Today we celebrate Israel’s Independence Day, Yom ha-‘Atzma’ut.  In this essay, I explore one central symbol of independence in the Tanakh – bones, ‘atzamot, signifying the transition towards independence for the nation.  Opening the Ibn Shoshan dictionary to the word ‘atzma’ut, one finds the following definition: “ability to stand on one’s own; independence from others; autonomy.”  At the root of ‘atzma’ut lies the word ‘etzem – bone.  The hardest material within the tender flesh of our human substance, bones enable us to stand upright.   Through our bones, our skeleton, we owe allegiance to the vertebrate kingdom – being warm-blooded, enabling homeostasis, the development of an immune system and complex metabolism.  That is, our bones grant us greater physiological independence from the environment.

Yet, the first time the word bone appears in the Tanakh, we find an admixture of both independence, ‘atzma’ut, and dependence.  To create woman, God took the “side” of Adam and built it up, after inducing a deep sleep (the first general anesthetic).  When God presented her to him, the man declared:

This [zot] now [ha-pa‘am]  is bone of my bones [‘etzem me‘atzamai]

And flesh of my flesh

This [zot] shall be called ‘woman’

For from ‘man’ this [zot] was taken (Gen. 2:23, my trans.)

At that moment, he recognized that “this one” was both from him, “bone of [his] bone, flesh of [his] flesh,” and yet independent of him.  Using the demonstrative pronoun “this” [zot] emphatically three times to punctuate his speech, he signified (like the pointing finger) otherness, separation from himself.  Yet he also recognized her as his own, of his substance, of his bone-being [mi‘atzmo].  Her sense of difference or independence derived from her emergence as other than him while, at the same time, she was similar; she mirrored him in bone, in flesh, and in name (isha/ish, woman/man).

Similarly, in the identification of kinship, the term “bone” is evoked to connote identity with another.   Laban identifies his affiliation to Jacob in terms of being “of [his] bone” and “of [his] flesh” (Gen. 29:14); Abimelech reminds the people of Shechem that he is of “[their] bone and [their] flesh,” in proclaiming his right to rule over them as king (Judg. 9:2); and the Israelites (of the northern tribes), identify themselves with David as being “of [his] bones and [his] flesh” (2 Sam. 5:1) when they express their desire that he rule over them as well, extending beyond his tribal affiliation with Judah.  The expression “of [one’s] bone” and “of [one’s] flesh” sets up a dialectic between, on the one hand, independence, difference, the emergence of one from another as in the birth of woman out of man, Eve from Adam, or child from parent.  On the other hand, it harks back to filial ties, tribal alliances, and national identification.

The story of the exhumation of Joseph’s bones upon the Exodus from Egypt presents us with a paradigmatic narrative.  In the concluding scene of the Book of Genesis, Joseph exacts an oath from his brothers: “When God surely takes note of you [paqod yifqod etkhem], you shall bring my bones up from here” (Gen. 5:25). The oath is fulfilled on the eve of the Exodus, when Moses takes up the bones of Joseph “who had exacted an oath of the children of Israel saying, ‘God will surely take note of you [paqod yifqod etkhem]: then shall you carry up my bones from here with you” (Exod. 13:19).   The repetition of Joseph’s oath, almost verbatim in Exodus, suggests that it is part of the providential plan.  This is the last thing Moses does, implying that had he not done so the Israelites might never have been able to leave.  The Mekhilta suggests that the Egyptians deliberately hid the burial site of Joseph’s body (ensconced among the mummies of the Egyptian Kings or sunk to the bottom of the Nile in an iron casket), because their sorcerers had predicted that, upon the departure of Joseph’s remains, Egypt would be physically devastated.  Yet the Egyptian effort to undermine the oracle was thwarted.  And Joseph’s bones rose from the bottom Nile, or were disinterred from ancient tombs, while the mother country writhed.  And the Israelite nation emerged as a people from the womb of another people [goy mi-qerev goy] (Deut. 4:34).  Ultimately, the oath was fulfilled by Joshua, his descendant (of the tribe of Ephraim), and the bones were buried at Shechem, the ancestral land granted to Joseph before his father’s death (Josh. 24:32; cf. Gen. 48:22).  Just as the raising of Joseph’s remains marks a pivotal moment in the nation’s Exodus from Egypt, so the final settlement of his weary bones confirms the nation’s establishment in the Land.  Joseph’s bones then represent both the separation from another nation, mother Egypt, and kinship to his own nation, through a link to the ancestral promise, embodied in the flesh-and-bone of peoplehood.

The same promise of the resurrection and interment of lost bones characterizes Ezekiel’s prophecy over the “Valley of the Dry Bones.”  While there is debate in the Talmud as to which bones remain scattered, unburied in the Valley (clearly a cursed status), R. Yehuda argues that the prophecy must be read as a parable (b. Sanhedrin 92b).  His reading seems closest to the plain meaning, as Ezekiel concludes his prophecy with an exhortation to the community in exile:

Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.  And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.  I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord (Ezek. 37:12-14, NRSV).

The prophet no longer invokes the image of dry bones in a valley, assembling as sinews and flesh accrue, sewn with new skin, imbued with the spirit/breath/wind (ru’ah) of God like Adam when first enlivened with divine breath (Ezek. 37:9; cf. Gen. 2:7).  Here, instead, he calls to the bones lying in open graves.  These are the people scattered throughout the Babylonian empire.  To them, God promises return to the land of Israel.  As Ezekiel draws the stick of Joseph (representing the Northern Kingdom), and places it with the stick of Judah (representing the Southern Kingdom), the two merge, being bone of the same bone, flesh of the same flesh.  And God promises to make them, once again, “a single nation in the land, on the hills of Israel…Never again shall they be two nations, and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms” (Ezek. 37:21, NRSV).

Today we are witnessing the assembly of the dry bones out of the valley of the shadow of death and out of the open graves – out of the Crusades and the banishment from foreign lands, in the wake of pogrom upon pogrom and the Holocaust.  Our people, bone-of-our-bone, flesh-of-our-flesh, are returning to the land.    It is an amazing vision.  And yet it is no longer just a prophetic vision.

There are thirty three bones in the vertebral column.  Each of those small bones is critical to the body’s ability to stand upright and each one of us holds the position of one of those small bones.  The emergence of Eve from Adam, the birth of the Israelite nation from Egypt, and the return of the Jewish people from the Babylonian exile, all involved both separation and identification in linking one bone to another.  Today, may each of us contribute to the assembly of the bones of independence, ‘atzmot ha-‘atzma’ut, individually in our own way, vertebrae by vertebrae.

