Korach

I said this out loud on 6 July 2019, on Shabbat morning at Ha Kol Olin, London: 

We read today that Korach and other aggrieved members of the community feel left out.  So they combine against Moses and Aaron and say to them You have gone too far.  All of the community are holy, all of them.  So why do you raise yourself above the Lord’s congregation? And then the Korach rebels are all sucked into the earth together with their entire households. The torah says. ‘They went down alive into Sheol, with all that belonged to them and they vanished from the midst of the congregation.’

These are my issues.

I have a problem that the children of Korach were included in the punishment of their fathers.  Secondly I believe like Korach that all people in the community are holy.  In fact I believe that all people are holy.  So when the high priest wears his sign on his forehead that says Holy to God, I always think, yes, mate, you’re holy because you’ve got a sign on your head but really in reality all people are equally holy to god. In my theology God doesn’t bunch more in some people than in others.  

But that’s on the plain of the ideal.

In real life, society works more peacefully when there is authority and clear leadership.  That’s what makes the second part of Korach’s statement more problematic. He says why do you raise yourself above the Lord’s congregation.  Why indeed? There’s the problem right there for Moses.  It’s true that Moses and Aaron have raised themselves, but did it because they had too.  They had a huge task which was to free the slaves from Pharoah, keep them alive in the desert for 40 years and receive the Torah at Sinai and establish a new kind of society that is based on the rule of law for everyone, loving-kindness and justice.  Moses and Aaron had to steer a very large ship.  Try doing that without proper leadership.  The problem with Korach and his fellows was that they were complaining about the ascendancy of Moshe and Aaron, and complaining about the privileges of others instead of doing something constructive about it.  It was all ego driven and not service driven.

When we face existential issues, climate crisis for example, should we trade individual liberties for clear, ego-less leadership that first consults and then offers decisive action offering stability and ultimately survival?  

Next, why the terrible punishment for the children of Korach?

The Talmud in Sanhedrin 110 is particularly wonderful on this Parasha.  There are many interpretations given including Reish Lakish who says it teaches that one must not be obdurate in a quarrel and Rav who says it teaches that we should not be unyielding in disputes.

But the sweetest of the midrashim in the Talmud is this. It says the children of Korach didn’t die.  A Tanna taught: It has been said on the authority of our teacher: A place was set apart for them in the Gehenna, or a place was fortified for them in Gehenna where they sat and recited songs. Ve-amru  shira.

It comforts me to know that the children of Korach are still in Gehenna singing songs, and if we listen carefully we can still hear them.   

But it’s bittersweet, because they are underground and we are above, where on a day like this, we can still see our beautiful world.

Shabbat shalom

The Golden Age of Babylon

I said this in Assif yesterday 29 June 2019, as part of our learning series on Golden Ages in Jewish History. 

"The beginning and ends of Golden Ages are invisible to the people that live in them.  It’s only from far away can we see a moment when one age ends and another begins somewhere else. 

In fact, a Golden Age only looks golden from a distance. On the ground, people are dealing with in-fighting, jealousies, famines, droughts, persecutions and fall-out from battling empires.  On the ground, people are putting mezuzahs on their doors, going to shul, saying prayers, doing business, lighting Friday night candles, having Pesach Seders, paying taxes and raising their children. 

Then as now.

The only reason I am calling this period between the 4th century and the 10th century, in a place that is today called Iraq, a Golden Age, is because of what came out of it.  Cities with names like Sura, Nehardea, Pumbedita and Mehoza are dust today, but they once housed Jewish scholars who together created a glittering edifice that still stands.  It is a magnificent laboratory of thought that has no match in history.

Those named and unnamed scholars produced an exquisite and self-confident system called the Babylonian Talmud. And that is the tradition we live within today.

This Golden Age started as the best things must, with an end.  Once upon a time, in the 4rd century ACE, the Roman governors ended the powers of the Sanhedrin. (The Sanhedrin was the Jewish court and ruling body in Israel until that time).   So, because of Roman persecution, Israel which had until then controlled the Jewish calendar for the whole Jewish world, and had produced the mighty Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud declined, and Jewish centre of the world moved to Babylon.  

