“It’s a Trap!,” or, How the Torah’s Narrative Blames Joseph for the Israelites’ Slavery

Well, it’s been a bit of time since I did a post on the weekly parashah. Let’s break that trend.

This week we have Parshat Vayigash, the second-to-last Torah portion in Genesis. Vayigash starts with the story’s big reveal: Joseph yet lives. His brothers and father come to Egypt to live during the famine.

Hooray, right? Well…there’s this, in Genesis 47:19:

Buy us and our land with bread.

It turns out that the Joseph story puts the narrative’s enslavement of the Israelites at Joseph’s feet. Surprised? Read on.

Again a Little Lull

Readers, it’s been quiet on the blog for another week. Again, I’ve not forgotten you–I’m still plugging away at term papers, and there’s only so much writing one can do. I’m also in the middle of teaching a class on modern Judaism for a group at a local church, so there’s not much time left for the blog.

I do hope that, before too long, I’ll have some material to post. For those interested in what humanistic Jewish Torah interpretation looks like, I do suggest stopping over at Rabbi Denise Handlarski’s blog. She is turning her rabbinic thesis (the big paper you write as a capstone to rabbinical studies at IISHJ) into a series of blog posts on the weekly Torah portions.

I’ll be back blogging sooner rather than later.

Parshat Korach, Humanistic Judaism, and a Grand Reveal

This week, the traditional Torah reading cycle brings us to Parshat Korach, the biblical tale of a rebellion within the Israelite camp which included Korach, a member of the Levites, and 250 other leaders of the Israelites.

The short version of the story: Korach is angry that he and others didn’t have the priesthood opened up to them, he objects that the entire people is holy, and he challenges Moses and Aaron. Moses says, in essence, (1) Don’t be mad at Aaron, and (2) You would presume to challenge the divine plan!? As a Levite, you’ve been given privilege already–how dare you ask for more!?

Botticelli’s Korach – Image obtained from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korach_%28parsha%29#mediaviewer/File:Korah_Botticelli.jpg)

The result? Competing offerings are made near the Tabernacle, and the earth opens up and swallows Korach and his followers.

Musings on Historical Approaches to Judaism and Problems of Is and Ought

DovBear has a discussion on his blog today about the implications of a “rational and historical” approach to Judaism. He quotes a question posed about the practice of tikkun leyl Shavuot–staying up all night on erev Shavuot to study–and whether, if someone will be exhausted and “lose Torah” as a result, it is better to “quit while you’re ahead” or stay up all night. The response to the question says, essentially, tikkun leyl Shavuot is only about 500 years old and its origin story with Rabbi Joseph Karo (author of the Shuchan Arukh) is sort of dubious, and none of the rishonim or Talmudic-era rabbis did it. So if you’ll “lose Torah” by staying up all night for the tikkun, the quote says, it’s better that you sleep your ordinary schedule than try to stay up.

DovBear doesn’t particularly agree with this (I’m soft-pedaling his response a bit). 

Starting Points

As promised a while ago, I’m still here and will continue to post.

Posting will be a bit intermittent for a while yet, I think. We are, in some sense, trying to rebuild our lives a bit. And at a new starting point, I’m thinking about any number of starting points. This post is bit of reflection on that idea.

Starting Point, the First – Crisis

For those who’ve read the blog for a while, you’re aware that my son, Secular Jew, Jr., (let’s just use SJJ here for now) is autistic. (If you’ve not been reading for a while, you now know.) Over the last couple of months, we’ve seen a number of setbacks for SJJ–dramatic aggression, lost coping skills, lost communication skills–that in retrospect appear somewhat tied to medication issues, but that also seem to have been building for the last year or so until reaching a breaking point in late April. He’s been hospitalized in inpatient treatment centers twice in the last month, with the total inpatient plus waiting-in-the-ER time coming to about two weeks. The last of the two stays overlapped with his tenth birthday.

