parshat bo – exodus 12 – 13
This week on Madlik, we’re diving into a fascinating exploration of the Jewish calendar – a topic that’s not just about marking time, but about renewal, liberation, and the very essence of what it means to be Jewish. In our discussion of Parashat Bo, Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Mintz unpack the significance of the first commandment given to the Israelites as a nation: establishing their own calendar. We examine how this seemingly simple act was actually a radical departure from other ancient calendars, and how it embodied core Jewish values of human agency and imperfection. Some highlights from our conversation:
– Why the lunar-solar Jewish calendar was seen as revolutionary by other cultures
– The deeper meaning behind witnessing the new moon
– How the Essenes and early Muslims viewed the Jewish calendar
– The beautiful tension between divine perfection and human imperfection in our timekeeping
This episode really drove home how our calendar reflects so much about our worldview as Jews. We hope it sparks some thoughtful reflection for you too. Tune in for a mind-expanding journey through time, Torah, and Jewish thought!
Sefaria Source Sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/620499
Transcript:
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. This week’s Torah portion is Parshat Bo. According to Rabbinic tradition, the twelfth chapter of Exodus’ requirement that the Israelites take the lunar month of Aviv as the beginning of their calendrical year is the first commandment in this book of Laws. We consider the substance and ramifications of the unique Israelite and latter Jewish modified lunar calendar in the context of other alternatives and the Exodus story itself. So, join us for Solaluna.
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Well, Rabbi, it is, I believe, Rosh Chodesh tomorrow. Correct. It’s Shvat, it’s Shvat is correct. And you are in Australia and I am in London. So the stars are aligned for us. The moon is about to start a new month. And here we are discussing what we have to realize is the first commandment of the Torah. So we’re starting fresh all over again. And because it’s something that has to do with time and the calendar, I thought I would remind myself and our listeners that if you look at the difference between Christianity and Judaism and Islam, I think the first thing they’ll say is the day of the Sabbath. Islam is on Friday. The Jews celebrate it on Saturday. Christians celebrate it on Sunday. One of the demarcation lines that religions make are always calandrical. And here we are. The first commandment has to do with much more than when we keep the Sabbath or the seventh day. It has to do with how we keep time, how we mark our calendars. And so in a sense, it’s surprising because it might seem to many of us as trivial. But on the other hand, it shouldn’t be surprising because Demarcating the calendar is something that historically has divided people. What thinks you?
Adam Mintz: Yeah, the calendar is the most important thing. That’s why it’s the first mitzvah, because you have nothing without the calendar. So we’re about to have Pesach. But Pesach isn’t worth anything unless you have a calendar to know when it falls and what the first month is. So this is. This is no question that this is the beginning. It’s not the beginning of the Torah. It’s the beginning of the story of the Jewish people.
Geoffrey Stern: And just to hammer the nail in. In my studies and preparation for today, I came across a Ketubah. You’re going to be marrying a couple on Friday in. In Australia. It’s a ketubah found in the geniza, and it’s a marriage between a karaite, those that kept, that followed the letter of the law, they were formalists or literalists and a Jewish fellow. And in the Ketubah, it has a condition, and it says that they will observe the holy festivals according to the sighting of the moon and the finding of the barley in the land of Israel, not according to the laws of the Gentiles. Already you see that the way you keep the calendar can divide people. I think of the Christian church, the Eastern Church and the Western church celebrate Christmas on different days. That totally divides them. So this is really a Rubicon, if you will. And therefore it shouldn’t surprise us, as you say, that it is the first law, but to remind us. So let’s start in Exodus.
Adam Mintz: Well, let’s go back for a second to the calendar. Why is it that in Russia they celebrate a different Christmas? You know, in 1582, Pope Gregory IX saw there was a problem with the calendar, and he eliminated 10 days from October 5th to October 15th. And the Russians, the Eastern Orthodox, never accepted it. So literally, it’s a different religion. Because if you don’t celebrate Christmas the same day, can you imagine if we celebrated Yom Kippur on one day and in Israel they celebrated Yom Kippur on another day? That would be crazy.
Geoffrey Stern: I mean, this.
Adam Mintz: We couldn’t have a religion that way.
Geoffrey Stern: It sets up the stakes of the discussion that we’re going to have. And as you know, there were instances in Judaism where different sages, maybe different communities had those notions and we could have gone down that path. Fortunately, we didn’t.
Adam Mintz: We avoided that path. Right.
Geoffrey Stern: So here we are in Exodus 12:1, and God said to Moses and to Aaron, in the land of Egypt, this month shall mark for you the Beginning of the months. It shall be the first of the months of the year for you. Chodesh hazeh lechem Rosh chadashim Rison hu l’chem L’hodshei Hasanah. So, Rashi, first of all, I go back to the first Rashi in all of the Bible. And Rashi asks the question, why do we have all this narrative of Abraham, of Adam and Eve, of the tower of Babel? He says, why don’t we start with the first commandment given to Israel, which is Hakodesh hazeh Lahem? It seems to be, while there may be disagreements when we count all of the 613 commandments which they are, there seems to be a consensus that this in fact is the first commandment given to the Jewish people.
Adam Mintz: Right. That. That’s correct. There are two things. One is, this is clearly the first commandment that’s given to the people. The people, not individuals. Not the Mitzvah of circumcision, not the mitzvah of Gid Hanasha. This is given to the people. But, you know, Rashi makes an interesting point in that first Rashi. He says, the Torah should have started with this chapter. You know, Geoffrey, that’s not so obvious. Who says that the Torah is only a book of law and that we should only have law in the Torah? I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a pretty good time with you since the week after Simcha’s Torah. You know, studying the stories. Isn’t that an important part of the Torah? So Rashi makes a huge jump by saying the Torah should start here.
