Tag Archives: Exodus

January 17, 2024 · 10:51 pm

Entitlement Reform

parshat bo, exodus 11 – 13

Join Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz recorded on Clubhouse. We explore how the plague of the firstborn represents the culmination of the Genesis critique of primogeniture and transcends the Exodus narrative in the Israelite law of the firstborn and first fruits. And we wonder how this effects the message of the Exodus.

Sefaria Source Sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/538044

Summary

Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz discussed the profound impact of the plague of the firstborn in the context of the Exodus. They explored the timeless message carried by this particular plague and its influence on the Israelite law of the firstborn and first fruits. The speakers also delved into the power dynamics and privilege portrayed in the story of Exodus, drawing parallels to modern-day scenarios such as the treatment of Jews on college campuses and the concept of victim Olympics.

They examined the rabbinic lens on the killing of the firstborn as a means to dismantle the caste system and entitled ruling class, offering a deeper understanding of the Exodus narrative. The discussion also touched on the significance of firstborn animals, first fruits, and Tefillin in the context of the Exodus, emphasizing their symbolic connections to Jewish laws and the commemoration of the Exodus story.

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 clubhouse every Thursday and share it as the Madlik podcast on your favorite platform. This week’s parsha is Bo. Of all the plagues, only the plague of the firstborn carries a timeless message. It represents the culmination of the Torah’s critique of primogeniture and takes on a life of its own in the Israelite law of the firstborn and first fruits. So, join us as we explore how the death of the firstborn impacts the message of the Exodus in this week’s episode: Entitlement Reform.

GS: So Rabbi, welcome to Dubai. Uh Salam Alekem and um, I must say, just like, you know, you traveling to Dubai, it sounds like you’re in a new world. I got to say, every time I read the Parsha, it’s a new world. And I had never actually focused on the fact that of all the 10 plagues, not only is the death of the firstborn obviously the one that tipped the scale and did the trick, but it actually is the only plague that had any meaning to it.

I mean, frogs and locusts and darkness, they don’t figure into our culture, into our religion, into our laws. But as I think we’re going to make a case today firstborns do, and I just had never noticed that before.

AM: That raises an important question, and that is, why did God bother with the first nine plagues? If that was the only plague that made a difference, why did God bother with the first nine plagues?

GS: I think that’s a good question. You know, clearly you could say, well, it had to wear them down and had to, as the Bible itself says, God wanted to show his power, the miracles that he could create. And all of that good stuff. But still, you’re absolutely right. It does raise that question. But on the other hand, I think the focus of tonight is, what is the message? Are we reading something into it that isn’t there? Or is—am I right in my premise that this is categorically different? So we are in Exodus 11.

And basically it says that Moses the man, Yish Moshe, was much esteemed in the land of Egypt, among Pharaoh’s courtiers and amongst the people. Moses said, Thus said God, toward midnight I will go forth among the Egyptians, and every… in my translation in brackets, it says, “male” firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die.î I think we’re going to find out that that ís not universally the opinion. From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the milled stones, and all the firstborn of the cattle.

And there shall be a loud cry in all the land of Egypt such as has never been or will ever be again. Here it brings something that we could do another podcast about, but not a dog shall snarl at any of the Israelites, at human or beast, in order that you may know that God makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. Then all of these courtiers of yours shall come down to me and bow low to me, says Moses, saying, Depart you and all the people who follow you. After that, I will depart. And he left Pharaoh’s presence in hot anger.

And I have to say that a little bit further in Exodus 12, 29, it actually recounts what literally happened. And it says in the middle of the night, God struck down all, again my translator says “male”, firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on the throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon and all the firstborn of the cattle. And Pharaoh arose in the night with all the courtiers and all the Egyptians because there was a loud cry in Egypt for there was no house where there was not someone dead.

Ein bayit asher ein sham meit. So, it’s fascinating, it’s powerful. I mean, I think that last phrase, you know, because we are in a war in Israel right now, and I think, I don’t know if this is where the phrase comes from or not, but you can’t talk to an Israeli where there has not been a death of a friend, of a friend’s friend, of a relative. Ain bayit she’ain sham mate, but what it does is…

5:31 AM People do use that phrase. I mean, that phrase has been used, you know, in connection with that.

GS: So it makes it a little tragic, but it also shows how impactful this was. And so I think the first thing that I noticed this year is that not only were the hoity-toity powerful of Egypt, their firstborn killed, but in Exodus 11, it talks about down to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the millstone, In Exodus 12, it says, the firstborn, the captive who was in the dungeon. That kind of struck me. I had never really focused on that before. And the other was the animals, which I had never focused on before.

Discussion on the Interpretation of Exodus

But let’s talk for a second about the slave, the 1st born of the slave girl or the firstborn of the captive who’s in the dungeon. What do you make of that?

6:38 AM So, I mean, there’s a famous Rashi which you bring, which I think is an important Rashi here, right? And why were the sons of the handmaid stricken? Because they too treated them, the Israelites, as slaves and rejoiced at their misery. And that’s a really important idea, the idea of rejoicing at the misery of others. And that’s also something, obviously, that’s relevant today. But, you know, it’s one thing to be the ones who inflict the misery. But even if you’re not the ones who inflict the misery, if you’re the one who rejoices at the misery, then you’re also bad.

