentaries to say what happened. How did he discover God? It was similar here with Caleb. He went on the same journey that they did, but there was a metamorphosis. It’s interesting how they describe his name. I joked a while ago that Caleb can mean dog. One of the commentaries that I saw said that, yes, he was compared to a dog in a good way. Dogs follow the trail. They stick with the mission. They’re totally loyal. But I think the real takeaway from Caleb is it has the word “Lev” in it. It has the word heart in it. And I think one of the commentaries on it is that it’s a full heart. It’s a complete heart with his whole heart. The Midrash Agada says Caleb ben Yefuneh. Why was he called thus? Because the words that were on his heart, Lev, he replied to Moses not according to what was on the hearts of the scouts, as it said, who had a different spirit. So he followed his own intuition, I think, would be one way of looking at that, his own judgment. And then, of course, we get to Ben Yefuneh. What does that mean? And Yefuneh can mean multiple things. One is to turn, “lifnot.” And he was to say Ben Yefuneh differently. He was a master of change. He was a master of the pivot. That is another quality. I think there is so much that’s going to come out in the history of what happened a week ago, but part of it had to do with what the changing circumstances were. After Hezbollah was destroyed, they could no longer launch their thousands of rockets as a deterrent against attacking Iran. What happened after the first time Iran launched their missiles and Israel didn’t disappear almost a year ago? What happened when Israel retaliated and was able to take down the anti-missile and anti-air defense systems? All of this, this was constant calibration. And I think that to a degree is what Ben Yefuneh means. It means someone who can master the change.

Adam Mintz [28:14 – 28:32]: Right, right. I mean, that’s great. I mean, it seems to be that what you brought up at the beginning, “ruach acheret,” seems to be what all the commentators are focused on. That’s what made Caleb different. That was in his name, Caleb. That was in his name, Ben Yefuneh. Everything revolves around.

Geoffrey Stern [28:33 – 31:16]: And the other thing that the Malbim says here is that he was also able. He turned away from the accepted wisdom, so to speak.

Speaker A: And so, what they really do is they contrast the two. Joshua was helped by God, and while Caleb is not shown as a secularist, he is shown as someone who was able to find it within himself. It wasn’t some sort of secret sauce that he was given, but very rational things.

So the way I want to end is, and this I had not really seen strongly, is that Caleb at the end talks about why we need to go. He says in Numbers 14, he exhorted the whole Israelite community, “The land that we traversed and scouted is an exceedingly good land, Tovah, Aretz meod, meod.” There were those commentaries. Emek Davar is one who is fascinating when he comments on Genesis when God said after creation that creation was Tov meod. He actually references this quote by Caleb and does it again in his commentary on our verses.

I think what he’s trying to say is one fascinating thought. The traditional explanation for Tov Ma’od was that in every good, there’s also bad, and that you can’t recognize the good unless there was bad. I would almost say if you’re evaluating a plan or a strategy, if there isn’t any bad, there’s something wrong; it must be a trap. You have to be able to accept the bad.

But getting back to that spirit of God hovering over creation, looking at the spirit of Caleb, one almost wonders, in kind of looking at it like a Victor Frankl perspective, that what God gave us more than creating a world was, if the Torah gives us something, it’s what perspective, what judgment, what motivation we should take that world to be. And that’s why it says, after everything good, it’s good, it’s good. That was above the facts. God gave us what Caleb gave us in spades, which is you have to have the right attitude.

Adam Mintz [31:17 – 31:28]: That’s such a great thing. You know, the HaEmek Davarwas written by the Netsiv, who was the head of the Volozhin yeshiva in the second half of the 1800s. He always has great insights. This is a good insight. Very, very good.

Geoffrey Stern [31:28 – 32:27]: And the last thing I’ll say is it made me think over the last two years. The biggest mistake that Israel made in its history, and it did it twice, is it underestimated its enemy.

In terms of Gaza, we underestimated Hamas; in terms of the Yom Kippur War, we underestimated the Egyptians. In this particular war that we’re having now, they, if anything, overestimated the Iranians, overestimated the Lebanese and Hezbollah. That’s the right way to plan a war: be surprised that they are more of a paper tiger. But I think this is the war they were prepared for. Hezbollah was the war they were prepared for. And what they did is they didn’t ignore the strengths; they addressed them. When we underestimate our enemies or underestimate the challenges that we’re against, that’s when we get into trouble, actually.