Because of her longevity, she embodies a living Jewish memory, becoming the sole link to the generation of the patriarchs, lost to the Israelite slaves in Egypt.  The beginning of Exodus (the book of Shemot, lit. names), ironically, is marked by a radical discontinuity, represented by the nation’s descent into anonymity, as they became “fertile and prolific, and multiplied and increased very, very greatly” (Exod. 1:7).  With the exception of the midwives, there is a distinct absence of names after the twelve brothers pass away – symptomatic of the dehumanization of the enslavement.  According to the Zohar, the oppression is also marked by an “exile of the word” [galut ha-dibur].  At the end of chapter two, the people can only groan under their slavery, moan and cry for help (there are four different Hebrew expressions of their wordless anguish – va-ye’anhu, va-yiza‘aqu, shav‘atam, na’akatam – appear in Exod. 2:23-24), while God hears their inarticulate cries.  Language itself goes into quiescence, into exile.    Both Moses and Serah bat Asher are pivotal in bringing the word back – she as the agent of living memory, bearer of the oral (mouth-to-mouth) tradition, and he as the messenger of divine revelation.

The critical meeting between Moses and Serah bat Asher occurs in the presence of the elders.  Prior to this, at the burning bush, Moses was seized with doubt that the Israelites would not believe he had been sent by God as their redeemer.  God answered the prophet’s anxiety by giving him a set of signs [otot] – the staff turns into a snake, Moses’ hand becomes leprous, and water turns to blood.  But He also gave him words, embodied in letters [otiot]: “Tell them, the Lord, God of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, appeared to you and said, ‘I have taken note of you [paqod paqadeti etkhem] and of what is being done to you in Egypt…’” (Exod. 3:16).  These words echo the promise Joseph had uttered when he made his brothers swear to take his bones out of Egypt: “God will surely take note of you [paqod yiphqod etkhem] and bring you up from this land…” (Gen. 50:24-25).  “After Moses performs the signs and Aaron reiterates all the words God had said: ‘when they heard that the Lord had taken note of the Israelites…’ the elders believed Moses and bowed low in homage” (Exod. 4:31).  Who makes the connection between God’s promise to Moses and Joseph’s oath?  Serah bat Asher of course, the sole survivor of the generation that left Canaan.

The midrash, Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer, presents this meeting in the light of an oral tradition that revolves around the five “letters of redemption,” which appear twice in significant expressions of God’s providence: kaf-kaf, mem-mem, nun-nun, peh-peh, and tzadi-tzadi.  These letters differ graphically when they appear at the end of a word, pointing to the telos – the ultimate End – that they signify.

The letters (peh-peh) were delivered to our father, Abraham.  Our father Abraham delivered them to Isaac, and Isaac [delivered them] to Jacob, and Jacob delivered the mystery of the redemption to Joseph, as it is said, “But God will surely take notice of you (paqod yiphqod etkhem)” (Gen. 50:24).  Joseph his son delivered the secret of the redemption to his brothers.  Asher, the son of Jacob, delivered the mystery of the redemption to Serah, his daughter.  When Moses and Aaron came to the elders of Israel and performed the signs in their sight, the elders of Israel went to Serah bat Asher, and said to her: “A certain man has come, and he has performed a set of miraculous signs [otot] before our very eyes.”  She said to them: “There is no significance to these signs.”  They said to her: “He said ‘I have take note of you [paqod paqadeti etkhem]” (Exod. 3:16).  She said to them: “He is the man who will redeem Israel from Egypt in the future, for so I heard from my father, peh-peh, ‘God will surely take note of you [paqod yiphqod etkhem]…’” (Gen. 50:24).  The people then believed in their God and in Moses, as it is said, “And the people believed when they heard that the Lord had taken note of the Israelites” (Exod. 4:31).  [Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 48, my translation]

Serah bat Asher grants Moses authority, endorses his claim to be the redeemer of Israel, not on the basis of the miraculous signs [otot], but on the basis of the letters [otiot], peh-peh, embedded in the critical words: “God has surely taken note of you [paqod paqadeti etkhem].”  Significantly, the term paqad, to take note or remember, first occurs in the Bible in the context of Isaac’s conception:  “And the Lord took note of Sarah [paqad et Sarah] as He had promised…” (Gen. 21:1).   Paqad does not imply God had forgotten but, rather, the time had now come to fulfill the divine promise – in Genesis, the birth of Abraham and Sarah’s son, Isaac, as heir to the covenant, and in Exodus, in the birth of the nation, Israel.  God’s act of remembering, paqad, is like the focus of dispersed light into a beam, the focal point being Sarah, and later her descendants.

Like the matriarch, Serah bat Asher becomes the bearer of a promise.  While Sarah carries the promise in her body, Serah carries it through her lucidity.  She uniquely presents the possibility of continuity with a lost generation as bearer of the oral tradition, mouth-to-mouth (peh-el-peh). Moses, on the other hand, engages with God face-to-face (panim-el-panim), as the conduit of direct revelation.  Both Serah bat Asher and Moses revive the possibility of language, stir the return of the word after a period of exile.  Serah, as her name signifies (cf. Exod. 26:12-13), does so by “overlapping” the generations, carrying over the remnants of a promise.  Moses, like the bush itself, burns without being consumed; he becomes the vessel of Torah, carrying the divine words of black-fire-on-white-fire to the people.

In our generation, we appear to be at a loss for both figures.  Yet we can find models of continuity in the wizened story tellers of a lost generation and in the brilliant scholars of the Beit Midrash.  Perhaps the likes of Serah and Moses continue to stir words, calling for a return from exile.

A version of this article was published in the “Kol Isha” column of the Jerusalem Post, Jan. 22^nd 2010, and on the website of Matan as the Rosh Hodesh Shvat essay in memory of Edythe Benjamin: http://www.matan.org.il/eng/show.asp?id=36471. A longer version of this essay appears as “Serah bat Asher:  Songstress, Poet, Woman of Wisdom” in Torah of the Mothers, ed. Susan Handelman and Ora Wiskind-Elper (Jerusalem: Urim 2000), 218-243.

Jews are known for answering a question with another question.  Following this tradition, I’d like to address this midrash with another midrash:  “While the brothers were occupied with the sale of Joseph, Jacob with his sackcloth and fasting, and Judah with taking a wife, the Holy One, blessed be He, was creating the light of the Messiah… “Before she was in labor, she gave birth” (Isaiah 66:7)…“It happened at that time” (Gen. 38:1)” (Genesis Rabbah 85:1).

The midrash addresses the connection between the two chapters (37 and 38) of Genesis.  Judah’s descent immediately follows the sale of Joseph into slavery and the presentation of the cloak dipped in goat’s blood, with the telling words to his father, “This we found, discern [haker na] whether this is your son’s cloak or not”  (Gen. 37:32).   Jacob’s diagnosis, “A wild animal has devoured him; Joseph is torn, torn apart,” rends a deep tear in the fabric of the family.  The brothers disband – Judah the first to initiate the rupture; their presence for each other would stir pangs of conscience they could not bear.  Jacob withdraws into his sackcloth and fasting, the brothers greedily divvy up the profits of the sale, and Judah turns towards assimilation, through marriage to a Canaanite woman.

