parshat vaetchanan – deuteronomy 4 – 6
Join Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz recorded in front of a live audience on Clubhouse. The Torah proclaims that its laws are your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the nations. The nations of the world will say that this is a wise and understanding people. We discover the writings and biography of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner; a radical thinker and early religious Zionist. Based on this verse, he taught that if Torah does not match the most enlightened moral, ethical, cultural and aesthetic standards of the day…. it needs to evolve. We explore.
Sefaria source sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/583652
Transcript:
The Torah proclaims that its laws are our wisdom and understanding in the sight of the nations. The nations of the world will say of the Israelites that this is a wise and understanding people. We explore the traditional commentaries and then we discover Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner; born at the end of the 19th century and a radical thinker and early religious Zionist. Based on this verse, he taught that if our Torah does not match the most enlightened moral, ethical, cultural and aesthetic standards of the day…. It…. And we need to evolve. So, join us for “What they say about us actually matters…”
more
Well, welcome Rabbi, another week of Madlik Disruptive Torah.
We should just remember Shabbat Nachamu.
We remember your father, who was, you know, we talk about Disruptive Torah, and we talk about all these kind of forward thinking ideas.
He really taught everybody what it meant to be forward thinking and to, you know, to appreciate Jewish history, but to also appreciate what the Jewish future could be about.
So we remember him, the Shabbos, on the special Shabbos.
And you already invited everybody to Westport, to Beit Chaverim.
If you’re going to be in the Westport area, have a l’chaim and have a kiddush with Geoffrey in memory of his father.
Fantastic.
I hope to see you all there.
So this is kind of exciting to me.
You just did a shout out to Beit Chaverim.
I am going to give a shout out to 2015, where I went to my first week long learning session.
I think there was an executive seminar at Hadar.
And I heard Ethan Tucker talk about this Rabbi, Rav Moshe Shmuel Glasner, who we’re going to be introduced to.
So isn’t it wonderful when we have institutions, peoples and opportunity just to thank for influencing us and enlightening us and making our lives that much richer.
So here we are.
We’re in our Deuteronomy 4, 5 – 7.
And it says, Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that you shall act accordingly in the land whether you go to possess it.
This is Moses talking.
They’re about to go into the Promised Land.
Verse 6, keep them therefore and do them.
For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations.
And these nations shall hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.
For what nation is there so great that God is so near to them as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for?
So, you know, it would be a normal verse kind of encouraging us to keep the commandments, but it adds something that actually is a surprising radical and fairly unique, that not only are the laws good, not only do you have to keep them because you were commanded them and God is great and all that good stuff, but all of a sudden, out of the blue, it talks about what the world, what the Umot HaOlam, the nations of the world will say, and lo and behold, it says they will look upon you.
And of course, in the beginning, I said, Chukim u mishpatim.
Chukim, we always have said, are maybe laws that we don’t really understand that well.
Mishpatim are laws that we do.
But when it talks about this is your wisdom amongst the nation, there it says, Asher yishma’un et kol hachukim ha’eleh.
So all of these laws that are chukim, all of a sudden the nations will look upon them.
So clearly, this is a verse that stands out and requires us almost to explain.
Rabbi, you said you’re already in Connecticut.
You were in the pool today, and you were discussing this with your family.
What kind of discussions did you have?
What does this mean to you?
This is what we have.
I mean, this is, what it is, is it’s a surprising puzzle.
And I think you made that point.
You wouldn’t have expected it.
Like, you don’t need it.
But somehow, kihi kachmatchem u’binathem le’ynei ha’amim.
Ve’amru rak am chachom ve’navon ha’goy ha’gadol hazeh.
כִּ֣י הִ֤וא חׇכְמַתְכֶם֙ וּבִ֣ינַתְכֶ֔ם לְעֵינֵ֖י הָעַמִּ֑ים אֲשֶׁ֣ר יִשְׁמְע֗וּן אֵ֚ת כׇּל־הַחֻקִּ֣ים הָאֵ֔לֶּה וְאָמְר֗וּ רַ֚ק עַם־חָכָ֣ם וְנָב֔וֹן הַגּ֥וֹי הַגָּד֖וֹל הַזֶּֽה
It matters what they say about us, right?
They need to say that we’re a smart people and navon, it’s interesting what the difference between the word chacham and navon is.
I think chacham means you’re smart.
Navon means you understand things, right?
It’s a more sophisticated level of intelligence.
We always know, havin is l’havin davar mitoch davar, binah, women are considered to have more binah than men.
But absolutely, I love that.
So we’re going to go through some of the standard commentaries first, before we get to my buddy Moshe Shmuel Glasner.
So, the Sforno says, The observance of the laws of the Torah is your true wisdom and will enable you to resist the lures and challenges by the heretics.
Ba teshavu la’apikoros b’moftim shechli’im.
בה תשיבו לאפיקורוס במופתים שכליים
So all of a sudden, this becomes a verse that enters into the world of polemics.
All of a sudden, for the first time, it’s not like we’re fighting nations, we’re conquering nations.
Now, we’re engaged through this verse for the first time in the Torah in discourse and possibly, as I said, polemics, but justification of who we are.
I think the Sforno kind of sets the stage for where a lot of the traditional commentaries go.
The Malbim talks about, and he focuses definitely on the fact that it’s emphasizing the Chukim.
It’s emphasizing the laws that don’t necessarily have a rational reason.
And he says, don’t think this is because it’s the opposite.
The fact that these laws are kind of strange, that they are a kind of different, that is not a negative, it’s a positive.
Because every nation has laws and customs that are rational that their wise men established.
Only we have the weird stuff.
So, I mean, it’s fascinating how they’re all grappling with trying to understand what exactly the polemic is.
But, you know, I said it facetiously, but it means that we have rules that defy logic, that cannot be necessarily defined by pure logic.
And in and of itself, according to the Malbim, that becomes something that people admire, that the nations of the world look to.
But again, he’s trying to struggle to understand what is the argument here.
Why would the nations of the world look at the Red Heifer Law, and the laws of kashrut, and all of the laws that seemingly don’t have a logical explanation.
The Chatam Sofer, and he is going to be part of our conversation, because Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner, I believe was his great grandson.
Something like that, right.