Adam Mintz [32:27 – 32:36]: Oh, that’s a great thing to end on. So Shabbat Shalom, everybody. Am Yisrael Chai. We hope for good news from Israel, and we look forward to seeing everybody next.

Geoffrey Stern [32:36 – 32:38]: 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 and Substack, we also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. If you like what you hear, feel free to give us a few stars and a nice review. This week’s Parasha is Beha’alotcha. The Israelites celebrate their first Passover, we are told, at twilight. One cannot help but acknowledge that a lot of Jewish ritual is dependent on time, or to use the Talmudic phrase, taluyot bizman. Watching Shabbat and holiday observance, one could be forgiven for thinking that Judaism has a fixation on the liminal moments of twilight and, to a lesser extent, dawn. We will explore this fascination with twilight as an embrace of the ambiguity and disorientation experienced during this daily transition. So welcome to the Twilight Zone.

Adam Mintz [2:01 – 2:04]: Rabbi, okay, I’m looking forward. This is a great topic.

Geoffrey Stern [2:04 – 2:09]: You know, I don’t know how we get these topics, but we stumble into them and we have some fun.

Adam Mintz [2:09 – 2:10]: They’re amazing.

Geoffrey Stern [2:10 – 2:41]: We have some fun. So, you know, most people, I think if you ask them about twilight time outside of the context of a particular few minutes of shkia or one of these technical terms that are used for the setting of the sun and the onset of the Sabbath, or the coming out of the stars and the end of the Sabbath, they might refer to a Mishnah in Pirkei Avot. And there it says in Pirkei Avot 5:6, it says 10 things were created on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight, Erev Shabbat Ben Hashmashot. That’s the word used in Mishnaic Hebrew.

And these are the mouth of the earth which swallowed up Korach, the mouth of the well, the mouth of the donkey, the rainbow, all of the 10, I would say, miracles that occurred in the Bible. And I have always, Rabbi, taken this to mean that the rabbis didn’t feel comfortable with miracles. So they said, you know, it must be written into the code, it must be coded into the software of the universe. And that was done at this twilight time.

But frankly, I think, and today I’m going to argue that it goes beyond just having a problem with miracles. The twilight time was the place of safek. It was the place of uncertainty. And that coursed over the uncertainty that comes with not knowing what’s ahead to the uncertainty of philosophical arguments, uncertainty regarding philosophy and theology, and certainty about halakha. And we are going to see that if there was one moment of the day associated with safek, which is the Hebrew word for uncertainty, it is twilight. So let us dive right into the parsha of that.

It is mentioned in the biblical Hebrew and it says God spoke in Numbers 9:13 to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai on the first new moon of the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt. So already there is a fixation, Rabbi, in Judaism, on time; it’s the new moon, it’s the second year. We are very calendar-oriented and I would say time-oriented.

Let the Israelite people offer the Passover sacrifice at its set time. You shall offer it on the 14th day of this month at twilight, Bein Ha’arbayim. At its set time, you shall offer it in accordance with all of its rules and ways. So again, Rabbi, you can’t help but notice that when we are talking about mishpat and laws, there are a lot of laws and rules in Judaism that have to do with dates and with times. You just can’t get away from it.

Adam Mintz [5:22 – 5:24]: So let’s look at the term.

Geoffrey Stern [5:26 – 5:26]: Because.

Adam Mintz [5:26 – 5:40]: The word arbayim is a familiar word. That’s the word erev, meaning evening. So bein ha’arbayim means between the evenings, which they translate as being twilight.

Geoffrey Stern [5:40 – 6:05]: And I said in the intro that we had a fixation on twilight. And Rabbi, really? I think twilight can be in the morning and at night; it’s both dusk and sunrise. It’s that moment where I think that you get a transition from day to night. But I think you are right. In the biblical Hebrew, it comes across more for the twilight that we get at sunset.

Adam Mintz [6:05 – 6:19]: And that’s why the Rabbinic Hebrew uses bein hashmashot from the word shemesh, because the word Ben Hashmashot applies equally to the morning and the evening, while bein ha’arbayim really only applies to the evening.

Geoffrey Stern [6:19 – 7:27]: I absolutely agree. I love it. And the only thing that I would add in thinking about this is maybe the reason where both the biblical Hebrew word focuses more on sunset and our tradition focuses more on the importance of sunset is actually we start and end the day at sunset. The morning dawn might have an impact on when you can start to pray, when you can put on your tzitzit, things like that. But at the end of the day, or the beginning of the day, I should say it begins at sunset.

