Tazria-Metzora: Alone Time [Yichud?]

The conventional wisdom has usually been that these two parshiyos are essentially about tzaraas.

The conventional wisdom has usually been that tzaraas and the attendant isolation and series of rituals designed to bring the leper back into the machaneh were mida kneged mida for lashon hara, if by degree: the negative talk had served to drive people away from each other, hence the speaker experiences this form of internal exile.

In other terms, the speaker made achdus difficult, if not impossible; therefore a form of “yichud” with oneself was the prescribed corrective.

Or was it just for that?

Julius Preuss in his 1911 classic Biblical and Talmudic Medicine lists—based on Arachin 16a, Yalkut 563, and Sanhedrin 107a—fourteen sins that lead to leprosy; but he reserves special mention for “lewdness”, giving David haMelech as the example from Sanhedrin.   [Preuss mentions Vashti’s leprosy as payback for making Jewish girls undress, pace Megillah 12b.]

In David haMelech’s case, while the tzaraas was one of the punishments Natan prophesied would be the result of his taking of Batsheva, there might have been another indirect payback by several degrees: the maaseh of Amnon and Tamar and the concomitant issuance of the gezerah of yichud with a penuyah that resulted.

If one reads Sandra Rapaport’s Biblical Seductions [as I did over Pesach] and gets the idea that Amnon icked up his predatory habits from his father—as she at least intimates there might be a hava amian for—you might wonder if, after David himself had unwittingly sent Tamar into Amnon’s lair to meet her fate and he was grappling for a response to a whirlwind of family tragedy [Rapaport does draw a parallel between David taking Batsheva and sending Tamar off—both the result of royal privilege].  So one might think that the gezerah was completely reactive, and punitive to the victims: “If such a great disgrace can occur even to the king's daughter, and all the more so to regular women” [Sanh. 21b].

If one looks at that statement again in light of what had happened, it might not be the case.  First one must remember—no matter how it seems like a whitewash—women in those days needed protection [and, after reading Rapaport, the royal women needed it especially.]  Second: if yichud is punitive, then it “punishes” everyone—but it especially punishes [or protects?] the men who want access, like Amnon, who would stop at nothing to get it.

So why the gezera on penuyot and not siblings? 

My mara d’asra, R. Allen Schwartz, had an interesting theory about Yonadav.  Despite the gemara there saying he was a “chacham for evil”, R Schwartz theorized that his entire plan to get Tamar into Amnon’s quarters and have her minister to her might have been to help Amnon get over his obsession—to see her as his sister, taking care of him as a sister would.  But it backfired: a man with Amnon’s character could turn the most benign action into something completely inappropriate; a man who would obsess over his sister might eventually obsess over his mother. 

[And if the incident hadn’t rendered Amnon impotent—as the gemara notes—he might not have stopped with this incident.  One wonders if this could have been another punishment by degrees: as a kerus shafcha, Amnon’s procreative options were now severely—nichras.  Which could not have been very flattering to the Crown Prince, who now had to live with a reminder of his criminal act for the rest of his life—which he had to spend in a sort of “yichud”.]

So all the circumstances of Amnon's crime were unlikely to repeat themselves in a situation where there shouldn't have been any kind of sexual miasma.  Other situations that lend themselves to that--this might have been the tipoff, however different it was from a "normal" course of events.

The gezera was to prevent a situation where there wouldn’t be a third party to possibly stop the proceedings; the palace incident might have called for a whole different set of safeguards.  Which is why—as counterintuitive as it was—the gezera made sense as a response to this incident.

Obviously this didn’t really help Tamar [Rapaport does try to imagine how she might have attempted to cope and rebuild her life].   And one probably won’t find satisfactory answers.  

But one can learn three things from the crossover—however limited—between tzaraas and yichud.

The first: EVERYONE has an obligation to behave equally.  The onus is on BOTH genders.  No one has illicit access to the other.