Something like that.
And he says that really the true value of these laws are esoteric, they’re hidden, they’re nister.
But the nigla, that which is available for all to see, even that inspires the respect of the nations.
It’s almost as though he’s coming from a perspective of we don’t really need their recognition.
We don’t need their “likes” on social media.
But this verse is saying that even still, even though the truth is much deeper, but even on the surface of it, they find something to admire.
Now, you do understand, let’s just pause for a second on that Chatam Sofer.
You see, it bothered him that we care about what the non-Jews think about us.
That bothered him.
He didn’t like that.
So, he needed to say that’s not what it means.
Even though, of course, we don’t care what they say about us, nevertheless, there’s an explanation.
But it’s just interesting the kind of perspective.
And he lives around in the early 1800s.
So, it’s already the modern period.
You know, they’re already interacting with non-Jews.
They already feel the tension of, you know, already by, let me just say it like this, by the beginning of the 1800s, the Jews were already going to university with non-Jews, which means that, you know, it mattered what they thought about us, what we thought about them.
So he needs to say, that’s not really what we’re talking about.
So there’s the Khatam Sofer and the Ketav Sofer.
I have a friend named David Sofer, who may or may not be listening.
Once in a while, he sends me a note….
But they were the poster children.
This duo were the poster children of those who really fought what is called the Haskalah.
They fought the Enlightenment.
They fought reform.
They were conservative with a capital C.
And so I think what you just said is absolutely spot on, that he, you can feel almost the resentment that we even need to explain, because in a sense that dilutes who we are.
We are who we are because we are, and we don’t need to explain.
But, icing on the cake, even so, the non-Jews will look at us and say it is our wisdom.
The Rabbeinu Bahaya takes a whole different perspective.
I would like to say that he takes the Nobel Prize argument.
He says that this relates to the fact that in the Torah, there is science.
He refers to healing.
We all know Maimonides was a great doctor.
He says that the Torah observance is preventive medicine.
Basically, he’s saying what my…
I think Rabbi Riskin once said that his grandmother told him that if you eat kosher, you’ll be healthier and stronger.
And he believed that up until the point where at Yeshiva University, he was on the debate team, and they went to debate West Point.
And the 6’5 guy who shook his hand before the debate, as he shook his hand, little Shlomo Riskin was lifted from the ground.
And he said to himself, I don’t know about this healthier, more robust business, but there definitely was a very strong tradition that if you follow our rules, it’s better for you.
It’s physically healthier.
Many people associate kosher with healthy food, no extra ingredients.
This is a tradition.
And again, it was tagged on to this verse.
And it comes actually from the Talmud in Shabbat 75a, where they focus not so much on healing, but they focus on calculating astronomical seasons.
And we did a podcast on this once, Rabbi, because Judaism is based on a lunar calendar, and because it is critical that our holidays fall within their season, namely that Passover comes in the spring, we had to generate, we had to create rather impressive, I would say, understandings of both the solar calendar and the lunar calendar, so that we could fix them from time to time, calibrate them, if you will.
The Muslim calendar doesn’t calibrate.
The word is synchronize them.
Amazing.
But to do that, you had to understand both this.
You got to understand the planets and the moon and the sun.
And so here the Talmud looked already that long ago and said, maybe, unlike what maybe the Rabbeinu Bahaya was saying, but maybe because we, as a people, have created kind of, I would say, barriers in front of ourselves.
We have become very curious and very inventive.
I mean, I think there’s a whole chapter in Startup Nation that because of the challenge that we have, maybe people attribute culinary arts to Israelis because they had to figure out how to make this with a non-milk substance or something.
But that’s what this argument is, that the constraints, I look at it almost like a sonnet, that we had to write those 14 lines and that forced us to innovate.
Fascinating, isn’t it?
It’s absolutely fascinating.
Yeah, that’s a great explanation.
Yeah, that’s good.
That’s a really good explanation.
And it’s interesting, Rabbeinu Behaya, he lives in Spain.
You know, all these things, the minute that you talk about interaction with the outside world, you have to think about where these people came from.
Rabbeinu Bahya comes from Spain.
And Spain in the 1300s, there was tremendous interaction between the Jews and the non-Jews, right?
We know the Abarbanel was a politician.
He worked for the king.
There was a lot of interaction.
So this is a real issue for these people.
So now we get to my buddy Shadal, Shmuel David Luzzatto.
We haven’t quoted him.
We haven’t studied him for a while.
No, it isn’t.
And he’s also interesting because he comes from Padua.
He comes from Italy.
And there’s a lot of interaction with the non-Jews.
Padua has a very important medical school.
So he was involved in all of this.
So he is at the cusp of higher Biblical criticism.
He’s at the cusp of people who are saying, you can’t understand Judaism unless you understand Hammurabi’s Code, Eshnunah Code, unless you understand the culture and the laws out of which it organically grew, that you have to study other languages, that the Israelite religion is not all that unique (of if it is unique, it is in reference to other law codes and cultural institutions of the ancient near east).
In fact, to understand it, you need to be a scholar in all of these other cultures and law systems.
What he takes from this verse is he said, if, in fact, the Israelite religion came out of the milieu of the ancient Near East, why are the non-Jews saying, ki hi chachmat hem?
Boy, this is different.
He is making an argument that this is proof solid, that the Israelite religion was a paradigm shift, that in a sense it came out of nowhere.
He writes, you know, if the Jewish people had stolen it from the Egyptians, like our buddy Freud says, you know, there was a religion that worshiped the sun.
It was a monotheistic religion in Egypt.
Why would they say that?
So everybody that we’re looking at heretofore is really focused on the polemical aspect of this verse.
And they’re all, as you say, coming out of their own context, of where they are in the history of ideas and in the development of the Jewish people with, whether it’s in Spain or Cordova or wherever.
It really is a wonderful Rorschach test to see as much about our commentaries and commentators as it is about the Pasuk itself.
That is, that, this Shadal is actually remarkable, because again, it’s clearly against the backdrop of people who believe that Judaism came from somewhere else.
And he felt that this was the place that he needed to defend Judaism, as like you said, being a paradigm shift.
So now we’re going to make our own paradigm shift.
Now we’re going to go in another direction.
