The Enemy

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This should go without saying but given what I’m seeing shared these days (to be fair, after six months of warfare, psychological and actual, and antisemitism erupting worldwide, but nonetheless):

Palestinians are not The Enemy.

Arabs are not The Enemy.

Muslims are not The Enemy.

Hamas is The Enemy.

Hezbollah is The Enemy.

Khomeini and his ayatollahs are The Enemy.

Our fight – not just of the IDF but really of every Jewish person in the current socio-political world order – is not with anyone who seeks their own advancement through peaceful ways and democratic means. Certainly not with anyone who seeks to coexist with us on moral, honorable terms.

Our fight is with every individual who seeks their own advancement through our literal destruction.

Let’s keep our eyes on the proverbial ball and not fall into the same rut of irrational bigotry in which our adversaries are stuck.

How to Learn the Mishne Torah

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Unconventional advice: For beginners looking to learn Mishne Torah in order to understand how to practically observe the law, reading the book straight through from the beginning can be a mistake, especially for the modern reader.

As fundamental as philosophy is to the Maimonidean system – and I don’t mean to undermine that centrality in any way, it really is important to understand certain basic ideas about the Creator and the creation – a reader looking for practical guidance can easily get distracted and confused by the Aristotelian cosmology and theological details (much of which I think is better learned from a teacher, in a seminar setting, and/or with an experienced study partner).

Instead, I suggest reading the Introduction, to get an overview of the Maimonidean-Talmudic halakhic system, and then contemplating the following points before moving on to actually start studying the second book:

– The Creator exists in a way that is essential, and completely different from all created things, certainly with no physicality or dependency on anything created; but nevertheless establishes communication with created beings via prophecy, at which Moshe rabbenu surpassed all others

– It is possible for a created being to self-regulate and seek self-perfection, and this is the path of wisdom

– Continually learning, teaching, and studying Torah, which is wisdom and law communicated by the Creator to the creation via Moshe rabbenu, is a fundamental obligation of the nation of Israel

– Worshipping or deifying any created entity – any entity other than the Creator – is tantamount to rejecting all of the above

– The choices of created beings have consequences and yet it is always possible for a created being to reconsider their choices, and furthermore to learn to serve the Creator not just in order to avoid negative consequences, but out of love for the Creator itself, Law-maker of the kosmos

…and now you’re ready for the Book of Love, starting with when and how to recite the Shema’ properly.

Zionism and the Hebrew Bible

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Morning thoughts on Zionism and the Hebrew Bible:

The European Zionists of the 19th century did not invent Zionism. They merely took the banner of Zion that the prophets had first raised and that the sages then passed down from generation to generation in all our prayers and in all our rituals and in all our memories, for three thousand years, and rallied to it Israelites throughout the land and around the globe. Today Zionism – a project first proclaimed by Isaiah – only has meaning because our ancestors across the ages prayed for it and paid for it.

Criticize the state all you want, it’s just one imperfect attempt at realizing a dream that will never die.

“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.