The Mikveh Waters (Makkot 4a)

If there was a giant oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, would the waters be invalidated as a mikveh?

Today, the gemara debates whether a mikveh becomes invalid when different amounts of either drawn water or other liquid substances mix with the free flowing mikveh waters. The first round of discussions focuses on a mikveh that does not yet contain the necessary amount of water to make it valid (forty se'ah). The rabbis discuss what happens if a small amount of drawn water enters the mikveh, and what happens if that drawn water was diluted by another substance like wine (which changes the color) or milk (which does not change the color). Even though there are different opinions on each of these circumstances, it is clear that the amount of outside liquid does matter in determining if the entire mikveh is invalidated.

The next case discusses what happens if a barrel of such a substance (drawn water or other liquid substance) comes in contact with an open body of water, like the Mediterranean Sea or a river. Rav holds that there are different rulings for a sea verses a river. A sea is stationary (קיימא) and maintains the foreign substance whereas a river has a current which disperses the substance to a new area by the time a person immerses (4a2).

So what about a gulf? A gulf is in some ways stationary like a sea, but it also has a current like a river. Many predict that the oil in the gulf will remain for years and years in addition to also making its way via current into the greater Atlantic ocean.

I have almost no doubt that the rabbis would say the oil spill in the gulf has rendered the waters invalid for mikveh immersion. I wonder though, what happens when the oil moves up the coast of the United States and into the greater Atlantic Ocean? What percentage of oil makes a gigantic body of water invalid and does it matter if one immerses in a safe zone that is surrounded by troubled waters?

Though we obviously don't need the Talmud to teach us that too much of a foreign substance (especially oil!) is never a good thing for fresh flowing water, I think we can learn something from the presence of this discussion in the gemara.

With all the anger, drama and finger pointing going on with the situation in the gulf, this passage reminds me that this issue is so much greater than money, politics, and even the environment. This is truly an issue of holiness. The water of a mikveh is supposed to be fresh flowing because it represents the mayim chayim, the living waters, that sustain us and purify us. Water is in many ways the essence of holiness. If we want to strive for holiness in our world, we must dedicate ourselves to protecting our waters. Sure, we may accidently spill a bottle of wine or even a barrel of oil, but we must absolutely do everything in our power to prevent this type of spill from ever occurring again.

Too loaded (San 113a)

Yesterday we finished Sanhedrin. Today we begin Makkot. However, I want to explore an important issue that came up in yesterday's daf.

In a somewhat lengthy discussion of Jericho we learn that it is both forbidden to rebuild a city in Jericho or to build a city anywhere else with the name Jericho.

I've been thinking a lot about that teaching. Today there are names (and terms) that are out of bounds. I'm not sure if I know anyone in America who would name their child Adolph Hitler (although there are some exceptions). The same goes with Amalek. Words too express this idea. In college a friend and I thought it would be funny to take back the word kike, just as the GLBT community has taken back the word queer. It was to no avail. It was too charged, too offensive.

However, the GLBT community has succeed in taking back the world queer just as the black community has taken back the n-word. So what makes these movements different?  Didn't they reclaim a loaded and historically problematic word? Is it so wrong to build city called Jericho. Isn't there one on Long Island! Can't this city (my mother's birthplace)  remind us of of Joshua's quest and its dominant themes (God's power, human faith)?

Leaving aside New York's decision to go ahead and reclaim the name, I understand the Rabbi's point of view. Unless a movement of people get behind a word they cannot reclaim it. For the Rabbis, Jericho was too loaded a term (theologically that is) in order to be reclaimed. Maybe we too will reclaim kike for ourselves, but until then, let's leave that one for the history books, right alongside the biblical notion of Jericho.

On entering the Promised Land: Haftarah Sh’lach Lecha

Joshua 2:1-24

Everybody, it seems, wants to get into this place. It was the goal of the Israelites. Since the year 70, it had been the Jews’ hope to return. During the Crusades, the Christians and Muslims fought over the land, trading ownership frequently. The British coveted it. Modern Middle Eastern nations have pledged to sweep through all the way to the sea, destroying the Jews along the way. And this past week, 700-ish activists, made an attempt to get their cargo into Gaza. What is it about this land?