And the other direction is, this is less polemical and more an insight into the nature of the Israelite, the Jewish religion.
So to do that, we have to quote another verse that comes up in our pasha.
And it is 6: 24, Then God commanded us to observe all these laws, to revere our God for our lasting good and for our survival, as is now the case.
Le tov lanu kol hayamim.
Here is a sense that in fact what this is saying is stop with the polemics already.
This is telling us something intrinsically powerful about our religion.
They are really seeing within our religion, our way of living, something that is beautiful because living the life of the Torah is not for some other world, it’s not for some cosmic reality, it is for a better life that anyone on the planet can realize.
Another verse that would be brought in here from Wisdom Literature, it doesn’t really, it shouldn’t really be talking about Torah, but it is universally used to talk about Torah, is Proverbs 3.17, Darcheha, darchei noam, v’chol nativa tach ha’shalom, her ways are pleasant and all her paths are peaceful, she is a tree of life, etz chayim hi l’mach ha’zikim boa, v’tom chayim ha’muushar, whoever holds her is happy.
So here is another perspective.
This isn’t about them, it’s about us.
And truly, what God is saying is that the law that I’ve given you, the commandments, the customs that I’ve given you, make you a better people, and you are better for it.
I think this is a change.
If you look at Maimonides, the great rationalist, who believed in something called Taamei Hamitzvot, that every commandment has a reason.
You know, we talk about Chukim as things that have no logic.
I don’t think that would sit well with Maimonides.
He absolutely believed that what this verse is saying, that if you understand, truly understand the Torah, you will see in it, I wouldn’t say a superior, but certainly an amazing (optimal) way of life.
And he criticizes people.
He doesn’t mention the Malbim, because the Malbim lived after him.
But he criticizes those who kind of say that the laws are, you know, for the masses, and that we should…
The argument that he brings, both here and in the Guide for the Perplexed, is actually fascinating.
It’s the Guide.
It says that these could not be human laws, because no human would come up with this stuff.
And Maimonides says, you are not raising the rabbis and raising the Torah.
You are degrading it when you say that.
You say that no man would create these laws, but God would.
So he was against the heebie-jeebies.
He was against the hidden meanings.
The fancy term they use is that the Rambam was a rationalist, right?
Everything had to make sense.
Even God’s role in the Torah had to be logical in the Rambam’s mind.
And that’s his argument.
And for those of us who study the Torah and come up against something that is a challenge to our reason, what we try to do is try to contextualize, we try to understand.
But basically, and I am guilty as charged, we believe that the Torah is an amazing document, that the Israelite rebellion/revolution was an amazing revolution.
It might be in a particular time, and then we follow the rabbis, and I’m a big fan of the rabbis, as you know, and we’ll say how they adopted it and changed it and so forth.
But ultimately, at the end of the day, we don’t just rule it out as something that’s strange and that makes it holy, or it’s beyond our understanding and that must make it holy.
So in a sense, I guess you and I are kind of rationalists.
Right.
I think that’s right.
I mean, and that’s not surprising because, you know, the world of education is the world of rationalists.
You know, the Rambam was so surprising because it wasn’t really a world of education.
Most people were not educated.
So the Rambam came as a rationalist and that was really surprising to people.
Okay.
So now, as promised, we are going to take a left turn.
Comes along Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner.
Tell us his biography.
So, you know, he passed away I believe in 1923-22.
He was born obviously in the 1800s.
He was in Hungary.
As I said, he was a relation, a grandson, a great-grandson of the Chatam and Ketav Sofer.
He called himself the Dor Revi’i.
And in a sense, that meant that he was the fourth generation of these luminaries.
But it also resonated with the fact that Abraham was told that the Jews would go down to Egypt, and the fourth generation would go into the land.
Yes, he was a Zionist also.
And there’s a picture in the source sheets, and you will look at him, and he looks as Charedi as Charedi come.
He, so we had both the provenance (Yichus) and the learning, but he was absolutely a radical thinker.
I think he made Aliyah to Israel two years before he passed away.
It was right after World War I was over, and as the crowds gathered at the train station, he said, leave as you can and when you can, because if you wait too long, you will want to leave and not be able to leave.
He saw everything coming.
As we’re going to see in a second, he also was an amazing fan of the Enlightenment, of the Hoch culture, of Europe, of human rights, and of everything that was happening.
And this is in total counter distinction to his grandfather and great grandfather.
What do you have to add, Rabbi?
No, I’m listening to you because you know more about him than I do.
So, had you heard about him before?
I know the name, yeah, but I don’t really know about him.
That’s why I was excited to read this this time.
Great.
So, as I said, I was introduced to him at an executive seminar by Ethan Tucker at Hadar.
And basically, what he says, he has a book, a commentary on the tractate of Hullin, and in it, he has a lengthy introduction.
And so you will know, Rabbi, that in addition to my Haggadah collections, I have an original of his commentary of the Dor Revi’i on Hullin in my collection, and there are pictures in the show notes.
But in any case, he turns this pasuk almost onto its head.
And he says that anything that violates the norms of enlightened human culture cannot be permitted to us, a holy nation.
Can there be anything forbidden to them, but permitted to us?
The Torah says that the nations are supposed to say, what a great nation with such just laws and statutes.
But if they are on a higher level than we, in the laws and norms, they will say about us, what a foolish and disgusting nation.
So what he does in the words of Ethan Tucker is he turns a description into a prescription.
That the fact that we are told that the world will say about us, that looking at us, we are wise, is not a description.
It is a prescription.
It means that we have to work.
We have to make sure that we are always ahead of the curve, that we in fact have rules and regulations that are equal, if not more moral, more aesthetically pleasing, more enlightened than the rest of the world.
And this turns everything unto its head.
He goes on to say, I say that anything that is revolting to enlighten Gentiles is forbidden to us, not just because of Hillul Hashem, but because of the command to be holy.
In a sense, he’s almost saying that we let culture, as it evolves…
Defines what morality is.
It’s radical.
It’s really radical.
It’s so surprising, you know, everybody moved in the other direction, like we saw in the Hatam Sofer, and, you know, everyone moved in the other direction.
And he’s willing to say that society defines what morality is.
So this is an excerpt.
And in the source sheets, you will find links to Ethan Tucker’s study of this.