The midrash concludes with a peculiar metaphor of a child born even before the mother is seized with pangs of labor.  Conceived in the Great Mind, God lays out a plot to undermine Judah’s plan to assimilate, by thwarting his marriage and continuity through his wayward sons.  As Robert Burns penned: “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gone aft agley” [go often askew].  God’s meta-plot trumps them.  Who is the agent of Judah’s return?  The veiled daughter-in-law, Tamar.  She re-aligns Judah on his path, diverts him from his “descent from the presence of his brothers” (Gen. 38:1).

After years of waiting to be married to Judah’s third son, Tamar sets herself up at the entrance to Enaim (Petah ‘Enayim, lit. “opening of the eyes”), dressed as a harlot.  She has heard that Judah’s wife passed away and he is on his way to Timnah for the sheep-shearing festivities.  She, like Rebecca, covers her face with a veil.  The woman sees, seduces, conceives knowingly, and the man, not seeing, unknowing, concedes to her demand for a pledge, promising to pay for services rendered with a goat from his flock.  He hands over his signet ring, cord, and staff  (tantamount to his car keys, driver’s license, and credit card, all marked indelibly with his identity).  The promised payment – a goat from the flock – evokes the goat slaughtered to stain Joseph’s cloak.  The goat serves as the “cover story” in the case of Joseph’s sale into slavery; here the promised goat is the catalyst for the “uncover story”.  Because the supposed harlot is never found and the goat never paid, Tamar can use the pledge as the ultimate source of revelation, the real “opening of the eyes” that will occur three months later.

Judah and Tamar, from “the School of Rembrandt” – attributed to a number of painters, including Gerbrand van den Eeckhout and Aert van der Gelder (circa 1650-1660)

Unveiled, back in her widow’s garb, Tamar is accused of being pregnant through “whoredom”, and Judah orders her to be burned.  The apocalypse, the “unveiling”, happens when Tamar presents the pledge and utters the words: “It was the owner of these who made me pregnant…discern, please [haker na], whose these are, the signet and the cord and staff” (Gen. 38:25).  The words “haker na” resonate with the words the brothers used in presenting the bloodied cloak before their father.  Judah experiences a double entendre, which awakens him not only to his transgression with regard to Tamar – “She is more righteous than me, insofar as I did not give her to my son, Shelah” (v. 26) – but also to his responsibility towards his father.  Tamar serves as the catalyst for Judah’s teshuvah (repentance), and he finds a new inner strength, an integrity which enables him to stand as guarantor on behalf of Benjamin (cf. Gen.43:8-10 and 44:32-34).  His heroism before the supposed Egyptian viceroy in offering himself up as a pledge for his brother, Benjamin, ultimately mends the traumatic seam that rent the family apart.  Tamar facilitates this transformation.

Let us return to the image of veiling, the conception of twins, the discrepancy between vision of women and men in the Book of Genesis.  Tamar also gives birth to twins, as Rebecca did, both sets of twins born from a womb of double-sowing.   In both stories, the inner consciousness of the woman, what the midrash calls the creation of the Messianic light, must penetrate the obtuse sight of man.    It is a process not of jarring confrontation but, rather, of subtle shifts of cloth and skin, of donning and doffing.  And sometimes it is precisely through that stubborn darkness, stumbling down the wrong path, absent of insight, that God will redirect a man (with a little help from the better half).

Dr. Rachel Adelman, “Kol Isha” article for December 2009

Rebecca begins the chain of deceit, which forms a fault line in Jacob’s family history.  Yet she, not her husband, Isaac, uniquely understands God’s will and actively guarantees the fulfillment of the divine oracle.  Experiencing an overwhelming tumult in her belly, she asks, “If so, why do I exist?” and goes “to inquire of the Lord” (Gen. 25: 22).  She is the first biblical character to initiate direct contact with God.

According to Ramban, her existential question reverberates with Job’s:  “”Why did You let me come out of the womb? Better had I expired before any eye saw me” (10:18).  Like Job, Rebecca questions the meaning of her life and intimates a wish that she had never been born – that the womb had been her tomb, or that the tumult of child in her body did not bode ill omen.  Overwhelming pain compels her, perhaps, to regret her fervent prayer for pregnancy after twenty years of barrenness. (See Avivah Zornberg’s, The Murmuring Deep, 2009: 208-215).

. In answer to her plea, God tells her what he does not tell Isaac, and (perhaps more importantly) what she does not tell Isaac: the twins born to her – the older a ruddy, hairy man-of-the-hunt, the younger, a smooth,  heel-grasping, dweller-of-tents  – will establish two separate nations, “and the older shall serve the younger” (Gen. 25: 23).  Does this prophecy reassure her?  Now, she knows the import of the burden she bears.  Two nations.  Two peoples.  Thousands of years of bloody, ideological conflict – if, as the sages suggest, Esau (qua Edom) is identified with Rome and, eventually, Christianity while Jacob (Israel) is the progenitor of the Jewish people.   This is almost unbearably weighty news and hardly reassuring.  Yet she knows that this in utero conflict, this womb rumble, is greater than her, greater than mere sibling rivalry, greater than the race for the status of first-born.

Why, decades later, when Isaac calls on Esau to hunt and to prepare the game for him so that he can bestow the blessing upon him, does Rebecca not tell her husband?  Why does she resort to deceit, dressing Jacob in a goatskin? Thomas Mann wrote:  “It is possible to be in a plot and not know it.”  Isaac seems to be one of those unwitting players in God’s plot. And Rebecca is in cahoots with God’s shenanigans.

Isaac Blessing Jacob

Flinck, 1639 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam [Oil on canvas, 117 x 141 cm]

I’d like to suggest that the discrepancy between Rebecca’s and Isaac’s understanding goes back to their first meeting.  Coming from Beer La-Hai Roi, Isaac raises his eyes and sees camels in the distance while Rebecca raises her eyes and sees him and falls from her camel (Gen. 25: 63-64).  What does she see that so stuns her?  There, set against the light of the dying day, stands a man most holy, other-worldly, marked by the trauma of the near-sacrifice on Mount Moriah.  After discovering that “that man over there” would be her future husband, she may feel unworthy.  And so she veils herself.

The Netziv (R. Naftali Tzvi Yehuda of Berlin) suggests that her “fear of Isaac” marks the relationship from that moment onward.  The veiling establishes an asymmetry – wherein she knows and sees more than he does.  Rebecca, however, may assume otherwise: “Surely my husband, the holy man, would have known the oracle!” (See Ramban on Gen. 27:4).  Despite her modesty, she perceives more than her husband, who lacks both sight and insight, loving “Esau because he had a taste for game”, while Rebecca loved Jacob (Gen. 25:28).

