September 29, 2021
The marathon of holidays has always been hard for me. I'm glad it's over and I can begin some sort of routine for the rest of the semester. After the holiday marathon, 5782 finally starts with Bereshit.
Bereshit (In the beginning) is the first Torah portion of the yearly cycle. In this portion, everything is created: the heavens and the earth, light and darkness, water and dry land, grass and plants, the sun and the moon, and all living creatures.
The first human, by the way, was created androgynous. At least according to the rabbis. Or maybe according to some rabbis.
Bereshit contains the single most egalitarian verse that I know of; the basis of our belief that each human life has intrinsic value.
Genesis 1:27 reads: "And God created the human in his image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them." Each human is created in the image of the Divine. There is no hierarchy amongst humans.
"Male and female God created them." This can be read in many different ways. One way is that we all have "male" and "female" in us. Another way is that some of us are male and some of us are female. But the rabbis prefer to see life as concrete, rather than venturing into the realm of the "idea" of what it means to be female, or the "idea" of what it means to be "male." Thus, according to Bereishit Rabbah 8:1,
R. Yirmiyah ben Elazar said, when Hashem created Adam HaRishon [the first human], he was created androgynos [אנדרוגינוס]; thus is it written, "male and female He created them." R. Shmuel bar Nachman said, when Hashem created Adam HaRishon, He created him with two faces, one on each side, and [when He made the first woman] He split him along the middle, forming two backs. [The other rabbis] challenged him: but it is written, "And He took one of his ribs!" [R. Nachman] said to them: "mitzalotav doesn't mean rib, it means one of his sides, similar to that which is said, "and to the 'tzela' of the Mishkan," which is translated "the side of the Mishkan."
October 18, 2023
Not much has changed since those fateful days, in primordial time, when the first humans brought about the destruction of the Earth.
"The Earth became corrupt before God; the Earth was filled with lawlessness. When God saw how corrupt the Earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways, God said to Noah, 'I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the Earth is filled with lawlessness because of them: I am about to destroy them with the Earth' " (Genesis 6:11-13).
Human beings believe that they are the end-all and be-all of creation, endowed with rights and privileges that permit any actions, including murder, to advance their evil ways. Even in the Torah this lesson is not truly learned, even after the flood, for the end of Parashat Noach tells the story of Tower of Babel, which is by commentators as another physical manifestation of greed and desire for power.
I'm scared. I'm afraid because the pace of our world, filled with violence, war, planetary destruction, greed, indifference, poverty, genocide, hatred and intolerance, is moving so fast with the technological advances, that I fear we will not, cannot, stop, turn around and repair the massive damage we have done and continue to do on a daily basis.
However, the same technology that is speeding us up, blinding us, brainwashing us, is also being used to open our eyes. We all have cell phones and we all can see what is happening in Gaza despite the attempts to censor and manufacture reality. Billions of people can see it.
Our friend from Gaza wrote about his parents' attempt to "evacuate:"
On their way to the South of Gaza, they got the notification that the Israeli warplane bombed the cars heading to the south and killed many people. The cars that were hit were a few meters from the car that my parents were in. Miraculously my parents survived and returned to my grandpa's house.
They are not only bombing the the convoys of evacuating people, but yesterday they attacked and massacred at least 500 people taking shelter in the only Christian Hospital in Gaza. They targetted the centre of the courtyard where people were taking refuge, with no warning.
More than 3,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, including over 1,000 children.
Israel is using Hamas's October 7 attack inside Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people, as an excuse to speed up the slow-moving genocide they've been involved in for 75 years.
We are witnessing the total obliteration of Gaza.
Political leaders refusing to speak out should feel eternal shame over the horror they are allowing to unfold.
Those of us who believe that all human life is precious cannot stay silent.
October 27, 2022
Last week during JeLiThIn's Parashat HaShavua Group we had a fascinating conversation about vestiges of ancient traditions that made it into Parashat Bereishit, including a puzzling archaic and mythological passage:
And it happened as humankind began to multiply over the earth and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were comely, and they took themselves wives howsoever they chose.... The Nephilim were then on the earth, and afterward as well, the sons of God having come to bed with the daughters of man who bore them children: they are the heroes of yore, the men of renown (Genesis 6:1–2, 4).