And I suggest that you all take a look.
But he writes, One need not dig too much deeper to hear that the text here is necessarily making just a descriptive claim here, but a prescriptive one of as well.
The Torah and its mitzvot are supposed to evoke the sort of admiration from outsiders.
If it does not, something is wrong.
It is not a far leap from here to suggest that interpretations and applications of the Torah that evoke revulsion from the external observers are potentially suspect and in need of deeper thought and reevaluation.
Rabbi, he’s going even further.
Not only are we supposed to keep up with the times, but if we have stuff that is criticized on these higher enlightened ideals, we should be questioning our own commandments.
That’s remarkable.
I mean, I don’t know good or bad, but that’s remarkable.
It doesn’t matter if humanity considered a certain action to be neutral for most of its history.
If all enlightened, decent, intelligent people come to abhor that action, then Torah implicit implicitly tells us that Jews must abhor it as well.
So here Tucker adds something else.
This is not static.
This is dynamic, meaning to say that you could, and I’ll just take an example of Shehita (Ritual slaughter).
You could make a case that in its day, the ritual slaughter of the Jews, of animals, was the most humane way of killing an animal.
But you can make a case and then that we were ahead of the world, that we were looking at package labels (and the source of our food) a thousand years before the world started to say, it’s important what you eat.
That we were distinguishing between types of food, a thousand, two thousand years before the world discovered food that has lactose in it, Gluten-free or environmentally correct.. food that is whatever.
So yes, we were in the day, we were ahead of the curve.
But what he’s saying is that this is dynamic, that we have to keep ahead of the curve, and we have to constantly be looking at our rules.
Now, that might be the most interesting thing of all.
The idea that Judaism needs to be dynamic is a very revolutionary idea.
The idea usually is that Judaism is where it is, and we’re solid where we are.
The idea that we need to always be responding to the culture around us, that we need to be dynamic, is very, very surprising.
So we don’t have a a lot of time, so I’m going to have to talk like a New Yorker rabbi, even though we’re in Connecticut.
Basically, in his thing, he brings two examples that he wants to prove his point.
He says, you’re not allowed to wear bigdei Isha, women’s clothing, but if you’re sleeping in bed naked and a fire breaks out, do you just run out naked or do you borrow the house robe of your wife?
You are stranded on the top of a mountain, your plane crashes, there are corpses there, you are starving, you see pigs walking by.
Do you eat the pig which is forbidden by the Torah, or do you become a cannibal and eat human flesh which is not forbidden by the Torah?
And he brings these two examples as examples to show, in a sense, there’s a higher authority.,, certain things are just obviously distasteful and counter to human norms and culture…
That we all know that, and he uses the fact that Genesis begins with Adam and Eve, where there’s first our humanity and then comes the Torah, and the Torah is built upon that shared humanity.
An example that Ethan Tucker does not bring, that I think ties it all together, is the example he brings about a house that is burning on Shabbat.
Are you allowed to extinguish the flames?
And he says that those commentaries that say that you can extinguish the flames because the flames might spread and destroy non-Jewish homes and therefore it will be a Hillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s names, are absolutely crazy.
Because as a Zionist he says, what happens when we live in Tel Aviv?
Are we going to let the whole city burn down?
And he brings a proof text from a Gemorah that says that you have to serve God with all your heart, soul and all your material needs (bechol Me’odecha).
And the Talmud says that there are some people that value their life more than anything, and there are some people that value their belongings more than everything.
And from this he says that just as you can save your house to save your life, you can also save your house because of you economic well being,,,,, this is both common sense but also practiucal… you can save your house because your belongings are going to be destroyed.
And he says, and if you have constant poverty for all your days, there is an unending torment.
It’s much harsher than taking a life.
He almost sounds like those people who argue that abortion is okay because it’s a Rodef (a pursuer), because you can’t take a 17-year-old girl’s life away from her because of a mistaken pregnancy.
I mean, he is so far into the future in terms of understanding, I would say, the bigger picture, but it is absolutely fascinating.
And of course, as Tucker raises, it raises all sorts of questions about, you know, how do we deal when the world thinks differently about sexual identity?
How do we deal when the world thinks differently about circumcision?
This is an introduction to the thought of this rabbi…
Living in Israel was a time where he felt that the oral law should never have been written down because it calcified.
And he felt that when we get to Israel, it can be opened up again and we can try to update it to these moral codes.
And that’s just fascinating.
It’s a kind of a breath of fresh air from the early 1900s.
From a Hungarian rabbi, from the last place you would expect it.
That’s amazing.
Shabbat Shalom.
Thank you for that.
This was a great topic.
That was an amazing revolutionary kind of idea.
And I promise you, we will discuss it again tomorrow night around the Shabbat table.
Enjoy your Shabbat.
Enjoy your Maftir.
Everybody in Westport is very lucky this Shabbat.
And we look forward to seeing everybody next week.
Shabbat Shalom.
See you all next week.
Shabbat Shalom.
Listen to previous episodes:
Enough
Shema Yisrael and the struggle against Cheap Faith
Seventy Faces
parshat vayigash, genesis 46
Join Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz recorded on Clubhouse on December 29, 2022. Even if you are not a proponent of numerology you cannot ignore the repeated claim of the Torah that seventy souls went down to Egypt. The implied significance of the number 7 and its variants 70 and 49 provide a unique lens to view the Biblical narrative. Join us as we explore Gematria, rules of Biblical interpretation and the number Seventy in the Bible.
Sefaria Source Sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/455577
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 Torah portion is Vayigash. Even if you are not a proponent of numerology you can’t ignore the repeated claim of the Torah that seventy souls went down to Egypt. The implied significance of the number 7 and its variants 70 and 49 provide a unique lens to view the Biblical narrative. So join us as we explore Gematria, rules of Biblical interpretation and the number Seventy in the Bible. Seventy Faces.
more
Well, welcome back to Madlik and just as we have finished Hanukah where we added a candle every night and counted to eight, we are going to spend a half hour today doing something that I typically don’t like to do, I am not into numerology, I am not into this gematria where you assign a value to each letter of the alphabet and you build high mountains of interpretation based on those types of things. Typically, I look at those things and I find them artificial, I find them impugned and ultimately, I feel that they’re almost an insult to the text itself, which has so much richness, why would you need to add numerology to it Rabbi is your take on gematria and numerology before we take off here?