The text doesn’t tell us why Rebecca favored Jacob.  But we know that she knew God’s will was with the tent-dweller, with the smooth one, an ish tam, blameless, man of integrity.  His life became enormously complicated from the moment that he first donned those hairy goatskins.

From Rebecca’s first veiling and dressing Jacob up in goatskins, the sequence of masks reverberates on.  Leah is veiled when she poses as Rachel under the wedding canopy.  Later Laban ironically quips:  “it is not done in our country, to give away the younger before the first born” (Gen. 29:26), as if to say:  “While you may pose as the older son and steal a blessing, we don’t displace the right of the first born.”  Jacobs own sons dupe their father with Joseph’s cloak dipped in goat’s blood.  Tamar, his daughter-in-law, also dons a veil and sits at the crossroads of Enaim in harlot’s garb in order to seduce Judah.  She becomes the progenitor of kings, establishing the Davidic line towards the Messiah.

So my question remains: why do biblical women choose the circuitous path, the road “not taken”, and why does God ally with them?  “It is possible to be in a plot and not know it.”  Yet, the women seem to know, forging a path through the brambles of history, like a prince hacking his way through roses and thorns to Sleeping Beauty, towards the final Awakening.

Stories of mothers and daughters abound in literature and legends but there is only one story of a mother-daughter  relationship in Tanakh – the tale of Ruth and Naomi.  Though Ruth is not Naomi’s daughter by birth, she is by spirit; the older woman addresses her as “my daughter” (biti) again and again.  Precisely because Ruth is not flesh-of-her-flesh, bone-of-her-bone, this story becomes the paragon tale of loving-kindness (hesed).  Naomi tries to discourage her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, from following her to Beit Lehem, three times adjuring them to turn back to the Land of Moab.  Orpah then takes her advice, returning to her homeland.  But Ruth, named for loyal friendship, reut, swears on oath that she will never leave Naomi in one of the most beautiful ‘love’ poems of the Tanakh:

For wherever you go, I will go;

Wherever you lie, I will lie;

Your people shall be my people,

And your God my God.

Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.

Thus and more may God do to me

If anything but death parts me from you. (Ruth 4:16-17)

Her love for her mother-in-law surpasses filial devotion (as there is no biological bond); rather, Ruth offers a love based on the commitment to abide by Naomi’s side until death parts them.

Yet Naomi does not initially understand the blessing that Ruth offers her, for she answers these words of love with her own poem of rankled bitterness.  Upon returning to Beit Lehem, widowed, bereft, and penniless, all her land sold, the women all greet her, as a Greek chorus: “Is this Naomi?” And she answers them in a Job-like lament:

Call me not Naomi, Call me Mara [bitter]

For Shaddai has sorely embittered me.

I went away full, and God has brought me back empty [reikam].

How can you call me Naomi?

When God has humiliated me,

When Shaddai has brought evil upon me! (Ruth 1:20-21)

Naomi disowns her name, meaning sweetness or pleasure pleasantness’ (na’im), and calls herself, instead, Mara.  In dire pessimism, she is prepared to contract into a bitter lot.   Indeed, she would be the female counterpart to Job if Ruth was not by her side — this young woman would prove to be better than seven sons to her (4:15), enabling the redemption of her lands and giving birth to a grand-child, whom Naomi herself would nurse and mother (vv. 16-17).  Ruth will sweeten those bitter waters.

The season bodes hope, for they return to the Land of Judah around the time of the barley harvest. Naomi only becomes fully aware of the true gift Ruth promises her when she returns from the night spent with Boaz at the threshing floor.  Before leaving at dawn, Boaz asks Ruth to hold out her shawl, “and he measured out six [measures] of barley” (3:15).  The commentators in the Talmud query:  was it six grains or six bushels of barley? Would it have been the custom of Boaz to give only six grains?  Yet six bushels would have been too much for one woman to carry! Instead, in these six grains he intimated to her that six descendants were to come from her, each blessed with six blessings: David, the Messiah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah…” (b. Sanhedrin 93b).

From the threshing floor, she carries away not only the hope of redemption for her mother-in-law, but the portent of salvation for the nation, the Cosmos, even history.  What an auspicious gift! Yet when Ruth returns with the six grains of barley, Naomi asks an odd question, “Who are you my daughter (Mi at biti)?” (3:16). Just as Naomi was not recognized by the women of the town upon her return to Beit Lehem, Ruth now seems unrecognizable.  Yet Naomi’s surprise stands in contrast with their alarm upon her return; perhaps she does not recognize the hope radiant in Ruth’s face.  Yet one can read the question with an alternative intonation: “Have you really become my daughter? (Mi? At biti?)” Ruth answers her, supposedly quoting Boaz (though he never said these words):   ”He gave me these six [measures of] barley, saying to me, ‘Do not go back to your mother-in-law empty [reikam]‘” (3:17).  She is echoing Naomi’s original lament, “I went away full, and God has brought me back empty [reikam]” (1:21).  How little it takes to turn from despair to hope: six grains of barley wrapped in a shawl!

We look at our daughters and often do not see the blessing they bring us.  For Naomi, it took time for her to recognize this in her daughter-in-law.  And then there were moments of surprise, even pleasure.  Ruth enabled Naomi, who called herself Mara (bitter), to reclaim her namesake, na’im (sweetness, pleasure).  She healed those bitter waters.  I would like to bless you this Shavuot with the loving-kindness of Ruth and the ability to see the sweetness in your daughters, to see what a mere six grains of barley can carry.

*Originally published as an article for J-Post, “Kol Isha” Column May 2009

She is tall, refined, her hair, long and black, held in line with a diadem, a snake bracelet wound round her slim upper arm.  And she moves slowly, reciting Egyptian poetry, her fingers strumming the reeds as she walks – nature’s harp.  She hears a mewling from the banks of the Nile, stops, and parts the reeds.  And, lo, there below in a glade, pinned by a cluster of rushes, floats a basket, sealed with bitumen and pitch, water-proof, a perfect little ark.   Though too far to reach without getting muddy, she stretches out her arm.  In that gesture, another arm extends from her body to take hold of the basket.[1] And as she lifts the wicker lid, light pours out, painting the green reeds emerald, the water sapphire.  An infant, a Hebrew baby, perhaps abandoned by his mother.

The soldiers were constantly inspecting their houses, taking the infants they’d find squalling, when the mothers were no longer able to stifle the cries.  They’d grab the baby by the heel, carry him out flailing upside down, and leave a cacophony of wailing behind.  She had seen the flashing swords, heard their threats: “Then we’ll take all the children.”  But, for now, it was only the male newborns that they really wanted.

So sounded Pharoah’s decree: “Throw the infant male progeny of the Hebrew slaves in the Nile.  Drown them.”  And her father, dismissive of her protests, adjured: “They are like too many rats infesting our land.”

This child will not drown.  I can save one soul from his death-toll.  This child will be mine.

And, crouching, she took the infant in her arms, and called to her maidservants:  “I have found a Hebrew baby. See, he is circumcised.”