The second: as much as one might consider Torah and mida kneged mida a “behavior plan” of sorts, it’s never that simple [certainly, it’s not Pavlovian or ABA].  The prescribed correctives may not always seem to directly match the offense.  But somehow things seem to eventually add up.  [Gehazi, one of the more famous lepers in Tanach, was also one of the Talmud’s more noteworthy predators: several sources intimate that he essentially sexually molests the Shunammite woman.   So his leprosy—though not a direct result of this action—at least keeps him from trying that again].  The reaction to the Amnon incident didn't look like a direct corrective.  But it might make sense that it was the impetus.

Finally: everyone needs alone time.  It should never be imposed.  But even if and when it is—even in a social media age—it’s not always as bad an idea as it looks.   It’s been said [I’ve seen it but don’t remember the source] that the only people who actually contracted tzaraas were on a high enough level to actually appreciate a Divine message to decompress.  Hopefully we can do that by ourselves, however we do it.

[PS--following that line of thinking, the appreciation of the message to decompress was a more difficult test than that: the correctives took place in public, the metzora being exiled from the camp and in some cases having to call out so as to not contaminate passerby.  One only hopes that the more prominent individuals who might be in need of a public correction being able to take one if it comes.]

Pesach: The Iron[y] Age, or: Wait For It…

L’fi rov shittos of historians, the Iron Age starts around 1200 BCE, or k’misparenu, 2560.

Give or take a few years, that’s rather close to yitizias mitzrayim.  [It’s closer to the kibush actually, but without the geula there's no kibush, so…who cares about exactitude anyway?  What is this, p’sak?  In theory, it might be more accurate to tie in the inundation of the Pharaonic retinue in the Red Sea to the Collapse of the Bronze Age, which would not only herald the dawn of the Iron Age, but provide a further irony, thus further underscoring my point.  Ad kan.]

In any case, it really might have been a demarcation in more ways than one.  The dawn of the Iron Age AND Yitzias Mitzrayim are rich in…irony.  [And not the kind they spray onto sugar cereals, including Crispy-O’s.]

But in the grand tradition: I’m going to make you Wait For It…like the haggadah does when it quotes Pesachim 116a: “Yachol MeRosh Chodesh”…no, G-d made us Wait For It.

The hava amina that the mitzvah of sippur yetzias mitrayim should start from Rosh Chodesh Nissan can be taken one step further to the first Rashi in the entire Torah, quoting the medrash [or—as some posit—his own father] that the Torah should really start with Rosh Chodesh Nissan: as the Torah is really a sefer mitzvos, it makes sense that it begins with the first mitzvah in the Torah given to the Jews as a collective.

Irony number one: the Torah—which should start with just “us”—doesn’t.  And even the starting point where is ostensibly our first mitzvah makes us unique HAS to be defined against the "other" on two levels: first, that we have an exclusive calendar for our own purposes, but it’s defined against everyone else's calendar [cf. TB R”H, which delineates between R”C Nisan for OUR kings and R”C Tishrei for everyone else's—even though [further irony] the “goyishe” kings dates are from where we count “misparenu”.  And don’t even get me started on the avoda zara of month names, especially Tammuz…]

Irony number two:  the Korban Pesach itself was designated as sheep particularly to counter [and desecrate]  the idolatrous practices of the host Egyptians, who worshiped sheep.  So—like our calendar—our defining sacrifice is defined as a contraindication rather than sui generis.

Irony number three: this time—Pesach is only one day; especially in terms of chametz.  The matzah was eaten bechipazon, but BEFORE they hit the road.  The irony itself my be attributable to a sicha of R’ Aharon Lichtenstein regarding how the difference between the way Pesach was ostensibly less machmir the first time actually speaks to how the Torah counterintuitively allows for flexibility from within [key word: from within], particularly how the procedure vis-à-vis that one-time korban pesach was a one-shot deal.

Irony number four: Moshe takes the erev rav because he thinks we need a groundwork for our eventual exile.   However: THEY are the impetus behind the eventual worst excesses of the Egel, and all exile stems FROM that [“ no punishment befalls Israel in which there is not part of the punishment for the sin of the [golden] calf [TB Sanh 102a]”].  So Moshe’s proactivity MAY have introduces the very element behind what he was trying to avoid, OR his ruach hakodesh told him this was the best way to stave off its inevitability. Tzorech iyyun.