Adam Mintz 01:58
I’m with you. I’m an old-fashioned traditionalists just like you. I don’t really like numerology. But numerology is one of those things you have to understand because it’s so much a part of our tradition. Now, there’s numerology. And then there’s some times where the Torah gives us numbers. I would also make that distinction. If the Torah gives us a number 70. Probably that number 70 means something.
Geoffrey Stern 02:25
So that literally was my point of departure. So in Genesis 46: 27, it says, And Joseph’s sons who were born to him in Egypt, were two in number. Thus, the total of Jacob’s household who came to Egypt was 70 persons. כׇּל־הַנֶּ֧פֶשׁ לְבֵֽית־יַעֲקֹ֛ב הַבָּ֥אָה מִצְרַ֖יְמָה שִׁבְעִֽים. And, as I said before, it is repeated in Exodus, it says, Exodus 1: 5 the total number of persons that were up Jacob’s issue came to 70, Joseph being already in Egypt, שִׁבְעִ֣ים נָ֑פֶשׁ. So again, when it repeats it twice, and of course, in the reference in our parsha. In our portion, it is preceded by what we found many times before a genealogy, and the genealogy has this is a child of Leah. This is the children of, of Rachel, these are the children of the two handmaidens. And then it says, and therefore everything added up to 70. So you can’t ignore the fact that it was important to the text that it added up to 70. And this actually is the most obvious most in your faced version of this, but it actually, according to the rabbi’s has happened before. At the end of the story of Noah, in Genesis 10. It gives all of his genealogy, he had three sons Shem, Ham and Japhet, and then in the beginning of Genesis 11, it says everyone on Earth had the same language and the same words. And the rabbis learned from this, first of all the rabbi’s go ahead and they count up each one of the members of Noah’s house, and lo and behold, in our source sheet I have quoted the Chizkuni, but he is not alone, where he adds them all up. And sure enough, there are 70 and from this comes the tradition that there are 70 nations, and that those 70 nations spoke one language before the Tower of Babel. And they spoke 70 languages after the Tower of Babel. So it’s seems to me if you look at both the Jews coming down from Canaan into Egypt, and you look at the end of the, the portion of the flood, and you talk about moving into a new basis for humanity at both of those junctures you have this group of 70. And you have a wonderful implication, I think the idea that there were 70 nations, and that they were 70 languages, had beautiful implications for us. The most beautiful is that according to the rabbi’s in the tractate of Shabbat, 88b, when the Torah was given, each utterance of God’s mouth was divided into 70 languages. So, I’ll stop here, do you believe as now we start to explore the texts or the Bible’s sense of 70? Does it have to do with transition? What do you make of 70 Languages? What was the implications for the generation of the Exodus?
Adam Mintz 06:11
Well, I mean, there are so many different pieces of this. First of all, seventy comes from seven, and seven is the number in the Torah of a cycle, because that’s seven days. How do I know that? I know that from the story of creation, the very first cycle in the history of the Torah, in the history of the world, is the cycle of seven, God works for six days, and he rests on the seventh. So, I know from Genesis chapter one, that the key number in the Torah is going to be the number seven, and therefore 70, and therefore 49. And all of those variations of seven, sorry, so right that we know from the beginning. So therefore 70 languages, and 70 people fit in. Now, we’re not talking about this yet. But Rashi points out that if you count the numbers, the numbers are wrong, that actually, it’s only 69. And that, we have to get a 78 from somewhere. And Rashi suggests that number seventy is Yochevet, Yochevet is the mother of Moses, the daughter of Levi, who’s a grandson of Jacob, and the Rabbis say, she was וְנִתּוֹסְפָה לָהֶם יוֹכֶבֶד בֵּין הַחוֹמוֹת she was literally born on the way between Canaan and Egypt. Now that that is very important in its own, because she’s the mother of Moses. Moses is the one who took the Jews from Egypt to Canaan, he asked to have been born from a mother, who also knew both cultures, she was born between Canaan and Egypt.
Geoffrey Stern 08:07
So how does that relate to the number seventy?
Adam Mintz 08:11
Well, that’s number 70. If you just count up the numbers in this week’s Parasha, you don’t get to 70 You need a seventy. So, Rashi has this idea that these 70th is someone who was born on the way, so she didn’t make it into the genealogy in the Torah, but she’s counted as number 70. But obviously, that’s significant because you need 70. So where are you gonna get 70 from?
Geoffrey Stern 08:38
So that’s, that’s amazing. They really had to work at it. And I think what’s interesting about coming to this number of 70, for the generation of the Exodus, is it wasn’t all that neat. They make a point, the verse makes a point of saying, and you have to add Joseph who was already there, or you have to add Joseph and his sons who were already there. So although it’s this sense of 70 came down, it’s not as if they came down all at once. And even a few verses earlier in Genesis 45: 7 it uses the word וַיִּשְׁלָחֵ֤נִי אֱלֹהִים֙ לִפְנֵיכֶ֔ם לָשׂ֥וּם לָכֶ֛ם שְׁאֵרִ֖ית בָּאָ֑רֶץ וּלְהַחֲי֣וֹת לָכֶ֔ם לִפְלֵיטָ֖ה גְּדֹלָֽה, which means in later Judaism, we would have congregations who were formed that left Spain, and they were called like the one in New York City Shei’rit Yisrael the leftover the remnants of Israel, Pelatah, has the same meaning. You almost get a sense that maybe there were more people in Canaan left behind who, as would happen in a famine didn’t make the boat, weren’t so lucky. But here was this remnant who reunited with their estranged son/brother and became this whole. But it was it’s part of survival too, which is fascinating to me. And that’s the בֵּין הַחוֹמוֹת you we’re talking about between the walls.
Adam Mintz 09:46
I think all that’s true. By the way, when the Jews left Egypt, they didn’t leave with a number that was a multiple of 70. 600,000. Jews left Egypt. It’s not connected to 70. I can’t explain it. I’m just telling you that that’s a fact.
Geoffrey Stern 10:20
So that that becomes kind of interesting.