Geoffrey Stern: Maybe I should rephrase, Rashi, because obviously he has an answer to that question. But I think if he were to say, if you think that the Torah is a book of law, then it should have started with this first commandment. Good, good. And then he answers, but it actually is more than a book of law.
Adam Mintz: good. Okay, good. That’s probably the right way to say it, because the other way to say it is, you know, that isn’t fair to the book of Bereshit.
Geoffrey Stern: But I love the fact that you reference circumcision and some other ordinances that were given to individuals like Abraham. That’s what one of some of the commentaries talk about in terms of speak unto Moses and to Aaron. This is a kind of a threshold. All of a sudden, God is not talking to Pharaoh. He’s talking to Moses and Aaron, and he’s commanding the people of Israel who were born. Moments, ago with the Exodus. From Egypt.
Adam Mintz: Right.
Geoffrey Stern: I just.
Adam Mintz: One little thing that’s related to all of this is last week we talked about the, the beginning of the plagues and, and, and Moses and Aaron. You know the Torah in last week’s Parasha, Someone pointed this out to me last Shabbat morning. The Torah in last. In last week’s Parasha says that the father of, of Moses and Aaron, Amram, married his aunt Yocheved. That’s what the Torah says in last week’s Parasha. Do you know that in the Torah later in, in, in Leviticus, the Torah says explicitly, you’re not allowed to marry your aunt? So Moses and Aaron come from an illicit marriage. I mean, nobody makes a big fuss about that. You have to say somehow, and this is your point, that what happens before chapter 12 is not really Torah in the legal sense. It’s stories, but it’s not really Torah. That’s super interesting.
Geoffrey Stern: Great. In any case, this is a pivotal moment. And the fact that the moment, the first commandment that was chosen was about this Rosh Chodesh, this beginning of the chodesh, we typically translate that to be month here or the next. Rashi. Rashi begins to get into a little bit of the nuance of the word for chodesh. He says that he showed him meaning Moses, the moon in the first stage of its renewal. And he goes, the tradition, therefore, is this stage of renewal shall be the moment of the beginning of the months. There’s something here about beginnings. There’s something here about this ability to renew oneself. And it all comes, it’s starting to color in and reflect this concept of not only is this something that relates only to the calendar, it might have something to do with the Exodus itself. And before you comment, I have to make one kind of admission that I was thinking this week to find a correlation between all the astrology that we came across in the book of Genesis and Exodus, which starts with the astrologers not being able to interpret Pharaoh’s dream of seven good years and bad years. And all of a sudden Joseph coming and doing that the astrologers couldn’t do. And then we have the astrologers who are trying to mimic the plagues and the tricks, so to speak, of Moses. And then we have the astrologers who predict the birth of the savior of the Jews, Moses, and therefore determine that all the firstborn should be killed. I was trying to see kind of a contrast, a departure here, that the Jews were, in a sense, rejecting a little bit of the set rules of astrology and Looking at the moon, didn’t find anything. I’m curious to know what you’re thinking.
Adam Mintz: I mean, I think that’s very good. It seems to be, from the way the Torah presents it, as if this is a big innovation, right? The Torah presents it like, wow, we’re going to declare the month based on the moon and our whole calendar is going to be based on the moon. That seems to be a big deal. Doesn’t.
Geoffrey Stern: Certainly does. There is this sense of renewal, There is this sense of something fresh. There is this correlation that the first Rashi in Genesis kind of triggers, which that was the creation. And this is the creation. This is the beginning of this amazing journey. And Cassuto, who I just love that Sefaria has used him. I do have to provide my own translation.
Adam Mintz: I was going to say, I’m surprised they translated. That’s great that you translated.
Geoffrey Stern: So he’s lyrical. What he says is. And he follows a little bit on the higher biblical critics who make a distinction between the few verses that we just read, a whole bunch of body that lies in between, which talks about the Exodus, the passover of the Exodus, and then goes back to the Exodus of the generations. What we just heard a second ago, Rabbi, was not only for the people of the Exodus, the moment in Egypt when the slaves were freed, it was forever. And what he says is, this is a momentous change in paradigm. He says, after the end of the previous episode comes a break. And after the pause, as mentioned in the description of events change, the story takes on a new form. Pharaoh is forgotten, his servants are forgotten. Pharaoh’s palace and the entire environment where which we stood during the entire previous episode seem to have disappeared before our eyes. The center of the plot is now in the midst of the people of Israel. And the commands given to Moses and Aaron are directed towards the people of Israel. This is people pointed. And whatever needs to be done towards Pharaoh, God’s going to take care of it. They, Moses and Aaron have nothing but to take care of their people. And the first command given to them is the command to prepare for the day of the redemption, which will come soon on the one of the first months of the year. This is the beginning of a new period in people’s lives. So he really is almost leaving.
Adam Mintz: This is a remarkable Cassuto.
Geoffrey Stern: It’s poetic. I never saw him to be so poetic, but really, really great. It’s a new chapter. It’s a mind change all of a sudden. So what happens is after we skip the in between verses that talk about the exact requirements for that particular passover, the passover of those people who were being redeemed. It comes back to the Yetziat Mitzrayim. shel hadorot wrote, Moses said to the people in verse 13:3, remember this day in mind on which you went out from Egypt from the house of serfs, for by the strength of God brought you out from here. No, Chametz, no fermentation is to be eaten. He says, today you are going out in the month of Aviv, which Fox correctly translates as not spring, but a particular aspect of spring. This grain, this first grain to blossom. And what’s important here is that all of a sudden, Hayoma tem yotzim bechodesh Aviva, before it said, you have to keep this month, and this is the month of the Exodus. Now you have to follow the Chodesh, the lunar calendar. Now it adds something more. And now it says, but even though you follow the lunar calendar, it has to be linked to the time when the barley blossoms. And this, Rabbi, is where things start to get complicated. Because up until this point, we could have easily said we were going to have a lunar calendar. But guess what? Lunar calendars need to be corrected. Because if, as Islam, as we’ll see in a second, you have a strictly lunar calendar, Ramadan can happen any month of the year. If you have a solar calendar, Christmas is always going to be December 25th. If you have a lunar calendar, we get into the old question of are the holidays early this year or are they late this year? It has to be fixed.