GS: I think you’re absolutely correct. What struck me, and this is a little bit of a continuation of a discussion that we had last week, where it’s easy to think in terms of an entitled class a powerful class, and then those who are disenfranchised and low, and look at the whole world through that kind of black and white lens. And what reading this, and especially that Rashi, raised to me was that no, sometimes exploiting Sometimes taking advantage, sometimes rejoicing in someone else’s misery has nothing to do with your social status or your social calling.

And that was a real mind-opener to me. And again, it opens up the whole concept, or I should say the paradigm, of the exodus, that it is much more nuanced and sophisticated than simply saying, these guys are all bad, and these guys are all good, by dint of the fact that they are powerless. And what this verse, by bringing in two different variations, either the handmaiden or the person in jail, that they can also have the negative character traits that we are against, and they can be also exploiters.

That just blew me away. And, you know, some of the other commentaries, for instance, the Ibn Ezra says, The firstborn of Pharaoh that sitted upon his throne, who is fit to sit upon Pharaoh’s throne after him? And then the translator says, Pharaoh’s firstborn did not sit on the throne of Egypt, hence the Ibn Ezra’s comment. Moses mentioned the most honored of all the Egyptians, namely the son of their Lord, whom all of them serve, and all the meanest of them all, namely the firstborn of the maidservant who is himself a slave.

I think there’s a running current amongst the commentaries that firstborn should not necessarily be taken literally or only literally, and that in fact, and I had really not understood this, Pharaoh’s literal firstborn was not killed. Is that the case? Is that what the comment.

9:48 AM That’s what it seems to be, you see, I think you have to see it in the bigger picture. And you have this in a later source, in source twelve. And that is that the Torah takes firstborns literally, because the next chapter says, Kadesh li kol peter rechem which is sanctify the firstborns. So they make it all about the firstborns. And I think the commentaries point out the fact that it wasn’t necessarily about the firstborns, right? But it’s really the Torah that makes it about the firstborns.

GS: Yes, so there’s no question, and you gave away a little bit of what’s going to happen with this, which is great, but the idea is that there is this attempt to connect what happened with later practice and custom. And later practice and custom, because like any legal system, it had to normalize this. It had to structure it. So it says, well, if we’re going to remember what happened on that night, the best way to do it is with the firstborn, the peter rechem, that which opens the womb. But in fact, what actually happens, at least through the eyes of the rabbinic commentaries, is that this was against the entitled, and that’s where the name of the episode comes from in terms of entitlement reform.

This was against those who artificially were in power. And the other commentaries that talk about, we shall see in one of the commentaries, I think it is the Rabbeinu Bechaya, even goes so far as to say that In fact, in Egypt, not only biological firstborns were smitten, but in the absence of an actual firstborn, the oldest in the house. Why else would there not have been a single house without a dead body on that night? The Rebbeinu Bechaya picks up on that verse that we started with, which says, ein bayit she’ein bo’meit.

Clearly, there are going to be homes and houses where… Which don’t have a firstborn.

And he goes even further. He says our sages in the Midrash, Shemot Rabbah, confirmed this sentence when they stated that the plague of the killing of the firstborn in Egypt included the females. From the palace of Pharaoh, with exception of Pharaoh’s first daughter, Batya. And that’s a beautiful midrash.

12:30 AM That is beautiful. You know, it’s interesting because we don’t know that we don’t know that. Pharaoh’s daughter, Batya, who saved Moshe, was actually a firstborn. But he puts all the stories together, which is fantastic.

GS: Either that or, again, she was a princess of Egypt, you know, and if this is going after the rulers. So because we both kind of discovered this together, I’ll just finish reading what Rabbeinu Bechaya quotes from that midrash. It says, the one who had saved Moses at the time, Moses himself had acted as her counsel of defense at the heavenly court, according to the midrash. This is one of the meanings of, she saw him that he was good. Said concerning this, Batya, what made her good? She sees her business thrive, her light never goes out.

I think that’s from Eshet Chayil. The light of which Solomon spoke was Batia’s soul, and the night was the night during which God smote the firstborn. Okay, so you listeners of Madlik, if you leave this with only one thing when you sing Eshed Chayil this week and you talk about the light never going out and she was good, you can think of Batya, and she was spared from the firstborn. But again, getting back to my point. Through the rabbinic lens, the killing of the firstborn was bringing down the caste system, it was bringing down the entitled ruling class, and even more than that, because that in itself is a powerful statement, it also meant these micro-castes.

Power Dynamics and Privilege in Exodus

In every—even in a jail, there are the prisoners who are running the jail, and there are those who are at the punishing end. And this liberation, this freedom was to free humankind, to free the Israelites from all of these overbearers. And I think that is so absolutely fascinating.

14:35 AM: I mean, the power dynamic, of course, is really what you’re talking about. And that is that whenever you have a vulnerable group, there’s always going to be the people who have power. Now, those people, those people who have power, who are entitled, aren’t necessarily the upper class people or the important people. They’re just vis-a-vis the vulnerable, they become the powerful.

GS: And to extrapolate a little bit further to today’s situation, where you have, for instance, on college campuses, where Jews are on the one hand a minority, but they’re considered a privileged white minority, and therefore, all of a sudden, there is no protection for them. Forget about micro acts of demonition. They can be exploited to anything, and I think that’s what really came out to me so strongly was this sense that this was—and it comes from the verse itself. It says, “…from Pharaoh’s house,” and then it has two variations on how these microaggressions and that these structures of authority go down the whole status of society.