It’s been a horrifyingly difficult time for us–for him, unable to get across his needs and sometimes being ragingly angry, and for us, unable to do what parents are supposed to be able to do: to fix it. And the gap in services–medical, mental health, therapeutic, etc.–has been frightening and frustrating and enraging and depressing, because there are so few resources for parents dealing with autistic children in their extremes. Fortunately, we had enough support and resources to start to get back on track. Lots more behavioral therapy coverage has been approved by our insurance company, a new doctor is involved, and family was in town to help absorb some of the emotional blows of an earlier-than-expected release from the second inpatient facility. (And I’m beginning to wonder whether my insurance card will just spontaneously combust at some point from overuse.)

In short: we’re at a new starting point. Full-time therapy, no public school, no summer camp, a new schedule, and new challenges.

Starting Point, the Second – Identity

But putting SJJ into hospitals twice, with very limited visiting hours (generally an hour per day) during those visits, allowed Mrs. Secular Jew (MSJ) and I time we ordinarily would not have. And so, I had time to consider my own starting points.

The first time I had to consider these was when we checked SJJ into the first hospital. Hospitals ask about your religious preferences when you are treated inpatient, so they can (if you want) match you with a chaplain. Both hospitals just had an open box with religious preference–you write it in.

So, what would I put? (Somehow, though I insist to MSJ that just because I’m a lawyer doesn’t mean I’m good with paperwork. My job is more involved with tearing paperwork to shreds than with filling it in. Yet still, I do most of the paperwork.) None? Humanist? Jewish? Something else?

My decision: “Jewish (humanistic).” And I declined chaplaincy services. To my knowledge, there aren’t many humanistic Jews in the Indianapolis area, and I know who the Jewish chaplains in the area are and just didn’t feel like I would want their services. And SJJ, who has limited communication skills, wouldn’t get much from chaplaincy services in any case.

Mishnah Berurah

Did I write what I wrote because that was the easiest thing to do? Probably–the likelihood of it just confusing chaplaincy staff and encouraging them to let us be drove some of that decision. But the answer reinforced for me that, wherever I end up, I know where I start: with Jewish sources.

Starting Point, the Third –  Coping

Continuing on, it turns out that when your home life is oriented almost entirely around raising a special-needs child, you actually don’t know what to do with yourself when that child is gone. Or at least, we didn’t. So combined with the fears and concerns we had, all centered on a child who has suddenly changed in a dramatically negative way, we were faced with a vacuum in the conduct of our daily lives.

So we went out to dinner. We visited SJJ every chance we had. But when you’re accustomed to waking up to find that your child is in bed with you (again!), and wake up in a different state, it’s very disorienting. And it’s guilt-inducing to intentionally do things that are fun, because it’s not what you think you should be doing at that moment–even though you know you need the break.

I was in some ways almost paralyzed into anxiety and introversion by all this change. Decisions just didn’t matter, and I didn’t have a lot of interest in making decisions anyway–our son wasn’t home, and we were both exhausted. Yet I was waking up several hours before I needed to leave for work.

This is where I reached another starting point. I had to remake a daily routine that would at least begin to fill in gaps. I didn’t really know what to do with that time in a way that wouldn’t leave me perseverating on the troubles we faced–that our happy, funny kid had turned almost overnight into a desperately unhappy, angry, raging, violent person.

And so I did something I hadn’t done in years. I laid tefillin.

Tefillin, siddur, and tallis fringe

“Wait!,” you might say. “You did what!?” (At least, if you’re a secularist/humanist/Yiddishist/etc.) So, let me explain.

I needed some kind of thing that would structure the day. That thing was usually helping get SJJ ready for school in the morning, but that wasn’t happening. I was up several hours early. And I needed a way to use the time to get my head screwed on right so that I could do the work of the day. I needed quiet; not the quiet that came with a suddenly empty house, but a reorienting quiet where I could work out my own “stuff.”

Meditation Room Window

The building I work in has a meditation room. It’s labeled that way. I know, I know, it’s a chapel, right? But no crosses, or stars, or crescents. Some secular artwork? Yes. There are Bibles and Psalm books on some shelves in the back. But there are no religious services conducted there, other than the occasional employee-organized Bible study or prayer circle. Our employer does nothing in that space; a private organization separate from my employer maintains the room.