[Four-and-a-half: the puranus meme also may speak to the “A”T/BA”SH” system of figuring out what days holidays fall out on, because rishon shel Pesach and Tisha B’av ALWAYS come out the same day of the week; one of the other reasons for the egg on the seder plate.   A participant at one of my family seders years ago thought the tone of the Maggid discussion was starting to “sound like the Holocaust”, whereupon my father responded that “This WAS a Holocaust.  The first one.”  The irony of our greatest triumph havig the seeds of our greatest failures built right into the celebration is paradigmatic in more ways than one.]

The final irony [for now]: Krias Yam Suf , which might be the paradigm of lo nitna Torah lemalachei hashares--the Angels don’t get to sing, but we do.  We had also died en masse during choshech, the blood on the marpef saving [some of] us from the makkah, and the angels ostensibly say nothing; at the Red Sea, they say “these worship idols, these worship idols”…and maybe THAT’S why the angels don’t get to sing: they were about to have EVERYONE drown,  and now they wanna sing?   It’s as if G-d was saying: Who’s side are you on, exactly?  Angels have no bechira, so they exist in a pure realm.  But as Yoram Hazony points out, that doesn’t work down here.

It’s unlikely that Faulkner had TB Avoda Zara 3b in mind when he called G-d the “Cosmic Joker”.  But it might be better [and certainly less pejorative] to call Him the Supreme Ironist, particularly where Yetzias Mitrayim is concerned.  It might not be accidental that the above Gemara refers to the LAST geula as when G-d laughs.

The final irony—as we pointed out in the title—G-d made us Wait For It, even as we were commanded that the holiday services were done “bechipazon” [subirony: what seder nowadays is done “bechipazon”?]  But: we had to Wait For It after Rosh Chodesh [“yachol merosh chodesh?”], we had to Wait For It when we took the sheep on the tenth for sacrifice on the 14th, we had to Wait For It when we didn’t leave until Pharaoh actually gave “permission” in the aftermath of Makkas Bechoros, we had to Wait For It at the Red Sea because no one would jump in until Nachshon ben Aminadav did...and while I pretend that I actually can list the myriad “Wait For It”s in the literature, suffice it to leave off with the ultimate Wait For It, Rambam’s 12th ikkar.

May one geulah lead to another, with all the attendant irony.

Chag kasher v’sameach.

Vayakhel-Pekudei: With Mirrors

This week’s parsha[s] detail how the mishkan was built through bnei yisrael basically collecting and throwing in everything but the kitchen sink in a national giving drive, to the point that Moshe had to tell them to stop.

But there was one gift the G-d wouldn’t allow him to give back.

As Rashi details on 38:8: “…they would take the mirrors…each one would view herself with her husband in the mirror, and entice him…”

Then the women brought these mirrors to Moshe for use in the Mishkan.  Moshe was reluctant to use anything with such an obvious “ta’aroves hayetzer”, but G-d ordered him to accept the gift: “"Accept them!  For they are more dear to Me than anything else!"

So what made G-d take this, when everything else He was getting was leading Him to say, as it were [cf. Ex.36:6]: “Space, please”?

One idea is that the general giving had become unrestrained and unfocused.  It has been pointed out by numerous commentaries that the giving to the mishkan was supposed to be an atonement for the giving of the god and jewelry that ended up making the Egel; the giving was still impulsive and needed to be restrained.

In the case of the mirrors, this was not so.  It was very specific [and, ironically enough, it became the kiyor—for the lack of a better term, the “kitchen sink”.]  It also conjured up a very poignant moment for G-d: the women insuring the perpetuity of klal yisrael in the face of the Pharaonic genocidal policy.

But there’s also a common thread in their reaction to that policy and their employment of the mirrors in the first place: both were grassroots initiatives that ran counter to the more established way of thinking by the pre-eminent religious authorities of their time to the point that the initiatives changed the minds of said authorities with G-d blessing.

