July 25th: Matot/Mas’ay
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
Our relationship with Torah is complex—with some passages speaking of truths whose profundity takes the breath away, and other passages troubling us deeply. We are taught to revere both the document and the relationship it represents (with God!), and we speak of Torah as the channel of truth and holiness from Heaven to Earth. And yet, when the text talks about slavery or the legal inferiority of women, many of us feel ambivalence. Do we take such passages literally? Do we still follow them? Do we consider them infallible instructions from God—or are they time-bound and culture-bound ideas of our ancient ancestors who were putting their customs into God’s mouth? Do such passages perhaps need interpretation?
While the Reform Movement has been straightforward about disagreeing with (or interpreting out) such passages—making women completely equal with men, removing some of the ancient “purity” rituals, and formally welcoming LGBT+ individuals into the embrace of Judaism, even the Orthodox struggle with many passages. When the Torah says that only men can initiate divorce, Orthodox authorities can “urge” bad husbands to grant their wives divorces by various measures of persuasion (including physical intimidation and incarceration). While Torah insists that no fires burn on Shabbat, the Rabbis found loopholes (arranged workarounds) so as to allow fires lit before Shabbat to burn on into the Sabbath and provide warmth, hot meals, and Oneg Shabbat/Enjoyment of the Sabbath.
My favorite example in walking back a problematic text is not from the Torah, but it is nonetheless instructive. In the Mishnah, Pirke Avot 1.5, Yossi ben Yochanan of Jerusalem says, “Do not talk to your wife too much.” Other translations expand it to, “Do not talk too much to women.” The problematic-ness of such a statement is staggering, and later readers are both struck by and stuck with a part of our sacred Tradition that cannot possibly be God’s word. Nonetheless it is there, and commentators struggle to interpret it (away). Rashi says that it only refers to one’s wife during her monthly period—that a husband should not bother her then. Maimonides treats “talking” as a euphemism for sexual activity and urges men not to let such thoughts dominate their thinking. (And the modern Sage Selma Harris teaches that this means that men should not presume to tell their wives how to run the household and do the cooking. Women know what they are doing and do not need the meddlesome assistance.) In any event, what we have is an outlandish statement that, whatever its meaning in the Second Century, needs to be contextualized and re-read.
I mention such problematic verses because this week’s Torah portion presents a real doozy. In Numbers 33, we have one of several places where the Israelites are commanded to totally destroy the non-Israelite population of Canaan:
“When you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, you shall dispossess all the inhabitants of the land; you shall destroy all their figured objects (idols); you shall destroy all their molten images, and you shall demolish their cult places.” (Number 33.51-52)
Earlier in the portion, we read about the total destruction of Midian and all of its population (except unmarried women). It is a bloodthirsty business, and yet these and other campaigns are cast as mitzvot from the Lord. In the case of the Midianites, the term used is vengeance. “Avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites.” (Numbers 31.2) There are even statistics of the number of people killed and the number of people enslaved.
Such instructions and records give us pause—until we realize that such destructions never happened. Though Numbers and Joshua record staggering destruction, there is no archeological record of this kind of invasion or devastation. And, according to the Biblical books that follow (Judges, Samuel, Kings, and the Prophets), all those “destroyed” nations and tribes were still around and neighbors of the Israelites for centuries. Why else would the Prophets rage about the idolatrous temptations they proffered? Why else would the Mishnah discuss how Israelite interactions with pagan neighbors could potentially enable idolatry? Why else would book after book and story after story talk about Israelites interacting—and sometimes marrying (Ruth!) non-Israelites? According to both the Bible and the archeological record, the Israelites moved into the Land of Israel and lived among and near the Canaanites, Moabites, Perizzites, Hittites, etc. It was a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society.
In other words, the passages that command the destruction of the inhabitants and that record such destructions seem to be inaccurate. Why are they in the text? Could they be reflections of later generations finding “bragging rights”—discovering ferocity in their ancestors that bolstered their self-esteem? Could they be hyperbole attempting to turn a peaceful, generations-long migration into something victorious? We can only imagine the reasons for such inaccurate claims, but one thing we do know is that the various parts of the Bible were edited several times over the course of the centuries. Who knows how/why later generations enhanced the ancient stories—finding greatness, rooting traditions, expressing aspirations, or pre-resolving current conflicts?
Another thing we know is that hyperbole and other figures of speech are used throughout the Biblical text. From Abel’s blood “crying out from the ground where it was spilled” in Genesis 4.10, to Abraham “falling on his face” in Genesis 17.3, to “ALL the people answering as one” in accepting the Covenant in Exodus 19.8, we see the Bible as very capable of using non-literal literary techniques to communicate its message. Indeed, perhaps this is a way to understand the scientifically improbable Six-Day Creation Story. Perhaps it is not meant as a literal record but rather as a theological summary of an obviously much more complex process. Whenever we read something improbable, it is useful to think of how it could be a metaphor or hyperbole for something else.
The Biblical text presents us with a variety of messages—and some are to be taken more literally than others. Some are to be taken as timeless truths that emerge from our relationship with the Divine, and others are to be taken as human glosses inserted for a variety of less-than-heavenly purposes. This is why we study Torah—as opposed to simply believing it. Rather than a literal record of God’s words to us, Torah is best understood as a locus for accessing the Divine. As Rabbi Chananyah ben Teradion put it: “When two people sit together and exchange words of Torah, the Divine Presence dwells with them.” (Avot 3.2)