In short, it’s a quiet, warm room with some chairs. It’s not often used early in the day.

And I start from a Jewish point. It’s what I know and where I’m comfortable. So I constructed a weekday ritual around laying tefillin in the morning. I sometimes used a siddur, but engaged in a significant pick-and-choose process: I’d say one thing, omit another, change another, to express what I wanted to express. Or I would study something–part of the weekly Torah reading, or some halakhic text in Hebrew–to still my mind and transition from the trouble of home to the focus of work.

What I wanted to express was just the hope that we would be reunited with enough improvements to move forward. I didn’t ask anyone or anything supernatural to intervene, and I didn’t expect it. I still don’t. I didn’t pray. I still don’t.

But I needed a thing to do, and I needed a place to do it. I still love the core liturgical texts as poetry. I love Hebrew. And so doing something that would look to an observer like a very “traditional” Jewish thing to do–after all, tefillin were found at Qumran!–was what came naturally.

Starting Point, the Fourth – Moving Forward

Where does this all leave me now? Laying tefillin and studying a Jewish text–part of the siddur, or the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch yomi, or Mishnah Berurah yomit—most weekdays has become kind of centering for me. Even on days when I don’t lay tefillin, which has taken up a kind of “worry beads” meaning for me, I study one or both of the daily Kitzur or Mishnah Berurah in Hebrew. They’ve had no normative effect on me–I don’t do anything different, and many times I recoil at what the texts say about treatment of non-Jews. And, as before, I continue to try to read the weekly Torah portion in Hebrew, as well.

What am I not doing? I’m not praying. I’m not keeping kosher, observing Shabbat in a halakhic manner, or observing yom tov. When I’m burned out, I’ll stop without guilt, because what I’m doing isn’t something I perceive as being commanded in any way. It’s a balm.

MSJ and I talk about my new practice as “davvening,” since that’s what it looks like to the outsider. But it’s not what’s happening on the inside–and, if you look closely, you see that it’s not what’s happening on the outside. But it makes me feel better, and it lets me stay connected to parts of Jewish culture and history that resonate for me emotionally, though not intellectually or normatively.

And that’s what I need right now as a starting point.

Yom HaShoah and Amalek

One of the nice things about being essentially skeptical is that I don’t take a prooftext as a definitive answer. One of the bad things about being essentially skeptical is that when a prooftext is adduced as a definitive answer, I sometimes want to hit my head on a desk.

Unfortunately, prooftexts on Yom HaShoah turn out to be no exception.

Jewish Food and Humanistic Ethics

Rabbi Adam Chalom, rabbi at Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation in the Chicago area and dean of the U.S. division of IISHJ, posted this entry about the Jewishness of food as well as fasting. As I “turn[ed] it and turn[ed] it” (Pirke Avot 5:22) in my head, as well as other Humanistic Jewish writing about the status of issues of food and kashrut, I was reminded of a discussion I had in graduate school with one of my professors about the effect of the laws of kashrut on non-Jews. This conversation stuck with me, and I’m going to reflect on that and the ethical problems associated with maintaining kashrut.

(For my more traditionally-oriented Jewish readers: by now, you must have figured out I’m more or less a raging apikoros; I’d have to be to cite Torah and Talmud to reach the results I do. You won’t like what’s after the jump; I think you need to hear it, but you’ll likely disagree. I’m not picking a fight; it simply is what it is.)

How soon we forget.

Over at The Atheist Rabbi, Rabbi Jeffrey Falick has a post addressing the sudden realization of Steven Cohen and Kerry Olitzky that maybe there’s a way to welcome people to the Jewish community and Jewish identity without forcing them to undergo a halakhic conversion.

Hey, I know some people who’ve advanced that position for years!

I won’t add much to Rabbi Falick’s observations, except to say this: something like this has existed for at least two thousand years: the ger toshav.