Adam Mintz: So let me just say that the Chodesh Aviv introduces. Of course, you’re right, and that’s going to be fascinating about the calendar, but it introduces the agricultural feature means, you know, the. The idea that we left Egypt during the spring somehow was important as we go forward in terms of the agricultural connection.
Geoffrey Stern: Absolutely. And of course, in prior years, when we’ve looked at the kibbutzim haggadot, they really emphasize the spring, seasonable and agricultural part of this. But here I had never realized that Aviv doesn’t really mean spring. It’s so linked to agriculture. It has to do with the first blossoming of barley.
Adam Mintz: And I think that’s in the Torah. The fact that the word Aviv means that I think is from the Torah somewhere. So that point is really good. By Fox.
Geoffrey Stern: Absolutely. And so one of the things that Rashi brings that is linked to this is that this is not a coincidence. The idea in the rabbinic texts is She hu Kashar l’tzeit that this time of spring is actually connected. It is fitted for this redemption. So, again, along with Cassuto and along with what Rashi said earlier about seeing it, not necessarily seeing the moon, but seeing the renewal of the moon, everything here is about renewal. It’s starting to fill in the blanks quite nicely.
Adam Mintz: Fantastic. I just want to say you need that, Rashi, because otherwise it seems kind of random that you have to go out in the spring. Why don’t we have a calendar like the Muslims? So Rashi is kind of sensitive to that.
Geoffrey Stern: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And just to give you. And again, I always say this when we do our podcasts, there are. Sefaria notes that go along with our podcast that have all these texts in full length. We just quote a little bit from them. So the Rabbeinu Bachaya actually says something that’s fascinating for our liturgy. And he says that the blessing that we say is Mekadesh Yisrael VeHazmanim, we bless Israel and its timing v’lo haMoadim and not the festivals. In other words, what takes precedent is you can’t have Passover without the season of the spring. You can’t have Sukkot without the season of the harvest. It’s the season that comes first. It’s the calendar that comes first. I would venture to say that in the eyes of the rabbis, in the eyes of the text itself, what we’re seeing is the radicalization of this lunar calendar that’s being introduced here. It really is packed and pregnant with meaning about renewal, about seasons, about the change of history, if you will.
Adam Mintz: Yeah, no, I mean, that’s really good. Let’s just think about that for a minute. I never thought about it, but Mikadesh Yisrael v’hazmanim That’s not really correct because we say Mikadesh Hashabbat. It should be Mikadesh Yisrael V’hamoadim ha’moadot So hazmanim the importance of time. That’s a very, very good point by Rabenu Bachaya. I like it.
Geoffrey Stern: Yeah, yeah, fascinating. But it’s even more fascinating in the context of the discussion that we’re having, because we’re talking about time and we’re talking about calandrical time. So, of course, the cornerstone of the last verse that we need is in Leviticus, where it says, Elu Moadei hashem. These are the set times of God, the sacred occasions where you shall celebrate at its appointed time. So if there was ever any question that this lunar calendar had to be calibrated so that even though it misses 10 days every year, it will be calibrated. So Passover is always in the spring. This is explicit requirement that our calendar calibrates itself. And of course, we had some of this when we were looking at Genesis. In Genesis 1, we actually mentioned this where it says, God said, let there be light in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night. They shall serve as signs for the set times, the days and the years. It was clear that the sun and the moon, both of them, were going to be used in calibrating holidays and serving as signs for mankind to kind of go through the cycle of life.
Adam Mintz: Just take one second on that. And that is that you see that this idea of the moon and the holiday days goes back to breishit, goes back to creation. You know, that’s a little trick that the Torah plays, and that is that everything is found in creation. God doesn’t change things. God just allow, you know, kind of pulled out from creation at different points in history. The Mishnah in Pirkeo Avot talks about the talk. This is out. Out of context a little bit, but he talked about the. The talking donkey. Like, where’s the talking donkey? We never had a talking donkey. He says that also was created at the time of creation, and God kind of pulled it out of creation. So here too, Genesis 1:14, and now finally in chapter 12, God takes it out. That’s very good.