The employment of the mirrors ran counter to the initial thinking of the “gadol” of the time—Amram, who[as detailed in TB Sotah 12b] in reaction to the Pharaonic decree divorced Yocheved with the consequence that ALL the men divorced their wives…until his own daughter Miriam convinced him that what he was doing was worse, whereupon he remarries Yocheved, and ALL bnei yisrael follow.   The mirrors were an iconic representation of the original “kol korei” being overturned.  They then became the iconic representation of another kol korei being overruled, this time by G-d himself.

In recent years, one grassroots initiative that started really as a Jewish communal initiative and garnered rabbinic support only later was the system of services to combat domestic violence.   As recently as twenty years ago the catchphrases thrown at suffering spouses was “go back for the children/shalom bayis”; “stay for the children”.  That would be currently unthinkable, thankfully; the culture HAS changed.  But now a new initiative is needed, even if [or maybe even because] the halachic groundwork [like the foundations of the mishkan] has been laid.

That’s the pre-nup.

I’ve written elsewhere about why the pre-nup is both actually romantic AND more like the kesuva than some people want to admit publicly.  It may be telling that the opposition to the pre-nup such as it is seems to be way more passive than active; you don’t hear anyone screaming “This is assur!!” [because for once they know better]; you get platitudes like one being "entitle to embrace the presuptual approach if one chooses...but [] recognize that there are others who, for entirely defensible reasons, choose otherwise." As the lack of a salient reason for opposition has now been betrayed by the pre-nups’ detractors,  there really is no longer anything defensible about not making it part  and parcel of everyone wedding, even to the point that it becomes almost if not as de rigeur as the kesuva and tanaim.  

The way to do that is first for the community to stop employing mesadrei kiddushin at wedding who won't officiate with one.  At some point when the officiators get the hint, they'll stop performing chuppah without one, and eventually it will come around to the point where they will insist that the families and parties get one.   

The culture needs to change.  It's happened before and it can [and should] happen again.

And it won't have to be done with mirrors.

Purim: Jumping In

This can be compared to a boiling hot bath into which no person could descend, one scoundrel came, and he jumped and went down into it.  Although he was scalded, he cooled it off for others [Rashi Devarim 25:18]

Rabbi Judah says: "When the Israelites stood at the sea one said 'I don't want to go down to the sea first', another said 'I don't want to go down first either'; while they were standing there and while Moses was praying to G-d to save them, Nachson ben Aminadav jumped up went down and fell into the waves. [TB Sotah 36a, Mechilta Beshalach]

An analog has been making the rounds of social media recently comparing Iran to Haman, Obama to Achashverosh, and Bibi to Esther/Mordechai, finding the Ta’anis Esther timing of today’s speech to Congress particularly propitious.  Personally, I find Prof. Manfred Lehmann’s 1972 Tradition essay “A Reconstruction of the Purim Story” more compelling: he makes Haman out to have been Cannanite, and therefore more a character analogous to an Arafat or other Palestinian actor [which, to carry the analogy one step further, would make Bill Clinton Achashverosh]. 

In any case, I came up with a different meme.

The juxtaposition of the two mekoros up top is not accidental.  The two pieces are there to illustrate mirror-image paradigms of “firsts” and water.  Each actor was the first one to “take a plunge”, as it were, and each respective “plunge” was influential in getting others to follow: Nachshon kickstarted the march through the Yam Suf; Amalek kickstarted genocidal Jew-hatred.

Today Bibi represented the Nachshon meme: the sole world leader with the gumption to call Iran out for its theofascist genocidal tendencies and declared nuclear ambitions.  [Umm…you want 190,000 centrifuges…to fight cancer?]  He took a plunge no one else seems to be willing to, and we only hope that some influential people follow.

While Iran fits the Amalek meme for all sorts of obvious reasons, if one would hesitate to begin to apply it to elements of this current administration, particularly the Executive branch and the State Department, it might not be that far a stretch to say that the disingenuous manner in which they’ve conducted the negotiations and their ostensible attempt to give themselves political cover for what they see as the “inevitability” of a nuclearized Iran might give one reason to believe that they, too, are “jumping in the water”. 

Heavy water. 

To cool it off for everyone else when the inevitable nuclearization of the rest of the Middle East follows.