Like a wind through the reeds, there was a sudden rush of whispers among the maids, but she only caught a few furtive words: defy… Hebrew-slave child… barren years… Pharaoh’s decree… her own father… the oracle of the magi.

But these were only hieroglyphics, rumors she could choose not to hear or decipher.

Then, from out from the rushes, sprang a young girl, about five or six years old.  Barefoot and muddy, she tripped over her words, “Your majesty. Princess, I mean.  Your highness….”

“Yes?”

“I know a woman who could nurse the child for you.  She just lost her own baby – the soldiers’ inspection yesterday, you know – and she is full and aching with milk.”

“Perfect.  Yes, go summon her.”

And we know the girl – Miriam, called to sweeten those briny waters, mayim marim, of their embittered lives, va-yimreru et hayekhem.

And we know the nurse-maid – Yocheved – whom Miriam went to fetch, so that the baby’s first years were at his mother’s breast, and the first words were Hebrew lullabies: Ehiyeh asher ehiyeh, ilulei, ilulei, halilah hazeh, halilah hazeh, ilulei, ilulei, ehiyeh asher ehiyeh. Come what may, come what may….

And when the mother came, Pharaoh’s daughter said: “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay your wages.”  Every week she would visit, months turned into years.  And everyone in the land knew this was her son, and the nursemaid was hired to preserve her figure. (Rumors about whom the father could be, that maybe there never had been a pregnancy, were thoroughly quashed).

Three years later, she came back to take the child.

“I will call him Moses,” she declared, “my son, Meses, Moses. In Hebrew, you say, Moshe. For from the Reeds, I drew him out, mishitihu.”

She embraced the nursemaid, whose name she never knew.  And told her the dream:  “One day, he will lead you through a Sea of Reeds just as I found him.  But there the waters will part for him.”

Edward Long's painting of Batya 1886, City of Bristol Museum

***

Decades passed.  Eighty years to be exact.  It was time for the Exodus.  And God remembered her, and summoned her to the same place by the Nile where she had drawn Moshe from the water.

“You were once Pharoah’s daughter.  But now I name you, Bityah, my daughter.  Moshe was not your son, yet you called him your son; so, though not my daughter, I will call you my daughter [biti] as it says:  “These were the sons of Bityah, daughter of Pharaoh, whom Mered married” (1 Chron. 4:18).[2]

Though Moshe had ten names, God chose to address him solely by the name she had given him: “God called him out of the midst of the [burning] bush, Moshe, Moshe” (Exod 3:4).[3]

And again, at the inauguration of the Mishkan [tabernacle]: “And God called to Moshe, and spoke to him out of the Tent of Meeting…” (Lev 1:1).[4]

What’s in a name?  An inkling of prophecy, the Holy Spirit, the Ineffable calling.

Eventually, the beautiful Batyah married Caleb (also called Mered), one of the twelve princes, of the tribe of Judah.  And she, princess of Egypt, became the mother of princes and kings in Israel.

[2] Leviticus Rabbah 1:3.

[3] M. Kallah Rabbati 3:23.

[4] Leviticus Rabbah 1:3.

On the phrase – “they too were involved in the miracle” – Rashi cites the famous adage: “by virtue of the righteous women, Israel was redeemed from Egypt” (b. Sota 11b).  Women are obligated to drink the four cups of wine at Seder because they played a pivotal role in the Exodus miracle.  Which women did the Aggadah have in mind?  It may have been the myriad of women who, against all odds, resisted despair and gave birth to the Israelite nation. Or perhaps it was the midwives who defied Pharaoh’s edict, refusing to kill the infants at their birth (Exod. 1:18).  In Nahum Sarna’s words, they enacted “history’s first recorded case of civil disobedience in defense of a moral cause.”

The most moving scene, however, entails a female conspiracy of three.  Pharaoh had decreed that every Hebrew male infant should be thrown into the Nile. Then a Levite woman conceived and gave birth to a son, “and saw that he was good” (Exod. 2:2).  It is this special way of seeing - with the intent to save – that also marks the gaze of Miriam and Pharaoh’s daughter.  When she could no longer hide the baby, the mother sent him to the Nile waters in a little ark (a teva, like Noah’s in miniature).  His sister, Miriam, stood at a distance, watching, “to find out what would befall him” (v. 4).  As Pharaoh’s daughter was walking along the Nile with her maidservants, “she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to fetch it.  When she opened it, she saw that it was a child, a boy crying. She took pity on it and said, ‘This must be a Hebrew child!’” (v. 5-6).  The mewling infant filled her eyes and heart, and, like the midwives, Pharaoh’s daughter was moved to defy her father’s decree, in the second significant act of conscientious objection in history.  Upon Miriam’s suggestion, she hired a Hebrew nursemaid (ostensibly the child’s own mother), and two or three years later, she “made him her son, naming him ‘Moses’”, which means simply ‘son of’ or ‘child’ in Egyptian.  However the text suggests that she gave the name a Hebrew meaning, “for out of the water I drew him [mishitihu]” (v. 10).  Out of the water, from among the reeds, swaddled in his ark, she drew him for life, against the decree of death.

The midrash suggests that Pharaoh’s daughter eventually married Caleb (also called Mered) of the tribe of Judah and was renamed Bithiah, daughter of God:  “The Holy One, blessed be He, said to her: Moses was not your son, yet you called him your son, so too you are not my daughter and yet I call you my daughter (biti), as it says, ‘These were the sons of Bithiah daughter of Pharaoh, whom Mered married’(1 Chron. 4:18)” (Lev. Rab. 1:3).  Just as she adopted a Hebrew infant to become an Egyptian prince, God adopted an Egyptian princess as his own daughter, when she joined the Jewish people.  And while Moses had ten different names, “God only addressed him by the name she called him, as it says, ‘God called to him out of the [burning] bush: “Moses! Moses!’” (Exod. 3:4)” (Kalah Rabbati 3:23).  She saw with the gaze of compassion, naming the child after her act of rebellion, “from the waters I drew him [mishitihu].” God then echoes her call, so that Moses will draw the people out of the Reed Sea, those other waters.

This Passover seder, I will lean and drink wine, as my Bubby and aunt Gladys never seemed to do.  But I will tell their story, for their story is one of maternal care, of compassion, the story that affirms life and, ultimately, redemption.  I will also tell the story of the Princess of Egypt, the “important woman” who was willing to risk all, moved by the gaze of compassion.

[Article for Jerusalem Post, "Up Front", by Rachel Adelman ("Kol Isha"), March 2009]

Thereupon Moshe turned and went down from the mount bearing the tablets of the Covenant, tablets inscribed on both sides, inscribed on one side and the other; they were the work of God [ma'aseh Elohim], and the writing, the writing of God, inscribed on the tablets (Exod. 32:15).