This week’s Haftarah, from the book of Joshua, tells us about the spies that Joshua sent to Jericho to scout out the land and determine what the prospects were for victory. They meet a woman of ill-repute with a heart of gold named Rahab, who hides the spies and tells them where to go to keep away from Jericho’s forces. Unlike those around her, she does not fear the Israelites, but sees an opportunity to be saved by them. For her help, she and her family are spared the fate of the rest of the city of Jericho.

So, what is it about this land? Everyone has their own reasons for wanting this land. The Israelites are promised the land by God. The Christians came to help out their Byzantine cousins. The Muslims felt that it belonged to them. The British love owning things. Certain modern Middle Eastern nations have a view of a Muslim Middle East that doesn’t include Jews or westerners. And, the 700 activists? They wanted to bring aid to Gaza. Or they wanted to break the Israeli blockade. Or they wanted to prove a point. Or they hate Israel. Or they hate Jews. Or they love Palestinians. Or they wanted to transfer money to purchase weapons. Or they knew that Israel would overreact. Or they wanted publicity. Or any combination of the above.

Either way, they sailed their boats, ready for confrontation, ready to try to make a difference for a cause they believe in, whichever it may be. There is no question that Israeli forces could have done something better advised, like not go at night and not drop down from a helicopter. There is also no question that the activists, who from the looks of their rage in attacking the Israeli forces want peace about as much as they wanted to be boarded by Israelis, could have done something better advised, like allowing the cargo to enter Israel and then be transported to Gaza.*

The flotilla wanted to get to the land. The blockade is a reminder of the walls of Jericho. Some hope that it will come crumbling down, and the world is calling for it. At this point, it seems inevitable that it will at least come down in parts. Others hold firm in their belief that the wall is necessary. Has the wall stopped bombs from falling on Israel? No. But who is to say how many more may have fallen? Has the wall weakened Hamas? Who are you asking?

Is Israel the new Jericho, building walls for her security and hoping they don’t crumble? Israel sends its troops out to attack the spies in one place, but it appears that the real danger and the real enemy are in another place altogether. The real danger is not the crumbling of walls; it is the building of walls between Israel and her allies, few though they may be. The United States is not thrilled and is demanding a new tactic that is not a blockade of Gaza. Turkey, once Israel’s strongest Muslim ally, is enraged and threatening to sever certain diplomatic ties. If Israel is not careful, she will not be the new Jericho, she will become the new Gaza. Who, then, will sail a flotilla to come to her defense?

Israel has offered a two-state solution, but Israel cannot have a terrorist state next door, they say. (Syria and Lebanon, notwithstanding, apparently.) It’s hard to negotiate when no one will sit at the other side of the table. When the Israelites came toward the land of Jericho, the residents trembled in fear, knowing what the Israelites had done to other enemy nations. The Israeli Military used to instill that fear, and used it as a deterrent, but now seems to make a mess out of almost everything that it attempts to do.

It is not boats or commandos or flotillas of aid or helicopters that will solve this. It’s hard to know what, if anything, may. So many of us, these days, feel like the residents of Jericho, fearful of the prospects on the horizon. Hoping for peace, but knowing that the alternative is sure to stick around for a long while. So many of us have lost faith in the peace process after so many starts and stops. So many of us are tired of watching the walls of peace crumble in front of us, on the news. So many of us are tired of the rhetoric and the hatred and the death. Surely all the inhabitants of the land are quaking today, this week, this month, perhaps even a little bit more than usual.

Rockets in the North, Kidnapped Soldiers, The War in Lebanon, Rockets in the South, The War in Gaza, the Flotilla, Not sitting down to talk: all circuits around the walls of peace. How many more until it falls?

The books of Joshua and Judges are filled with warring tribes and conquering of land between ancient enemies. These ancient enemies never stop being so. They fight until one is destroyed. Let us pray that these books become more of a religio-historical document than a prophetic one.