And it wants to make sure that the understanding of the Exodus was that this was a revolt against all of those. And I just found that fascinating.

16:09 AM: Well, that is fascinating, but let’s go back to the first thing you talked about, and that is the fact that the firstborn of the maidservants also were killed, and that idea that people who stand by and celebrate at the suffering of others, they’re as guilty as the perpetrators. I mean, that has to do with, you know, with, with rallies on behalf of terrorists and things like that, right? I mean, Rashi is really referring to a situation that wasn’t just then, but it’s true throughout the ages, isn’t it?

GS: I absolutely love that connection, and I hadn’t really thought about. Now, I did say in the introduction that you could take this death of the firstborn as really the culmination of all of Genesis. You know, if you read through Genesis, to a T, every firstborn is passed over for the spare, so to speak. And you could make a case that this ultimately is not a little side message or side show, but in fact – and we’re going to look to see how this pans out going forward – but before we do that, I wanted to focus on the past, and that is that there is no question that Genesis can be connected, one patriarchal generation to the other, and even before that with Cain and Abel, it all comes down to breaking the structure of society, and the word that I used was primogenitor.

You know, I think even in our inheritance laws, where the firstborn gets a double portion, I believe – and I focused on this once when I was studying Ireland – in Ireland, there was a strict sense of primogeniture, which meant that the firstborn got everything. And when I say everything, I mean he got all the land. An interesting outcome of that was that in the potato famine, most of the emigrants, the ones who left Ireland, were not the firstborn and they established a new life in a new world, whereas the firstborn thinking maybe that they were privileged to have the land, were actually cursed with having the land.

They couldn’t leave. They had too much to lose. So it’s fascinating how that plays out, but clearly in this case, the thrust of Genesis to this moment in Exodus is that this sense of primogeniture, this sense of the firstborn and the entitled class is destroyed at midnight.

19:00 AM: That is.absolutely right. I mean, and that’s really the important thing here. And that is, you know, what you’re really talking about is how do you undermine slavery? How do you bring an end to slavery? And the problem of slavery is but the problem of slavery is that there’s an entitled class that takes advantage of the, you know, of a class that’s more vulnerable. And what you’re saying is that that’s the whole issue in Egypt, was to try to you know, to, to re balance that idea of the privileged class.

I mean, you’re really giving a whole new peshat in the story of Yitzhak Mitzrayim and why the ultimate plague is the plague of the firstborn, and that’s really the issue here, right? That’s an amazing thing. It’s not about slavery. This is going to be a good devar Torah, Geoffrey, for your Seder this year. It’s not about slavery. It’s about it’s about, it’s about the privileged class. It’s about the vulnerable. You know that, of course, in the late 1960s when the black power movement gained importance, there was a whole big issue about whether the blacks and the Jews were actually still allies.

And that was also a question because black power, the minute that you have power, so, you know, so who, you know, they wanted power as the vulnerable. They thought the Jews weren’t as vulnerable as they were. So therefore, they didn’t like the Jews anymore. And therefore, the days of Martin Luther King marching with Rabbi Heschel, they look back at that and say, no, that’s not our reality anymore. So really this idea of who is the privileged class is itself something that, that, you know, that that’s argued about and fought about.

Isn’t that interesting, right? Means it’s not, it’s not. In the case of Egypt, it was clear who the privileged class were, but they’ve been fighting until today about who the privileged class is.

20:48 GS: I love what you just said. I want to move on to the animals but before I do, I just want to say what you just said resonated so strongly with me because what I think you were talking about also was what I believe people have called victim Olympics. Where being a victim becomes a competitive sport. Talking about words like Holocaust and genocide and saying, it happened to me or it happened to you, and I think that has to be one of the explanations of including the slave girl and including the prisoner in this thing.

So I just, I absolutely love that. But what I want to go to now is what is seemingly very odd, which is the inclusion of animals. So if you recall, it says, this is all going to happen, v’chol, v’chor, v’hemah, and also all the firstborn of the animals. And one of my favorite go-to places is thetoa.com, and I quote in the source sheet a professor, Rabbi David Frankel, who really comes at this from multiple perspectives. The first thing he says is this must have been a later addition in the editing process because we already know animals had been killed in a previous plague.

The Significance of Firstborns in Jewish Law

20:20 GS It says in Exodus 9.6, and God did so the next day, all the livestock of the Egyptian died, but of the livestock of the Israelites, not a beast died. So as you’re reading this, then I quote the Chizkuni, and he’s saying in every firstborn of domestic animals. Now, Rabbi, that doesn’t come out of the Hebrew. I think the translator put that in. But it probably comes out of a traditional rabbinic explanation of having to square this circle, where how was it that there were still animals to be killed, firstborn animals, on the night of the plague of the firstborn if they had all been killed before?

But whatever the case may be, there’s a sensitivity here. But whatever the case may be, this Rabbi Frankel goes to great lengths to say that this proves that later priestly codes and this code, they entered it into the text. I would like to take a different tact. What I would like to say is that the animals were entered in, like Rabbi Frankel says, because we have laws of the firstborn animals, in order to put that into what happened in the night, to connect all of our laws that we have about What happens if your animal’s the firstborn of your animal?

