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RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:NUMBERS 8:01-12:16:PARASHA BEHA'ALOTCHAH:Season of the Witch
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
"Must Be the Season of the Witch"
Our parasha this week wins two awards for brevity. Last week's Torah
portion holds the record for being the Chumash's longest parasha. This
Shabbat's readings give us the Torah's shortest prayer as well as the
Torah's shortest "book." Unfortunately, alas, this d'var will not win
accolades in this "short division."
Our parasha gets its title from God commanding Moses about kindling the
Mishkan's (desert Tabernacle) menorah ("When you mount...beha'slotechah
...the lamps). All of the lamps were to shine into the middle stem of
the candelabra. Rashi writes that because this light was not spread out,
it symbolized God, the source of all light. The Midrash credits God
Himself with making this menorah. It says that Moses threw a talent
of gold into the fire and from it emerged the finished menorah. The
Talmud points out that this menorah symbolized God's wisdom through Torah. Since
the menorah stood on the south side of the Mishkan, the sages reasoned
that anyone who wished to increase his wisdom should pray facing south.
While praying toward the south is no substitute for study, this
Shabbat is an excellent time for us, especially those who claim to
have no time to study, to start and finish an entire book of Torah! Here
is the entire book. It is from Numbers 10:35-36. "When the Ark was to
set out, Moses would say 'Advance, O Lord! May Your enemies be scattered
and may Your foes flee before You!' And when it rested, he would say
"Return, O Lord, You who are Israel's myriads of thousands!"
If you look on the Hebrew side of your Chumash, you will notice how these
two lines are bracketed with open spaces and diacritical marks
resembling a reversed Hebrew letter "nun."
Why are the nun letters reversed? The obvious answer is that they look
like parentheses. But the Talmud Bavli gives us another clue. In Tractate
Berachot 4B the rabbis teach that the 145th Psalm makes up our daily
Ashrei (Happy) prayer. It is an acrostic prayer made up of verses starting with
a letter of the aleph bait in the correct order of the Hebrew alphabet.
The letter nun is missing. The sages teach that this letter is omitted
because the "fall of Israel's enemies begins with it. For it is written:
Fallen (Naflah)." So, Nachmanides posited that if a regular nun means
"fallen," then an inverted nun means "risen." So our short book contains
the entire history of the Jewish people. By keeping the ideal of the
Torah with us when we travel or when we rest, we will always be risen,
even when we seem to have fallen.
Talmud Bavli Tractate Eruvin 13B even goes a step further with our short book. The
Hebrew for the words "when it rested" (nucho) is derived from the same
root word as "noach." This word means to comfort, to be gentle or to be
sweet. Our history as a people will be assured when we use Torah to
teach love and inclusiveness. When the Talmudic sages would debate the
words of Hillel versus the words of Shammai, the sages agreed after three
years of debate that the words of both were God's. However, they decided
to make their rulings follow the teachings of Rabbi Hillel because Hillel
and his students were "gentle and accepting." They would always give
courtesy and credit to Rabbi Shammai and his pupils. If we remember to be
humble, gentle, accepting, loving, inclusive, comforting and sweet, it
will be difficult for any enemy's philosophy to triumph over our Torah.
The Talmud Bavli in Tractate Shabbat 115B and 116A states that these two "set
off" verses are a separate book of the Torah. The sages posited that
these verses are bracketed because God did not want to record three sins
of the Jews in a row. What were the three sins? The Midrash claims that
when verse 10:33 says we left Mt. Sinai, we ran away from it "like a
child running away from school," afraid that his teacher would give him
more homework (more commandments). The next two sins come after this
short "book."
The second sin is the kvetching and complaining found in verses 11:01-4.
Our people--who just received the Torah on Mt. Sinai just three days
prior--are moaning that they are bored with manna. They want Egyptian
"meat, fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic." God responds
by flying in a flock of quail that the people would eat for an entire
month until "it comes out of your nose" and "becomes nauseating" (Num.
11:20). This is history's first recorded mass aversion-therapy session.
The third sin was committed by Miriam. Miriam calls Moses's wife a
"Cushite." She discusses his marital relationship. She further complains that she
and Aaron also talk with God, so why is Moses the leader? God hears this
slander and strikes Miriam with tzaraat. The sages say that this is the
skin disease (mistranslated as leprosy) that God inflicts on people when they
do loshan ha ra (gossip). Moses then asks God to forgive
and heal Miriam with the Torah's shortest prayer. "Please, God, heal her
now" (Num 12:13). The traditional view of these short verses in Numbers
12:01-2 has produced volumes.