Adam Mintz 10:22
I can’t explain it. I’m just telling you that that’s a fact.
Geoffrey Stern 10:27
Yeah. I want to pick up a little bit on what you were saying about the number seven. Obviously, seven times 10 is 70 times seven is 49. We count that for the years of the Shemita, the Sabbatical Year that in the 50th year then becomes the Jubilee Year, the Yovel. When I was looking at the texts, I came across a comment by Everett Fox, who we’ve come across before and he says shivim; 70. Related to sever, it has to do with completeness with something that is perfection. And then he says, I’ve written more on this, but also see a certain scholar named Umberto Cassuto and Umberto Cassuto was an Italian Jewish scholar, who, because of the persecution moved to Israel, and join the Hebrew University, and because of Everett Fox’s reference, I went ahead and I opened up my book on Genesis by Cassuto. And for someone who doesn’t like numbers, this was like a mind opener to me. And he lists, I think, seven or eight ways in which the number seven plays a part in the creation of the world. And obviously, the most obvious one is seven days of creation. But he talks about the fact that the divine name in one of its forms occurs 70 times in the first four chapters, he says, And there was evening and there was morning, is seven times he says there were seven chapters who the Masoratim, the people that gave punctuation to the Torah scroll, if you look at a Torah Scroll, there is no punctuation. They created seven paragraphs. He said, The Seven times you have this divine fiat “let there be”. Then he talks about the terms light and day are found seven times in the first paragraph, and seven references to light in the fourth paragraph, he goes on water is mentioned seven times in paragraphs two and three. He says the expression good appears seven times. The first verse of the Torah about a set has seven words, the second verse contains 14 words. And at the end, he says, to suppose that all this is a mere coincidence is not possible. Full disclosure, I think that Cassuto, was arguing with what’s called high a biblical criticism, or form criticism, which implies that the Bible, especially the first chapters of Genesis, were written by different sources. And what he is arguing is, if you believe that the numerology of seven, and seven, and 14, and what built into the text, it’s pretty difficult to assume that the multiple edited texts would be able to convey this, it’s almost looking more like a Shakespearean sonnet that has certain rules to it, the rules are followed exactly, and his seven is pulling that up. But as a byproduct, …. if we buy into what Cassuto is trying to say, he’s trying to say that the original author of these texts was very mindful of the power of this seventh. And that, in the words of Cassuto, is very hard to believe is a mere coincidence. Have you ever seen this stuff from Cassuto? Before? This was the first I mean,
Adam Mintz 14:36
I’ve never seen it from Cassuto. But I’m very familiar with the idea. I mean, and you’re 100% right, because Cassuto was a scholar in the first half of the second half of the of the 1900s. And, you know, there was a big push towards scholarship, you know, Bible Scholarship, which says that the tau res, you know, written by multiple authors, and it’s a work of literature, and then what they I always do is they point out all these things that can’t be coincidence coincidences? And he points out that one of those big things is the number seven, seven is everywhere. You see, the Torah, even as God’s book has to be built on, you know, based on certain principles. And one of the principles, his argument is that one of the principles is seven. And he likes the fact that one of the principles is seven, because since there were seven days of creation, and that’s the first number, and that’s the first cycle. So it makes perfect sense that that should be the cycle around which the entire toe is creeping.
Geoffrey Stern 15:43
But it really I mean, it kind of you don’t have to buy one of his arguments, or two of his arguments, you can say, Well, that’s obvious. The weld was great in seven days. So, it says I was good seven times. But the cumulative power of all of these things, is fascinating. And it makes one say, okay, in our, in our profession, we have this, this sense of 70 people in the genealogy, it makes you look back at Noa where it doesn’t point out that it’s 70. And read it differently. And that’s my point. My point is that this then these numbers become a tool, a way of listening to the narrative in potentially a new way, which is kind of interesting.
Adam Mintz 16:34
Really interesting. And to think about why seven should be such an important number. So, I’m making a big deal about the fact that seven is the first number in the Torah; seven days of the week. But why is seven completeness? And why is 70 completeness. And why is 49 completeness. You know, it’s all based on God’s cycle. God determined that seven was the number. Since God determined that seven was the number, everything revolves around Gods sevens.
Geoffrey Stern 17:09
Yeah, and again, it’s not as though the tradition was not aware of 10. I mean, I think you can assume 10, and I’m no scholar in this regard. But 10 is 10 fingers, it’s the easiest way to count. We talk about the digital revolution, where everything is associated with a number digits come from our fingers. If you look up the word digit, it is a finger. So that I get and that is interesting, because that does appear we do have 70 is 10 times seven, which is fascinating. The Rabbi’s talk about the world being created in 10 phrases. And of course, Cassuto says well, he sees a combination there of the seven that he has identified, and three others, but I don’t have an answer to why seven is important other than the week and the importance of time. But that almost begs the question, how did we get to a seven-day week? It’s certainly one of the Jew’s greatest contributions to civilization, especially in terms of the seventh day, which is the holy day of rest, but I don’t have an answer. All I know is that this little exercise that we’re having today is sensitizing me and hopefully you to the numbers and the associations that the biblical author and or the rabbi’s later had with, with number associations.
Adam Mintz 18:49
I think I mentioned on this clubhouse Class A while ago, that there was a book written last year called The week. (The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are by David M Henkin) And in the book, he traces this idea of the seven day week. And what I couldn’t believe but seems to be true, is that there have been attempts as recently as the 18 hundreds after the Civil War, to try to make the week simpler, you know, the week doesn’t work out with the month because the month is either 30 or 31 days. We all know, therefore it’s confusing. So, in December, December 10 was whatever day of the week it is. January 10 is going to be another day of the week and February 10 will be another day of the week. We’ve taken that for that we figure that out and we look it up on calendars. But before they had calendars that was complicated, one did have been easier had the week, and the month didn’t synch, meaning that the week been five or six stays. So that wouldn’t that have been easier? Yeah. And the answer is they tried it. And it didn’t work, because seven has been the number since the time of creation. And that really is interesting. You see, sometimes the fact that something wins, even though it doesn’t make sense, shows you the power of it. So, seven doesn’t make sense, it would have been better to do it the other way. But nevertheless, seven one, and I thought that was great.