Shabbat Shalom

*although…

Rabbah Bar Bar Hana (110a)

There are a series of stories in Bava Batra that peaked my interest. They are mostly told by Rabbah bar bar Hana and they make almost no sense. For this reason, they have become allegories for some of the most important ideas in Judaism (most notably issues surrounding the evil inclination). Yesterday's daf had a parallel from one of these stories (the 14th, from B.B 74a). Here it is in soncino translation, my comments in italics:

Rabbah b. Bar Hana said: I was proceeding on my travels, when an Arab said to me, ‘Come, and I will show you where the men of Korah were swallowed up.’ I went and saw two cracks whence issued smoke. Thereupon he took a piece of clipped wool, soaked it in water, attached it to the point of his spear, and passed it over there, and it was singed. He said to me, ‘Listen to what you are about to hear.’ And I heard them saying thus [voices from under the ground]: ‘Moses and his Torah are true, but they [Korah's company] are liars.’ [these are actually Korah's group speaking in 3rd person about themselves]. The Arabian then said to me, ‘Every thirty days Gehenna causes them to turn back [here] like meat in a pot, and they say thus: "Moses and his Torah are true, but they [we] are liars."

There are a lot of interpretations of this text, the most basic is that Korah's men bemoan their rebellion and openly admit the truth of Moses's leadership and his Torah.  I want to bring another very interesting interpretation by a commentator "benyamin amar" (lit. Benjamin Zev Wolf HaLevi, born around 1740).

According to him, this story reminds us that Korach's men erred in two respects (how he arrived at this concept requires a closer reading). On the one hand, Korach's men thought that everyone is worthy to obtain prophesy and connection to God. However, this is not true, there are some people that are more worthy and Moses is one of them (I think he gets this from the first part of the statement, "Moses...[is] true.") The second mistake is that they thought that divine Providence is equal among everyone. Knowing what I know about Rambam's notion of Providence in the Guide for the Perplexed (who he quotes) Providence and Torah are intimately tied. Here is a quote from the Jewish Encyclopedia.

Maimonides then proceeds to expound the theory of the Jewish religion. Man is free and God is just. Good is given man as a reward, evil as a punishment. All is adjusted according to merit. Providence, practically, is concerned only about man. The relation of providence is not the same to all men. Divine influence reaches man through the intellect. The greater man's share in this divine influence, the greater the effect of divine providence on him. With the Prophets it varies according to their prophetic faculty; in the case of pious and good men, according to their piety and uprightness. The impious are become like beasts, and are thus outside the scope of providence. God is for the pious a most special providence.

Therefore the more one studies and the closer one is to Torah the better and easier it is to connect to God and the more influence Providence will have over him.

I don't bring this commentary for any reason other than to show that there is a rich body of work (much of it which needs more translation and more scholarly study), namely later commentaries on the aggadic portions of the Talmud. These commentaries are fascinating and deserve a great deal of attention.

The Obstacles of Luxury (San 108a & San 109a)

The discussion over the past few days has focused on how different groups of people lost their share in the world to come. The rabbis give many different examples of what the groups did to transgress their way out of olam ha'baah. One reoccurring thread used in discussion with the generation of Noah and the Sodomites is how wealth and fortune turned into arrogance and transgression.

לא נתגאו אלא בשביל טובה שהשפיע להם הקדוש ברוך הוא

The people of Sodom/the generation of the flood became arrogant only because of the bounty that the Holy One, Blessed is He, Lavished upon them. (108a2 and 109a4)

The obvious take away is how dangerous money, wealth, power, etc can be for a group of people. What I think is so interesting is the way the rabbis emphasize that they only became arrogant because of something God gave to them. So, who are the rabbis blaming, God or the people? It seems to me that the rabbis are putting some of the responsibility on God, who gave the people an obstacle they couldn't overcome.

As I was writing this post a crazy thing happened.

An umpire, Jim Joyce, blew a call that caused Armando Galarraga to lose a perfect game on literally the last out. If you don't know anything about baseball this is like the biggest deal ever. The stadium (and virtual world) erupted with such anger because we all had the fortune of watching the replay and could clearly see that the ump blew the call. Basically, we have been given a gift of technology, and this gift makes us feel entitled to justice. The game of baseball gives the luxury of "replay" to the fans but not the umpires (for this type of call). A lot of people are against replay in baseball, feeling that human error is part of the sport. This may be true in the moment for those on the field, but the problem is that it is too late for the rest of us watching on TV. Nothing good comes out of the umpire and the player walking in to the bullpen and seeing that a human error cost a perfect game. The umpire feels horrible, the player is probably devastated, and the fans are enraged. We have been given an obstacle (technology) that we can't overcome.