Geoffrey Stern: Look, it’s a general statement. It was the world that people lived in. They didn’t take out their calendar, they didn’t look on their watch. It was derived from nature, from the stars. And so I think even at the most basic level, what it’s saying is ancient man, but the Jews were no exception. Looked up to the stars, looked up to the moon. I mean, I think the word for month is chodesh, which definitely comes from renewal, which the scholars argue argues against a solar system where you don’t really have renewal, you have cyclicality. And then the other word for month is yerech. Yerech means moon. So you can make a compelling case that the core of the Israelite calendar was the moon. But nonetheless, we’re going to see that the sun enters into it. So I think what we need to share now is what is absolutely unique about the way the Jews counted the months. And we noticed a little bit before that some of the commentaries focus on the fact that when in our Parasha, God said to Moses, it’s the new moon, he said Hazeh, he was like pointing to the moon. And the way our tradition took that is, that the new moon is something not to be calculated, but is to be seen by witnesses. Witnesses were to go out. I would argue that this is the humanizing of the calendar, that the calendar was dependent on society and members of the society. But the way the rabbis took that really made that concept that I just said on steroids. Because what they said was, is even if you have a witness who comes in. And in the case of the Talmud, in Rosh Hashanah, where witnesses come in and they say, we saw the moon at its earliest phase on Monday, and then on Tuesday, they come in and say, we didn’t see it today in the same phase. And what the Talmud says is. What they’re saying is scientifically unacceptable. And so these witnesses should be rejected. The example they give is to say about a woman that she gave birth on Monday, and then you look at her and her belly is between her teeth. On Tuesday, it’s clear that she’s still pregnant. And what Rabban Gamliel did, and he was the Nasi, he was in charge, he says, we don’t follow science in this regard. We’re not that interested. In fact, we’re much more interested in the process. And so he said, the new moon will be when these witnesses determined it would be. And Rabbi Joshua came and argued with him. And the famous story is that he told Rabbi Joshua, I want you to come to me on the day according to which you believe Yom Kippur is. And I want you to have your staff in hand, which is not permitted on Yom Kippur. I want you to walk to me and desecrate what you believe to be Yom Kippur. And the idea is that it was more important, this process of man and society seeing when they believed the moon was in its phase than what was in reality. And what Rabbi Akiva did to calm down this Rabbi Joshua is literally talk about this verse from Leviticus that we just mentioned. And he says, these are the appointed seasons of the Lord. He says, whether they are declared them or not at the right time is not important. It’s when they are appointed. And I think this is one of the radical aspects of the way that Jewish and rabbinic tradition took this concept of declaring the new moon.
Adam Mintz: Yeah. Now let me ask you a question. Why do you think you did a very good job in summarizing that story about Yom Kippur? Why do you think there’s a need for that story about Yom Kippur?
Geoffrey Stern: Because I think what we’re going to see is that the alternatives to the Israelite calendar were calendars that were trying to be perfect. We are going to see and we might as well move to this right away. In the Dead Sea Scrolls they found something called the Book of Jubilees. And of course, Jubilees we know, is something that’s calendrical. It has to do with the calendar. And it’s clear that there was at least part of the sect and part of the reason the Essenes broke away from Rabbinic Jews is they believed that the year was 364 days. Interesting. Not 365. 364. And they say that the reason that that is so important, in other words, a solar year is so important, is that everything will fall in according to the way it’s supposed to be. And they looked at the rabbis and a story like the one we just heard and they said they are disturbing the feasts. They went on to say, for I know for henceforth shall declare it unto them is not of my own devising. In other words, we can’t make up a calendar. We can’t decide when a month begins. For the book that is written before me is on the heavenly tables. The divisions of days is ordained. And what they are saying is that any calendar that can be adjusted by man, and I think that we saw in that story of Rabbi Akiva and Joshua, cannot be pure, cannot be holy, cannot survive within a religious context. And I’ll quote one of the scholars who talks about it, is they were looking at time in heaven is precise and unchanging, a heavenly based system. And it’s interesting, Rabbi, why they wanted 364, because 364 is actually divisible so that every date in the calendar is therefore can be assigned a specific day. 91, 13 weeks of seven days. It all was perfect.
Adam Mintz: Now, you know that, Geoffrey, right? You know that from your birthday. If your birthday this year is on a Monday, next year it’s going to be on a Tuesday. It’s one day off. I just want to say one thing, and that is we’re coming to the end. So before you finish this up, I just want to say one thing. And that is, of course, the argument between the rabbis and the Essenes and the book of Jubilees is whether or not the calendar should be man made or God made. We believe that man, that the Oral Torah is man’s contribution. That’s why the calendar is so important, because it’s man’s contribution. But they didn’t believe that. They wanted everything to come from God.
Geoffrey Stern: And to show you that this was not me in 2025, presupposing what other people thought of the Jewish calendar, the Islamic calendar goes in the opposite direction. It follows a purely, and I emphasize the word pure, purely lunar calendar. And they say a calendar that can be adjusted to address the marketing season, to address the harvesting season. They call it Al Nasi. And most scholars believe that al nasi is literally referring to the rabbinic calendar where the nasi determined. So I think what you have to understand is the Jewish calendar was redical,, but it was radical and self understood to be radical. Radical and understood by its neighboring religions and cultures to be radical. And at the end of the day, I think we live in a society where people believe they have facts and they dive into their facts. And anyone who believes in their facts are correct and anyone else is a heretic, is a liar, is a criminal. And I think that’s how you could look at perfect calendars, whether it’s lunar or solar. And I think what the radical context of what the Israelite and later Jewish calendar was saying was just calm down. We can have a calendar that is imperfect because humanity is imperfect. And dare I say the world is imperfect. We might not understand our God created world as being imperfect, but it is so. And that the importance of the message for liberation is that society. And that’s why this Cassuto was so beautiful when he says we are switching gears here and now we’re talking about not miracles and not politics. We’re talking about society and the calendar and the time that they will make work. And I think it’s a radical message.
Adam Mintz: It’s great. This is amazing. I’m going to share it this week in Melbourne at the shul. This is a great message about the calendar, about what the Torah comes to say. Fantastic. Shabbat Shalom, everybody. This was really, really good this week. Next week we’ll both be back on the east coast in New York. Kind of boring, but we will continue learning Parshat B’shalach. Be well, everybody.
Geoffrey Stern: Shabbat Shalom.
Words Without Borders
parshat noach – genesis 10 – 11
Join Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz in conversation regarding the weekly Torah portion. What happens when language becomes both a bridge and a barrier? In this episode of the “Madlik Disruptive Torah Podcast,” the duo delves into Parashat Noah, exploring the Tower of Babel’s tale and its implications on linguistic diversity. They unravel how the division of languages shaped rabbinic texts and Jewish tradition, posing questions about unity and communication. Discover how ancient narratives explain modern phenomena, and consider the power of translation in preserving and transforming sacred texts. Is the multiplicity of languages a divine gift or a source of chaos?