What happens to human firstborn? I will go so far as even to say, what happens to first crops? This is a major theme in Jewish law, and it was important that it was connected back to the Exodus. We’ve said it before, zecher l’tziyat mitzrayim. You don’t have to take the step that it was some scribe who introduced this later. The important thing is in the narrative itself, it wanted to connect the narrative to a long process, a long history going forward of how we commemorate the death of the firstborn.

How do we commemorate the lessons that should or could or must be learned from the Exodus? And so it says in are very partial, and you, of course, reference this in chapter 13.1.2, it says, God spoke further to Moses, saying, Consecrate to me every male firstborn, human and beast, the first male issue of every womb amongst the Israelites to mine. So kadash li kol b’chor, it is clear This is a theme that is clear that it is tying that into the exodus from Egypt. And if you look at 1315, it goes on to say, When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, God slew every firstborn in the land of Egypt, the firstborn of both human and beast, Therefore, I sacrifice to God every first male issue of the womb, but redeem every male firstborn among my children.” And then it goes on to talk about the tefillin, also a symbol.

What it is saying, and it’s not hiding it, and it’s not kind of an editor craftily putting it into the text. It is clearly making a connection between Israelite practice later on, commanded by God. I’ll go out on a limb, Rabbi, and say that just as we eat matzah to remember what happened in Egypt, we have these laws about treating the firstborn of our own and the firstborn of our animals in a unique way, in the same way to commemorate.

26:22 AM: So, I’ll tell you, your point is such a good point that Ramban, Nachmanides says, he asks the question, you mentioned Tefillin. You know, Tefillin appears at the end of that chapter about the firstborn. And he asks, what does it have to do with anything here? What is what? Philanax he says, no, no, no, no. He says, Tefillin has to do with the exodus from Egypt. He says, and not only Filanda actually find their source in the exodus from Egypt. And that’s what you’re saying. You’re saying that it’s this dynamic of really protecting the vulnerable, which is, of course, you know, Rabbi Riskin’s idea, and that is that, you know, 26 times in the Torah doesn’t say that you have to be nice to the stranger.

The whole Torah is about this power dynamic. See, we didn’t talk about this this time, but Geoffrey, that’s what we always come back to. And that is the power dynamic. Within our own society, we have a power dynamic. The Torah says you have to be nice to the stranger because that power dynamic there, they’re vulnerable, and that we learned from the Exodus in Egypt.

27:25 GS: Douglas Goldstein Absolutely. And the other thing, I did make reference of this before, it’s not only the firstborn of humans and not only the firstborn of animals, the bikurim is the first fruits. In Exodus 23, it calls it bikurei ad matcha, the first born of your land.” And of course, getting back to what we’re going to talk about at the Seder night, the key part of Magid is the formula recited by every Israelite who brought the first fruits. And it always makes you wonder, what is the connection between that, which actually happens on Shavuot, and the Passover Seder?

And it’s clear from here that it is a part of the Seder that brings back into the story this whole issue of the firstborn. And everything that that connotes. And that is a critical part of the message of the unique vision of freedom that we are celebrating. And the firstborn is such a critical, critical part of it that, in a sense, you can plot a line from Genesis, Cain, and Abel, all the way to Deuteronomy, where we recite the formula of the bikurim, and it is this one amazing message.

And the last thing that I’ll finish with is, you know, when the Jews go into the land of Israel and they are told that they should get rid of all of the Canaanites, the seven nations that are there, in Exodus 23-28, it says, And of course, the English translation actually works better for me, even than the Hebrew. I will send a plague ahead of you, and it shall drive out before you the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites. And then it goes on to say, for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hands, and you will drive them out before you.

The word for inhabitants of the land is yoshvei haaretz, and I have a quote from Norman Gottwald, a famous Hebrew Bible scholar, and he makes the case that yoshvei haaretz really means the ruling class of the land. He says, the idiomatic political use of yeshav He says, either directly denotes or strongly connotes a pejorative meaning. The Yoshev or Yoshvim are very largely the objects of Israel’s opposition and attack insofar as they are non-Israelite rulers. They are the objects of severe criticism and therefore punished.

The term has to do with ruling abusively or ruling oppressively. And at times even the sense of ruling illegitimately. So whenever we return the Torah to the ark, we say that God ruled. It wasn’t that he was sitting, it was that he ruled, and here in this case it connects leaving Egypt with coming into the land where the struggle against the oppressor and the entitled continued, it wasn’t against all the people. It was against those people who were oppressive. And that, to me, connects the whole cycle.

31:07 AM That’s a great end. Fantastic. This is great. If we could do next week, same time next week, two o’clock, Lunch and Learn, Dinner and Learn here in Dubai. Shabbat Shalom. This was a great, great topic and a great discussion. And I’ll be talking about this issue this Shabbat in Abu Dhabi. You can be sure about that. So have a great Shabbat. Love to everybody. Be well.

GS: Same to you. Shabbat Shalom.