And so it is only natural that we Jews should be focused more on twilight because it’s the beginning of our day. Midnight has no significance for us. The calendar doesn’t change when the clock strikes 12. It changes when the sun sets. And I don’t know how many cultures and traditions and religions are like that, but certainly in Judaism that already adds to the baggage inherent in twilight and sunset right now.

Adam Mintz [7:27 – 7:37]: Islam also works, you know, days from the evening. I just wonder whether they also have a category called bein hashashot. That would be interesting comparative religion someday.

Geoffrey Stern [7:37 – 8:08]: Yeah, absolutely. And those listeners who know a lot about Islam, guys, send us a note. Put a note on Substack. Let us start a discussion. In any case, this is not the first time that Passover is associated with being done at twilight. I think that’s kind of unique. Also, whereas Shabbat, you kind of wait for the twilight transition to be over, and then, you know, it’s Shabbat here somehow. Even in Exodus 22:6, it says, you shall keep watch over it until the 14th day of this month, talking about the paschal lamb, and all the assembled congregation of the Israelites shall slaughter it at twilight, Bein Ha’arbayim.

And here is where in Targum Onkelos, the Aramaic translation, he translates it as Ben Shimshaya, Ben Hashmashot. So we do get these two terms that you referenced before; they are identical. Slightly different nuances, but they are certainly identical to what that rabbi told me when he wouldn’t speak to me. It was Ben Hashmashot. It’s universally understood as it’s that transition time.

Now, Ibn Ezra, on his commentary on that Exodus verse, says, bein ha’arbayim is a difficult phrase. He quotes Rashi, who actually starts thinking in terms of the midday sun. We’ve mentioned this before, Rabbi. The Jewish or the Halachic hour is not 60 minutes. The day is divided up into 12 equal parts. So in the summer, the hours are longer. In the winter, they’re shorter.

And Rashi somehow believes that once you get into the second half, the second half of the game, so to speak, of the day, already you’re starting to talk about twilight. Ibn Ezra, and I would argue most of Jewish tradition, does not agree. And what Ibn Ezra says is that there is no question that when we are talking at dusk, you shall eat the flesh of the Passover sacrifice. He is talking about when the sun starts to go down on the horizon. That, he says, is the first part of dusk. The second is when the sun is no longer visible, but there is that ambient light.

Those are the two parts of twilight. Not the first time that the Ibn Ezra quotes the Sadducees, the Tzedukim, who say that they divide the evening dusk into three parts. So of course, the idea is it was so important to Judaism that it was kind of like an Eskimo giving different words for snow. We started to slice and dice what the dusk was, and that there were just disagreements between different factions. I just find that kind of fascinating.

Yeah. So let’s just explain it. The two parts of this dusk: one is when the sun’s on the horizon, that’s before sunset, but after sunset, where it’s still light. And we all know that, right? For a while after sunset, it’s still light. That’s the second half. So actually, the two parts of this dusk period are divided by sunset. They’re the two sides of sunset.

Yes, absolutely. And there’s a magic to it. There’s a magic to when that sun goes down below the horizon and there’s still light. There’s magic in the morning when you don’t see the sun yet. But there is an aura, I would think, in many, many religions and cultures. There is this idea of this beauty of the twilight moment. But I made an argument in the beginning that for our rabbis there was certainly an issue and an association between twilight and Safek, or uncertainty.

If we go to the Talmud in Shabbat 34b, it says the sages taught in a Baraita, which is like a Mishnah, which discusses the range of problems that arise with regard to the twilight period. Twilight is a period of uncertainty, Ben Hashemashot Safek. And there’s uncertainty whether it is day and night, or is it completely day, and there’s uncertainty whether it’s completely night. And that is the first moment. They don’t know whether it’s day and they don’t know whether it’s night.

Besides this Passover law, Rabbi, which is kind of fascinating to me, and maybe we won’t touch upon, there’s really nothing that is done during twilight. Things are done at day and things are done at night. And you’re kind of waiting for the end of Shabbat or you’re waiting for the sun to set and the beginning of Shabbat.