Crazy little thing called law

Mosaic Magazine, the successor online publication to Jewish Ideas Daily, has published its December 2013 article of the month, “What is This Thing Called Law?” I don’t necessarily love the thrust of Mosaic–it’s published by an affiliate organization of the Tivkah Fund, which has a notably conservative bent to it in terms of religious questions–but this is a pretty interesting article that appeals to both the rabbinics and American law geek in me.

In the article, Rabbi Joshua Berman, a professor of Bible at Bar-Ilan University, assesses the current state of halakhic debate in modern Judaism–focusing on Conservative and “Orthodox” Judaism–by looking at “how we got here.” That is, Professor Berman tracks the move from what he calls a common-law approach to halakhah to a code-based approach to halakhah.

It’s an interesting approach, and one that I think could, from a certain perspective, yield some interesting results. But it needs refinement–particularly as it pertains to what it means to approach things from a common-law perspective as opposed to what Professor Berman calls “common law” but which is probably more properly thought of as simply flexible. Some of this refinement is simply mechanical and is adjusted by understanding better how many common-law systems actually work; other aspects of this refinement stem from basic assumptions and goals of genuine common law legal systems vis-a-vis what is happening in the world of halakhah.

The Mechanical Bits First

The mechanical aspects of my critique are easier to set out, and explain in part why I would characterize what Professor Berman calls “common law” as more properly flexible, improvisational, or simply case-by-case.

Pointing to the Code of Hammurabi, incidences of specific cases of adjudication in the Bible, and differences in specific legal texts on similar topics within the Bible, Professor Berman argues that what these texts show us is the recording of the results of specific adjudications or, more broadly, adjustment of a general rule to fit a somewhat new circumstance. For example, he points to the difference between Exodus 21:37’s penalty for someone who takes an ox or sheep from another person and disposes of it through sale or slaughter (that is–commits the common law tort of conversion) and the penalty King David would have imposed upon the hypothetical thief of a sheep in the story of Nathan’s prophecy concerning David’s treatment of Bathsheba in II Samuel. Exodus would impose a repayment of four sheep for the one taken; David would impose the same fine and would also have the thief put to death. Professor Berman points to this difference and argues that we are seeing common-law adjudication at work: recognition that one case (the theft of an animal by one presumably hungry or penniless) is different from another (the theft of an animal by someone who could easily have used an animal that already belonged to him).

I think this reads both too much and too little into the differences between the texts. Too much, because the text of Exodus doesn’t specify its rationale. Too little, because it assumes that David simply knew the rule in Exodus and applied something different–that is, it assumes the priority of the laws in Exodus to the story of David, and for that matter perhaps also the historicity of David as having had such a matter posed to him and having rendered a decision on it. In other words, Professor Berman fails to set out his assumption that the biblical texts are true enough to be relied upon for the historical proposition he advances.

Beyond all that, Professor Berman’s characterization of common-law decisions as not binding precedent is too simple. As common-law systems presently function, the decisions of higher courts bind the subsequent adjudications of lower courts at least to the extent those higher-court decisions squarely encompass the circumstances of the cases before the lower courts. Precedent is, contrary to Professor Berman’s characterization of it, often binding–particularly in American common-law jurisprudence. (See here for an interesting exploration of the role of precedent in British common-law court. Beware–it’s an academic work.)

This makes Professor Berman’s comparison of common-law adjudication to, say, the talmudic/gaonic mode of case-by-case adjudication somewhat inapposite, at least as he describes it, because the concept of binding precedent as we have it in common law simply wasn’t a factor. Yet this may simply be because, unlike a common-law system, there were not (at least after the dissolution of the Sanhedrin in the fourth century C.E.) multiple levels of subsidiary courts. Nevertheless, precedent is at least persuasive in the Talmud, where specific rulings are introduced in argument, with authority ascribed based upon the speaker of the precedent. That’s true on the very first page of the Talmud, Berakhot 2a, where even in the Mishnah a story is relayed concerning Rabban Gamliel’s instructions to his sons concerning the recitation of the evening Shema and how this established the outer limits of the law (so long as the first rays of the morning sun have not appeared, he tells them to recite), but not the “best practice,” which per the Sages is that the evening Shema should be recited no later than midnight.

