THERE IS NO “JEWISH” DEVIL

Sidrah:  Genesis 41:1-44:17

Haftarah:  Zechariah 2:14-4:7

                This week the Haftarah is related to the celebration of Hanukkah instead of the weekly Sidrah.  While it contains a number of famous and profound verses, and the remarkable symbol of the Menorah, I choose to focus on a frequently misunderstood personage in the Hebrew Bible, known in Hebrew as ha-Satan, or in English as “the adversary.” In the Haftarah he stands to oppose the appointment of a priest named Joshua as High Priest over the Second Temple which will soon be rebuilt.  A figure with the same title appears in the Book of Job to accuse an innocent man of insincerity, and in the first book of Chronicles (1) “an adversary” entices King David to take a census of the nation without Divine authorization.  Significantly, the description of this event in the second book of Samuel states that Hashem incited King David to take the census because He was angry with the nation. 

                Hashem rebukes the adversary who opposes Joshua the priest, but does not punish or curse him for his words.  The Malbim explains the repetition of the word, “rebuke” as a dismissal of two accusations against the priest Joshua.  First, Hashem declares Joshua vindicated of any charges against his personal character; the Malbim understands the filth on the priest’s clothes to be soot from the “fire” from which Joshua the “firebrand” has been rescued.  Second, Hashem announces that He has chosen Jerusalem to be His capitol and will restore it as the capitol of the Jewish nation, with Joshua serving as chief priest in the rebuilt Temple.  The Malbim attributes both verdicts to Hashem’s compassion, which is as infinite and as irrefutable as His attribute of justice. 

                In the story of Job, the adversary is also not punished for speaking against Job even though Job shows himself steadfast in the face of adversity and Hashem declares him righteous.  Any reader who sees Hashem “making a bet with Satan” and treating an innocent man as a pawn, does not view Him as either just or merciful.  In Jewish liturgical poetry the figure known as ha-Satan frequently gains the title of prosecutor in the Heavenly court, a role some see as consistent with that of the serpent in the narrative of the Garden of Eden.  Accordingly, says the Midrash, Hashem does not ask the serpent for his motive because he would reply, “Who were they supposed to listen to, me or You?”

                Occasionally the Tanakh (2) interchanges the name of Hashem with the phrase, “angel of Hashem.”  How can the “adversary” mentioned in Chronicles equate to the intervention of Hashem described in Samuel?  To shorten a very long answer, Judaism did not create the belief that anything evil or even harmful comes only from some entity acting independently of Hashem’s will.   The point of our Haftarah is that Hashem decided that the time was right for the end of the Babylonian exile.  The point of the story in David’s life is that an unseen hand wrote tragedy into the narrative, but no human can grasp the reason, and all King David could do was pray for mercy.  No matter how angry we feel when the universe does not give in to our wishes, the proper response is to shout in protest as Job did and accept the reply even if it does not satisfy us, because we are responsible for working with each other to relieve suffering regardless of its source.

(1)    The “double books” in the Hebrew Bible were originally single books. Samuel, Kings and Chronicles were divided into “first” and “second” books when they were translated into Greek.

(2)    Tanakh:  derived from the initials of the Hebrew words Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings), the three major divisions of the books in the Hebrew Bible.  The “k”consonant at the end of the word becomes “kh” because of the rules of Hebrew phonology.

HARSH WORDS

Sidrah:  Genesis 37:1-40:23

Haftarah:  Amos 2:6-3:8

Our Haftarah establishes its connection to the weekly sidrah through the unwarranted sale of Joseph. Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir (1) and Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato (2) note that the text can mean that actually a band of Midianites sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites, even though tradition holds the brothers guilty of the sale. The reading from the Prophet Amos begins with a warning to the people of the Northern Kingdom that although Hashem may have given them multiple chances for repentance, His patience has run out with their corruption of civil justice, selling “the righteous man for silver and the needy man for a pair of shoes.”  The Malbim understands these “sales” in terms of witnesses being bribed to give false testimony in capital cases, “selling” innocent defendants to death, along with corrupt judges who overlook such criminal behavior. He further interprets those who “pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor” as those who are eager to see a poor man’s head cut off so they can claim the victim’s tiny homestead for themselves.