I don't think the rabbis in the gemara were necessarily blaming God and I also don't think the people who are outraged about this call are blaming technology either. We know replay is dangerous, but we can't not watch. I think the same was probably true for the generation of Noah and the Sodomites. There were probably those who understood that their wealth was getting the best of them, but at the end of the day, they didn't really want to give up their comfortable lives. I guess the lesson here is that we as a society need to learn how to deal with the gifts we are given. I think it is especially important that these passages discuss groups, not individuals. I believe individuals are better at overcoming arrogance and living modestly than groups are. As a leader in my different communities, I wonder what I can do to help combat societal arrogance and help my community overcome the many obstacles that our lives of leisure give us.

Importance of Hospitality (San 109b)

We read in Shabbat 127a about the paramount place of hospitality in our tradition. This idea is only underscored in today's daf. Here we read that the sin of the Sodomites was that they failed be hospitable.  The Talmud gives more examples than I can enumerate here, but some of the highlights include:

• A legal system that benefits the natives and penalizes the foreigner (those who take boats pay less than those who cross water themselves, something no rationale person from the outside could have guessed)
• Hotel owners that cut off the legs of tall patrons and stretch those of short ones.
• Givers of charity who mark their coins, give them to the poor, but then refuse to sell them bread (after the newly "rich" beggar dies from hunger the residents take back their original coins).

What I love about these ideas are that they take the emphasis off the "sexual iniquities" of the Sodomites and emphasize something much more basic: the way we treat the stranger in our midst matters and can either lead to our punishment or our redemption.

The other thing I love about these interpretations is the they act as a foil to Abraham. We all know Abraham as the paradigm of hospitality (the rabbis even claim that Abraham would serve non-kosher food to his guests [Gen. 18] because he knows that is what they like to eat). I'm a sucker for literary illusions and thematic plays. By creating a culture who stand opposite Abraham, Sodom and it's residents take on a whole new (and complex) meaning.  

The wonderful grayness of Job (106a)

One thing that I've noticed over the past few days is that there is a definite trend among the Rabbis to define the grayness of human action. Throughout chapter 11, the Rabbis take the most ambiguous characters and label them as either evil or righteous. We can read Jill's post to see how the Rabbis make excuses for David in order to show how many of his actions were righteous (for example, they prove that David did not commit auditory). On the flip side, the Rabbis go to great length to prove that everything Balaam does is for evil (even though the plain meaning of the text does not suggest this).

There is little gray. The Rabbis have a system of reward and punishment and it seems that they will go to great lengths to keep this system intact. The system is simple, if you do something wrong you are punished (the debate really centers around whether it will happen in this world or the world to come).

For the most part I'm not bothered by this rabbinic theology. However, I found myself really questioning this methodology when it came to defining the character of Job. For those who don't know Job's story the premise is that Job is a righteous person who gets punished by God at the request of Satan. Job's friends then come over and "comfort" Job, telling him he must have done something to deserve his affliction. Job demands that he has done nothing wrong. In the end God appears but does not resolve the question of Job's guilt. Instead he says essentially, "I'm God, you're not!"

The thing I love about this book is that it is so "gray." We don't know if Job actually did deserve his affliction. We can't understand God's rationale. In fact, it serves as an almost anti-theology, leaving the reader scratching their head. That's why for generations of people have fought about the theological implications of this story. And it's for this reason that I had so much trouble digesting the Rabbinic interpretation of Job's character.

The rabbis explain that Job was a member of Pharoah's council. When he heard that Pharoah wanted to throw all the Jewish children into the sea, he remained silent. Because he failed to speak out for justice, he was punished and was afflicted with suffering. While I like the notion that those who can speak out against injustice and remain silent should be held accountable, I am troubled by the rabbi's decision to "take sides" in the Job narrative and claim that Job deserved his punishment.

Luckily, we live in a very different time. Although it's nice to have things in black and white, I encourage everyone to see and love the grayness in the book of Job and in all other biblical stories, for it is in this grayness that we might see ourselves in the narrative. Only here might the text be a mirror into our souls.