Geoffrey Stern 20:32
And it speaks to the power the meaning that we humans also imbue something with it takes on a life of its own, which I think is fascinating. So, I wanted to take the discussion in a slightly different direction, because I did say that I had a kind of a bias against Gematria. And I did a little research the most preeminent scholar in Greco Roman influences on Judaism is Professor Saul Lieberman. And he wrote a book actually called a how much Hellenism in Jewish Palestine. And in it he talks about a Mishneh in Shekalim were they availed themselves the utility of putting Greek letters on jugs. The word Gematria itself… if it sounds like the word geometry there’s a reason. it’s a Greek word. we’ve all might have been exposed to the different forms of hermeneutics of Yishmael in terms of rules of interpretation, but there is a lesser-known rules of, interpretation for the Agada …. for the narrative portions, the moral the ethics, and that’s 33 Midot. There were 33 ways of doing it. And it was the first to cite one of these Midot is the numerical values of the text. And according to Lieberman, this was by Abulwalid ibn Ganah, and as you can tell by his name, this was anything but the rabbinic period. And in terms of our experience of Gematria. Here’s an interesting one, if you remember when we did our episode on Aramaic, and we talked about Eliezer, who was Abraham’s servant going down to find a bride for his son,….And I said, if you will call, while the Rabbi say it was Eliezer. The truth is, it never says Eliezer but the rabbi’s learn it and Rashi quotes from a gematria from the numerical value of 318, servants of Abraham, but it’s rare and late. And the interesting thing that Lieberman talks about is that this sense of even ascribing numerical value to letters comes very late. It’s he quotes in the Talmud that they got it from the Greeks in terms of a Mishnah in Shekalim, where they availed themselves the Greek alphabet. to put numbers on different jugs, the word Gematria itself, if it sounds like geometry, there’s a reason it’s a Greek word. So the first interesting thing is, the value of numbers is important. We’ve pointed that out. But giving these num numerical values to each letter is something that was much later as a tool of interpretation. What’s fascinating, is, we’ve all heard the Sofrim. Sofer is an author in modern day Hebrew, and the Sofrim were one of the earliest interpreters of the Bible. But if you know Hebrew, you know the word l’saper can mean to tell a story, Lispor can mean to count, and here Lieberman says something that after reading Cassuto, we all of a sudden, can recognize. And he quotes two pieces of Talmud, where they talk about the lost art of counting verses, counting words, and that they ascribe to the Sofrim. So on the one hand, Gematria might be something late, but I think doing something along the lines that we just saw Umberto Cassuto do with some maybe a lost art.
Adam Mintz 24:55
That selection from the Talmud. Sofrim, shows that there are actually was an entire profession of people who counted the words and the letters of the Torah, exactly what Cassuto did. That’s what they did. Now you understand, in those days, they didn’t have books, the only book they had was the Torah, and the Torah was a holy book. So, if you have a holy book, you might as well turn it over and turn it over and turn it over again. And turning it over means reading it, and reading and reading it all the different ways you can read it. And they believed that counting the letters and the words of the Torah was a holy pursuit, I think that’s an important thing that needs to be said that in itself was a holy pursuit.
Geoffrey Stern 25:37
And it probably as Cassuto points out, helped with punctuation, helped with structuring the text. So when Cassuto says that there are seven paragraphs of creation, and Sofrim were great, the Mesoratim were great in terms of putting those little brackets. It fed itself. They were, you know, the question was, is how much were they projecting onto the text? And how much were they uncovering some rhythms, some patterns of the tax that were helpful in other regards, that to me, is kind of fascinating. And as much as it goes against my grain to admit this numerology, there is something there that makes it makes it fascinating. I think about 10 Years Ago, there was a book called the Bible Code. And that went a little a little bit far, and made almost a ……
Adam Mintz
A mockery of it
Geoffrey Stern
I think that’s exactly it. And so you have to walk a very interesting line here. And maybe you need to scholars like a Cassuto, who see it that way to listen to them to help that enrich your experience of reading the text, but not overcome it.
Adam Mintz 27:02
I think you’re making a very interesting point about the Sofrim. We know that they counted. What exactly did they count. So the Bible Code took the Sofrim and kind of exploded it. And everything was allowed, because Cassuto limits it. But it’s interesting to think about the fact that the minute you start counting things, it’s hard to create limits. And basically, to say it a little cynically, but probably truthfully, your ability to count is as good as your ability to come up with a Devar Torah. If you’re counting will give me a good Devar Torah, that I’m willing to count. But if you’re counting is not going to give me anything. What’s the point? And I think that’s what the Bible Code got, The Bible Code has these crazy things, you know, they predicted World War Two, and all these kinds of crazy things. So, the minute that they actually were able to predict things, people took them seriously now it was wrong to take them seriously. This goes back to the very first thing you said today, and that is your kind of hesitation towards these kinds of numerologies. I think that’s our general 21st century view of that the numerology is we’re not afraid to say what Cassuto said, what we’re afraid to do is to get carried away. That’s dangerous. And that’s what the Bible Code did.
Geoffrey Stern 28:38
So yeah, I totally agree. But now I want to focus out what we can learn from this number 70. And this sense of how the rabbi’s took it. You already described this sense of between the walls and I love that it becomes part of the birth of our nation at that exact moment of transferring from Canaan to Egypt, where people were born. We had that number 70. I talked about Noah having 70 children and then having this story about languages. And from this, the rabbis learned that there are 70 languages. I also mentioned that when the total was given, there’s this beautiful Talmud that says, Every utterance emerged from the mouth of the Almighty divided into 70 languages. What I didn’t give you is the metaphor that they took from that. And they said that each word was therefore like a hammer that shatters a rock, just as a hammer breaks a stone into several fragments. So every and each utterance that emerged from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He divided it into 70 languages ״וּכְפַטִּישׁ יְפֹצֵץ סָלַע״ and נֶחֱלָק לְכַמָּה נִיצוֹצוֹת so now we’re starting to see this kind of dynamism this kind of dialectic between 70 being a sense of complete, and perfection, and 70 being something that breaks outside of the boundary of completeness and perfection.. The Sparks when the hammer strikes the rock or the anvil. You know, this sense of language, we all know that you can’t translate perfectly, which maybe says something in a negative sense about translating. But the positive sense is that whenever you do translate, you’re seeing the original text in a new way, you’re taking it with new nuances. I’ll finish by saying that when the Bible was translated into Greek, the word that it was called, is this Septuagint for those of you who know Greek that comes from the word 70, because by rabbinic tradition, there was 70, scholars put in 70 different rooms, and they all translated the Bible the same, I would love to say that maybe they translated it the same, but by translating it, there was this spark this diversion and the rabbi’s understood that and that was manifest in this word. 70. Once again,
Adam Mintz 31:29
I think that’s great. And obviously, that legend about 70. It’s the same thing, you know, 70 is the round number 70 is the holy number. 70 is the special number. If you’re going to have it translated, obviously, it’s going to be 70. Right? It’s like if I were to wake you up in the middle night and say how many people translated the Torah, you will say, of course, it’s seventy.
