The Terutz is Better than the Kushya

In shul, I was reading a pamphlet of divrei Torah produced by a particular American Yeshiva, which included a rather lengthy and, ultimately, thought-provoking essay from the Rosh Yeshiva. However, one thing caught my attention right at the beginning. He asked why Kiddush on Shabbos invokes Yetzias Mitzrayim. He understands why it would on the 3 festivals, but not Shabbos. Granted, he writes, all mitzvah observance is predicated on the Exodus and the subsequent giving of the Torah, but then that reason would apply to all mitzvoth, even those like treif and tefillin (his examples) which are not considered commemorative of the Exodus. The rest of the d’var Torah is an explanation of the connection between Shabbos and Yetzias Mitzrayim in that they both represent the ability of rejuvenation to overcome entropy, ve-acamo”l.

A few things really baffled me about his question. We invoke Yetzias Mitzrayim in Kiddush because the Torah does (Devarim 5:13-14), and it also is pretty obvious about the ‘connection’ between a weekly cessation of labor for all, including slaves, and the Exodus from Egypt. His examples of mitzvot that are not considered commemorative of the Exodus are, in fact, both explicitly considered commemorative of the Exodus. Tefillin in Shemot 13:9 and 16, and ‘treif’ in Vayikra 11:43-45. I wonder how many other readers caught these? I mean, these aren’t kashyas based on some Tosafos in Kodshim. It’s PARSHA (this week’s Parsha, no less) for cryin’ out loud! EVERYBODY who read this should’ve had these questions.

I’ll give this RY the benefit of the doubt that whoever transcribed or wrote this essay simply missed the boat (which is why on the VBM is a shiur is transcribed, it will always indicate whether the written version or translation had been reviewed by the maggid shiur). I can’t figure out what he really was trying to ask, or if the ‘question’ at the beginning is just a rhetorical device to get into what he really wants to get into. In that case, if I had been in the shiur, it may have gone something like this:

RY: Why do we say zecher le-yetzias Mitzrayim by Kiddush on Friday night?
AR: Because the Torah, in the retelling of the aseres hadibros, says that Shabbos is zecher le-yetzias mitzrayim.
RY: Eh, ok, ken zayn, but I have another terutz…

Pesach Ponderings

Being the Jewish cultural behemoth that it is, Pesach is usually a very fruitful (preferably dried fruit) time for thinking about all kinds of things Jewish and for generating some wonderful random associations. There are some other pieces of Torah coming (including a post on the Mishna of ‘kol yemei chayecha’ that’s found its way into the Haggadah)

We all know that matzah is called lechem oni, and we’ve all heard different explanations as to what exactly it means. I saw in the Torah Chayim Haggadah (Published by Mossad HaRav Kook) that one Rishon (and I can’t remember which one; I believe it was Ritva, but I could be wrong) explains it according to one of the dominant positions, namely, that it’s the food of the impoverished. He then explains why a poor person would eat this bread – it takes a very long time to digest and therefore the consumer will remain satiated for a longer period of time. Now that just makes a whole helluva lot of sense. Don’t we know it?! I think I can guess where this Rishon came up with this insight.

Which brings me to my next point: On Pesach, people who are normally very prim and proper all of a sudden are very comfortable discussing their bathroom habits or using bathroom humor. It’s unbelievable. And I’m sure that that matzah has something to do with it.

Took a bit of a chol ha-mo’ed trip today, and visited some Civil War sites. I felt it was very apropos for a holiday which celebrates freedom from slavery. One area that I find very interesting is the legacy of John Brown. Today, we (rightfully) call such men terrorists, even if we identify with their cause. Brown was most definitely lionized by many, and it was never overwhelmingly one way or the other. It makes one think about the need to restrain radical elements of even the noblest cause. It makes me wonder about the Altalena.

The First Seder was magnificent. The tze u-lemad experiment was a great success, and I was able, through all kinds of playacting and questioning, to communicate a lot to my 5-year old daughter. What could be better?

צא ולמד 2

[actual text of my Seder handout, which includes the sections from Bereshis, Devarim, Yehoshua, Yechezkel, and Tehillim, all of which, by the way, are cited at different points in the ‘tze u-lemad section of the hagadah]

On this night of Pesach, we are enjoined to retell and re-experience the story of our Repdemption and Exodus from Egypt, the land of our enslavement. Traditionally, our retelling takes the form of the brief summary of the events that accompanied one’s delivery of their bikkurim, their first fruits, to the Temple and its Kohanim. We expound upon the meaning of each phrase in this summary, trying to recover its embedded meanings.

The goal of this section of the hagadah is to engage, develop, and question the story, in our attempt to reconstruct all of its meaning. Unfortunately, we have become content to read and recite ancient interpretations without trying to engage the story ourselves.

