Bemidbar (Part 2) - Numbers 1:1-4:20

Daddy Issues

At the beginning of this weeks Torah portion, the following formula is repeated over and over, "You shall count them according to the father's house (tribe)..." (Num. 1:2, 1:4, etc).

Following that, we are told how each tribe got its own flag and position for marching through the wilderness, With the tribe of Yehudah (Judah) taking the lead, and the others following. (Num. 2:3)

Non-Jews

But what if you didn't have a Jewish birth father? (I am using "Jewish" as a simple identity rather than switching between "Hebrew" and "Israelite" and "Community member".)

We read in Leviticus 24:10 the story of a man who had a Jewish mother from the tribe of Dan, but whose father was an Egyptian. And while the mother was accepted, the son was not, and he cursed God for his situation. The result was that he was stoned to death. (Lev. 24:23).

There were gentiles travelling with the Jews, who left with the Jews (Ex. 12:48, 12:49, 22:20, etc) . While leaving Egypt, the term geyr occurs repeatedly. Sometimes this word is translated as "sojourner", or "stranger", or "proselyte". But what it really means is a gentile who dwells among the Jews. Typically this is called a geyr toshav, but geyr is a simplified form.

There is also a term called eyrev rav, which is often translated as the "mixed multitude", as in Ex. 12:38, "And the eyrev rav went up also with them..." This is typically read as being those who did not have a Jewish father, and were tribe-less. And when the eyrev rav start complaining (see Num. 11:4, for example), several commentators (Rashi and Sifrei 86, for example) see this as a problem being initiated by outsiders.

No converts

Keep in mind that as far as Yahweh was concerned, if your father was a descendant of Jacob and his sons, you were part of His people. If your father was not, then you were not. The idea of a proselyte or a convert is post-Biblical and the Hebrew word for conversion (להתגיר) did not exist in the Tanach.

As far as the Torah was concerned, if the man was a Jew, and he acquired a woman, then by virtue of her relationship with him, she was a Jew. And if he died and she had children, then by virtue of his children, she was still part of the tribe. If she had no children, but her husband had a living male relative (typically a brother, but we read in Genesis where the father of the dead husband (Judah) could stand in), then she retains her status as part of the Jewish people and becomes her brother's woman (unless they both agree that it's a bad idea).

The myth that Ruth was a convert (the text never says that) is exposed when one reads that she performed chalitzah (an odd ceremony of severing the requirement to marry the dead husband's relative) with her dead husband's brother, which is something that only a Jewish woman who was married to a Jewish man is obligated to perform. The myth that the text that forbids Moabites from joining with Israel only means the men is also exposed when one realizes that a Jewish woman who leaves to bed a gentile is not making him part of the Jewish people but, rather, when a Jewish man takes a gentile woman, he is including her as one of the Jewish people.

In the Book of Ezra, he changed all of that. As far as he was concerned, taking a gentile woman was wrong, and that all of the Jewish men who had done so needed to divorce themselves from such relationships and send away the women and the children, since none of them were Jewish. 

As far as Ezra was concerned, conversion was not an option.

It would only be generations after that period that Rabbinical Judaism would tweak the system to introduce conversions.

Marching orders

So since we know who was being counted in this week's Torah portion and why, and the gentiles were excluded from this count, there are several questions that the Torah doesn't answer:

• How many of the "mixed multitude" were there? This would affect the overall total!
• Where did they march? Did they march behind the Jews or in the middle of a V-shaped formation?
• Who were these people and why did they leave Egypt with the Jews?
• Did some choose to become perpetual slaves to have a tribe to live with?

We don't know.

But they are interesting questions to ponder.

Bemidbar - Numbers 1:1-4:20

Hey!

There is this continuing argument within the Talmud between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael. Rabbi Akiva, a zealot, saw that not only was the Torah the Word of God, but that that since God is perfect, then His Torah is perfect, and so there is no such thing as a superfluous or missing letter. All such things must be secret messages from God.

