Gil

“Recalling the Covenant”: Biblical Stats

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I thankfully was able to obtain a copy of R Moshe Shamah’s “Recalling the Covenant,” which includes his commentary on the biblical censuses as well as an appendix on biblical number symbolism and the usage of numbers in the Hebrew Bible, apparently based on the theories of the polymath R S D Sassoon (whose only book I have is his work on theoretical physics).

And all I can say is that I’m more perplexed than ever regarding the tallies of individuals in the Torah. 🤷

Are they intended literally, and just happen to be both improbably large and skewed while exhibiting many signs of fabrication?

Are they intended non-literally, and the historical truth was considered unimportant to record in comparison with encoding symbolic ideas that only a select few of careful readers would be able to (even know to) decode?

What does the answer say about the meaning, purpose, and accessibility of the Torah? What does it say about the meaning of Torah as a divine message? What does it say about the meaning of our collective memory of our history?

What does the Creator mean with any of this?

I don’t know.

The search for truth is messy.

Sometimes you just gotta live with the perplexity and trust the God of truth to some day enlighten you.

Two Possible Answers

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How did the physical constants of the universe become fine-tuned to support stable and ordered complexity in the universe?

How did the first DNA replicators form and allow the diversity of life as we know it to evolve?

How did the first members of the human species develop the linguistic units and structures necessary to create language/culture and sufficiently organize to dominate the world?

How did one human subgroup collectively survive with its cultural memory intact despite thousands of years of war, colonization, and geographic dispersion?

You could answer “blind chance” for all of the above, although that’s a hard sell on each question, for different reasons.

Or you could answer “intelligent cause,” which for some may also be a hard sell, but for entirely different reasons.

Historiography and the Holiday of History

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Some thoughts on historiography, in preparation for Pesah, the holiday of history:

History may not be a science, but it is a discipline that makes use of the sciences.

That said, the material evidence of bygone ages that scientists have to work with is relatively scant, and the majority of textual evidence that might provide meaningful context for interpreting the little material evidence we have, has not survived to the present day. Certainly we have no surviving members of lost societies to consult on the interpretation of their material heritage.

This makes the work of the historian especially vulnerable to bias, both overt and latent. While peer review of results and interpretations that methodologically respect the available source material helps to curb the influence of some of the more fatuous theories, peer consensus is not always correct and is rarely universally shared, in any academic discipline. Due to various factors and despite persistent criticism from equally credentialed experts in the field, mediocre explanations of the material and textual evidence sometimes can and do become academic dogma, with all the political implications thereof.

Some people, lacking exposure to critical and scientific methods and sometimes ignorant of basic facts of the relevant source material, react to the inherent tenuousness of the historian’s conclusions by rejecting their expertise altogether, preferring history written by contemporary religious or political celebrities, or other authors of fiction. This is how we get pseudo-history, and it’s a poor replacement for the real thing.

David Rohl (the historian, not the musician) is not a pseudo-historian. He is a serious academic, recognized by his peers as a master of the relevant source material, who happens to disagree with the academic consensus on Egyptian chronology. 🤷 While purveyors and consumers of pseudo-history have of course made much of his work, so have many thoughtful and credentialed historians of ancient history across the world. Rohl has his critics – the academic discourse still functions – but I think his ideas about redating Egyptian chronology, in a way that just so happens to line up the material evidence with the biblical record, are worth considering as we ponder the reality and the meaning of the Exodus.

The Hebrew Bible contains, among many other genres, historical works, written in a distinctly Canaanite style. The Pentateuch, the first section of that anthology that is replete with Egyptian vocabulary and cultural references, contains much historical information as well. And the archaeological record, when interpreted critically but differently from the consensus view, upholds much of the history of the Hebrew Bible.

Is it really beyond the pale to suggest, in light of the totality of the evidence considered without prejudice, that the Israelites of the Judaean and Samaritan provinces of the second commonwealth didn’t all just make it all up, and that the Exodus from Egypt in fact occurred?

Check out the wikipedia article on the New Egyptian Chronology proposed by Rohl.

Selling Hamets: The Basics

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AFAIK the best way to fulfill the precept of not owning any leavened bread foodstuffs during Pesah, is to get rid of it all before Pesah.

If that’s not feasible for you – due to the financial loss it would incur, for example – it is also possible to sell it, in a halakhically-valid sale, to a gentile friend.