Therefore, you will find, in this packet, the ‘raw material’ that Our Sages themselves used to compose the hagadah, which includes five different retellings (actually, 4 retellings and one ‘pre-telling’) of the events. We will study each of these sections, and try to answer the following questions?

What is emphasized and what is neglected in this retelling?
Where does the story begin, where does it end, and what’s the climax?
What is the context in which the story was invoked, and what is the narrator trying to accomplish with it?

Through this study, we will try to reconstruct what the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim means and has meant, how it was and is remembered, and how it influences our understanding of ourselves.

צא ולמד

The Mishna (Pesachim 10:4) selects the summary of the Egyptian enslavement and Exodus that is found in Devarim 26 as the central narrative to be expounded during the Seder. It’s very terse, in narrative form, and is written from the first-person-plural perspective of a member of the group which experienced the events recalled.
The Mishna instucts us to be doresh (expound, discuss, solicit) this segment. Our Haggadot include a standardized form of this drisha, roughly akin to the one found in the Tannaic Midrash, the Sifri. With the advent of Maxwell House (or perhaps a bit earlier), this part of the seder, which is the central recounting of the Exodus, has evolved from a drasha into a kri’ah – a recitation.
This year, with the permission of the hosts of the Sedarim I will be attending (i.e., my in-laws), we will be doing something a bit different for this part of the Seder. Each person will receive a compilation of several different summaries of the events of Yetziat Mitzrayim, all of which have the central features of a story with a plot (or, in the words of the Mishna, that ‘begin with degradation and end with praise’). We will then compare and contrast these different summaries, look for subtle meanings and turns of phrases that lead the reader in a particular direction, look at the particular context of each summary, to try and gauge its general purpose, etc. Here are the texts from which I’ll be compiling. I’ll use Devraim 26 and 2 or 3 others (I’ll provide links, rather than clutter this post up with full texts). I’d recommend having a full TaNach :
Devarim 26:5-8
Joshua 24:2-7
Ezekiel 16:2-14
Nechemia 9:7-15
Psalms 78:42-53
Bereishis 15:7-21(hat tip: Yehupitz)

כל עדת ישראל יעשו אותו

R’ S.R. Hirsch points out that the Chapter 12 of Shemot, the instructions regarding the Korban Pesach, marks the first time that the term ‘Edah’ is used to describe a group of people. In fact, the term is used several times throughout that chapter.

I had been wondering about that term. After writing the posts of earlier in the week, about Pesach and narrative, I wondered, before seeing this R’ Hirsch quoted, about the use of the term ‘Edah’. This term is clearly a derivative of ‘Eid’, or testimony, which itself might be related to ‘od’ – continuity. The job of a witness is to make the past current (I saw this in the BDB Biblical Lexicon). Similarly, the role of an Edah is to perpetuate a given memory, to collectively stand witness to certain events.

In this sense, then, the Israelites were constituted as an Edah from the outset; the very first Pesach, the Israelites were enjoined to bear witness to the events that were befalling them. Thus, at the very moment of our birth, the obligation to create and transmit a collective memory was central to our group identity.

Rachav the Harlot

I’ve started learning perek yomi in the Nach Yomi cycle, and I couldn’t help but think about the story of Rachav the Harlot, especially its conclusion in Chapter 6. She winds up saving her entire family by bringing them into her whorehouse, the only place in town that remained safe while the Israelites were annihilating it.

I can’t help but wonder how her father felt about entering that place, or about what his reaction must have been when she implored him to find ‘sanctuary’ there. The place which must have symbolized, for them, nothing but shame and ridicule, winds up being the very source of their own salvation. There seems to be a great lesson and a delicious irony in that.

I was also struck by the fact that a deal to keep this particular Canaanite family was struck and kept. What about the obligation to wipe out the 7 nations? How could such a ‘political’ solution be honored? Shall we just ignore the Torah, then? Well, perhaps it’s significant that in the very first battle in the conquest of the land, realpolitik intrudes upon the pristine and ideal world of text.

Prophetic Intuition: Reading of Pesachim 66a

Thinking about my post from last night/this morning, I had an insight into the well-known Gemara in Pesachim 66a. Hillel, who had just been appointed Nasi, had forgotten the procedure by which one would transport his slaughtering knife to the Temple when Erev Pesach fell out on Shabbat.

Hillel responds, “Leave Israel alone! If they are not prophets, they are the sons of prophets”. The people found other ways to transport the knives – sticking it in the wool of the Paschal lamb, for example, which reminded Hillel that, indeed, that is the ruling on the matter.

Granted, this story has Halakhic implications, but it should be read as aggadah, with a literary narrative structure. As I’ve mentioned previously, the lines between Halakha and Aggadah are not sharply drawn. In this instance, the same story appears in the Tosefta (Pesachim 4:1), Bavli (Pesachim 66a), and Yerushalmi (39a/6:1). Each version has slight variations, and there’s a wealth of scholarly material on this (for example, here – see especially the comparison chart at the end). My point is only that there is license to treat this story aggadically.