Rabbi Ishmael culminates this argument in Sanhedrin 51b, when he takes Rabbi Akiva to task, interpreting a capital punishment because of a single extra letter: "Shall we condemn this woman to fire because of the way you interpret this superfluous vav?" Rabbi Ishmael's view is that the text is written in a way that people read an write. Would a God use letters that could be reinterpreted to mean different things to different people?

Depending upon your predisposition, especially if you are a religious zealot, the answer might be a resounding "Yes!".

I have sat through more sermons than I can count where the speaker is addressing something as insignificant as a superfluous object-identifier in Biblical Hebrew, as though it had some secret meaning, while ignoring that it was simply not a concern at the time when the men wrote it down.

This brings me to the letter hey, the 5th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (or aleph-bet).

In the beginning

The letter hey, when used as a prefix typically is translated to the article "the". In Hebrew, you append prefixes and suffixes to create phrases. And sometimes the act of doing so creates an uncomfortable pronunciation.  And so, rather than pronounce the name of this book ("Numbers") as "Beh-Ha-Midbar", the "Ha" would dropped, and the "ah" sound would be applied to the "Beh", changing it to "Bah", and a vowel indicator would be placed beneath that first letter to indicate that this shortening of the spelling has taken place (a technique known as smichut), and the result would be "Bah-Midbar", or "In the wilderness/desert".

And that is how almost everyone pronounces this book: "BAH-midbar".

The problem is, there is no such indicator in the name, and there is also no hey (or "the"). And so, the name of this book should really be pronounced as "Bemidbar", even though most Jews that I know, and most English commentators on the text, spell and pronounce it incorrectly, as "Bamidbar".

One might say that this takes place because "Bemidbar" in the context of the sentence makes no sense ("In a wilderness"). But then, what about the very first word in the book of Genesis?

Almost nobody pronounces or spells the first word in Genesis 1:1 as "Bareshit" (Bah-ray-shyt), which does look odd. It too is missing the inferred hey, yet most translations use "In the beginning...".

If you pay attention, you will see that the insertion of "the" or "ה" occurs quite a lot.

It's about style in any language

The thing is, every author from every age has had his own writing style and were rarely concerned with such things as spelling and grammar, as we are today. For some, it was about cadence or sound, and for others, it was a matter of style.

In the Aramaic Targum, for example, it adds "the" to more than 800 different words in the Book of Numbers. In Aramaic, this is done by appending a word with the letter aleph (א), which is akin to prefixing a word with the letter hey (ה) in Hebrew. It does this for consistency of grammar, and was written during a time when such things began to become important.

And so, the Targum changes במדבר to במדברא, which would have become בהמדבר in Hebrew, before it would become "Bamidbar" (but with the missing vowel indicator as previously noted).

Other hey inconsistencies

The letter hey may often be used at the end of a noun to make it feminine. There are exceptions to this, of course. But let's take the noun, na'ar, for example ("young or prepubescent male"). When speaking of a girl, the letter heh would, in modern Hebrew, consistently append the word, making it na'arah.

However...

In Biblical Hebrew, this letter is often not be appended to the end of a word, such a na'ar, and would only be inferred, based on the context of the sentence. In Deuteronomy 22:16, we read of a prepubescent girl who was not found to be a virgin on  her wedding night. It is spelled without the final hey, but the traditional way to read it is to pronounce it as though the hey was there, as na'arah. However, in 22:19, na'arah is spelled fully, and the religious zealots, taking a cue from Rabbi Akiva, will create a sermon about the significance of this change in spelling when it was simply a stylistic rendering.

It's Greek to me

There is no "H" in ancient Greek, so the LXX interpretation of the Masoretic text would often just drop the hey when it was part of a name. And so, Yehudah becomes Judah, and Yehonaton becomes Jonathan and so forth.

And the authors of the LXX, like the Targumist, also "corrected" the missing hey in the words, making the grammar consistent with how people normally spoke.