– Explore the Sefaria source sheet www.sefaria.org/sheets/599916
Transcript:
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 the Madlik Disruptive Torah podcast on your favorite podcasting platform, as well as a video version on YouTube. This week’s parsha is Parshat Noah – We continue our discussion of “Division” as a seminal force in the Creation story of the Hebrew Bible. Today we’ll focus on the creation and division of language and associated concepts and opinions and how this linguistic diversity played out in latter Rabbinic Texts. So join us for “Words without Borders”
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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 the Madlik Disruptive Torah Podcast on your favorite podcasting platform, as well as a video version on YouTube. This week’s parsha is Parashat Noah. We continue our discussion of division as a seminal force in the creation of the Hebrew Bible. Today, we’ll focus on the creation and division of languages and associated concepts and opinions, and how this linguistic diversity played out in later rabbinic texts. So join us for Words Without Borders.
So, Rabbi Adam, our second debut on YouTube. It’s been a lot of fun exploring this. I have to say that after last week, I put it up on YouTube. One of the things that I found that was fascinating is that people can actually comment on our podcast. And so I had a woman I want to thank, Sarah Richardson. Not only is she following us on the YouTube channel, which you can do.
Adam Mintz [1:21 – 1:22]: Holy cow.
Geoffrey Stern [1:22 – 4:18]: But she had a completely different feminist approach. Bereset Bara elokim “at” Aleph Tov. And I encourage you all to sign in to YouTube. Look for our channel and you can read it there. But it certainly does make this whole endeavor, doing it on YouTube a little bit more exciting. So, as I said in the intro, we are going to continue. We don’t normally continue one Madlik podcast with another, but this was irresistible because as you can see, we have the story of the Tower of Babel. And if it’s about anything, it’s about creating divisions and what those divisions mean in the most important form of communication that we have, which is language. So, we are in Genesis 11, and it says “Everyone on Earth had the same language and the same words.” There was total unity. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. Interesting. It says. So all of a sudden, we have now not only one language, but people are starting to travel. The translation that they give for Kedim is East as in “Yoma, Kedma, Tzophona, v’negba. But Kedim also is kind of an accolade for it’s for creation, as we’ll see in a second. So, this is like moving to the next chapter after Creation. And we’re all pretty familiar with the story of the Tower of Babel. Mankind said, let’s build this tower up into the heavens. And then God in verse 5 came down to look at the city and tower that humanity had built. And God said, if as one people with One language for all. This is how they have begun to act. And then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. So, God recognizes עַ֤ם אֶחָד֙ וְשָׂפָ֤ה אַחַת֙. He focuses on the fact that they have one language. The truth is, Rabbi, these were people who were doing their first communal endeavor. And with this wonderful gift that God had given them, whether the gift was language, whether it was just the earth that they were on, they used that power to rebel against God. And almost God is the one, I think, that is bracketing this story with language. The narrator starts by saying everybody had one language. They had yahdut, they had unity. And then this is what they did with it. It’s not clear.
Adam Mintz [4:18 – 4:41]: It says, and this is that nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. It doesn’t have to mean that they rebelled against God. But the minute that you can do anything, then rebelling against God is within your reach all of a sudden.
Geoffrey Stern [4:42 – 6:22]: Yeah. So, I think there’s two things. There’s the assumption that they were up to no good, and there’s the assumption that it’s all because they had one language. You know, maybe they all had the same sandwich in the morning. You could have attributed it to that. But in any case, that’s the purpose of this story. And God in verse 7 says, let us. Same thing that he said when he created man. Not let me, but let us then go down and confound their speech there “so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.” I love that. That they will not hear one person. The language of Re’ehu clearly has a sense of a comrade, not simply the other. So, God focuses on language as the channel that they use, the catalyst here. And he creates Babel. It’s not that farfetched to see that there’s a double entendre here between the word Babel and the place Babel. Just as we started Mkedem, they went from one place, they came to another. So, this is a myth in the most basic meaning of the word. You can call it a creation, an origin story. The interesting thing is we are going to be talking about language. So even Onkelos, who is this convert who converted to Judaism and made the first, I would say, approved translation of the Bible into Aramaic. He calls it was.
Adam Mintz [6:22 – 6:24]: It was Sefaria 2000 years ago.
Geoffrey Stern [6:25 – 8:11]: It definitely was, he says, when they traveled from the east and then in parentheses at the beginning. So, there is a double entendre here. It’s not only a journey in space, but it’s also a journey in the chronology of the world, and it’s a continuation of the story of creation. So, we are talking now about translation. I just mentioned a second ago that Onkelos made the translation. But, Rabbi, when we try to explain things one to the other, we can use different words in our own language, synonyms, or we can use other languages. It’s the most basic form of really understanding here. And certainly, translation is not altogether bad, as we’ll see. So that’s kind of what we’re going to be looking at again this week, where something is kind of maybe pigeonholed and targeted as evil, but ultimately both in our tradition as Jews, but also as the Western tradition, the universal tradition of knowledge and the growth of knowledge. Multiple languages are not a bad thing. And that’s kind of interesting that here we are again looking at what we did last week. We were talking about the creation of male and female, the separation from the Garden of Eden, which was a creation myth in the sense that it created who we are today. We wouldn’t understand who we are today without death. And the story of leaving Eden explains death to us. We wouldn’t understand how we are today without having the ability to procreate male and female. You about to say something, Rabbi?
Adam Mintz [8:12 – 8:18]: You didn’t read this gemara in megillah 3A. You say having different languages is good.