Sefaria source sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/538044

Listen to last year’s episode: Hard Hearts

Joining the Tribe

parshat beha’alotcha, numbers 9

Join Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz recorded on Clubhouse on June 16th 2022. The Torah breaches the subject of a Ger (Convert alt. resident alien) celebrating the Exodus from Egypt. Jews-by-birth praise God who took “us” out of Egypt and we wonder along with Nachmanides and Maimonides whether a convert can or should consider him/herself a part of past Jewish historical experience as well as part of the Jewish People. In the process, we discover an ambivalence Judaism has to converts and we explore this ambivalence through history and up to the present.

Sefaria Source Sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/414358

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 clubhouse every Thursday at 8pm Eastern and share it as the Madlik podcast on your favorite podcast platform. The Torah breaches the subject of a convert celebrating the Exodus from Egypt. Jews by-birth praise God who took “us” out of Egypt but what about those whose ancestors did not share this historic experience? Tonight, we explore an ambivalence that Judaism has to converts and we explore this ambivalence throughout history and up to the present. Join us as we explore: Joining the Tribe.

Well, welcome. Welcome to Madlik. And if you are listening to this as a podcast, please, if you like it, give us a few stars, say something nice about it, and share it with your friends. So, the rabbi; Rabbi Adam Mintz who is with us tonight spoke at the JCC of Manhattan on Shavuot about conversion. And every other week in pre party, he he’ll say, I went to Italy like he went last week or he went here or there to officiate at a wedding. And I think he once dropped the fact that he’s converted 200 people maybe in the last year. So I dedicated myself to finding a parsha, where we could use this as an opportunity to get a little bit more of an insight into Rabbi Adam Mintz’s approach to conversion. So here we are, it’s in numbers, Beha’alotcha is the name of the Parsha. And it starts by talking about how the Israelites all had to come forward and lay their hands on the Levites we get the word smicha from this, and they basically transfer the concept of being a first-born from themselves unto the Levites. I have taken them for myself, in place of all the first issue of the womb for all the male first born of Israelites. And then it goes into keeping the Passover something that it does a lot similar to what it does about the Shabbat It’s a favorite subject. But in numbers 9: 14 It says out of the blue, as it’s discussing how you now have to keep the Passover. And when a stranger who resides with you would offer a Passover sacrifice to God, it must be offered in accordance with the rules and rights of the Passover sacrifice. There shall be one law for you, whether stranger or a citizen of the country חֻקָּ֤ה אַחַת֙. So, all the rabbis are wondering, scratching their heads. Why would one think that a convert would carry or observe the Passover in a way different from the rest of the Jews? He joins the tribe. He keeps all of the laws whether Shabbat kashrut, in the same manner as the Jews. So, Rashi says well, you might think that Passover is so important that if you convert on a Wednesday in June, you should do a Seder immediately. And therefore, this comes to tell us that no, the Convert waits to observe their first Passover when it happens in Nissan. But Ramban Nachmanides, a commentator that we’ve come across many times before, says something even more insightful, I believe, and serves as a great segue to today’s conversation. He says when we celebrate the Passover, we might think that strangers who joined us in going out from Egypt, this mixed multitude should keep the Passover, because they were also included in the miracle of the Exodus. But those who converted afterwards in the desert or in the land of Israel, we might have thought do not have to bring the Passover offering since neither they nor their ancestors were included among those who it is said he brought us out of the land of Egypt, and therefore according to Nachmanides, we need this verse to tell us that even if in your Cultural Historical Heritage, your ancestors did not literally come out of Egypt. Even if you are a convert, you should keep the Passover sacrifice, the Seder the observance in an identical fashion as the Jews, but what Nachmanides is raising and Rabbi, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this, is that there is this tension there is this dynamic there is this way of looking at a convert and saying maybe you don’t get it. Maybe you are not full in How can you say words like that God has commanded us at Sinai, when you and your predecessors were not at Sinai. How can you say all these wonders were done for us? So I do really think that Ramban raises this question of how does Judaism deal with and consider the convert? Am I right?

Adam Mintz 05:52

You are right. And it’s interesting that you talk about the ערב רב the mixed multitude. I want to tell you in the Chumash it’s not clear who the mixed multitude is. It just says that the mix multitude came out with the Jews from Egypt. And it seems to be that they were involved in the sin of the golden calf. Now, Rambam, Maimonides, in his laws of conversion, says the following. He goes through how someone converts, a woman goes to the mikvah, a man needs circumcision, and then goes to the mikvah. And he goes through all of that. And then his last law in that chapter, says the following. קשין גרים לישראל כספחת. Now ספחת that’s a great word. It’s a word that we’ve had before. One of the types of tzarat, of leprosy. They have different names for the different types of skin issues. One of those issues is what called a ספחת. And so basically converts are as bad for the Jews as leprosy, which we know is the worst, right? I mean, that’s kind of the thing you want to stay the furthest away from is lepers. And the Rambam explains, because the converts are going to cause you to sin, as we see from the ערב רב the mixed multitude, who caused the Jews to sin at the golden calf. So Rambam is clear that they’re bad. Now, there were other explanations, I’ll just tell you quickly, about what it means it’s a quote from the Talmud, קשין גרים לישראל כספחת that converts are as bad as leprosy. Another explanation is that converts are as bad as leprosy, because converts, will keep the law more strictly than Jews from birth, since they’ll keep the law more strictly than Jews from birth. It’s embarrassing, they embarrassed the Jews. And that’s why you shouldn’t have converts. Now, two explanations are exactly the opposite. Right? One is that they’re bad because they cause you to sin. The other explanation is, they’re bad because they make you look bad, completely different. Isn’t that fascinating?