Geoffrey Stern 31:51
What’s interesting is in the actual text, it says, it says some texts say 72, and some say 70.
Adam Mintz 32:00
We call it the Septuagint, which means the translation of the seventy. Yes,
Geoffrey Stern 32:05
And I would like to argue from that, that the word 70, was also taken in as a form as an expression. The other place that you have it, one of the reasons given for it being called the Septuagint, besides the 70 rooms, is that the text of the Greek translation was then sent to the Sanhedrin. How many people are members of the grand Sanhedrin? Rabbi?
Adam Mintz 32:34
Of course, 70, because that’s the only number it can be.
Geoffrey Stern 32:38
So here, too, we have this Sanhedrin, and that by the way, Kim was out of Numbers 11: 16, then God spoke to Moses gather to me 70 men of the elders of Israel, to whom you know that they are elders of the people and its officers. And that’s where he appointed his judges, you cannot mention the 70 members of the Sanhedrin without mentioning the unbelievable, mind-blowing piece of Talmud in Sanhedrin, 17a that says, if you have a Sanhedrin in a capital case, that has unanimity, each of the 70 judges says that this individual is guilty. He goes free. If there’s one or two of them that say no, I’m not convinced you can convict him of death. But I’d love to know what your takeaway is, my takeaway has always been in 70 people let alone 70. Jews can all agree about something there’s something wrong
Adam Mintz 33:45
There’s something wrong with the case. That’s correct. And that’s the way we’ve always interpreted it, right means you can have unanimity. There has to be some debate, There has to be a way to see it the other way. If you don’t give you can see it the other way. You haven’t tried hard enough to find the other argument. Isn’t that a great way to kind of pull the whole thing together?
Geoffrey Stern 34:06
It really speaks to this sense that seven might be complete and perfect. But perfection can never be unanimous. Universal. there has to be an outlier. There has to be something that’s open to discussion, whether it’s a translation or a judgement. And, you know, maybe if I knew more about numbers, I would be able to understand how seven is unique. It’s clearly not. It’s not divisible by whole numbers. So there’s something there, but I just think that the Sanhedrin and the Septuagint. And that a hammer hitting the anvil and making Sparks as a metaphor for Torah is a beautiful message of what those 70 individuals going down to Egypt had in store for themselves when they launched our nation.
Adam Mintz 35:04
What a great topic. So, thank you for talking about numerology, Shabbat Shalom, everybody enjoy 70. And think of all the other examples of seven and 70 and 49 that we have in our tradition, our tradition is full of them happy new year, and we look forward to continuing it’ll be 2023 but next Thursday night, we are going to continue with Vayechei and then we will bring it in to the book of Bereshit, the book of Genesis, Shabbat Shalom, everybody, Shabbat Shalom, Geoffrey, and everybody. And we look forward to next week be Well, everybody,
Geoffrey Stern 35:35
Shabbat Shalom that the force of 70 be with you all. And if any of you have any comments or suggestions or something that you want to share with us, please go ahead and raise your hand. And I would love to invite you up to the Bima. Hey, Michael.
Michael Stern 35:55
Hey, Geoffrey, thank you, I What a blessing to come on today. I’m driving, but I just wanted to add to the mix. That the year 2023 numerologically, adds up to seven.
Geoffrey Stern
Wow.
Michael Stern
Yeah, so I didn’t want to overlook it. And, of course, I believe and feels numerology. And I think that it’s very deep. And so I think there’s something going on, this is going to be a powerful time of alignment. Hanukkah and Christmas were also the same crescent moon rising. I check that out the last day of Hanukkah and the day of Christmas. So there’s something going on that I just wanted to share, and thanks for great Madlik today.
Geoffrey Stern 36:47
So Michael, I think that’s amazing that you are link our discussion today of Shivim of 70 the New Year, which adds up to seven because one of the sources that I had wanted to bring but I had neglected to bring was right out of the Haggadah. It says web Eliezer Ben Azaria said Behold, I am like a 70-year-old man, yet I have not merited to understand why the Exodus from Egypt should be said at night until Ben Zoma explained it to me. And from this, we learn that Shivim can also be related to time and more specifically years. And whether it means that he felt like he became an old person, which is the mainstream explanation because he was very young, when he was appointed to be the head of the Sanhedrin. Or maybe because he was from another generation. There was 70 years that the Jews were in captivity. in Babylonia there was 70 years plus or minus where the Second Temple was being rebuilt. So maybe he was saying, I I’m a man of a different generation of the generation of the galut of the destruction. And I didn’t know whether we should remember the Exodus from Egypt only during good times i.e., during the day, but also during bad times, but I love that he associates 70 with years, and we are about to celebrate a new year. And I’m also reminded of the Chinese that give every year a face every year is associated with a different animal. And that was why I called the podcast 70 faces Shivim panim because there is a tradition that every verse has 70 faces 70 different explanations at least. So, for this coming year, let us discover the face of the year let us discover the different textures of our texts and aspects of our friends and family and wishing you all a very happy New Year. Shabbat shalom.
Sefaria Source Sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/455577
Listen to last year’s fantastic Vayigash episode: Joseph – Tool of a Repressive Regime?
Leave a comment
Filed under Bible, haggadah, Judaism, kabbalah, Religion, Sabbath, Shabbat, shavuot, social commentary, Torah
Tagged as gematria, numerology, Torah