"THE Angels" vs "Angels"

A friend of mine argued that the two angels (Genesis 19:1) were the same as the three men who visited Abraham (Genesis 18:2), missing one, of course, because the word for "angels" was prefixed with a "ה", meaning THE angels, and because of "the", it must mean that they were known before, and since no angels were mentioned up until this point, then the angels must be from the three men who visited Abraham.

I argued that a prefix doesn't mean that they were mentioned before anymore than saying HaElohim means "the God" who was mentioned before. If you want to argue that HaElohim means the "unique" Elohim (God), then I'm OK with that, and we can say that the two angels were also unique, but in reality, the "ה" being added or removed in either instance doesn't do anything for the verse.

It's an unsatisfactory apologetic to try to resolve the problem with the angels showing up.

Finally, does it matter?

You might think, "So what's the big deal if a letter is missing or superfluous?"

For some, it is not a big deal and they don't see any real significance to the insertion or the removal of a "ה". It is akin to spelling "David" as דוד or דויד in that there is no significant attached to it. Although, there are some who will make up a sermon based on the insertion of elimination of a letter.

If you believe that there is nothing missing or superfluous in the Torah and every letter has a special significance, then you will start seeing things in the text that aren't there or, more likely, parrot others who claim to have seen such things in the text. And some of these interpretation are wonderful, and some aren't inspiring at all.

So, if Bemidbar means "in a wilderness", is that what the person who wrote it intended?

Given that there are more than 800 instances where the missing hey prefix is being treated as though it actually existed, it is most likely just a style of the writing of the time, and something we might consider sloppy by today's standards was quite acceptable back then.

Perhaps I should start pronouncing Bemidbar exactly as it is written.After all, doing so has the potential to cause people who don't think about such things to, perhaps, think a bit more about them.

It's worth thinking about.

Bechukotai (Part 3) - Leviticus 26:3-27:34

As the book of Leviticus comes to an end, we read about vows. Vows are not only endorsed, but they are recommended. But if you make one and break it, that's a bad thing and the punishment for that is lashes.

If you read the Rabbinical literature, you will come away with the view that making a vow is a bad thing and should be avoided whenever possible. To this day, Jews often use the expression "bli neder" ("that's not a vow") when saying something like, "Yes, I'll pick you up at noon tomorrow, bli neder".

Without getting into the differences between the different kinds of vows, let's get clear on something. The Rabbinical view of vows is a more lenient view. So much so that there is a tradition on the eve of Yom Kippur for the Jewish men to stand before a group of other Jewish men and recite an ancient Rabbinical declaration to annul any vows made, known or forgotten, so that you will not enter Yom Kippur with any sin, and if God chooses to have you die before you can fulfill that vow, you will not be punished in Gihennom for it, causing your time there to be extended.

(These and many other reasons are given for this annulling of vows, depending on who you are reading or listening to.)

The fact is, there is nothing in the Torah that permits any man to cancel a vow!

Because women are the property of their fathers, and later, the property of their husbands, their male guardians can cancel their vow if the men see fit to do so. "I vow to not have sex with you again until you do something about..." The man can just say, "I annul that vow"!.

Problem solved!

But for the man, there is no such thing.

The tradition that if a man stands before Torah scholars and renounces all known and forgotten vows, that he is forgiven of them is based solely on statements by assorted sages in the Babylonian Talmud ( Chagigah 10a) who gave themselves the power to cancel a vow by finding some odd nuance in a word here or there that could be stretched into becoming what they wanted.

But the fact is, there is no statement in the Torah that tells men that they can have someone cancel a vow, it was a way, however, for the sages to put the Rabbis into a place that was specifically once the domain of the Priesthood; namely, the ability to act as an intermediary between the Jew and God.

Of course, you will have those who will claim, "It's from the Oral Torah!", meaning, is was something that Moses never got around to write down, and so we either have the claim that it was rediscovered later on, or that it is part of an unrecorded oral tradition, and so it must be true.

The problem with this view is that we go from a text that tells us that our word is important to a tradition that tells us that we can break it when it is inconvenient.

Because of that, very religious Jews have taken on the tradition of being symbolically whipped as well as renouncing their vows before a group of scholars.