Tzipporah, Moses's wife was a Midianite. Miriam calls her a Cushite. A
Cushite is a black Ethiopian. The sages state that Miriam was talking
with Tzipporah one day and was told that Moses was not having marital
relations with her. Miriam was unaware of what God told Moses. Since
Moses had to be ready at any time to talk with God, he needed to be
ritually pure. Therefore, Moses was not allowed to have sex with his
wife.
To get pure, he would have had to dip in the mickvah and remain
impure until evening. As we were taught in a previous parasha, if a male
had sex, he was impure until nightfall. Tzipporah and Moses were to keep
this their private business but Tzippie slipped and told Miriam, without stating the
reason why. So, our sages teach, when Miriam gossiped to Aaron, she was
not doing it to be mean to Moses, but to help (hopefully) the love-sick
Tzipporah.
But why did Miriam call Tzipporah a "Cushite"? Was she complaining
jealously that Moses married a dark-skinned foreign woman? Our sages say
"no." Miriam's use of the word "Cushite" was a euphemism for beauty. To
avoid the "evil eye," she used a negative word to give a compliment. I
guess the sages are saying this is like Michael Jackson's song "Bad." It
says "you be so bad," which means "you are so good." Rashi says the
numerical value of the Hebrew word for Cushite is the same as the Hebrew
words for "beautiful in appearance" (yafat mareh). The Rashbam (Rashi's
grandson Rabbi Shlomo ben Meir of twelfth-century France) says that this
Cushite was not Tzipporah at all. She was a black queen, named Adoniah
that Moses married while in Cush but with whom he never consummated the
marriage. It is interesting to note that another Midrash says that Moses
was king of Cush for the forty years between him killing the Egyptian
task master and meeting Yethro and his daughter Tzipporah.
But the sages ask--if Miriam was not doing anything wrong, why was she
punished? They answer that it was a warning to Israel. If tzaraat that
lasts for seven days is what happens for appearing to have spoken loshan ha ra,
imagine what could happen if one really spoke loshan ha ra.
What do we know of Miriam? Why are the Talmudic and Midrashic sages
protecting her from what is an obvious fit of sibling rivalry? Miriam was
the older sister of Moses and Aaron; their parents were Amram and
Yochebed. She was born in Egypt and was 80 years
old at the time of the Exodus. One tradition says she was married to
Caleb (Josh. 14:6). Josephus considers her the wife of Hur, a leader
appointed by Moses (Ex.17:10). As the wife of Caleb, Miriam would be
the matriarch of the Royal House of King David. Another Midrash says
that she gave birth to Bezalel, the architect of the Mishkan. Her name
means "bitterness" in Hebrew in response to the troubles that befell her
people in Egypt. Her name means "beloved" in Egyptian.
Another Midrash tells of her parents divorcing because Amram did not want
to produce any children that would be killed under Pharaoh's decree. Miriam
and Aaron were born prior to Pharaoh's decree. Her
father was a leader of Levi. Miriam said to Amram, "You are worse than Pharaoh. He has
only condemned our male babies to death. If B'nai Israel follows your
example, both the male and female babies will be condemned." Amram
remarried Yochebed and Moses was soon born.
A Midrash says that Miriam was one of the midwives who disobeyed Pharaoh
and let the Jewish male babies live. When Pharaoh's officers came to
arrest her, Miriam made herself invisible. She was five years old at the
time. While her mother was pregnant with Moses, Miriam had a prophetic
vision that the baby would be the savior of Israel from slavery.
Miriam stood watch while her mother placed her baby brother Moses in the
reed basket and placed him in the Nile. She followed the basket and
watched as Pharaoh's daughter rescued the baby. She told the princess
about a nursemaid who could care for the baby. She brought her own mother
to Pharaoh's daughter to care for Moses. Years later, at the Sea of
Reeds, she led the women in song and dance after being rescued from the
Egyptians. She was called a prophetess. She died and was buried in
Kodesh, in the wilderness of Zin.
The Talmud Bavli in Tractate Taanit 9B gives equal credit to Miriam, along with
Moses and Aaron, for Israel's survival in the desert for 40 years. It was
due to Miriam's merit, the sages teach, that the Jews had a fresh well
wherever they camped. When Miriam died the well went dry. The well was a
symbol of one of the three pillars that the world stands upon, according
to Mishna Pirkei Avot (1:2). One of these pillars is "gemilut chasadim"
(kindness). The second pillar is Torah study which Moses symbolized. The
third pillar is the service of God which Aaron symbolized.
Just as Miriam supplied Moses with food, so did she supply
Israel with water. Nothing can grow without water. The Maharal (Rabbi
Yahudah Loewe of 16th century Prague) compares
all women to wells by quoting Proverbs 5:19.