If the tablets (luhot) were specifically mentioned as God’s making, ma’aseh Elohim, why does the biblical text single out the writing as being of divine origin? According to rabbinic sages, the tablets (luhot), the writing (ketav), and the form of the letters (mikhtav) were created at twilight on the Sixth Day of Creation (Pirqe Avot 5:6).   Did the letters have a life of their own, imprinted on the stone?  In the biblical verse, the inscription appears on both surfaces of the tablets, on one side and on the other, conjuring an image of the letters as blank spaces amidst solid rock – sheer form, the mere outline of shapes.  The ketav, then, may be comparable to the content (the meaning of the letters, that is the Torah itself), and the mikhtav the form of the writing, as Rambam in his commentary on Avot suggests.  Bartenura, on the other hand, suggests that the ketav constituted the form of the letters on the luhot, and the mikhtav the instrument of writing or the stylus.

What happened to the original tablets and divine writing (ketav) with which they were engraved?  Though Moshe pleaded the Israelites’ cause before God at the top of the mountain, as soon as he saw their revelry directly, around the Golden Calf, he was seized with fury:

As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged; and he hurled [va-yashlekh] the tablets from his hands and shattered [va-yeshaber] them at the foot of the mountain. (Exod. 32:17-19)

How did Moshe dare break the divine tablets?  God’s ineffable name, the Tetragramatton, was engraved in that stone!  Was his reaction a spontaneous outburst or a deliberate demonstration?

The midrash, Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer (PRE) chapter 45, imaginatively re-writes this scene, endowing the letters with a will of their own:

Moshe took the tablets, and as he descended (the Mountain), the letters held themselves, and so did Moshe.  But when they saw the drums and the dancing and the calf, they flew up from the tablets, which then became unbearably heavy in Moshe’s arms, and he could no longer carry himself or the tablets, so he thrust them from his arms and they broke, as it says, “And he shattered them at the foot of the mountain” (Exod. 32:19).  (PRE 45).

By suggesting that Moshe merely dropped the tablets because he could no longer bear their weight, he is exonerated of willfully smashing them.  Furthermore, it is the letters of the Torah, which grant the tablets sanctity and when they fly away they leave behind merely profane stone; smashing the tablets then entails no act of irreverence.  Before the sin of the golden calf, the letters float suspended within the stone, bearing their own weight.  As long as the letters carry themselves, the stone is also imbued with the ‘bearable lightness of being’.  As the mishnah says of the letters, “read not harut, engraved, but heirut, free — for one is only a free man if one engages in talmud Torah” (Pirqe Avot 6:2).

I’d like to suggest that the buoyancy of the letters within the stone reflects the state of the nation.  That is, as long as they were one with God’s command, “they were free” like the letters; but as soon as they distanced themselves through idolatry, the letters flew off and the tablets become solid, pure density, sacral space, like the golden calf itself, and Moshe could no longer bear them (the tablets/the people) or himself.

The relationship between the stone and the letters serves as an ‘objective correlative’ for the spiritual state of the nation.  No longer able to abide the absence of Moshe any longer, they chose a calf, made of solid gold, to replace the God-Who-has-no-image.  The molten idol is the deity to which the people gesticulated: “Zeh [this] is your god who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exod. 32:4).  Yet the very same words had been used in the First Commandment:  “I [anokhi], the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt…”  (Exod. 20:2). They replace “zeh” [this] with the Anokhi, God’s declaration of  “I am.”  The people had been given a set of laws, engraved on tablets, which explicitly made the making of molten images forbidden (Exod. 20: 4).  The letters, as blank space suspended in stone, represent the necessity for the God-of-no-image to replace the penchant for thingness — the “this” of the pointing finger.  When Moshe smashes the tablets, he is the paragon iconoclast (lit. breaker of idols).  He insists that the God of language and law, represented by the blank space suspended in stone, replace the penchant for thingness, the concrete solidity of idols.

The Talmud states that had they not sinned with the Golden Calf, the Torah would never have been forgotten (b. ‘Eruvin 54a); it would have been engraved on each and every one who had stood at Sinai-and become a source of  genetic, collective memory.  Yet this movement towards the abstract, towards language and away from concrete images, was too ‘unbearably light’ for them.  Rather, the people felt collectively the gift of Torah to be a burden as heavy as solid stone, for they did not feel the freedom [heirut] of the law, which the suspended letters represented.  Thus, in PRE 45, the letters ‘fly away’ because the people cannot bear their weight (or weightlessness).  Instead, they engaged in filling in the blank space of the letters with density, with a molten idol of solid gold, symbolized by the tablets, which Moshe could then no longer carry.

Yet there is comfort in the second set of tablets. There is a famous statement by Reish Lakish, in the Talmud, based on God’s command to Moshe to carve out new tablets, replacing the ones he had broken, “asher shibarta” (Exod. 34:1).  The Holy One blessed be He affirmed Moshe’s audacious act: “yesher kohekh asher shibarta [good that you broke them!]” (b. Shabbat 87a).  The Talmudic passage praises Moshe for deliberately smashing them.  Yet had the tablets not been broken, the Torah would have never been forgotten!  Wherein lies the gain?  Forgetting necessitates invention or, at least, interpretation; had there been only the Torah-she-bi-khtav (the written Torah) engraved in the mind of every member of the nation, there would have been no necessity for the oral tradition, the Torah-she-be’al-peh.

This shabbat, I would like to bless you with the bearable lightness of the first luhot, and the legacy of their shards.  May you find the letters of Torah buoyant within your soul and breathe through them the breath of life.

In my apartment in Jerusalem, the kitchen table is piled high on the morning of Purim with the assembly line of containers, filled with potato kugel, pickles, homemade cookies (oznei haman [Haman's ears] otherwise known as hamantaschen), strawberries, and nuts.  My husband Jon and I take pride in how unique we make our little packages, (even while niggling a little over the excessive expense, which we try to at least match in gifts to the poor, matanot le’evyonim).  After the morning reading, we clear the table of packages and off we go on our delivery expeditions – some by car, some on foot.  But the table will be equally laden by the end of the day with mishloah manot we receive.  This year I feel particularly elated about all this hullabaloo and this is why.   

In chapter nine of the Megillah, we read:

“….the same days on which the Jews enjoyed relief from their foes and the same month which had been transformed for them from one of grief and mourning to one of festive joy. They were to observe them as days of feasting and merrymaking, and as an occasion for sending gifts to one another and presents to the poor.” (Esther 3:22, NJPS trans.)