What we didn't discuss during our conversation last week, was when God regrets he ever created humans:
And the LORD regretted having made the human on earth and was grieved to the heart. And the LORD said, "I will wipe out the human race I created from the face of the earth, from human to cattle to crawling thing to the fowl of the heavens, for I regret that I have made them." (Genesis 6:6–7)
Parashat Bereishit ends with a glimmer of hope: "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD" (Genesis 6:8).
Our Torah portion this week, Parashat Noach (Genesis 6:9−11:32), reintroduces Noah in complimentary terms: "Noah was a righteous man, he was blameless in his time, Noah walked with God" (Genesis 6:9), but reverts almost immediately to a description of the "corruption" besetting the world: "And God saw the earth and, look, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on the earth." (Genesis 6:12).
Traditionally, the flood story is understood as a morality play: the cause of the devastation is human behavior. The problem with this way of interpreting the flood story is that while it teaches a lesson about morality and human responsibility, it also leaves the flood without any purpose other than punishment. If the goal was to improve human behavior, it was a failure: violence and immorality reasserted themselves almost immediately and, regrettably, continue to flourish to this day.
But there is another explanation for the flood that we can glean from Rashi's commentary. Rashi's commentary to Genesis 6:12 reads:
for all flesh had corrupted — even cattle, beasts and fowl did not consort with their own species (Genesis Rabbah 28:8).
Why did God flood the world then? In a commentary on a Talmudic passage (Rashi on Sanhedrin 57a), Rashi provides us with an answer: "The flood generation was punished for illicit sex, as it is written, 'the sons of God of God saw that the daughters of man were comely'" (Genesis 6:2).
This line of thinking is taken up in a story from the Book of Enoch, in which baby Noah appears to his father "Not like a human being, but like the sons of the gods of heaven." Noah's father Lamech, tells his father Methuselah:
lt does not seem to me that he is of me, but of gods; and I fear that a wondrous phenomenon may take place upon the earth in his days. So I am beseeching you now, begging you in order that you may go to his grandfather Enoch and learn from him the truth, for his dwelling place is among the gods (Enoch chapter 106).
Enoch instructs Lamech's father Methuselah:
Now, make known to your son Lamech that the son who has been born is indeed righteous; and call his name Noah, for he shall be the remnant for you; and he and his sons shall be saved from the corruption which shall come upon the earth on account of all the sin and oppression that existed, and it will be fulfilled upon the earth, in his days (Enoch chapter 106).
Linking the story of Noah to the mythological passage of the union of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" that appears just before it, opens the possibility for a different interpretation. Perhaps the purpose of the flood was not to repair human conduct, but to wipe out the demigods: the progeny of the union of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men." Perhaps the story is about setting clear boundaries between the respective realms of God and humans. Perhaps the biblical authors are shaping a world in which it is possible neither for gods to descend to earth in order to commingle with humans, nor for humans to attain divinity by building a "tower with its top in the heavens" (Genesis 11:4). Perhaps this story is part of a bigger story of separating the divine from the human.
October 8, 2021
Tomorrow we will read Parashat Noach, which contains the first covenant of the Torah.
You know Noah's story because it is part of our culture. Humanity sins and needs to be wiped out. Humanity is wiped out through a flood that destroys everything. Following the abatement of the flood, Noah and the other creatures on the ark come off the Ark. And this is the occasion for the formulation of a covenant. This is the first covenant in the Torah; a covenant with all of Creation; a covenant where God promises never again, to destroy the Earth.
And God said to Noah and to his sons with him, "And I, I am about to establish My covenant with you and with your seed after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the fowl and the cattle and every beast of the earth with you, all that have come out of the ark, every beast of the earth. And I will establish My covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the Flood, and never again shall there be a Flood to destroy the earth." And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I set between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for everlasting generations: My bow I have set in the clouds to be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth, and so, when I send clouds over the earth, the bow will appear in the cloud. Then I will remember My covenant, between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters will no more become a Flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud and I will see it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures, all flesh that is on the earth." And God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth."
We have a record of God's side of the covenant, but what did Noah had to do in return? What must humanity do for God to keep God's side of the covenant? A covenant can only take place between two or more parties. And we are failing to protect our earth.