Adam Mintz [8:19 – 8:45]: But look at this story the Gemara relates to. When Yonatan Ben Uziel wrote his translation, Eretz Yisrael quaked over an area of 400 Parsa by 400 Parsa, and a divine voice emerged and said, who is this who has revealed my secrets to mankind? There is this idea that, you know, translations and other languages are dangerous because, you know other people are going to know our secrets.
Geoffrey Stern [8:45 – 9:01]: Interesting. You took it as other people are going to know our secrets. I took it in a different way. I took it as translation is a key to insight. It reveals the secrets just like that first Onkelos that we started today.
Adam Mintz [9:01 – 9:12]: So why did it quake? You think it quaked for good reason? I think it quaked because it was angry. Good. That’s why we learned Gemara, because there are different ways to understand it. That’s fantastic.
Geoffrey Stern [9:12 – 13:01]: And in typical Gemara fashion, I think we’re both right, because I think what it shows is that translation is, at the end of the day, very powerful. So if we go on to look at Rashi’s commentary on the verses that we just read when it says am echad, that they were one people, they possess all the advantage of being one People and having one language common to all of them. And this is what they begin to do. Almost in one of the midrashim, it compares the people who built the Tower of Babel. They compared it to Adam, who used God, gave him this beautiful gift of Eve, and he used it. He said to God, she made me do it here too. They used language, but again, it’s this sense of they used unity and language against me. The next Rashi says that THEY MAY NOT UNDERSTAND. One asks for a brick and the other brings him lime. The former therefore attacks him and splits open his brains. So, by mixing up their languages, God wanted to disrupt all communication and not enable mankind to create something like the Tower of Babel. I think that’s kind of the dialectic that we’re in today, because the truth is that language is also an amazing tool. Having different languages is having an amazing tool to build. But as you say, the earth quaked. So, it’s a really fascinating question that is raised. But I really started by talking about creation myths. And you have to say to yourself, rabbi, I understand the story of the Gan Eden, because without Gan Eden, we wouldn’t understand death. You know, the Christians call it original sin. But the point is it had to explain to us where we are today. It’s fascinating to me that the next myth, the next narrative, the next story that the Torah felt compelled to introduce was about language. That, too, is absolutely fascinating, but not so much because it is a book. It’s a book that transmits through language. But I have up on the Sefaria notes now a famous, famous guideline that Ramban passes on to us. This concept of maasei avot Siman L’banim. The stories of the patriarchs are a sign for their children. I would argue the correct translation would be the stories of the foundational myths or foundational stories are a siman, are a sign, are a metaphor, are creating a reality for us. And that’s truly what we have here. For the story of the Tower of Babel. In modern language, it’s called an etiological story. It’s a story that comes to explain a culture or a norm. And Cassuto, who I’m now so happy to see is on Sefaria, says literally that. That this story is here to explain different languages, different peoples, different nations. So, I think we have to recognize how important that is for the biblical text. That just as it was important to explain to us how the world came to be, the next thing it does is explain how languages came to be, how countries came to be. How divisions came to be. I think that’s just from a point of view of what the sensitivity was, is just fascinating.
Adam Mintz [13:01 – 13:58]: Yeah, I mean, this is an amazing Cassuto. You want to read. The second paragraph in the Cassuto just tells you about these ideological myths. He says an etiological myth or an etiological story is a story that comes to explain a custom, tradition, social norm, or other natural or social phenomenon. In the Book of Genesis, there are many etiological mythology, such as the shape of the snake, which is explained as a punishment imposed on it by God for tempting Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of Knowledge. The existence of different languages explained through the story of the Tower of Babel and the rainbow following the flood is a divine sign that there will not be another flood. Right? I mean, everything is an etiological story in the book of. In these first two parshios, everything that happens is an introduction of that phenomenon into the world. Cain kills Abel, murder is introduced there.
Geoffrey Stern [13:58 – 19:24]: And I don’t think anyone should hear us wrong. Calling something a myth doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Calling something a myth means that whether it happened or not, there is a lesson here. The author is trying to give us a way to explain, at the end of the day, what does religion. Its most important tool is to explain our reality to us. And I think that’s exactly what this story does. And it’s just again fascinating to me that there was a focus on language. Now, to show you how important the focus on language is, earlier in our parasha, we already have this question of languages come up. So, whoever the author of our work needed to answer this one way or the other. In 10 it says, these are the lines of Shem, Cham and Yafet. These were the children of Noah. And it says in 10:4, the descendants of Yavan, Elisha, Tarshish and Kittim and the Dodanim, it says, and from these maritime nations branched out. These are the descendants of Yaphet by their lands, each with its language, their clans and their nations. So, this is almost independent of the story of Babel. It is already talking about different peoples, different lands and different languages. In this case, it’s talking about the Greeks and it’s talking about the Greek sailors who sailed to different islands. מֵ֠אֵ֠לֶּה נִפְרְד֞וּ אִיֵּ֤י הַגּוֹיִם֙ בְּאַרְצֹתָ֔ם אִ֖ישׁ לִלְשֹׁנ֑וֹ לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָ֖ם בְּגוֹיֵהֶֽם. So, my argument is that the tower of Babel was only one approach of explaining languages. The other approach was sea fearing people. If you notice when we started the parsha today, it already talked about travel and we mentioned it. There’s travel and there’s language. And the texts that we are dealing with were out to explain it. Sometimes, as you know, Rabbi at Madlik, we love to bring our discussion up to date and we love to talk about modern Hebrew. There are two Hebrew words that come to play here because what I didn’t show when we talked about Cassuto is he starts by saying that maasei Dor Haflaga. We always think of the Dor Hamabul, which is the generation of the flood. That’s the first part of our story. What the Tower of Babel is called is the Dor Haplagah, the dor, the generation of the disbursements, right out of lst week’s discussion. And so, the word palga in modern Hebrew can mean two interesting things. It can mean miflaga. We’re about to have elections next week. Please God, we should soon have in Israel. But the word for mitlaga, for a political party, came from the same word as the generation of the disbursement of divisions. And the other word, which is fascinating is to sail. La’flig. And I bring that up here because we’re talking about the Greek states that were created by sailing. So, it’s this confluence of generations being created, people traveling, and it all created for the need to explain the different languages that we have. So, I want to go fast forward now into Jewish tradition and into rabbinic tradition, because my argument today, Rabbi, is going to be that in the rabbinic tradition, having multiple languages was actually seen as something that was critical to our story. So, the first thing that we’re going to talk about is this shivim lashanot, this sense from the rabbinic mind that there were 70 languages. Now, we’re not going to go ahead and count all the languages, see how they came up with this number. But the truth is they had a tradition that there were 70 languages. And they had a further tradition that when God gave the Torah at Mount Sinai, he spoke it miraculously in 70 languages. So, we have the school of Rabbi Ishmael taught with regard to the verse, Behold is my word not like fire, declares the Lord. And like a hammer that shatters a rock. From this we learnt the school of Rabbi Yishmael. Just as this hammer breaks a stone into several fragments, so too each and every utterance that emerged from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be he, was divided into 70 languages. So, and I think, Rabbi, part of this speaks to what you brought up before, that we wanted to make sure, that the nations of the world all understood it, all had access to it. But certainly, it was considered a miraculous part of God and part of the revelation at Sinai. And that speaks to the power of translation.