Geoffrey Stern 08:28

It is fascinating. And it literally hits the nail on the head, in terms of this ambiguity. In terms of, clearly, if someone joins the fold, if you have a movement, and someone joins in, from a certain perspective, they are not natural, they have to work at it. They’re bringing in foreign elements, and so forth and so on. But on the other hand, you are there because you had no choice you are there, because you were born into it. And this person is a Jew by choice, which is a wonderful word for converts. But what it means to amplify is that they chose God. They chose Judaism, they chose this way. So, I think that just as we find in the commentators on this verse, this sense of; is it because they were in there? It identifies exactly the issue that I believe you spoke about Shavuot night, which we have this kind of dialectic and ambiguity between looking at the Convert as something that is, it shows that God’s word is growing, that the movement is growing, that one day the whole world will recognize God on the one hand, and on the other hand something that is a dilution, and how does that work out through history.

Adam Mintz 10:06

So, basically, throughout history, meaning from the time of the destruction of the Second Temple until the year 1800 people were not allowed to convert to Judaism. Christians weren’t allowed to convert to Judaism and Muslims weren’t allowed to convert to Judaism by their law. So, it never happened. And that’s what I wanted to say. That’s an important thing. And that is when Maimonides; when Rambam talks about this, you have to remember that Maimonides, is not talking practically about converts to Judaism. He never met a convert to Judaism. I know that, because in Cairo it was punishable by death to convert to Judaism.

Geoffrey Stern 11:04

But on the other hand, you know, when I read that Nachmanides that I quoted the second ago. It had no problem with a non-Jew, who was part of the Exodus, who went out with the Jews, because clearly that non-Jew experienced everything that the Jews experienced. But the question that Nachmanides raised was, well, what happens if you convert it in later generations? And as you know, one of the most famous letters that my monitors ever wrote was to Ovadia the Righteous Convert. So, what you’re saying is, he might never have met a convert, but he certainly was in discourse with

Adam Mintz 11:50

Yes, that’s correct. We don’t know exactly what overcharges background is. But that’s right. So that’s interesting. That’s a very good point means he was familiar with the idea now, how it could be that Ovadiah converted to Judaism. That’s something that I don’t think we have an answer to. If it was prohibited in Muslim countries to convert to Judaism, how could he have converted to Judaism?

Geoffrey Stern 12:15

That’s an interesting question. Interesting question. You know, as long as we’re talking about that letter, you know, you have to say that the letter is addressed to this Ovadiah, who Maimonides called HaMaskil HaMeivin, Ger Tzedek, that he was an enlightened convert in all of the accolades that you could possibly give. And Ovadia asks the same question, addresses the same question as knock manatees, and says, Can I both in public and in private? Talk about the God of my father’s? Can I talk about the God who commanded me assuming it was at Sinai? And ultimately, to our point, can I talk about the God who took us out of the land of Egypt? And Maimonides gives an answer to all of the above questions, saying, yes, you can say that was commanded to you. You’re a child of Abraham. And then he gets to the question of our pasuk, of our verse. And there, he says, that when it comes to leaving Egypt, he says, as to the words, who brought us forth from the land of Egypt, or who performed miracles for our ancestors, these you may change, if you wish, and say, You who bought Israel from the land of Egypt, you who perform miracles for Israel, If however, you do not change them, no harm has been done. So literally, Maimonides goes on the fence in this one. And there’s overwhelming sensitivity for Ovadia, who he clearly respects but again, he straddles the question of what is the place of a convert in Judaism, and of course, you bring up Islam, and you bring up Christianity. In those religions, at least in Christianity, I’m pretty confident you don’t get born into it. The only way of access is by being baptized, and in a sense, opting in. So, conversion is what every member of the movement is ultimately going through. Judaism has this unique concept of both. It’s a race, but clearly from the texts that we’re looking at. It’s a shared historical destiny. And the question is, if you haven’t, or your ancestors have not been involved in that historic destiny, can you, should you, will you?

Adam Mintz 15:01

So that also is a fascinating question. So Rambam seems to say that your ancestors were not part of that tradition, but you’re allowed to accept that tradition. There was another great medieval scholar in Muslim Spain. His name was Robert Yehuda Halevi. He wrote the Kuzari that Kuzari says that actually every convert to Judaism, their soul was at Mount Sinai. Meaning that it’s not that you’re allowed to do it even though your parents weren’t part of the tradition, you could accept the tradition. No, you are part of the tradition, it just took a while for you to recognize that.

Geoffrey Stern 15:47

It’s kind of like finding this hidden connection.