I explain about that in detail, with photos at: this link.

Here's a sample photo:

Bechukotai (Part 2) - Leviticus 26:3-27:34

Chapter 27 of Leviticus begins with applying values upon people and property. It is part of the "God needs cash" narrative.  For example, if you are someone who is feeling rather generous and you want to donate a sum to the Temple treasury, you would make a vow to give this money. When you do so you might say something like, "I vow to donate the value of my wife to the Temple". Now, if she was, say, 20 years old, you would then have to bring 30 shekels (Leviticus 27:4) to the priesthood (they would, of course, want to confirm her age). So the last chapter of Leviticus is "Here is a system for you to be generous to the Lord".

Now, breaking your vow is a bad thing (Numbers 30:33). The punishment for breaking your vow is to be whipped. So if you vow to give money, you are committed to keeping your word. If you break it, you will be whipped. There is nothing in the Torah that permits men to break their vows, although husbands can nullify the vow of a wife and fathers can do so for their daughters.

I will talk about vows in another post, but here, I want to focus on something very odd, which has to do with killing someone in the Temple.

There is a positive optional commandment to do just that.

But before I discuss that,there's an important word that you need to know the meaning of because if you rely on translations, you will miss this odd item completely.

The word is cherem.

Cherem is sometimes used to indicate "excommunication", but it actually means, "that which will remain apart from you". It is rarely translated that way, so it's important to know.

So if a Rabbi declares that a particular book is cherem, it is something that you should not own or read, and it should remain apart from you as a forbidden thing.

There's also a different use of cherem as well, which is something that is too holy for you to use, so it too is to remain apart from you.

And that's how cherem is being used in Leviticus 27; it refers to a person, property, animal, or crop, after it has been declared very holy (a doubling of the Hebrew word "holy" is assigned to it) and has been handed over to the priesthood. At that point, it is forever cherem and you cannot swap or redeem it.

Wait...did I write "person"?

Yes I did. As we read in Leviticus 27:28:

"However, any cherem that will be made cherem by a man for Yahweh from all that was his - be it a person, or animal, or a field of his ancestral inheritance - may not be sold and may not be redeemed, and cherem is the most holy to Yahweh."

According to Rashi, based on the Sifra, this man would be a gentile slave, since Jewish slaves are not permitted to be sold or traded.

But need he be a slave? Could a non-slave be given over to the priesthood as a gift?

I'll get to that.

But first, look back a few verses and you will see that Leviticus does tell us that if we don't hand the property over to the priesthood, there's a way to get it back before it becomes cherem.

For example, if you call the priest over and say, "You know what, I rather like this ox. Tell me what it's worth and I'll give you the equivalent in gold instead." You must do this before giving the object to the priest, because if you have not given the object over, it is not yet permanently cherem to you, and it (or he or she) can be redeemed with something else of greater value.

Some haggling can ensue, and it's all based upon what the priest agrees to. After all, it's the priest who will determine the value, and the person who wants to redeem it will pay that value, plus an extra fifth or suffer the consequences.

This puts the priesthood is a much better bargaining position.

This brings us to 27:29 -

"Any cherem who/that was made cherem by someone will not be redeemed, it will die-a-death."

This speaks of someone who already handed over the person, animal, or property to the priesthood, and at that point it is now cherem, and the original owner cannot redeem it/him/her.

As I have mentioned before, a doubling of a term in biblical Hebrew applied an intensity to it. This verse has confused many throughout the ages. Some claim that this is a man who is to be executed  for a crime, even though there is no indication that this is the case, and requires that one ignore the previous verse. The reason for calling it an execution is the intensity of the death. We see this in Exodus when the same phraseology is use, and I insert the word "fucking" to add to the intensity to "die a death":

Yes, there seems to be a vengeful form of killing in the cherem verse. It is clear that it is an execution, and an ugly one at that, and not a sacrifice. After all, verse 27:9 indicates that only proper animals are to be sacrificed before Yahweh. 

What do I mean by killing it in an ugly way?