Adam Mintz [19:24 – 19:25]: Sure does.
Adam Mintz [19:27 – 20:03]: Just as the hammer breaks the stone into several fragments, if you break a stone, the fragments are part of the original stone. So too, the different languages are part of God’s Torah. That’s the image. That’s the important thing, that it’s not different. You know, that’s what you think. It’s impossible. We speak English and the Italians speak Italian and the Chinese speak Mandarin. How can we be saying the same thing? And the answer is that we can all be saying the same thing. And when it comes to religion, it’s all part of the tote.
Geoffrey Stern [20:03 – 22:28]: I totally agree. I once heard a lecture at Hadar, actually, and the focus was on this concept that what God said at Mount Sinai, everybody saw together, everybody heard together. And this rabbi said, you know, if you did a Google search and you came up with one answer, you would say, there’s something wrong with Google today. It’s broken. And so, I think what you say is true, but the other side of it is that there is this notion of that shattering rock into many thousands, infinite numbers of pieces, and that the languages, while they all translate the same thing, maybe they have a different nuance. Maybe, you know, we all talk about lost in translation. Every time you translate something, it becomes something slightly different. And I would say richer. So, the way I read these rabbinic traditions is in fact, that the translations add to the richness of the experience that was. Had a variation on the rabbinic text we had a second ago. It says all the people were seeing the voices. וְכָל הָעָם רֹאִים אֶת הַקּוֹלֹת. It doesn’t say voice, it says voices. Rabbi Yochanan said the voice would emerge and divide into 70 voices for 70 languages so that all the nations could understand that we’ve already said. And then it goes further. Come and see how the voice would emerge to each one of Israel, each and every one, in accordance with his capability. The elderly according to their capability. The young men according to theirs, children according to theirs, nursing babies according to their capability. Women according to them, and Moses too, according to that. So now we’re really seeing that the power of the same word to mean different things to different people. This is a pedagogic lesson about the richness of the Torah and the ability that it has within it. But again, I would argue it’s an absolute embracing of the multiplicity of languages. Not only different languages, but different nuances within the same language. It really is a celebration, I would say.
Adam Mintz [22:28 – 23:08]: That’s nice. I mean, that’s a good word, celebration. Not only is it good, but we actually celebrate the fact that God’s Torah can be split into different languages. Everybody can understand it exactly where they are. By the way, the word the 70 is just one of those round numbers. 70 could be a thousand, right? Did they. I think they once said, one of the mayoral candidates once said that in Queens there are 180 different languages spoken or something like that, so. Or 180 different dialects. So anyway, so, you know, there are a lot of different languages out there.
Geoffrey Stern [23:08 – 25:33]: It is. But I think we’re going to find that, and you know, Rabbi, I am not a numerologist, but we are going to find that 70s happen to be associated with this multiplicity of language, multiplicity of ideas and multiplicity of opinions. So, we’re going to pick up in that in a second. But I want to just add one more level to this multiplicity that we’re seeing here. We’ve seen it in translation to everyone, every inhabitant of the world. We’ve seen it in translation to every age group. And now we see not only in Shemot Rabba, it says not only did all the prophets receive their prophecy from Sinai, but all the sages who arise in each and every generation. Each one received their wisdom from Sinai. The idea was it went into the future as well. Because, Rabbi, languages changes, their language grows. Language takes on baggage and provides new insight. So again, language became a channel. It became a pathway for assuring that this tradition stayed dynamic and grew. And so, it’s really on every level, it’s horizontal, vertical, and into the future. But in Bamidbar Rabba, it adds something new to shivim leshonot. So, note there, it’s talking about the different utensils that were used in the temple, and one of them had 70 shekels worth. Why? Just as the numerical value of wine is 70, thus there are 70 aspects to the Torah. So again, I don’t think it’s by coincidence, Rabbi, that they use the same word, 70, when they talk about 70 languages and 70 panim. I love this Shivim Panim. Panim is a face. It’s also an angle that again, it’s just the nuance of language, but the nuance of transmission and of growth. There was a celebration of the diversity. What in the Tower of Babel could be said would be chaos, human chaos, social chaos. Here it’s not. Here it’s celebrated.