This works by a) selling the leavened bread foodstuffs to a gentile on credit with a 7 (or 8) day term for repayment, with the leavened bread foodstuffs as collateral for the loan and b) leasing the area in which the leavened bread foodstuffs are stored to a gentile with a 7 (or 8) day term for initial payment, and reverting it to original ownership upon default.

When this is done correctly, neither the leavened bread foodstuffs nor their location are in your possession for the duration of Pesah, and upon finishing the holiday you either receive the same leavened bread foodstuffs and don’t have a new part-time tenant, or you get their monetary equivalent and are now a part-time landlord. 🤷

If you would like help arranging for your own sale of leavened bread foodstuffs in anticipation of Pesah, feel free to message me.

You will need:

1) a gentile you trust

2) an extra house key

3) an area of your house (can be a shelving unit) that can be clearly demarcated and preferably closed/covered

4) a price list for your leavened bread foodstuffs

The Easy Pesah Cleaning Guide

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Someone could not translate their OU-approved easy Pesah cleaning guide from a well-known rabbi, so I figured I’d do a public service and share with you the Gil-approved easy Pesah cleaning guide from, uh, me:

1) Remove all leavened bread foodstuffs from your house

2) Remove all crumbs of leavened bread foodstuffs from all the rooms in your house where anyone might have brought leavened bread foodstuffs over the past year

3) Heat all absorbant non-earthenware cookware and dinnerware to the same temperature at which they might have absorbed particles of leavened bread foodstuffs

4) Enjoy Pesah

Anti-Zionism and Me

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I used to hold space for anti-Zionism. Not any longer. The reaction since Oct 7 has clarified for me where anti-Zionists actually stand. I don’t begrudge Jewish anti-Zionists their right to an interpretation or a conscience but miss me with all that misguided rhetoric and propaganda.

We can thoroughly criticize our own state without directly enabling and supporting (latent, unwitting) anti-Semites.

(Of course, our great-grandparents never even had the opportunity to criticize their own state, because they were still forced to live under the hegemony of foreign imperialism and settler-colonialism.)

Also, this is everyone’s reminder that – beyond the Israelite and Jewish communities that had never left the land despite Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic occupation – organized Jewish resettlement of the land of Israel began not in 1948 but in 1558 with the resettlement of Tiberias under the leadership of Doña Gracia, in the wake of Europe’s latest demonstration of how welcome Jewish people really were among their various nations.

The Roots of the Maimonidean Project

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R. Yitshaq alFasi disputed the Geonim and began the task of summarizing the practical law of the Talmud, making it accessible outside of the Geonic academies. Instead of establishing a dynasty like the Geonim did before him, he appointed his disciple Yoseph ibn Megas to lead the academy after him.

R. Yoseph ibn Megas ruled that after the sealing of the Talmud, all legal authorities were equal and the Geonim of his day held no authority solely by virtue of their office. In the academy of Lucena he taught the way of the Talmud to his disciples from Cordoba Maimun the judge and Maimun’s young son, Moshe.

R. Moshe b. Maimun disputed the Geonim and upheld his master’s ruling that after the Talmud, all authorities are equal. He continued his grand-master’s project of summarizing the practical law of the Talmud for public consumption, opting for the more accessible encyclopedia model becoming popular in his era and the common lingua hebraica of the Jewish people.

Rambam’s work shook the rabbinic world and changed the path of rabbinic Judaism, but he was just following in his teachers’ footsteps.

Palestinian Voters in a Jewish State

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Morning thoughts:

Sometimes solutions present themselves when you consider problems from alternate angles.

Scared of how millions of Palestinians will vote, given the chance?

Make sure your democracy is constitutional with a robust institutionalized system of checks and balances (that include the military), in which its democratic nature is preserved against populist hijacking – and make sure your citizens are educated with a modern curriculum that celebrates civics instead of martyrdom, and agree to choose the ballot over the bullet.

Make sure what makes the state Jewish – essentially, historically, timelessly, truly Jewish – is not reducible to expressions of mere ethnocentrism or jingoism, that can (and maybe דווקא should) be threatened by the very proposition of either a modern society embracing the separation of synagogue and state on the one hand, or a shared ethical monotheistic society with the daughters of the Hebrew Bible, Christians and Muslims, on the other.