If we look at Exodus 13:13, we read that if you don't redeem a firstling, rather than giving it to the priesthood you can choose to kill it in an ugly way - breaking it's neck.

Could this be the method of to "die a death"?

If we look at Numbers 18:15-17, we read that a firstborn son is owned by the priesthood, but he can be redeemed by the parent. The text seems to infer that one should redeem these firstborns.

But what if the parent doesn't redeem the firstborn and hand him over to the priesthood? Then he becomes cherem.

And as we read, anyone with a status of cherem will fucking die.

After all, a vow is a vow!

Bechukotai - Leviticus 26:3-27:34

This is the last portion of the Book of Leviticus, so let's take a moment to see a snapshot of this entire book of 27 chapters.

1. The kind of sacrifices that pleases God
2. Priests get a portion of the offerings, and don't forget the salt.
3. The innard parts of the animals, God enjoys.
4. How to get rid of unintentional sins, through sacrifice  (guilt offering).
5. Only the priest can atone for the person who sinned.
6. A nocturnal emission requires atonement to be clean.
7. Meat from a guilt offering belongs to the priests.
8. Initiation into the priesthood and the food they eat.
9. God's holy fire comes forth to consume holy offerings on its own.
10. The holy fire consumed the sons of Aaron for getting too close before they were called.
11. Defining what animals are kosher to eat.
12. All the things that have to be done due to menstruating.
13. The magical disease tza'arat. Only a priest can diagnose it.
14. How to cure tza'arat and only a priest can do it.
15. Handling discharges from women and men to make them clean again.
16. Explaining where God sits and how the priests need to dress to approach Him.
17. It's forbidden to sacrifice an animal without a priest being involved. Eating blood is bad.
18. Forbidden sex, nakedness, and customs of the gentiles.
19. Divination and worshiping other Gods is bad. Be nice to your congregation.
20. Sorcery and necromancy is bad. Bestiality bad. Adultery and cursing parents, also bad.
21. Priests don't defile themselves with the dead. A priest's daughter is burned for harlotry.
22. Only a person made pure by a priest can come before God. Priest's food is holy.
23. How to do the holidays and the Sabbath.
24. God needs fresh bread and candlelight daily. The bread belongs to the priests. Blasphemy bad.
25. Shmittah (Sabbath of the land). Jews cannot be sold like slaves. Gentile are slaves forever.
26. Serve God and you are rewarded. Refuse and he'll make your life hell!
27. God needs cash, or material equivalent!

Of course, there is so much left out of this list, but if you look carefully, you will see that there is an ongoing theme in Leviticus:

The priests are special, you need them, only they can tell if you are clean or unclean, and only they can correct that problem, and only they can do the proper sacrifices, and only they can atone for you, and only they can have a portion of some of the offerings, and only they can eat perform the holiday rituals, and it ends with: giving money or the equivalent to God, through them, is always good!

Yes, in the middle of all of this, there are a few commandments, like don't cheat your neighbor or steal from him, and some other nice things to live by. And the are some pretty horrible things as well slavery, stoning blasphemers, and threats of horrible things to happen to you if you deviate from these rules.

This also includes the rule about shmittah, which only appears in this book, and in this week's portion the priestly writers repeatedly emphasize that not doing this will be one of the things that will cause your pride to be destroyed and you and your people will be sent into exile and you will have a horrible time.

It's almost as though this was written after the loss of the temple from a text supposedly written before there was a Temple or even the thought of building one.

This brings me to verse 26:42 where it says "I will remember my covenant with Jacob".

In the Torah the name "Jacob" is spelled YAQV (יעקב) all of 211 out of 212 times. In this sentence it is spelled YAQOV (יעקוב) which is unique. And the only other place where that spelling is used is 4 times in the book of Jeremiah, which was written after the loss of the Temple cult and the Jews being delivered into exile.

Now it could just be a coincidence, and yet, chapter 26, which has a long description of the horrible things that will befall the Jews, is reminiscent of the warnings of Jeremiah as well.

One last thing about the curses.