Adam Mintz [25:33 – 25:48]: Yeah, no, I think that’s a real. That’s a really important thing. And that is the idea that we’re celebrating these things. 70 multiplicity could be chaos, but instead it’s celebration.
Geoffrey Stern [25:50 – 28:51]: And clearly that’s the way the rabbis took it. I quote a rabbi from the 17th century, 18th century, who talks about not only the permission that we have, but I would say, the obligation that we have to reinterpret texts. And what he says is that. And again, he uses this concept of shivim panim l’Torah. He says that God is granted permission to interpret the meaning of the verses. You know, last week we talked about the Perushim, the Pharisees, as people that divided. We neglected to say another meaning for perushim is people who interpret texts, the word le pharesh. And so here too, it’s a way of splitting texts, of splitting meanings. Lehevin davar mitock d’avar, as we talked about last week. But here we’re talking about it on a textual level. And I just again find that to be totally fascinating. I think that one of the other, I think, implications of what we’re talking about today, where we’re saying that actually, while the story of Babel might have explained how language came to be, it was the fact that we have a multiplicity of languages is actually celebrated. This also has to do with opinions that it’s important in the Talmud, have a minority opinion, because you never know when that minority opinion will be useful. And so, it asks, why do they record their opinion of a single person among the many, even when the halacha goes after the many? And again, it says, looking towards the future, because that single opinion can be set aside like the odd man out, like the stone that was rejected by the builders, and then it can find its day. You know, we talk. And here we get to 70 again, Rabbi. The Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was also 70. And again, I think I said when we started that we were going to be talking about language, we were going to be talking about concepts, but we will also be talking about opinions. And if the Sanhedrin, as the main court, is anything, it was the ultimate arbiter of opinions. And there is this amazing concept, again, that goes for the singular opinion and its power, that if in a capital punishment case, you have unanimity, where everybody talks the same language, where everybody sees things identically you cannot have a conviction. So again, this too is a celebration of that lack of unanimity in language indecisions. It’s just, it’s kind of remarkable. It kind of pulls together many thoughts that we discuss at Madlik.
Adam Mintz [28:51 – 29:05]: Now, you know that There are also 70 nations on Sukkos. They say the number of sacrifices is 70 because the sacrifices were given for all of the 70 nations.
Geoffrey Stern [29:05 – 32:26]: And I think that probably goes hand in hand with languages because the idea was 70 people. You were determined, you were to determine. But you know, even if you continue in the same famous Talmud that says that if you have a conviction with unanimity of all seventy, it’s not a good conviction. Minutes later, Rabbi Yochanan says, they place the great Sanhedrin only men of high stature, of wisdom and of pleasant appearance and of suitable age so that they will be respected. And they must also be masters of sorcery. They know the nature of sorcery. So, anthropologists, if you will, they must know all 70 languages in order that the Sanhedrin will not need to hear testimony from the mouth of a translator. Here we get introduced to the word meturgaman. But again, knowing many languages was a sign of power and wisdom. In the rabbinic times. There are kings who identified as kings because, as in the case of Pharaoh knew every one of the languages. And Joseph says maybe he didn’t know Hebrew. Knowing languages was power. It was power. It was the power of understanding and control. And finally, we could not end a discussion of a translation if we didn’t quote the famous word of saying of Hayim Nachman Bialik, which is תרגום דומה לנשיקה מבעד לצעיף. That translation is similar to kissing through a veil. So, you have both. The fact that translation is ultimate power, but also a translation can be limiting. And I think the rabbis understood it all. Interesting. If we’re going to go to the last 70, it’ll be the Septuagint. The Septuagint in Greek is called 70. That’s what it you put LXX and you know you’re talking about the Septuagint. So here is this famous story. We already talked about the Targum Yonatan and Targum Onkolos, which were Aramaic translations that were sanctioned by the rabbis. But the Greek translation was also sanctioned by the rabbis. And here they put them into 72 rooms. Because I think what they did was they took a fixed amount, 6 people from every tribe, was it. But in any case, the Sanhedrin is also 70. Maybe it’s 72 there is this ongoing concept of to get both unanimity but also diverse opinion. You go to multiplicity of languages and you go to translation, and you go to this. This number 70. So, I think it’s kind of fascinating, especially if you think of Babylonia and the Babylonian Talmud, which was written in a foreign language, which is the source of all of rabbinic wisdom. There’s so much embrace and also, I guess, concern with our translation, that the story for Jews, which are textual people of Babel, is particularly powerful.
Adam Mintz [32:26 – 32:41]: This is great. Now we go back to Cassuto, who says this is an etiological
story. It’s an etiological story. And you’ve just traced how that number 70 and how that idea of language has really shaped so much of Jewish tradition. Tradition.
Geoffrey Stern [32:42 – 33:47]: But I think it’s. It’s again, getting back to the choice of the need to have such a myth so early in the Torah speaks also to us as a people that because we are a people that value transmission of texts, the explanation of texts, the understanding of text, who ultimately understand the importance of language, that this would have been one of our fundamental seminal myths that would come in the second chapter. And I think that speaks a lot to the fact that even in the earliest parts of Genesis, and this really speaks to what we were talking about last week. Even in the earliest part of Genesis, you can see the Sherashim. You can see the roots of everything that follows of us as a people, as us as a tradition. That, to me, is as fascinating as long as we’re talking about origin myths and.
Adam Mintz [33:47 – 33:58]: Fantastic. Really fantastic. Okay, Yasher koach. Thank you, everybody. We look forward to seeing you next week when we talk about Avram and Lech Lecha. Thank you, Geoffrey.
Geoffrey Stern [33:58 – 33:58]: We’ll see you then.
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