In both Talmuds, Hillel suggests that the collective intuition of Israel is prophetic in nature. Many have tried to minimize the implications of this idea, whose unfettered ramifications, especially in our times, would spell the end of Halakha as we know it. I’d like to suggest that those limitations are part and parcel of the narrative itself.

The population that Hillel instructs us to ‘leave alone’ consists of those who are bringing the Paschal sacrifice. As I mentioned in the last post, the Pesach is the vehicle through which our identity as Israel is constructed, and by which we transmit that identity to the next generation. Those who participate in this process, who have rooted their very identities in the ever-unfolding holy history of Israel, have gained a spark of that prophetic intuition, and can contribute to the further unfolding of that history. Those whose roots are anchored in foreign soil lack this prophetic instinct, much as true prophecy could not be attained outside of the Land of Israel.

Identity and Narrative

A while ago, I tried to set out what I thought would be my own principles of faith. I came up with 12. Upon reflection, I recognized what my own criteria were.

It wasn’t about particular beliefs or important theological presumptions. Taken together, they tell a story. That story has implications for me and the way I live my life. My 12 ‘principles’ aren’t principles at all. They form the ‘plot’ of this story, this ‘meta-narrative’, which is the infrastructure of how I see and understand myself and my world.

Meta-narratives form the very fiber of our perception and identity. For example, as I write this, the ADDeRebbetzin slumbers several feet away. Objectively speaking, we are two distinct people, albeit in close proximity. An event took place several years ago which established a formal relationship between us: our wedding. The memory of that event, in our minds and the minds of others, is what generates the reality that we’re married. All of my relationships – with my kids, my car, my house, my job – are predicated upon the shared memory of certain events. Inside this paramount reality, at present, the truth of the event plays a secondary role to the shared memory of it. The ‘plot’ of each of these stories is very simple. With my car it’s ‘this car rolled off the assembly line in 1998, was purchased by x, who sold it to y, who sold it to me. The story explains my possession and is the basis of my ownership. For further illustration, go learn Chezkas Habatim.

Some things are more complicated. When I say “I’m Jewish” (of ‘I’m American’), what exactly am I saying? Answering, ‘well, I was born to Jewish parents’ really is just giving the last installment of the meta-narrative which really cuts to the very core of my being. Where does this story start?

That’s the essence of what we’re trying to do next Wednesday night: rediscover and relive the cardinal events of our story, and doing it in a way that it becomes our children’s story as well. That’s the mitzvah of sippur yetziat mitzrayim. We don’t do it to remember the facts; we’re telling our story, the story of Israel and God.

There’s a well-known question: what’s the difference between the mitzvah of sippur yetziat mitzrayim of Pesach and the daily mitzvah of zecher yetziat mitzrayim? It should be clear by now that this question is the equivalent of ‘What’s the difference between an elephant and spaghetti?’ There’s more to that, but perhaps for another post.

This notion of identity as something which is born in a narrative context and of a persistent memory allows us to escape from Judaism’s version of the ‘Ship of Theseus’ problem. The problem is that if there are so many components of Judaism which are constantly being lost and replaced, then in what sense is it still Judaism? In what sense are we rooted or anchored in anything?

If we attempt to answer this paradox by reductionism, by trying to boil Judaism down to its ‘core’, by trying to find that which is ‘authentically Jewish’, then we’ll be left with a desiccated set of dogmas and truisms, if anything at all. It leaves the definition of Judaism in the hands of the historians and archaeologists who have demonstrated over the past two centuries, if nothing else, that they are unequal to the task. The final chapter of Yerushalmi's Zakhor is perhaps the most honest appraisal of this situation. The great modern reductionist enterprise is ending in a dismal failure.

Fortunately, our identity is rooted in something else. We inherit the ship from our fathers along with an intuitive sense of how to make adjustments for faulty mechanisms and different climates before handing the wheel over to our own children. I doubt that I’ll be telling them the exact same story that my Zaydie told me. But I’m confident that his story is now my story, and that I can find a way to make that story my kids’ story.

[GH- You wanted to know what I thought about your posts on 'the Real Modern Orthodox'. Well, you probably don't want to hear everything that my right brain has to say, but this is the first part of my answer].

Menagerie Minhag

The ADDeRebbetzin (boy, she hates when I call her that) was recently informed by a concerned relative that pregnant women should not go to the zoo, because of ayin hara.

This one’s a doozy. I mean, how old can this minhag be? And what are we afraid of, that a woman will deliver a giraffe? I need some help here. Anyone heard of this one before?

Anyhow, gotta run and do psicha; we’re in the third trimester.