In any case, even if the Amalek designation can’t really be applied to this admin, the Achashverosh one—like with Clinton—might not be that far off.  As TB Megillah 13b-14a delineates, Achashverosh would have loved to get rid of the Jews himself [having proven with his “no more redemption” party what he really thought of them] but needed someone else to do the dirty work.

The Biblical narratives point to two possible parallels which might indicate as to what we can anticipate from this administration.

The incident at Refidim which we read on Purim which occurred subsequent to krias yam suf parallels the possibility that this administration will now double down and cave further to “Teheran’s talking points”, because, like the Amalekites who attacked at Refidim, they were enraged by the Nachshonian actions and wanted to show the rest of the latent anti-Semites in the world there was nothing to be afraid of in attacking the Jews.  Bibi’s warning may have the opposite effect in the short term owing to Obamanian hissyfits.

The other possibility is that, like a chastened and humiliated while not attitudinally transformed Achashverosh, this administration is forced to see the genocidal ambitions of its erstwhile new BFF’s and at the very least give the Jews carte blanche to defend itself by any means necessary with no clamoring for ceasefires like this summer, even to the point of codifying the response de jure as well as de facto in international law, as we see happened throughout Esther 8 and 9.  Even if through clenched teeth.  But as Bibi said, there ARE some things Israel CAN live with.

ONLY THEN will this admin have jumped in like Nachshon, and not like Amalek.

Side Note: Metzitzah and the Mayor

Just as he withdrew from the Stop and Frisk case after the city actually started to win it again, Comrade Bill and his admin backed down in formulating the city's MBP policy.

As far as I'm concerned, this doesn't do nearly enough.  "We can't enforce it etc." is such an obvious cop-out to electoral politics that it barely deserves a blurb.

However, there is one good thing that comes out of this:  it is now going to be well-nigh impossible for MBP advocates to even pretend there's a hava amina based on "science" and "evidence" that there is no correlation [if not outright causation] between MBP and neonatal herpes.  There has been a tacit hoda'ah here, even if MBP defenders don't know they made one.

Meanwhile, I'll make the following commitment: IF there is a policy in place that MANDATES ALL MOHALIM to be FINGERPRINTED and DNA TESTED and it's placed on the BOOKS [I won't be makpid on its enforceability if they do at least this], I'll stop insisting that that MBP practitoners and the parents who consent deserve to be arrested.  [The Agudah's dropping of it's fight against fingerprinting everyone in chinuch in 2009 is my template.]

However, I'll NEVER stop insisting that the entire Jewish world be mevatel this practice completely on our own volition.  In a couple of weeks I'll have a piece on that.

FINALLY:  If I ever am zocheh to have a son, and I'm misled as to whether a mohel does MBP or not, and he even TRIES it--I'll invoke pikuach nefesh and chase him off the bima myself.

Response to "Facebook and Modesty": Overstating the Case

A recent post on Aish.com ostensibly tackled the hava amina that Facebook was ipso facto "untzniusdik":

"Modesty doesn’t just mean the length of our hemlines. Modesty is an attitude. It’s how we talk, it’s how we walk, it’s how we conduct ourselves. It’s a sense of dignity and privacy and a focus on our inner selves. Modesty means I am not looking for credit, I am not looking for honor, I am not trying to draw attention to myself. And then along comes Facebook which seems to encourage the exact opposite."

Based upon a previous thesis of mine regarding the possible mistranslation of "tznius", this was my response [which they actually let through]:

"The author may have inadvertently highlighted one of the problems with defining "tznius" as "modesty" as opposed to "discretion", which indicates that maybe reducing digital oversharing is more a matter of basic common sense: rather than "feeling a heightened pleasure" [which borders upon self-congratulation, another hallmark of the digital age], maybe just ask "does anyone want to/need to see this?". Once it's called "modesty" and not "discretion", it's no longer about "an attitude...]i]t’s how we talk, it’s how we walk, it’s how we conduct ourselves. It’s a sense of dignity and privacy and a focus on our inner selves." Rather, it becomes a backdoor overcorrection in an attempt to spiritualize an arena resistant to it, if not discourage participation in said arena. Whole different ballgame than "not looking for credit, [] not looking for honor, [] not trying to draw attention to myself.""