Babylonian Jews still faced Jerusalem when they prayed, but they considered their tradition superior to the traditions of their fellows living in Israel.   Top of the pile in Babylon was the Reish Galuta or Exilarch who was responsible for community-specific organizational tasks such as running courts, collecting taxes, providing financing for the Talmudic Yeshivot, and financial assistance to poor.  They were headed by the Rosh Metivta. The Yeshivot ran kallahs or study sessions for hundreds of people during two months of the year.  (I imagine they were like Limmud because they were very crowded)  These were led by the Rosh Kalla.  There were also judges who were called dayane di baba (Judges of the gate) because traditionally justice was meted out before the gates of the city.

There is a lovely piece of evidence for their way of life that lies unused today in our siddurs.   The yakum Purkan prayer was written in Babylon during this period.   I’m fond of it for what it says about the people who prayed for these things; what it says about who they are and what matters to them…

May salvation from heaven, with grace, loving-kindness, mercy, long life, ample sustenance, heavenly aid, health of body,  enlightenment from above, and a living and abiding children, that will not break with, nor neglect any of the words of the Torah, be granted unto the teachers and rabbis of the holy community, who are in the land of Israel and in the land of Babylon; unto the heads of the Kallahs, the Roshei Galuta, the heads of the Yeshivot, and the judges in the gates, and all their students, and all the students of their students…”

How can you not love people who pray for enlightenment from above? In the prayer, you can see the civic leaders that formed the centre of the Jewish world at the time.

But as we know, things fall apart and the centre does not hold. Around the 10th centuries the Golden Age of Babylon started to draw to a close.  The Babylonian community rich in scholarship and culture, no longer globally dominated Jewish life.  The centre of the Jewish world was splintering and rerouting from the Babylon to North Africa and Europe.   But the jewel produced in this period continued to shape what was to come.

The Babylonian Talmud and the means to study it and be changed by studying it, came to define what it meant to be Jewish by every generation, everywhere afterwards, whether they knew it or not. 

There is a story told by Abraham Ibn Daud in his Sefer ha-Kabbalah, written in 1161. It may not be literal but it is true.

It tells of a boat carrying four great Babylonian rabbis.  (In my mind they are each holding the whole Babylonian Talmud)  The boat is captured by a pirate.  They are each sold by the pirate to Jewish communities around the world– one in Kairouan in North Africa, one rabbi and his son, are ransomed in Cordova, Southern Spain and one in Alexandria, Egypt. The identity of the fourth captive and the place where he was redeemed is not stated. They all take with them the means to teach others what they have inherited from their Babylonian tradition.

They do their jobs well because today while there are only eight Jews left in Iraq, there are 15 million Babylonian Jews alive today, including all of us here.


Shabbat Shalom.

Yitro - what we leave out

One of the first things I ever learned in the Talmud was that 2000 years ago, when the Temple was still standing, the priests would recite daily prayers very similar to the prayers we still say today. In an unbroken line, our daily prayers still include the Shema and the Amidah. However, the priests had another part of their daily prayer, and that part was the Ten Commandments.  They would say the Shema, the Amidah and the Ten Commandments.  This makes a lot of sense as the Ten Commandments are the high point in our history at Sinai and they are an excellent executive summary. They are short, pithy and sensible.

However it was decided to take them out of the daily prayers because of Tar Omet Haminim. This translates as the grievances of the heretics. 

Their grievance was that only the Ten Commandments came directly from God and the rest came through Moses. So as not to show any favouritism to one section of the Torah over the other, they were left out of the daily prayers.

Unsurprisingly, the people didn’t like this decision. The Talmud (b.Berakhot 12a) reports many generations of people asking their rabbis (at this stage, not priests any more) to put back the Ten Commandments into the daily prayers. In Israel and later in Babylon, this request was turned down because of Tar Omet Haminim.

But the story doesn’t end there. One thousand years later, people have accepted that it isn’t in their daily prayers anymore, but they still feel there’s something special about the Ten Commandments.

So when they are read as part of the Torah reading, like yesterday in Parasha Yitro, people would stand up. (They did yesterday as well in HaKol Olin where I gave this dvar torah) People would read responsively and often the Ten Commandments would be included in the shul decoration.