Adam Mintz 15:50

It’s very interesting. Now, people have been critical, because it’s a little racist, seeming to say that, you know, Jews are somehow better than everybody else. But anyway, leave that aside. It’s an interesting dispute between Rambam and the Kuzari. Well, I take it in a different way, when you said it, it reminded me of the similar tradition, that when you meet your Basher’t; your spouse, that ultimately you had been already connected before you were born, and you are meeting so to speak, combining those two halves. And I believe there’s even a dating site called saw you at Sinai. https://www.sawyouatsinai.com/ So when you said that, I didn’t think of it as racist, I just thought of it as finding your shared destiny, that if somehow Judaism resonates with you, the history of this people resonates with you, and you, for whatever reason, come and join the tribe, you’re re-joining the tribe. And I think that’s, that’s something beautiful, that we provide that sort of aspect. And I think what I was saying before, when you join Christianity, you’re born again, everybody becomes born again, what Judaism seems to be at least on the side of those who are saying that you can say, the God of my father, and my mother, and you can say that we were in Egypt, what it is permitting you to do, is to join a history to join a heritage to join a tradition that maybe was not yours in terms of a DNA, but is yours by choice. And I think that’s kind of a beautiful concept. That is really a beautiful concept. I don’t think the Kuzari disagrees with that, the Kuzari just wants to understand mechanically how it works, or religiously how it works.

Geoffrey Stern 17:52

I mean, if you think of us as Americans, you know, we all look back to the revolution, we all look back to Washington chopping down the cherry tree. That’s our shared Midrash. That’s our shared heritage. And so I think it’s almost natural to say that yes, and, you know, this is a long term theme, I think, of Madlik, which is that we can choose our history that we that that Judaism and the Exodus what it proved was that entitlement was wrong, where you are who you are, because of your blue blood, and choseness was in and were choseness is you can pick your heritage, and you can pick your future. And I think ultimately, that’s part of the concept of conversion within Judaism, which given our background as a tribe becomes kind of unique.

Adam Mintz 18:55

I think that’s really beautiful. I think that’s interesting. It’s important to say that all of these views we’ve talked about now, in the first half of the class, are all medieval views, where basically there weren’t converts. That’s interesting about Ovadia the Convert, but basically, there weren’t many converts. Radically, around the year 1800 that all changed. Around the year 1800. Jews were granted citizenship in Germany, and then in the rest of Western Europe. That meant that for the first time in history, Jews could go to university, Jews could be lawyers, Jews could be doctors, Jews could live in non-Jewish neighborhood. And you know, the first time something is opened up to you, you literally embrace it, you gobble it up. And the Jews gobbled it up, including the fact that for the first time they could integrate with the Germans. They could be in the same community. And the intermarriage rate in Berlin in 1840 was something like 50% from zero to 50. Now we talk about the intermarriage rate. But then it was literally from zero to 50. Because before 1800, Christians were not allowed to marry Jews. And all of a sudden, the Jews are marrying Christians. And there was a whole complicated situation where what you had was a Jewish man, marrying a non-Jewish woman. And they actually didn’t convert, and they had children. And the father, it’s interesting, he didn’t care about marrying a non-Jewish woman. And some of these men wanted their boys circumcised, and to have their boys have a bar mitzvah means like, I’ll be married to you, the kids are not technically Jewish. But can they be circumcised? Can they have a bar mitzvah? And this was a huge debate. So, I’ll tell you that there a rabbi who lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the rabbi, an orthodox rabbi, who lived in New Orleans. And this rabbi, he had the following question. There was a mohel in New Orleans, who was willing to circumcise sons of Jewish men and non-Jewish women, even though they weren’t Jewish. He said, Let’s circumcise them when they’re babies. And hopefully, when they grow up, they’ll convert to Judaism. But if we don’t circumcise them, as adults, there’s no way that they will circumcise themselves. So this is like the first step towards the process of conversion, even though we have no reason to assume that they’re gonna convert. The rabbi in New Orleans, was very upset about this. He was upset. He thought this was totally wrong. The kids aren’t Jewish, in a sense, you’re legitimizing the fact that this Jewish man married a non-Jewish woman, Jewish men will marry non Jewish women all the time. If they’re promised that they can have their son circumcised. So he wrote to the rabbis in Europe, because in those days, New Orleans, America was not much in 1840. He wrote to the rabbis in Europe and Germany, asked them what they thought about this. Most of the rabbis in Europe agreed with him, saying, you’re right, you should not circumcise the son. But there was one rabbi, his name was Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer. Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer was kind of interesting, because he was the first religious Zionist. Long before there’s a state of Israel. He was an outspoken, religious, Zionist, and in Germany, they thought that was dual loyalty, they were very much committed Germany. So people weren’t really Zionist. But he was a religious Zionist. And he wrote that No, I believe that we should circumcise these babies. Because again, he agreed with the mohel, that that was the first step towards conversion. And I think that Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer is a very interesting statement, about an attitude towards intermarriage and towards conversion. He believed that we need to be more inclusive, because for the sake of Judaism, you need to be more inclusive, meaning he didn’t say it, that you should circumcise the baby, because that’s the right thing to do. No, he was very practical, he said, This is gonna be good for Judaism, if we circumcised the baby, he added, took a very practical view to circumcision, and for the possibility of conversion. Now, that sounds very different than Rambam, who talks about the fact that that converts are like leprosy keep converts away. This Rabbi Kalischer is saying, No, don’t keep converts away. Let’s help him convert by allowing him to be to be circumcised.