Well, actually, but that. That period, what you call that liminal space, that’s the reason we had 25 hours of Shabbat, because we’re strict at the beginning and we’re strict at the end. That period on Friday between sunset and nightfall, since it’s a Safek, since it’s an uncertainty, we consider it as Shabbat. And on Saturday night, we also consider it as Shabbat.

And I think that fits right in with where the rabbis go now. And it says, therefore, the sages impose the stringency of both days upon it. So if we’re talking about, oh, I don’t know, as you say, Shabbat, or it’s a fast day of Yom Kippur.

So I want to tell you. So let me give you the example. This year, this summer, Tisha B’Av, the fast of Tisha B’Av is Saturday night and Sunday. Yom Kippur can never fall out on a Friday or Sunday. We protect Shabbat. Yom Kippur, the calendar is rigged in a way that Yom Kippur never falls out on Friday or Sunday, but Tisha B’Av can fall out on Sunday. So that liminal space, Geoffrey, between sunset and nightfall is a weird space. It’s both Shabbat that you can’t violate Shabbat, but you’re not allowed to eat during that period because it might also be Tisha B’Av. So, as the Gemara says, it has the chumrot, the stringencies of both days.

Yeah, it’s fascinating. I have a memory also going back to the yeshiva. There’s a tradition that you have three meals on Shabbat, and the third meal is called Shalosh Seudot, Shalosh Sudat. And I have memories of sitting in the yeshiva in a classroom, and, you know, you’ve been eating all day, so basically you want to break bread, and you might even use matzah during the year just to have two challot, so to speak, and you start singing.

Then the light outside starts to go down. But in researching tonight, I saw a ruling that says that you’re not allowed to eat before Havdalah. Therefore, some of the legal authorities say you can’t stretch your third meal too far because if it gets into that twilight zone, you might be eating at the end of Shabbat. And I definitely, God bless the Hasidim, they were times where they broke the rules because they felt very strongly that the twilight time was so magical, so spiritually powerful, that it would stretch on and stretch on and you would be singing, and it was powerful.

We’ll get a little sense of that in another tradition, hopefully later, where there is this sense of the forbidden. As you say, sometimes you want to be more stringent, but sometimes you can’t be stringent. Let’s finish with the rabbis, because this becomes kind of interesting about how you measure the twilight. It says the definition of twilight is uncertain. And what is twilight? From when the sun sets, as long as the eastern face of the sky is reddened by the light of the sun, if the lower segment of the sky has lost its color, the upper segment has not lost its color. That is the twilight period.

It goes on, and then it does something fascinating. The rabbis try to define the length of time of twilight. Rabbi Nehemia says the duration of the twilight period is the time it takes for a person to walk half a mil after the sun sets. Rabbi Yossi says it does not last for a quantifiable period of time. Rather, it is like the blink of an eye. This night enters and that day leaves, and it is impossible to calculate it due to its brevity.

I love the fact that they’re measuring things in ways that transcend time and space. Assuming that it takes you and me about the same time to walk half a mil as it did 2,000 years ago, we can get a sense of time. We can calibrate our watches. And then the other, a k’heref ayin, the blink of an eye, is a Talmudic phrase that is just so special, meaning something can come instantly. I love all of the words that are so descriptive and have such feeling about them.

That’s great. Choref ayin is a great word. But you know, Geoffrey, of course, that different people wait a different amount of time after sunset on Saturday night to end Shabbat. I’m sure in the yeshiva they waited a long time after sunset. The Modern Orthodox wait a shorter time. And you know what that’s based on? It’s exactly what you said. It talks about how long it takes to walk a mil, how long it takes to walk this distance. And that, of course, depends on the person. There’s a huge debate about how long it takes to walk, and therefore there’s a debate about when Shabbat is over.

So I didn’t tell you, Rabbi, but we had the week off last week, and I decided to rebroadcast an earlier episode that we did called Rashi, Women, and Wine. In it, I talked about Rashi’s daughters and the fact that they all married the Tosafot, who argued with Rashi.

And I believe what you were referring to is some people follow Rashi’s determination of when Shabbat begins and when it’s out. And some people follow the Rabbeinu Tam. So here, this is a segue from Rashi’s grandson. Yes, absolutely. These have strong impacts, I will say. Besides the stringencies, when things are, for instance, forbidden only from the rabbis d’Rabbanan, then we permit them on Bain Ha’shmashot. You can do things that maybe the rabbis would say you can’t do on Shabbat, but you can do them in this twilight moment.