Miriam's brother Moses complains to God in this Parasha that he is
forced to act like a woman. Moses, while he is frustrated with the
complaints of the Jews,
asks God in Numbers 11:12 if he himself had "conceived this
people?" He asks, "Have I given birth to them" so that I must "carry them
in my bosom" and suckle them?
The Zohar teaches that Mordechai raised
(oman) Esther (Es. 2:7). Oman is the Hebrew root for a nursing mother. A
mother has milk hidden within her breast that the baby needs to develop.
Only by "nullifying her self-orientation and becoming nothing," writes
Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, can a mother relax enough to allow the milk to
flow to the baby's mouth.
In Kabbalistic terms, this allows the hidden
potential, the true Divine "something," to enter the symbol of the
worldly "something." The Zohar teaches that this is how physical reality
encloses deep spiritual concepts and how the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm. God
manifests a level of nothingness (tzimtzum) that allows His
infinite supply of love and energy emanating from within His essence to
flow down to the world, like milk to a baby.
While God's milk is Torah
brought to us by Moses, Miriam's milk, through the well that followed us
in the desert, was life itself. Perhaps this is why the rabbis were
apologists for Miriam's behavior.
When Moses took on the role of leader, teacher, judge, provider and
nursemaid for the Jewish people, he lost touch with his own wife and
family. Judaism is against celibacy. Service to God, our sages taught,
did not release someone from the mitzvah of "be fruitful and multiply."
Marriage is not inferior to celibacy. Instead, it is part of creation's
order. Our Talmud teaches that we are to sell a holy Torah scroll if we
need funds to get married. The Zohar compares women to the body and men
to the soul. A person consists of both. Moses's sublime soul was on such
a lofty level that he could not relate to the physical needs of his wife or
of his people for meat.
The Zohar teaches that the Messiah will be more
of a flesh and blood man than Moses. He will not be detached from the
material like Moses. The Zohar teaches that the Messiah will be married
and that his wife will empower him to achieve spiritual rectification of
all humanity.
The Talmud addresses the problem of men being too involved with their
work or studies (or computers?) to attend to their wives' needs. They
ruled that if a man forbade himself to his wife, he could only do so for
a week and that his wife must first agree. Torah students could go away
to study for no more than a month at a time. Laborers could only leave
their wives for a week at a time. Rich men must have sex with their wives
daily, laborers twice a week, ass-drivers once a week, camel drivers once
a month, and sailors twice a year. This is from Tractate Ketubot 61A and
62B. But on Daf (folio) 63A, the sages ruled that Torah scholars could
leave to study for two or three years at a time. But then Rabbi Adda said
that they risk their lives if they do this.
Rabbi Adda told the story of a rabbi
who would only come home once a year and have sex with his wife before
Kol Nidre. One year, he was so distracted with his Torah studies that he
lost track of the calendar. He was studying on a roof. The roof collapsed, and
he was killed. Then Rabbi Judah decreed that a scholar should have sex
with his wife at least every Friday night.
How men could wish to avoid their wives may seem unclear to us now,
although not to all of us. But it was not uncommon in ancient times.
Women were a "strange group" to our ancient rabbis and they, and even
Freud, were "unable to decide what they want."
Women were often accused of witchcraft, especially with their words,
which may be why Miriam was punished for her loshan ha ra, and Aaron was not for his.
In Exodus 22:17 we were commanded to not let a witch live. The Hebrew term used is
"mekasefa," which is a female witch. This is odd because up to this time
in the Torah no mention was made of female witches. Male sorcerers,
however, especially Pharaoh's and later Balaam, are mentioned to us. In
the Midrash Genesis Rabbah the rabbis write that Sarah tried to use
witchcraft against Hagar. The same Midrash says that when Eve was created
"Satan was created along with her." But these Midrashim were written
millennia after the stories in Genesis.
In I Samuel 28, we are told that King Saul visited a witch in Ein Dor who
used an Ob. With this magical Ob she raised the prophet Samuel from the
dead. Another witch was Jezebel, daughter of King Sidon. She is labeled
both a whore and witch (II Kings 9:22). The prophet Nahum (3:4) compares
Ninevah to witches and whores. Ezekiel (13:17-23) prophesied against
Jewish women who dealt with witchcraft and magic and used the occult to
raise the dead or kill people.
The Talmud Bavli in Tractate Chagigah 77 tells of Rabbi Simeon who hanged 80
witches at Ashkelon. These women all lived in a single cave and "harmed
the world." In Talmudic literature there are other assertions that women
are synonymous with witchcraft. In Pirkei Avot 2:7 it is said by the
great Rabbi Hillel, "the more wives, the more
witchcraft; the more female servants, the more promiscuity."