Geoffrey Stern 24:26

So I find that so fascinating, but you know, I contacted you discovered you were in Italy, and said we’re going to talk about this and what should I add to this source sheet? And you said go ahead and look at Mishneh Torah, Forbidden intercourse 13 and 14 and I did and what I was blown away by, besides that throwaway comment that converts are like leprosy, it is so amazing to look at the original sources in this case, Maimonides, and see what he says about what is necessary for conversion? One of the things that really struck me, how do we deal with someone who says they’re Jewish? How do we how do we deal with someone who says they converted? And if you read the text of my Maimonides, it’s pretty amazing that we assume he’s telling the truth. And then when it comes to getting married, okay, so then we want some proof. But if he has children, and later on, he goes, you know, really, I didn’t have witnesses. So, you might say, he’s no longer Jewish, but his kids remain Jewish. The amount of flexibility there is, the amount of forward thinking there is, the amount of what you were just describing as within the law, the ability to look at conversion, the way every other religion does, which is, it’s wonderful when somebody chooses to be part of your club. It’s wonderful when somebody chooses to obey your commandments. And I think that’s kind of what comes across in those chapters, which are in the source notes, from my Maimonides that you are assigned me, so to speak, Rabbi and the other thing that comes, of course, is that these things are socially subjective. So, there was some rules that apply in Israel, and some rules that apply outside of Israel. In Israel, if a convert says I’m Jewish, you believe him, because most people are Jewish. I don’t want to get into the reeds of the particular sociology that is being addressed. But what I do want to say is, it is socially contingent, that it depends on the age, as you were saying, it depends on the circumstance. And we don’t have a long show. It’s only half an hour. I want to use that as a segue for you, Rabbi to talk about, how do you take this ruling of the rabbi in New Orleans? How do you take that into your own Rabbinate? And how are you dealing with these couples that are coming to you?

Adam Mintz 27:17

So that’s a good question. You know, we live in a different time. In those days, a Jewish man married a non-Jewish woman, it wasn’t just that the non-Jewish woman didn’t want to convert to Judaism. The Jewish husband didn’t care whether the non-Jewish woman converted to Judaism or not, he didn’t care, because they were being accepted in the non-Jewish world. And he was happy to marry a non-Jewish woman. Today, there are many secular couples like that. But what we’re finding is that there are many people who are exploring conversion. And that’s an interesting thing, that people are willing to convert. So if somebody came to me at a case like that, and they said, you know, can I circumcise my son, my wife is not willing to convert, and we do sometimes have cases like that. So, I’m very much aware of Rabbi Kalischer. And obviously, that’s what I would say, but I would broach the topic that maybe the mother would be willing to convert also. And I would discuss what that would mean to convert. You know, there’s an important thing about conversion. For a man conversion involves circumcision. But for a woman, it’s just going to the mikveh. The question is, what kind of commitment to Judaism do you need before you can go to the mikvah? That’s also an interesting question. Maimonides says, You have to accept the idea of mitzvot. Not that you have observe every Mitzvah, but you need to accept the idea of mitzvah. And the question is, and this is also an important question for today. How strict are we about that? I don’t think we’re so strict about that. I don’t think we should give away conversion, you know, we always say, don’t give away anything for free. If it doesn’t hurt a little bit, then you’re not going to value it. So, I don’t think we should give away conversion. I don’t think we should have a day in the mikveh whoever wants to come and dunk in the mikvah can dunk? I think there has to be a steady process. I think there has to be an understanding and a commitment to Judaism, as a whole, but I think, you know, the, the old-fashioned idea that if you know, if you don’t accept all the mitzvot and you don’t practice, you’re not observant, that you can’t convert. I think that that’s not what’s best for Judaism, and what just generally best for the community right now. Well, you know, I applaud that. I’ve been approached by family members who have a friend and they’ll say they’re getting converted and they go into conversion classes. Maybe it was Reform, maybe it was Conservative. And the rabbi said to them, so what is tough for you? And they go, well, you know, I love all of the mitzvot, and I’m going to have a kosher home and all that, but I kind of like a Christmas tree because it’s a national holiday. And the rabbi says, I think you need to find another class. And I thought to myself, you know, it, I think it takes a certain level of self-confidence for a rabbi to be able to look at Maimonides which I did this week. And you’re absolutely correct. He doesn’t say you have to accept it all. He goes, you know, some of the rules are tough, and if they don’t go away, then you go, okay. It’s so accepting. And I started the parsha today, by bringing this into context of the people of Israel, laying their hands upon the Levites. And saying, You guys are now the firstborn. And we know the Levites are not the firstborn, those of us who believe in birth order, there’s a whole dynamic to being a firstborn. But somehow by putting one’s hands on the Levites, they made the Levites take on a roll that was not theirs. And I think reading it afresh this week, that that was almost an intro to this ger (convert) who, in fact, we are making it possible to lay the hands upon tradition, to lay the hands upon our destiny, and to join, and I think it’s a beautiful thing. And I think it’s an amazing thing that you’re doing because I think at the end of the day, in the day and age that we live in people joining our group, people, loving our Judaism and our history as much as we do, is only, is only a positive thing. I would agree with you and I think it’s a great topic. Thank you for raising this topic. It was a great conversation, and I love the fact that you found it in this week’s parsha I want to wish everybody Shabbat Shalom, enjoy the parsha, and we look forward to seeing you next Thursday. Enjoy the parsha, Shabbat Shalom.

Geoffrey Stern 32:08

Shabbat Shalom and Rabbi Keep up the good work.

Adam Mintz 32:11

Thank you so much be well.