I wanted to come back to this question, Safek, of things that are unsure, which is a very strong concept in the Talmud. There’s even a phrase called “Sfek Sfeka,” where you have the translation is a compound uncertainty where, to put it into the language we’re talking now, you don’t know whether the sun has set yet and you don’t know whether it’s Friday. So now you’re talking about one Safek on top of another Safek. The rabbis literally thrived on questions of uncertainty. I think part of it had to do with this transcending the calendar. It talks to the fact that we start every with a moment of gray, a moment that’s neither here nor there. I think it had to have an effect.

If we’re talking practical halacha, you talked about Tisha B’Av. I will quote from our favorite mohel cantor, Philip Sherman, Zichrono Livracha, who talks about a baby born on Monday will have his bris the following Monday. Eight days later, a baby born on Monday, after it’s dark, will have his bris the following Tuesday. No big deal, you know, because it’s a Safek of whether it’s the eighth day or the ninth day, you push it out. A baby born Friday evening after sunset, but before it’s dark is called a twilight baby. I had never heard that phrase before.

Adam Mintz [21:15 – 21:20]: Geoffrey only can if Philip Sherman used that phrase. But it’s a good phrase.

Geoffrey Stern [21:20 – 22:26]: So he. He made it up. But I think it fits. There is a perfect example of when, because of the doubt, we don’t. We leave something, we don’t do something. There is a wonderful tradition since we started talking about twilight and Pesach, of making matzah after the time on Erev Pesach, that you’re no longer allowed to eat chametz. You’re no longer allowed to own chametz; you’re certainly not allowed to do anything with it. So that is the elongated twilight, if you will. There’s a mitzvah to make the matzah at that moment that you will use at the seder. Rabbi, it’s kind of like walking on the wild side. There is this sense of the uncertainty of the twilight period, the uncertain period that adds to its holiness, that adds to its mystery, that adds to its magic. I think there’s certainly something there.

Adam Mintz [22:27 – 22:51]: There’s no question about it. The mystery is a good term. The Bain Ha’shmashot is a mysterious period that actually, Geoffrey, goes back to the first source you quoted. The things that are mysterious, like the earth that opened up to devour Korah, all the things that don’t make sense in nature, they’re mystery. They’re created in this mysterious time.

Geoffrey Stern [22:52 – 23:23]: I think that’s the new read that we have on that Pirkei Avot. And that’s what I was trying to say, but you formulated it much better. I always thought that was coming out against miracles. In fact, what it’s doing is celebrating the mysteries, the things that we don’t understand, and celebrating them, truly celebrating them and making them special. There is no question. Now, we talked about the fact that the emphasis is clearly on the evening, the Bain Ha’arbayim. But dawn also has its moment.

I’m going to quote from a rabbi who has a website for people whose gender is not totally defined or post-gender. He has an article called “The Holiness of Twilight” by Reuben Zelman. He’s clearly a scholar. Let me read a little bit of it. He says, in Halacha, there is no morning. There is alot hashachar, the rising of the sun, the point at which the sunlight peaks on the horizon. There’s netz hachama, peaking of heat, the moment when the top of the sun can be seen. And Mishik Yakar, from when he will recognize the moment when a person can recognize someone else.

I always love that part of the morning. When do you know it’s morning? When you can recognize another human being, and it says specifically not their closest friend at a distance of a few feet. These distinctions, he continues, are incredible and precious. To collapse them into the binary of day and night misses the juiciness and the beauty of the spaces in between and the specificity that they each carry. The same is true for evening, which famously includes Bain Ha’shmashot, twilight, a period of time that sits between two days as both and neither, and has been carved out as a holy, liminal in-between place for Rabbi Reuben Zalman’s teaching and the twilight people’s prayer.

So he quotes a bunch of stuff. And then he taught me something, Rabbi. There is, in Mishnah Avot, a saying that says Rabbi Shimon said, be careful with the reading of Shema and the prayer. And when you pray, do not make your prayer something automatic, “Al ta’aseh tefilat keva”. I always thought that meant don’t do it by rote. Make every prayer as if you’ve never prayed before. But this Rabbi quotes from the Talmud in Shabbat 35B. It brings the opinion; he says, with regard to this keva. Rabbi Chiya Bar Abba said, Rabbi Yochanan said it is a mitzvah to pray with the reddening of the sun. Rabbi Zeira said, what is the verse that alludes to this? Let them fear you with the sun and before the moon, generations after generations.