One of the curses is the suppression of rain. Verse 26:19 says that God will make shamayim (another word for firmament - see Genesis 1:8) like iron and the earth like bronze. I am using a transliteration "shamayim" rather than use "heavens", since that term doesn't make sense these days. Remember, this is supposedly written in the bronze age. 

And in Deuteronomy, Moses repeats many of these curses except in Deuteronomy 28:23 he tells the people that God will turn shamayim into brass and the earth into iron - a reversal of the Levitical text.

In fact, compare all of the curses in Deuteronomy 28 to Leviticus 26, and you will see that the authors of each book were almost competing as to who could come up with the best curses!

So if the threat of turning the firmament into a bronze or iron dome, I wonder what it was originally made of. I suppose we'll never know!

Behar (Part 3) - Leviticus 25:1-26:2

But It Wasn't REAL Slavery!

In this week's Torah portion (Behar), it begins by explaining that God owns everything, and that He permits you to use what He provides for you, but certain things which have a special holiness, you don't own, you cannot sell, but He will permit you to use them.

I am talking about shmittah, the produce that you can eat from every seven years, but you cannot sell it, and you must treat with a special kedushah, holiness.

That portion then transitions into the discussion about the poor, who may also partake of this food.

We read in 25:39-43 about an impoverished Jew who sells his services as an indentured servant. At no point is this person called a slave (eved - עבד). He is a sakir (שכיר) a "hired worker" and a toshav (תושב), one who will reside with the master of the house (see verse 25:40).

It then goes to emphasize that they, like the produce of shmittah, are not property of the master, nor can they be sold like slaves, because, as Jews, Yahweh is their only master, and they are His slaves alone (25:42).

The Hebrew who was an indentured servant was not a slave, except to Yahweh, as were all Hebrews.

Scripture then goes on to tell us (25:44-46) that gentiles can be purchased and sold, for they are slaves and they can be passed down from generation to generation as an inheritance in perpetuity (25:45), meaning, not freed (there are some Rabbinical leniencies that were later applied, such as if the master amputates his slave's hand, for example, then he is freed after he is forced to convert to Judaism, since, according to Yahweh, only Jews go free).

So, when an apologist says, "But it wasn't REAL slavery!", he or she is a moral and ethical person trying to have the text reflect his or her moral foundations. But the truth is that not all Biblical slavery was defined as becoming an indentured servant for a limited period of time, especially if you were a gentile, about whom, to use the shmittah comparison, Yahweh didn't see as being His, and could be sold to others.

Behar (Part 2) - Leviticus 25:1-26:2

There are two interesting verses about slavery in the text that are sometimes missed.

First, there is a discussion about the poor Hebrew man who works as an indentured servant. While he is working for the master of the house, he cannot be sold because he is not a slave to the master of the house.

But this is how Yahweh describes such people who are in the employ of the master of the house:

25:42 - "For they are My slaves, whom I have taken out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as in the selling of a slave."

Let's go a few verses further:

25:55 - "For the Children of Israel are slaves to Me, they are My slaves, whom I have taken out of the land of Egypt - I am Yahweh, your Elohim."

From the point of view of this narrative, Yahweh is the owner of all of the Children of Israel. As their master, they must obey Him, and He can do as He wishes to or for them.

This is slavery for life.

A common modern expression that many Jews use is "eved HaShem" as in "I am a slave of Yahweh". It is said with pride.

When we look as verse 22:33, the significance of this view should not be lost on you:

22:33 - "[I am Yahweh] who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your Elohim. I am Yahweh."

The view of Elohim as the master of all, just as a master of the slaves that he didn't simply redeem, but retained as His own, is fairly clear here.

It is nearly akin to the Jew who redeems another Jew, a slave, who was owned by a gentile. The redeemed Jew will remain the property of the redeemer until the Jubilee year (every 50 years), which could be the rest of his life.

The Levitical authors saw the role of the Jew as one who was a slave to his or her God, fully obedient, and fulfilling the commandment to love his Master.

Whether or not He loves back, that's completely up to Him!