We know that people would stand 1000 years ago because rabbis’ told them not to.  Maimonides writes that people should not give any status to the reading of the Ten Commandments such as standing when that portion is read in shul on Shabbat, He states that the custom found in some communities to stand during this part of the Torah reading should be discontinued (Teshuvot Ha Rambam 46)

To this day there is no clear and agreed halakha on the subject.  In Rabbinic Judaism, we can’t even agree on which part of the oral/written law was directly given by God to the people.  Was it the entire Oral/Written Torah? Was it just the Ten Commandments? Was it just the first sound of the Ten Commandments that the people heard?

In b.Makkot 23b and quoted by Maimonides in the Guide to the Perplexed, the part that was directly experienced was only the first two mitzvot of the Ten Commandments. These are: I am the Lord your God, and You shall have no other God’s before me. These commandments are not mediated by Moses because for the Rambam, these are the only mitzvot that can be fathomed by any intelligent monotheist, and need not be transmitted by Moses.

It comforts me to know that we are not the first generation to be bothered by the prayers. I like belonging to a long line and a rich tradition of people wanting things put back and left out. We’ve all got our personal grievances. We don’t like everything we get to hear and say. There are loads of sections in prayers that have bothered me at different times. (Parts of Aleinu, birkat hamazon, some of the Yom Kippur service) but I’m glad they are there to struggle with because what bothers me changes all the time. Nothing is perfect and neither should it be. It would be a pity in our desire for  perfect bubbles of pleasing thoughts that offend nobody ever, we end up only praying the lyrics of John Lennon’s Imagine. 

I like the feeling of power of the people despite the declarations of the rabbis. 

I like that we stand when we should sit, and weirdly we leave out the parts that are most precious to us.

The grievances of the heretics over 2000 years ago mean that the Ten Commandments are no longer said daily, but unlike those heretics who are long dead, we are still standing.

Tetzaveh - humility and majesty

Every day thousands of tourists visit the Tower of London to marvel at the Imperial state crown and the other highly decorated symbols of the British Monarchy. Exquisitely made in gold, velvet and ermine, and encrusted with thousands of diamonds, the crown signifies royal authority to lead the nation.   I find it interesting that interesting the names of the people that have worn this crown are exalted, while the names of the people who created these marvellous objects are unknown. ?

 There is this same distinction in Parashah Tetzaveh. Dazzling ceremonial objects are created for powerful people, while the names of the creators are erased.  Majesty and humility are subtly contrasted. Nechama Liebowitz, an important biblical scholar of the modern age, raises three challenges in this week’s Sedra. She asks: Why is Moses’s name absent? Why does the Sedra go on and on about the clothes of the High Priest and who exactly is asked to make them?

In every chapter in every book after Genesis, Moses is mentioned by name. Only in Tetzaveh is his name erased. With Moses’s name not spoken, the scene is set for Aaron and his sons to become the major players. The second issue bothering Nechama is the amount of space and detail describing the ceremonial paraphernalia. for Aaron and his sons. Among the blue, purple and crimson yarns, is my favourite detail; and that is the description of the frontlets of pure gold engraved with the words: ‘Holy to God’. That sign is placed on the forehead of the high-priest as he goes about his business of being a High-Priest.

The effect of the proto-crown, clothes, breastplate and ceremonial objects must have been dazzling to the Israelites in the desert. .Ramban, an important Spanish Medieval commentator, sees their function to enhance the dignity and prestige of the sacred office in the eyes of the people. In other words, they don’t transform the wearer in any real sense, they simply create a social reality, a majestic, dazzling, powerful social reality. 

The last contradiction in the text as Nechama points out is between 28. 2 and 28.3. Look carefully. Who is being asked to make the clothes? The un-named Moses or the wise-hearted people? I think the key lies in the use of the word Chochmah which is the word used to refer to the wisdom that comes from outside ourselves when we know before whom we stand. It is the wisdom of understanding our small selves in an infinite and intact world of unending creation. It is the essentially modest position with or without a gold crown to remind us of our powers. It is the wisdom of the monotheist who knows that whoever our parents are, or whatever talents we have, we are all equally holy to God.

Liebowitz, Nechama. 1985. Studies in Shemot.  Jerusalem:Haomanim Press.