Friday, March 14, 2014



SHABBAT ZACHOR
Maftir:  Deuteronomy 25:17-19
Haftarah:  I Samuel 15:1-34
                The campaign against the nation of Amalek leaves a strange taste in the mouths of some modern readers of this Haftarah.  The Malbim, however, indicates five points contained in the commandment of “Remember” demonstrating why the Amalekites were worthy of such extraordinary retribution.  “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you left Egypt; how he encountered you on the road, attacking you from behind, all those who were feeble, when you were tired and weak; and he did not fear Gd. “
                The Amalekites violated five different standards of military action.
                They attacked us “on the way.” The Amalekites could not have been attempting to capture territory from us, as they came upon our ancestors as they were traveling through wilderness.
              “…as you left Egypt.”  This was not a pre-emptive strike on an army massing for an invasion, but the slaughter of slaves escaping from bondage.
                “…He encountered you on the road.”  The Amalekites were not seeking us out for retribution for some grievance; this was a random encounter.
                “They attacked you from behind, all those who were feeble, when you were tired and weak.”  A conqueror, or a ruler seeking to increase his prestige, does not waste time mowing down unarmed civilians.
                “And he did not fear Gd.”  The Amalekites did not believe they were acting for some higher purpose.

Friday, March 7, 2014



A THEORY ABOUT RELIGIOUS DISLOYALTY
Sidrah:  Leviticus 1:1-5:26
Haftarah: Isaiah 43:21-44:23

            We know how dear the Beit ha-Mikdash was to the Jewish people.  How, then, after little more than a century, would they fall into the kind of snare described in our Haftarah:  cutting down a tree, burning half the wood as fuel, and then using the other half to make an image to be worshipped as a god?
            The kings of Judah and Israel may not have completely banished or destroyed the Canaanite communities condemned by the Torah, but would such Canaanite remnants have friendly relations with Jews, whom they might well have seen as foreign invaders?  Would worshippers of Hashem really want to take on the customs of people who viewed them with hostility?  On the other hand, we may have absorbed alien worship from the descendants of Esau who intermarried with us; after all they were our relatives.  Some of the previous inhabitants may have adopted a solution to the conquest of the Land of Israel similar to that of natives of the Western Hemisphere who were subjugated by Christian armies. Just as some inhabitants of the Americas incorporate their ancestral beliefs and practices into the Christian religion, some idolaters may well have mixed their old beliefs into their worship of Hashem. In addition, Israel, and subsequently the Northern and Southern kingdoms, had trade agreements with neighboring kingdoms. Kings of Israel took foreign wives as a condition of peace treaties.  Commerce can lead to acculturation, especially if business associates share a border.
            And the Canaanite religions may have had an attraction we no longer know about.  When I was in college I knew Jewish students who actually had “Chanukah bushes” and laughed when I called such objects a mere excuse for owning a Christian symbol.  The idols of our neighbors may have represented concepts with tremendous emotional appeal; they may have been associated with agriculture, or may have been aesthetically beautiful.  The growing popularity of “Messianic Judaism” in the State of Israel demonstrates the ability of alien beliefs to take root and flourish even in the very homeland of the Torah.

Saturday, March 1, 2014



THE HEADACHES OF FUNDRAISING
Maftir:  Exodus 30:11-16
Haftarah:  II Kings 12:1-17