Rabbi Yose said in discussions on when to say blessings, that one should not say a
blessing over a spice if one doesn't see where the good smell is coming
from "because Jewish women offer incense to witchcraft" (Talmud Bavli Beracoth
53A).
In Talmud Bavli Tractate Eruvin 64A the rabbis teach that while it is a law to pick up
bread that one sees on the road, this does not apply now (at the writing
of the Talmud circa 500 CE) as "Jewish daughters are flagrantly involved
in witchcraft" and the bread may be cursed. Women cause dogs to become
rabid (Tractate Yoma 83B). As soon as Satan was created, according to the
rabbis in Tractate Kiddushin 81A, he sought a wife to be his partner in evil
witchcraft. The Zohar states that Satan, in the form of the serpent, had
sex with Eve producing Cain.
In Talmud Bavli Tractate Kiddushin 66B Rabbi Simeon says that "the best of women is
filled with witchcraft." When the rabbis ask themselves why the Torah
uses the female word for witch and not the male, they answer in Talmud Tractate
Sanhedrin 67A that God is teaching "that most women are involved with
witchcraft."
In the Midrash Sifre the rabbis teach that a man should not
be afraid to go into battle against other men, but that he should be
fearful of doing battle against a woman and her witchcraft. Talmud Bavli Tractate Sanhedrin
100B explains that a daughter is valueless because when she is a child
the father fears she will be seduced. When she is a young woman, he
worries that she will not marry. And when she is old, she will be
involved in witchcraft. Talmud Bavli Tractate Pesachim 111A warns us that if we see
two women at cross roads facing each other, they are witches.
Talmud Bavli Tractate Gitten 45A tells of the daughters of Rabbi Nahman who stirred a
boiling pot of witch's brew with their bare hands. Ironically, the two
books of witchcraft of the Talmudic era--Harba de Moshe and Sefer ha
Razim--are written by men. With further irony it is noted that the same
Rabbi Simeon who gives us so many examples of women being such bad
witches was a sorcerer himself! In Talmud Bavli Tractate Me'ilah 17B he exorcised an
evil spirit from the emperor's daughter. In Talmud Bavli Tractate Shevi'it 38B, Rabbi
Simeon turned his opponent into a heap of bones by use of the evil eye.
When Moses turned his rod into a snake it was a miracle by God. When the
Egyptian sorcerers did the same thing, it was magic. King Saul's needing
the advice of a female witch to determine how to wage war is sadly
reminiscent of President Reagan's use of a female horoscope reader to
decide on his schedule.
In the Bible women leaders are few but not rare. Our matriarchs were
quite vocal and visible, as were Miriam, Judge Deborah, and Queen Esther.
By the time of the Rabbinic era women who were charismatic or vocal were
feared and conveniently labeled as witches. There is one notable
exception. Rabbi Nachman's wife Yalta is given much space in the Talmud.
Despite restrictive rabbinic rulings, Yalta was both strong enough and
knowledgeable enough to get her way numerous times (Talmud Bavli Tractates Berachoth
59B, Niddah 20B, Kiddushin 69B, Chullin 109B).
Jewish women of the time were certainly treated and protected better than their pagan
counterparts. As we have seen in past d'vrei Torah, superstitious,
erroneous conclusions die hard. Only 400 years ago in this country, we
were burning and drowning suspected witches in Salem, Massachusetts, a
town that took its name from the Hebrew word for "peace." The admonition
of Rabbi Yose in Pirkei Avot 1:5 of "anyone who converses excessively
with a woman causes evil to himself...and will inherit gehinnom" (hell)
is still taken seriously in many circle.
The Chofetz Chaim (Rabbi Israel Kagan of twentieth-century Europe)
reminds us to "judge our fellow with righteousness" (Lev. 19:15). We are commanded
to give each other the benefit of the doubt, our sages decreed in Tractate
Shavuot 30A. Rabbi Kagan writes that if you are not quick to judge
someone in your mind, you will be less apt to speak badly about him or
do something harmful to him.
Pirkei Avot 2:5 teaches us "not to judge
your fellow until you have reached his place." It is impossible to reach
anyone's "place," as we all have such varied experiences. Therefore we
should not make judgments against people.
As Moses asked of God in the
Torah's shortest prayer, let us wish healing, rfua sheilehma, to each
other, as few of us are truly complete and whole. As we learned in the
Torah's shortest book, let us strive to live our lives with sweetness,
love, humility and inclusiveness. Let us renew our Jewish Spirituality. These traits do not make us weak. They
make us strong and beloved by others.
Shabbat Shalom,
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
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