Shemos: Delegitimations

Rabbi Ari Kahn posits how the Divine measure for measure may have been meted out to the purported three Pharaonic advisers at the beginning of the Exodusian enslavement:  Bilaam was killed for advocating for genocide; Iyov, who theoretically did no evil but manifested indifference, suffered so that he would develop the empathy he lacked; and Yisro, who at least actively manifested some form of protest, begat descendants who would continue along that line of thinking.

The first question would be: does Rabbi Kahn overstate the case by claiming Jethro “is forced to flee when his advice is sneered upon”?  Does the text in Sotah 11a indicate that he lodged a protest before, or even upon his way out?  It actually may not matter: the distinction between Iyov and Yisro isn’t in the verbal silence that both may have manifested, but that Iyov thought that a noncommittal approach would allow him to maintain an ostensibly moral stance while maintaining his position, while Jethro realized that it would be impossible.

In theory, a similar thing happened even among the Hebrews themselves.  The Netziv writes in his haggadah that the reason G-d had to—as it were—remove the Jews from Egypt with a “strong hand” [yad chazakah] AND “outstretched arm” [zeroa netuya] was because there were almost two classes of Hebrews at the time: the slaves in eternal peril who needed to be rescued, and the ones with more privileged positions who needed to be pried out because they were too confortable to leave.  [And…that didn’t even take into account the 80% [or 99.97%?] that didn’t make it out and supposedly all died during choshech.]  In theory, the “comfortable” ones who were redeemed [Malcolm X would have called them the “house slaves”] might have been reluctant to jeopardize their more privileged positions, but didn’t actively undermine their brethren or resist the opportunity to leave [even if it was coerced], while the ones who met their demise during the plague of darkness may have gone over to the “dark side” one way or another.

So how were they distinguished?  As I’ve discussed before, there was a tension between how the enslaved Hebrews maintained their ethno-cultural and religious identities [not changing their names, clothes, or language] and still finding themselves steeped in such a spiritual morass that on the eventual eve of their departure they’d gone as far down as they could go.  

This leaves us with several parallel tensions both within the character of the people as a group and between the various groupings among the people.  It got me thinking about a contemporary parallel of two Jewish subgroups that don’t easily overlap but that might be equally loathed from varying quarters: for arguments sake, call them the black-hat orthodox on one side and the Zionists on the other.

The irony here is that everyone outside seems to want to “deal wisely” with all of the groups, while each group here from within seems to want to “deal wisely” with the other [not to the same genocidally oppressive extent, to be sure, but with some element of deligitimation].  The question in this case would be: is there a difference between the kind of pressures dealt with by the attempts to delegitimize the Zionist project, and attempts to delegitimize the—for lack of a better term—the “black hat” project?

The difference is striking: the Zionist project was theoretically to create a state for the Jews the same way other nationalities had their states, exemplifying the commonalities with the world at large; the “black hat” project ostensibly adheres to “hivdilanu min hato-im”, and their cultural patterns are supposed to exemplify the clear distinction—one that is Divinely ordained.

Which raises the question: why would it be legit to criticize a “black hat” culture for its ostensible foibles [I’m not even going to get into what they are, but here’s one], and not criticize Israel for hers?  Simple: the Zionist project doesn’t announce that it’s on a higher moral plane.  Pum farhkehrt.  “Black hat” culture—even its artifacts—are outgrowths of “hivdilanu min hatoim”.  So it does announce that, even tacitly.  [L’havdil: a smiliar thing happened during a Bowl game when BYU players got into a fight with Memphis State players and BYU came in for more criticism—to the point that people were agitating for shutting down the BYU football program.  So sometimes it isn’t just us.]

In short: some groups take all criticism as a prelude to “hava nitchacma lo”.  It isn’t always.  And yes—I’ll go out on a limb here, in case I’m being too subtle—even the more trenchant criticisms of “black hat” cultural artifacts are more salient than criticisms of Israel.