                After complaining of the nation’s ingratitude and listing other examples of oppression, including the oppression of those who act as religious spokesmen, Amos uses an infrequently found verb, l’ha`ik, to create a simile between the populace of the Northern Kingdom and a wagon loaded with grain.  The Malbim derives its intent from the word ma`akah, a boundary or protective railing.  In other words, according to him, Hashem threatens to hold the people in place so that they cannot escape His punishment, just as a frame around the top of a wagon prevents grain from falling out.  

The prophet’s next rebuke is extremely profound; “You only have I known among the families of the earth; therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities.”  No understanding of the expression, “chosen people,” could be more wrong than to think that the Jewish religion gives us a free pass on immoral or unethical behavior.  Hashem commands us to follow His commandments to a more stringent degree than our non-Jewish neighbors in order to demonstrate that they can indeed be followed and that following them makes our lives a blessing to ourselves and all those around us.

(1)    Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir (or RaSHBaM) was the grandson of Rashi and is better known for his commentary on the Gemara tractates Pesachim and Baba Batra.

(2)    Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato (or RaMCHaL) lived in the 18^th century in Italy, the Netherlands and the Land of Israel.  He is most famous for a treatise on ethics known in English as The Path of the Just (in Hebrew, Mesilat Yesharim).

A ROUTE OUTSIDE THE BOX

Torah reading:  Genesis 28:10-32:3

Haftarah:   Hosea 12:13-14:10

The reference in the Prophet Hosea's sermon to the narrative of Jacob and Rachel seems out of place at first glance, especially in the original Hebrew.  A literal translation of the opening verse would read, “And Jacob fled to Aram; and Israel worked for a wife, and for a wife he guarded.”  Modern translators usually fill in a textual blank by writing, “…and for a wife he guarded sheep.”  Biblical Hebrew is a very compact language, and Biblical Hebrew poetry depends heavily on sentence structure, rhythm, and word play for its effect, so poetic highlights are often impossible to express in English.  The next verse is translated, “By (or through) a prophet Hashem brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet he (Israel) was preserved.”  In Hebrew the same verb signifies both “to guard” and “to preserve,” enhancing the parallelism of the two verses.  The Malbim considers (1) this second verse to connect the idolatry of Hosea’s time to the infamous Golden Calf.  In each case, as he sees it, people needed a visible figure to act as a “mediator” between them and Hashem.  In his Guide for the Perplexed, the Rambam (2) stresses that Hashem intended to wean His people away from this symptom of intellectual and spiritual immaturity. 

                In the Haftarah Hosea proceeds to vilify the residents of the Northern Kingdom, or Kingdom of Israel, for worshipping a Canaanite deity symbolized, coincidentally, by a calf. Even before the minting of coins in the ancient Near East, silver ingots of standard weight (3) were commonly used as money; therefore, that people were making images of calves out of silver suggests to me that these were figurines that could be set on a home altar or worn around the neck, and might be kissed as an act of reverence.   The Malbim understands the verb in the conclusion of this verse, translated in some Jewish Bibles as “sacrifice,” to mean “slaughter;” he argues that the Prophet is condemning individuals who slew a king for worshipping the Canaanite deity, yet worship that same deity themselves!

                The “nine dots puzzle” challenges a person to draw a path connecting nine dots arranged in a three-by-three square, using only four straight lines, in such a way that no line passes through an individual dot more than once.  The solution requires extending three of the lines beyond the edges of the square, which many people treat as a “box.”  The Sages who assigned the different Haftarot may have expected the readers and listeners to have a familiarity with the verses preceding the Haftarah, particularly one in which Hosea charges a merchant with having unjust balances, which parallels Jacob’s accusations against his uncle Laban for not only tricking Jacob into marrying the wrong wife but abusing him as an employee.  This insistence on fairness in the marketplace completes the route taken by the Sages in selecting the text for this Haftarah.

(1)    We traditionally refer to Torah scholars in the present tense even long after their deaths, because their words keep them alive in our hearts.

(2)    Rambam:  An acronym for Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon, also known as Moses Maimonides, a major authority on Jewish law as well as a philosopher and physician.  The Rambam compiled the first codex of Jewish law and served as physician to the Sultan of Cairo in the twelfth century CE.  He is especially admired for his rationalistic approach to scriptural analysis and Jewish legal practice.

(3)    Such as the silver shekel.