            This week we read a special Haftarah which reminds us of the Torah’s commandment for every Jewish male adult to donate a half-shekel which was used in previous years for purchasing the public sacrifices offered in the Beit ha-Mikdash.  The narrative’s background begins a number of years earlier when Queen Izevel (in English, Jezebel) of the Northern Kingdom erected a temple to the Canaanite god Baal.  Even after Elijah defeated four hundred fifty prophets of that false god, the temple remained standing until Hashem told the prophet Elisha to anoint a new king named Yehu, who killed King Ahab and Izevel, and tore down the idolatrous temple. 
            Furthermore, the king of Judah, Ahatzyahu, had been subverted by his mother Atalyah (sometimes spelled, “Atalyahu”) to worship the Canaanite god as well.  When Yehu assassinated Ahatzyahu, Atalyah murdered every male descendant of the royal line that she could find, in order to retain the throne for herself.  But the king’s daughter sheltered the infant Yehoash (or Yoash) along with a nursemaid until his seventh year, when a loyal kohen proclaimed him king and launched a coup that resulted in the death of Atalyah, to the delight of the populace.
            King Yehoash ordered the kohanim to utilize donations other than those for personal sacrifices for the purpose of restoring the Beit ha-Mikdash to its former status.  The Malbim seeks to reconcile the account contained in our Haftarah with that in Chronicles, which states that the king sent the kohanim out from Jerusalem to raise funds for the restoration of the Beit ha-Mikdash.  This second account leads the Malbim to conclude that Atalyah’s corrupting influence was pervasive enough to cause people in Jerusalem to loot the Beit ha-Mikdash for the pagan temple; consequently the kohanim could not afford to offer the daily sacrifices.
            Rabbi David Kimchi relates that the kohanim were waiting until they had collected sufficient funds to undertake all the work necessary to restore the Beit ha-Mikdash to begin the labor; this caused the king to suspect, unjustly, that the kohanim were either lax in their collection efforts or keeping the money for themselves.  Because of this the king ordered that henceforth whenever people brought donations to the Beit ha-Mikdash, the kohanim should immediately reserve the money for repairs.  The kohanim consented; in fact, Rabbi Levi ben Gershon states that the kohanim felt they should never have been assigned the duty of “building fund committee.” (1)
(1)     Rabbi Levi ben Gershon is also known by the abbreviation RaLBag, and as Rabbi Levi Gersonides.  He wrote commentaries on several books of the Tanakh and on parts of the Gemara.  He also wrote a book known as Sefer Milchamot Hashem, or The Book of the Wars of Hashem, dealing with the apparent conflict between free will and Hashem’s foreknowledge, along with the subject of astronomy as known to the Muslims of the fourteenth century.
 

Friday, February 21, 2014



FROM MISHKAN TO MIKDASH

Sidrah:  Exodus 35:1-38:7
Haftarah:  I Kings 7:40-50

                This week’s Haftarah gives a detailed account of the sacred furniture and ornamentation of the Beit Ha-Mikdash as commissioned by King Solomon to be made in gold, as well as cast in copper or possibly bronze (1) by an artisan named Hiram.  The artisan’s name appears twice in the verse, once spelled “Chirom” in Hebrew and once spelled “Chiram.”  The Book of Chronicles (2) contains its own account of the treaty between Solomon and the king of Tyre and the building of the Beit Ha-Mikdash; in his commentary on that book, the Malbim argues that “Chirom” knew how to work in gold and burnished bronze; and “Chiram,” who worked in copper, was his son.
                The Malbim further explains that King Solomon made (or more likely commissioned the making of) ten golden menorot and arranged them parallel to the southern wall, five to the right of Moshe’s original menorah and five to its left.  He similarly ordered ten golden tables for the lechem ha-panim or “showbread,” arranging them in the same fashion along with the original table from the Mishkan or sanctuary made in the wilderness, parallel to the northern wall.
For the full story of the two great pillars and the elaborate capitals that topped them, we must turn to the Sephardic Haftarah for this week, (3) which tells us that they stood in front of the entrance to the Beit ha-Mikdash.  The Prophet Jeremiah (52:21) reveals the interesting detail that they were hollow, which would certainly be reasonable, since they were cast lying down, and even hollow it would require tremendous manpower to stand them upright. Each of the pillars had a name:  Yachin for the one on the right side and Boaz for the one on the left.  The name Yachin means in Hebrew, “He will establish,” and Rabbi David Kimchi explains the name Boaz as a compound of the Hebrew words ”bo  oz”, meaning, “In it is strength.”  The Vilna Gaon cites references from the Tanakh and Kabbalah to associate these two names with pairs including the sun and moon; King David’s ancestors Zerach and Peretz; and, justice and mercy.  The construction of the original Mishkan and each instance of the Beit ha-Mikdash have filled and continue to fill us with spiritual, literary and artistic inspiration, along with a longing for the final Beit ha-Mikdash  which will stand until the end of time.
(1)    The Hebrew word nechoshet is variously translated as “copper,” “bronze,” and “brass.”  While brass did exist in ancient Israel, it was rare and expensive, so these huge objects must have been cast in copper or bronze. (C. P Thornton, “Of brass and bronze in prehistoric Southwest Asia,” pp. 189-201. See Wikipedia’s article on “Brass.”)
(2)    II Chronicles 3:15-17.
(3)    I Kings 7:13-26.