Assumptions and Goals

More crucial, I think, to what is happening than any shortcomings in Professor Berman’s description of a common-law system and the application of that paradigm to what happened historically in the development of halakhah is that this
description doesn’t lay bare the assumptions driving the common law compared to those driving halakhic jurisprudence.

The purpose of binding precedent in common law is, these days, simply to establish predictable, uniform rules by which individuals and organizations can arrange and organize their behavior and understand the likely consequences for action in one or another manner. For the most part, judges engaged in the day-to-day adjudication of cases don’t understand themselves as engaging in a great metaphysical, epistemic, or revelatory pursuit. (At least, not since legal positivism came to hold sway in English and American law schools at right about the time codification of laws came into vogue in the Western world. The primary exception to this is, perhaps, jurisprudence undertaken on constitutional issues with an eye toward natural rights or natural law theories.)

But that’s not what is happening in halakhah. This is something that goes somewhat under the radar in Professor Berman’s article, for halakhic jurisprudence isn’t about just setting predictable rules and consequences for behavior. Halakhah is the working out of the implications of divine revelation at Sinai; it is, then, a spiritual pursuit, not merely an exercise in setting the laws and evaluating, independently of an ultimately reality, their merit.

The difficulty of this project is not lost upon the tradition, of course. From the basic mechanics of talmudic dialectic (I’m sure someone has counted the number of times stammaim or saboraim used the phrase, “then let him/the Mishnah say X” to argue that a specific text or interpretation is simply incorrect, and it’s got to be a LOT), to the self-critical observations about the faint connection of certain rabbinic rules to underlying biblical texts, to the self-aware story of Aknai’s oven where the rabbis reject a heavenly voice that presumes to tell them the correct interpretation of a case, there is clearly an understanding that the project of working out what exactly is in Torah mi-Sinai is a fraught process. (Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Heavenly Torah, translated relatively recently into English from its original Hebrew, is focused on working out how the rabbis of the Talmudic period understood the project of the Oral Torah. It’s a dense work; you’ve been warned.)

Yet there is no sense that this is not the purpose of the process, at least in most Orthodox circles. Indeed, as much as disputes are enshrined in the core rabbinic texts, so too is the sense that the halakhic process is the working out of Torah mi-Sinai: it’s in Pirkei Avot, and it’s in Rambam’s introductions both to the Mishneh Torah and the introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah itself. And it is this purpose that goes without substantive mention in Professor Berman’s article.

Implications of the Purpose of Halakhic Interpretation

So, where does this all lead us? Accepting as binding and engaging in interpretation of halakhah carries with it at least some notion that halakhah is divine. Perhaps it is the underlying Torah text that one thinks is most closely divine, with subsequent interpretations less so. I imagine there are numerous variations on how this could go. But Professor Berman’s approach to his subject belies the purpose of the exercise.

This has its own consequences. For example, while Reform, Reconstructionist, Humanist, etc., rabbis largely don’t view themselves as poskim or dayanim–rabbinic interpreters or judges–they nevertheless engage these issues to varying degrees, because determining what to observe or not, what texts to use or not, what beliefs to preserve or not are all within the realm of determining what is at the core of Judaism. But Professor Berman largely writes all but Conservative and Orthodox Jews out of this process with mostly a wave of the hand, and speculates that even Conservative Judaism may have rejected the idea of the unity of the Jewish people.

And this, at bottom, is the problem with Professor Berman’s piece. He wants us to draw normative conclusions from the move to codification in both secular legal and halakhic realms. He wants us to be more flexible in our approach to halakhic problems (though without much more guidance than simply saying that–but then again, an essay isn’t enough space to work out that problem). But he also adopts a now-common trope in Orthodox halakhic reasoning that sees as identical Judaism and halakhah, and Jewishness and halakhah.