But I digress.

I don’t see two (or three or four or a million) states as a viable option, for all the reasons. I see a chance for us to make it through this together in one, Israeli/Palestinian, state of all its citizens.

When you really think about it – it’s not as bad as the movie in your head. 😉

Ten Maimonidean Propositions

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1) At Sinai, the people of Israel voluntarily contracted a bilateral covenant with the Creator, mediated by Moses, in which they agreed to follow the precepts instructed to them via Moses.

2) The aforementioned covenant includes a provision for dealing with questions that arise regarding the formulation or practical implementation of its precepts, especially in regards to their more ambiguous aspects that have yet to be officially regulated: consult the highest court and follow their decisions.

3) From the time of Moses until the closing of the Talmud, there was always a high court charged with determining the national calendar and with defining, formulating, and regulating the precepts of the national covenant, although the guises the high court took often changed with the epochs: an assembly of seventy elders, a council of prophets, a great congress, a Sanhedrin, a national academy’s court.

4) A record of the decisions of the high courts is found in the content of the classical rabbinic corpus – the Tosephta, the Siphra and the Siphré, and the two Talmudim – and ends with the last high court to historically serve the entire people of Israel, that of Rabina and R Ashé.

5) After the last high court of Israel disbanded, there is no entity with institutional authority to determine the national calendar; to define, formulate, or regulate the precepts of the national covenant; or to make any laws that are binding on the entire nation.

6) Nevertheless, many other institutions and individuals have, over the centuries, claimed the prerogatives of the highest court, making alternate claims to legal and social authority and even promulgating rulings, laws, and customs at odds with the recorded decisions of that court.

7) Trained in the jurisprudential tradition of the Talmudic academies and comprehensively educated in the classical rabbinic corpus, Rambam undertook the task of constructing an encyclopedic textbook of the actual laws of Israel, the Mishneh Torah (“restatement of the law”), composed in the familiar Hebrew language common to all communities of Israel, that would provide everyone without access to the classical rabbinic corpus with an understanding of what the national covenant requires of them, personally and collectively.

8) Although widely accepted throughout the Middle East and North Africa as part of the new standard in Jewish education and jurisprudence, the Mishneh Torah was also heavily criticized by detractors who objected to both Rambam’s style (in that he presented settled law while only obliquely referencing his sources) and his decisions (challenging his fidelity to the Talmudic record); however, there simultaneously emerged a scholarly defense of Rambam’s work throughout the ages that culminated in R Yoseph Qafeh’s exhaustive commentary to the Mishneh Torah, in which he provided all of Rambam’s sources and successfully rebutted all challenges to Rambam’s decisions vis a vis the Talmudic record.

9) The Mishneh Torah was the work of one brilliant, highly educated, but ultimately human scholar capable of error, and was accordingly subject to constant revision throughout the author’s lifetime (and inescapably contains idiosyncrasies and ambiguities of language and meaning); furthermore, the ever-growing socio-economic gap between the historical world of the cases Rambam discusses and our own modern world, additionally complicates any reading with the aim of practicing what is read.

10) Nevertheless, the final edition of the Mishneh Torah – when read together with the Hebrew Bible – remains the best guide to the laws of the covenant of Israel as understood and decided by the highest courts of Israel throughout history; and the intervening years since its publication have produced an abundance of commentaries, ancillary literature, and actual practice to provide necessary context and elucidation in interpreting Rambam’s decisions.

Who is Indigenous?

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Who is indigenous?

The people of Israel speak the language of this Land, follow the calendar of this Land, retell the myths and stories of this Land, tend and protect this Land, and have considered this Land their ancestral home for 3200+ years.

Most of their descendants were heavily colonized by the empires that came to this Land.

Some of their descendants were exiled from this Land but kept their language, calendar, and religion.

(Are they not indigenous?)

Some of their descendants were allowed to stay on this Land but were forced to adopt their colonizers’ language, calendar, religion, and politics.

(Are they not indigenous?)

Today I met a Native American woman of the Eastern Keresan in what is today called New Mexico, a student of her people’s traditions and an activist on their behalf – who speaks English (while studying Keres), uses the Gregorian calendar (and observes her traditional calendar), and believes in Christianity (as compatible with what she’s been taught of her people’s beliefs).

(Is she not indigenous?)

Hmmm…