So he translates keva, Rabbi, to mean when it’s 100% day or when it’s a 100% night, and with no uncertainty. No uncertainty says the only time to pray is when it is transient. And what does that transience of twilight bring in this regard? It brings fear of God. Fear can mean trembling; you can also say fear is what you were talking about before, the awe of the divine. But he takes this to mean don’t pray in the middle of the day; don’t pray in the middle of the morning or the evening. Get up and pray at dawn and say Ma’ariv at twilight. I just love that.

Adam Mintz [26:44 – 26:46]: That’s great. That’s amazing.

Geoffrey Stern [26:46 – 26:53]: And I had never even thought about that. This is a bona fide translation, or I should say interpretation from the Talmud.

Adam Mintz [26:53 – 26:58]: Talmud, yeah, I think it’s not. It’s not a translation, it’s an interpretation.

Geoffrey Stern [26:58 – 29:25]: Absolutely, absolutely. But I think keva, once you hear it, it makes you think. It definitely makes you think.

So I didn’t want to. The Talmud in Shabbat continues with its discussions. Since there are so many people who say, when is Shabbat over? When you see three stars, I thought I would also quote that, so we just put that in our little toolbox. On Shabbat 35B, where the conversation continues, it says, with regard to the period of twilight, Rabbi Yehuda said that Shmuel said, when one can see one star in the evening sky, it is still day. Two stars twilight, three stars night. Then they describe how big the stars are, so forth and so on. But that’s where that tradition comes from, from. Of doing the stars. Interesting. He has three gradations here, similar to the Karaites and what we were talking about before.

So I think that if there’s any real takeaway that I wanted to leave everyone with, it is this: If you look up twilight in Wikipedia, for instance, you’ll see the Christian practice, a vigil which gets held at a few times in the dark. In Islam, as you said, Rabbi, it might be the start of the day, but I think only in Judaism is it this liminal moment.

The word liminal comes from threshold, a doorway, a moment of passing. It’s this analogy, the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage. And I think that’s what I took away. It fits into our parasha in terms of the Passover Seder. You’re going through a rite of passage; the doorpost, that liminal thing, has the blood on it. I really do think that for the rabbis, it was this belief in Safek, in uncertainty, the awe that uncertainty brings. That was a profound tool for both feeling that which is transcendent, but also embracing uncertainty. And I just love it. Wanted to hear your comments. And then I am going to finish with my story of the yeshiva.

Adam Mintz [29:25 – 29:26]: Finish with your story. Take it away.

Geoffrey Stern [29:27 – 31:13]: So anyway, I studied in the yeshiva with Rav Shlomo Wolbe, who was considered in his own right, one of the great Mussarniks. But when I told him that I had applied and been accepted into Columbia University, he gave me an envelope and he said, you need to visit Rab Yitzhak Hutner.

So I went to Brooklyn, to Chaim Berlin, and Rav Hutner’s office had a door that had one of these (magnetic) buzzers on it. I was told before I went in that when you leave, do not show your back to Rabbi Hutner. Walk out backwards, because if you turn your back to him, he’s not going to buzz you out. So I knew that I was dealing with somebody who had gravitas. I went to him. I gave him the envelope. If there is anyone listening who has the archives of Rabbi Hutner and can find that letter, I’d love to know what Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe wrote. My sense is he wrote, Rabbi Hutner, you’re our last chance for saving this kid’s soul. You got to save him.

And I can tell you, Rab Hutner did not bite the bait. He looked at me and he said, as I said in the intro, you are Bain Hashmashot You are in the Twilight Zone. When you go to Columbia, you can come back and then I will talk to you. So I went to Columbia, and I went to talk to him, and he still would not talk to me. So, Rabbi, you know what I’m taking from that? I am taking from that I got a blessing from Rav Hutner that I am to live in the Twilight Zone. In that magical moment of Ben Hasmashot. I am still here, still thriving. And I take that not as him turning me away, but as him recognizing me for the path, the unique path that I was following.

Adam Mintz [31:14 – 31:29]: That’s a fantastic story. Okay. Please God, for many more years to come. Thank you so much, everybody. Great topic. Enjoy discussing the Pesach and Shabbat Shalom. We will see you all next week.

Geoffrey Stern [31:29 – 31:31]: Shabbat Shalom.

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.