I do not think that approach will do anything to grow Judaism–certainly not in the United States, and likely not in Israel over the long run. In response to Professor Berman’s article, then, I think we need to continue to work out what it is that makes Judaism what it is–and to recognize that it is entirely possible that, as liberal Jews, we may find ourselves less and less connected to Orthodox Jews both by practice and, increasingly, by rationale, as we accept their Jewish identity while they do not accept ours.

How unfortunate.

When we push too far, or, a nice reminder

In the traditional Torah reading cycle, we’re coming up on Parshat Vayeishev, which begins the story of Joseph. Over at Torah Musings, Gil Student has a post addressing the documentary hypothesis (the idea that the Torah has multiple, identifiable sources from which a redactor drew in assembling the final text; rundown here in Wikipedia) and one of the areas where there has been substantial scholarly debate over its application: the text of Genesis 37, which relates the story of Joseph’s dreams about his brothers and their decision to…well, it’s complicated.

Student, drawing on several scholarly sources, notes that the “traditional” scholarly view is that the contents of Genesis 37 come from two sources–J (the Yahwist–J makes a “Y” sound in German) and E (the Elohist). Each of these sources is generally considered to use certain ways of naming God (hence the J vs. E distinction), use certain characteristic vocabulary, hold specific subject matter concerns, etc., that help modern critics identify the provenance of particular passages in the Torah. Often, this approach makes sense: it makes sense of two creation narratives, replications and discrepancies in various narratives (the binding of Isaac, for example, and the substantial parallels in the stories of Abraham and Isaac), etc. Identifying source texts in this way often produces smoother narratives.

As Student points out, that’s not really the case in Genesis 37, and modern scholars have noticed this, with some critics arguing that the narrative as a whole reads much better than in its component pieces as assigned under the traditional version of the documentary hypothesis. Student argues, following Gordon Wenham, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and R.N. Whybray, that we ought to cast something of a jaundiced eye at the documentary hypothesis generally because of its breakdowns in areas like this.

There are parts of the story that might be well served by documentary hypothesis analysis; what the heck is going on, exactly, when Joseph is taken out of the well and sold in Gen. 37:25-29? He’s…taken by Midianites, who sell him to Ishmaelites? But the brothers see the Ishmaelites first and want to sell him. And where is Reuben in all this? Reuben only a few verses before discourages his brothers from killing Joseph, which is how Joseph ends up in the pit from which the Midianites take him, but then Reuben is apparently out of the picture.

That said, Student is right to remind us that such hypotheses, pushed too far, can break down. (I’ve long been somewhat skeptical of the use of the documentary hypothesis in all situations–for me, the Noah story made plain the problems with the approach.) This is the reason that newer approaches have come into use: various forms of literary criticism, more politically-minded forms of criticism (feminist, ethnic, economic), etc., have become more common over the last couple of decades, and many of them focus on the text as a whole.

But Student has an ax to grind here–specifically, he’s tagging Open Orthodoxy with this criticism (check out footnote 5 at the bottom of his post), and it’s the “mainstream” Orthodox “heresy” du jour. (Here’s Student’s recent op ed on The Forward’s website defending the RCA’s decision to publicly denounce the Open Orthodox folks.) And that is where his critique breaks down, because he is tagging modern scholarship (or really, one stream of modern scholarship) with circular logic while implicitly proposing another bit of circular logic: namely, that there is no human source (or no significant human source) for the Torah, which we arguably would know because it all fits neatly together and says so by its own terms. Or something.

In this, I think Student could be pulling a fast one on the reader–he conflates evidence with proof, and hypothesis with fact. Modern criticism accepts or rejects the documentary hypothesis because it does–or doesn’t–provide the best explanation for why a text or texts end up in a certain state, and various versions of the documentary hypothesis are critiqued on that basis. The texts are, ultimately, only ever evidence and never proof; all such scholarship is inherently argument.

And arguments pushed too far break down. For those of us who intentionally are not Orthodox, it likely goes without saying that Student’s perspective on the status of Torah as revelation is not, as a complete argument, as convincing as the modern scholarly arguments we have heard.

Just…a reminder for those who criticize arguments.