What is the significance of the original gifts sent out to one another?  Earlier in the chapter, the battle of the Jews in self-defense is described. (Note that we do NOT celebrate the day of victory in battle, but the day after, when they “enjoyed relief from their enemies”).  At that point, the biblical text introduces a rather minor detail, that they “did not lay their hands on the spoil [u-ba-bizah lo shalhu et yadam]” (Esther 9:15).   Perhaps their restraint suggest that they would not stoop so low as the original decree.  Haman’s edict to massacre all the Jews in one day, young and old, women and children, also included plundering their possessions [u-shlalam lavuz] (3:13).  So the Jews certainly did not plunder their enemies possessions even when they [the enemy] rose up on the 13th or 14th of Adar to massacre them.  Alternatively, the self-restraint signifies the tikkun [repair] of Saul’s mistake when, in his battle against Amalek, he took the best of the livestock and left the king, Agag, alive (1 Sam. 15).  But I think there is another aspect to not laying hands on the spoil, which concerns who we are as a people and what, in the end, must draw us together as a community.

When we send gifts to one another to remember the month “when grief and mourning were transformed for them to one of festive joy [nehafakh lahem mi-yagon le-simha, mi-evel le-yom tov],” we embrace giving over taking, life over death.  In Persia and Medea, it was only a true transformation from grief to joy when the Jews maintained their ethical integrity, when it was clear that the tragedies of the deaths on the other side were not motivated by plunder but, rather, were acts of self-defense.  So the Jews did not take from the spoils of war [lit. "send out their hands - shalhu yadam"].   But they did “send out” gifts to each other and the poor.  Mishloah manot then is not only a symbol of the tikkun [repair] against the original decree, but also signifies the way we come together as a people.

We happily and freely feed each other – from our home we send out kugel and pickles.  Today, I understand a little better why — bound together in life, not in death, in survival not wanton destruction.

I’d like to add just one last point.  The extension of generosity to one another today is not limited to food.  It is written in the Sefat Emet (the Torah commentary of Rab Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, 19th c.) :

After the salvation, [the Jews] gathered in their cities and established [the custom of] sending gifts to one another and to the poor, thereby uniting as a community.  So too do the learned [talmidei hakhamim] receive from one another, for each learned person has something unique to give.  And each one of us must receive that unique wisdom from his/her friend to unite as a community. [Sefat Emet, Purim 1901, my translation from the Hebrew].

In Jerusalem, I am fortunate to belong to two communities of learned, generous friends — the writers’ workshop (Beit Midrash Kotvim) at Elul and the shul, Mizmor L’David.  They have taught me the importance of giving and receiving both food and wisdom.  I wish for you all the same.  And if you do not have that sense of community, may you find it or make it happen.  It is a very special thing.

Check out the following websites:

For Elul:   http://www.elul.org.il/index.php

For Mizmor L’David: http://mizmorledavid.org/

And as for you, you shall instruct the Israelites [וְאַתָּה תְּצַוֶּה אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל ] to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling an eternal lamp…(Exod. 27:20)

Surprisingly, there is no introduction to these words of instruction with regard to the ner tamid, the eternal lamp.  There is no preamble as in other openings: “vayedaber ha-Shem el Moshe le’emor [And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying...]” (cf. Exod. 25:1, 30:11).  Instead, we abruptly drop into a conversation between God and Moses, instructing the prophet with regard to the making of the Tabernacle.  But is it not obvious that Moses would be the conduit for these instructions?  Why single him out “ve-’atta [and as for you]“, while leaving him nameless?   The same direct address introduces Moshe to his role of initiating Aharon and his sons into the priestly office and relaying the instructions concerned with their attire.  Like a trope, the phrase “ve-’atta” – and as for you – is repeated again twice:

And as for you, you shall bring forward your brother Aaron, [ וְאַתָּה הַקְרֵב אֵלֶיךָ אֶת אַהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ ] with his sons, from among the Israelites, to serve Me as priests: Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron….. And as for you, you shall speak [וְאַתָּה תְּדַבֵּר ] to all who are skillful, whom I have endowed with the spirit of wisdom to make Aaron’s vestments, for consecrating him to serve Me as priest. (Exod. 28:1, 3)

The threefold expression, ve-’atta tetzaveh (you shall instruct), ve-’atta hakrev (you bring forward) and ve-’atta tedaber (and you shall speak) all stand in stark contrast to God’s more common form of address to Moshe, as in Exod. 27:1: “ve-’assita et hamizbeah [you shall make the altar]“, and in the next verse, 27:2 , “ve-’assita et karnotav [and you shall make the horns of the altar]“, and again in 27:9 “ve-’assitta et hatzar hamishkan [you shall make the enclosure of the mishkan]“.  The second person pronoun, ve-’atta, just ain’t there!   Why then does God here use this strange, seemingly superfluous, phrase, “ve-’atta [and as for you]“, in addressing Moshe and how does it reflect broader themes in the book of Exodus?

The expression, ve’atta, first comes up in Genesis, in the context of God’s curse of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As Rav Zadok HaKohen of Lublin (1823-1900) suggested, the very first occurrence of a term in the Tanakh determines its significance, its semantic weight.  Following the transgression, God addresses the wily Serpent first in the series of curses:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They shall strike at your head, But as for you (ve’atta) you shall strike at their heel [וְאַתָּה תְּשׁוּפֶנּוּ עָקֵב].” (Gen. 3:15)

The term, ve-’atta (as for you) introduces an about shift, a counterpoint to the symmetry of enmity between the snake and the woman.  On the one hand, humans will have the upper hand, striking at the serpent’s head since it is reduced to a belly-crawl, now the most cursed of all creatures, eating the dust of the earth unto eternity;   “But as for you, you shall strike at their heel [וְאַתָּה תְּשׁוּפֶנּוּ עָקֵב]“, suggests there is recompense; it registers the surprise effectiveness of the snake-bite, striking as it does at the heel.

In opening of this week’s parashah, the threefold expression “ve’atta” also introduces a ‘surpise attack’, an about-shift.  On the one hand, the expression singles out You, Moshe, and, at the same time, it anticipates that the prophet will eventually be displaced by the very role he now initiates into service – he will not be the Cohen, but his brother, Aharon, will serve as Cohen in the Mishkan.   Furthermore, Moshe’s name is never mentioned in this parashah, while Aharon’s name is mentioned an auspicious seven times in the first seven verses (27:20-28:5).    Moshe is, paradoxically, present and yet occluded; he remains anonymous, while his bother is insistently named.   Why? The occlusion and focus on Moshe is reflected in liturgical practice.  This week’s parashah invariably falls on the week in which, according to legend, Moshe was born and also died – the 7^th of Adar.[2] He enters as well as exits the stage of history at this auspicious time.  The Baal HaTurim, on the other hand, relates the absence of Moshe’s name to his demand that God wipe him from the book, in his appeal for the people’s forgiveness after the Sin of the Golden Calf:  “And now bear their sin, and if not, wipe me out of your book which you have written [מְחֵנִי נָא מִסִּפְרְךָ]” (Exod. 32:32).[3] That is, if God is wholly bent on destroying his people in his wrath, Moshe wants no part of it – no record of his name in the annals of Jewish history.  Though, in the end, God does bear their sin (that is, He forgives the Israelites), a token price is paid by absenting Moshe from this one parashah.  It is the only chapter, since the Exodus narrative in which the prophet’s name does not appear.  So Moshe is symbolically, and also literally, erased from the book here.  According to the Zohar, “this is an example of the curse of a sage [being fulfilled] even when it is conditional.”[4] Yet the erasure of his name from print is expressive of a deeper spiritual layer, which requires some excavation.