Thursday, January 16, 2014



THE VALUES OF WORDS AND NAMES

Sidrah: Exodus 18:1-20:23
Haftarah: Isaiah 6:1-7:6, 9:5-6
                The Revelation at Har Sinai is the greatest miracle in the history of the world; Hashem revealed not only His holy Torah but also His essence in the most direct way that our bodies could endure. To match this, our Sages of blessed memory selected a haftarah in which the prophet Isaiah describes experiencing Hashem’s majesty in the lofty imagery of a royal figure seated on a throne in a chamber with an altar, surrounded by fiery angels.  Isaiah envisions himself as so unworthy of this experience that an angel must touch his lips with a coal from the celestial altar to burn away his sin.  Yet when Hashem calls for a representative, the mission He gives the prophet is purely down to earth and even painful for Isaiah to hear.
                  In the original Hebrew the message Hashem has for the people is written in the imperative voice. This gives the translation, “Hear but do not understand; see but do not know (what you are seeing)!”  Rabbi David Kimchi (1) discusses two interpretations of this message.  The first follows the interpretation often associated with Hashem’s words to Moshe regarding Pharaoh; Hashem will sometimes withhold the chance to repent from a person immersed in wrongdoing so that others will see the consequences of disobedience.  The second viewpoint regards the intent of the Hebrew as a warning, as if the verbs had been written in the future tense.  In English we would read it, “You will hear but not understand; you will see but not know the meaning of what you see.”
                The Malbim (2) also analyzes the choice of words in this verse linguistically.  He points out that Hebrew has two words for “no”.  The word al, used here, refers to prohibiting a specific, voluntary action that someone is about to perform.    The more familiar word lo is closer in usage to the English word “never.”  The Malbim also disagrees with Rashi’s understanding, which would be rendered, “I tell you ‘listen!’ but you do not pay attention; I tell you ‘see!’ but you do not know.”  He bases his disagreement on the nest verse in Hashem’s charge to Isaiah:   “Fatten this nation’s heart, make its ears heavy, and shut its eyes, lest it see (pen yir’eh in Hebrew) with its eyes, hear with its ears, and understand with its heart, and return and be healed.”  The Malbim maintains that if Rashi’s interpretation were the one intended, Hashem would have concluded, “perhaps it will see (ulai yir’eh) with its eyes….”  Instead, concludes the Malbim, a better interpretation would apply the verb “tell” to all the imperatives in the earlier verse.  In other words, he proposes this interpretation:  “Tell them, ‘listen,’ but do not tell them, ‘understand;’ tell them, ‘see,’ but do not tell them, ‘know.’”  Hashem predicts that the consequence will be a “stock” of the kingdom of Judah will remain to let a healthier “tree” grow back.
                Hashem instructs Isaiah, along with his son, to visit King Achaz of Judah.  The son’s name, Sh’ar-Yashuv, means “a remnant shall return.”  Symbolic names like this are not meant to refer to the person so named; instead they convey a message to the public message.  In this case the message follows the one above, which states a remnant of the Northern Kingdom will return to the true path and rebound, even after the tragedy predicted previously.  The encouragement implied in the son’s name is essential to support what Hashem wants Isaiah to tell the king—that he should not fear the conspiracy of the king of Israel with the king of Aram. 
                The haftarah breaks to a later passage in which Isaiah announces that despite the moral failings of King Achaz, his son Hezekiah will merit the name Sar-Shalom, which means “Prince of Peace.”   He will be given                                                                                                                  (over)

this name by Hashem, Whom the prophet assigns the title Peleh-Yoetz-E.l-Gibor-Avi-Ad, which in English means, “The wonderful Counselor, mighty Deity, everlasting Advisor.” (3) Throughout Hezekiah’s reign, the Northern and Southern Kingdoms were united and a new spirit of devotion to Hashem was widespread, due to a combination of the king’s personal integrity and the positive influence of Hashem Himself, which Hezekiah’s high standards were able to spread to his subjects.
1.       Rabbi David Kimchi, often cited by the abbreviation RaDak, lived in Provence during the twelfth and thirteen centuries.  He wrote commentaries on all the books of the Prophets, and on grammar and history, as well as a Hebrew dictionary. (Cited from Wikipedia.)
2.       I have discussed the life and works of the Malbim in a previous blog entry.
3.       Examine Genesis 42:8 concerning the usage of the Hebrew Av as “advisor” rather than the literal meaning of “father.”

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