What psychological reason lies behind this literary Houdini act – Moshe’s strange “appearance-disappearance” in Parashat Tetzaveh?  Perhaps it reflects an ambivalence Moshe may feel in initiating Aharon into his role as Cohen, anticipating his inevitable displacement from office.  The phenomenon of Moshe’s occlusion is consistent with his role in the Mishkan.  While he serves as the one who instructs its assembly and conducts the ceremony of sacrifices for the first eight days of initiation (miluim), once the Mishkan is consecrated, Moshe is excluded from service.  Both the omission of Moshe’s name in this week’s parashah and his exclusion from the Mishkan, in the chapters to come, foreshadow the tragic decree:  the leader of the Exodus will never enter the Land of Israel.  So he repeatedly experiences initiation and exclusion – weighed with tremendous responsibility and, at the same time, held at arms length.    The tension over Moshe’s role as the initiator who is later displaced is most poignantly expressed by a midrash:

And as for you, you shall bring forward your brother Aaron [ וְאַתָּה הַקְרֵב אֵלֶיךָ אֶת אַהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ" (Exod. 28:1).  It is written, "If your Torah had not been my plaything, I should have perished in My poverty" (Ps. 119:92).  When God told Moses, "As for you, you shall bring forward your brother Aaron", He did him an injury.  God said: "I had possession of the Torah and I gave it to you: if it were not for the Torah I should have lost My world!" This is like a wise man who married his relative and after ten years together, when she had not borne children, he said to her, "Seek me a wife!"  He said to her, "I could marry without your permission, but I seek your cooperation [יכול אני ליטול חוץ מרשותך אלא שהייתי מבקש ענותנותך].” So said God to Moses: “I could have made your brother High Priest without informing you, but I wish you to be great over him [שתהא גדול עליו].” (Exod. Rab. 37:4, A. Zornberg’s trans., Particulars of Rapture, 2001: 353).

God demands of Moshe an impossible task, impossible that is for one with less forbearance than him.  While God gave him the Torah, he also “did him an injury” (in Hebrew: her’a lo), for he demanded that he resign from office, to be replaced by Aharon as Cohen.  The mashal, allegory, likens this to a man who asks his beloved wife, who could not bear him children, to sanction his taking another, perhaps younger, more fertile wife. (Can you imagine, after years of fertility treatment turning to your middle aged wife and saying:  Dear, would you mind looking for a second wife for me on J-date?)   What, I wonder, could God and Moshe not bear together as offspring?  God is described as “a wise man, who married his relative” – perhaps they knew each other too well, while Aharon was less like God, more human, “of the people, for the people” – as it says in M. Avot 1:12: “Hillel would say: be a student of Aharon, loving peace and pursuing peace [ohev shalom verodef shalom]” (cf. Ps. 34: 15).  According to the midrash, God asked Moshe for his cooperation or forbearance (in Hebrew: ענותנות, related to the word ‘anavah, modesty) in initiating Aharon into the priestly role.  Yet, in asking for his permission, God assures Moshe that he will be greater than his brother: “I could have made your brother High Priest without informing you, I wish you to be great over him” (in Hebrew:  gadol ‘alav).    You will still be “his elder”, figuratively, the greater, the first wife, the chosen, favoured one. After all, Moshe was given the Torah. But, at the same time, he is placed in a psychologically difficult position – to endorse the introduction of a second wife into the home, to initiate Aharon into service as the Cohen.  This epitomizes the prophet’s unique character, as it says: “And the man Moshe was very humble, more so than any man on the face of the earth [וְהָאִישׁ מֹשֶׁה עָנָיו מְאֹד מִכֹּל הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר עַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה]” (Num. 12:3).

What do we learn from Moshe’s humility, expressed by his displacement from priestly office and the simple threefold expression ve-atta, ve-atta, ve-atta in this week’s parashah?  Moshe Rabbenu, our teacher, the Redeemer (ha-goel), the inscriber (ha-mehokek) of ethical imperatives on our hearts, models for us the possibility of an ego-less existence.   Yet, there is no man on the face of the earth like him, as it says: he was “more modest than any man on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3). Ranier Maria Rilke once wrote of the artist’s paradoxical role, describing it as “pride in being a tool” – how can one be “proud” if one is merely a “tool”, a conduit for the muse?  Perhaps it is not the poet, but the divine that speaks through him/her.  One could read Moshe’s biography as tragic: the leader of the Jewish people held at bay from serving in the Mishkan, excluded from entering the Promised Land.  Yet this is necessarily the fate of the one who is the conduit for the Torah, as the “tool”, the “vessel” for the words of God.  He will bear the Torah to the people, but he will not bear the people into the Land of Israel.   As in the allegory, it will be Aharon and his descendants, the priests, who will bear the children in that intimate family.  The priest will bear the people, in wearing the breastplate of judgment [hoshen mishpat], with each of the Israelite tribes represented by a unique stone, worn over the priest’s heart (cf. Ex. 28:29). He bears the people by carrying the possibility of their atonement and God’s forgiveness into the Sanctuary, through the very clothing he wears.[5] I would like to bless you all this Shabbat with the ability to recognize the greatness of Moshe’s forbearance, while acknowledging that we, all-too-human, are still being carried, born by virtue of the priestly breastplate (hoshen mishpat) – symbolizing the possibility of forgiveness – which decorates the Torah scroll to this very day.

[2] Cf. Megillat Ta’anit, last chapter.  It is listed with the rest of the ancient fast-days in Tur Orah Hayyim 580.  An exception holds for a shanah me’uberet [leap year], in which Parashat Tetzaveh is read in Adar I, and Moshe’s Yarhzeit falls in Adar II.

[3] This reading, of course, assumes that the instructions for the Mishkan were given after the sin of the Golden Calf – see, for example, Rashi on Exod. 33:11 and the Tanhuma Terumah 8:8.  Ramban, however, presents a different chronology (cf. his commentary on Exod. 25:1).

[4] Midrash Ne’elam, Shir HaShirim 4.

[5] See the discussion in b. Zevahim 88b, where each part of the Cohen’s clothing represents atonement for a different sin – the tunic (ketonet) atones for bloodshed, the breeches (mikhnesayim) for sexual transgressions (gilui ‘arayot), the mitre (mitznefet) for arrogance, the sash (‘avenet) for impure thoughts, the breastplate (hoshen mishpat) for civil offences (dinim), the ephod for idolatry, the coat (me’il) for slander, and the headplate (titz) for brazenness.