UTJ Viewpoints

(ו) עֲשָׂרָה דְבָרִים נִבְרְאוּ בְעֶרֶב שַׁבָּת בֵּין הַשְּׁמָשׁוֹת, וְאֵלּו הֵן,

א. פִּי הָאָרֶץ,

וּפִי הַבְּאֵר,

וּפִי הָאָתוֹן,

וְהַקֶּשֶׁת,

וְהַמָּן,

ב. וְהַמַּטֶּה,

וְהַשָּׁמִיר,

וְהַכְּתָב,

וְהַמִּכְתָּב,

וְהַלּוּחוֹת.

ג[a] וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים,

1 אַף הַמַּזִּיקִין,

2 וקְבוּרָתוֹ שֶׁל משֶׁה,

3 וְאֵילוֹ שֶׁל אַבְרָהָם אָבִינוּ.

[b] וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים, אַף צְבָת בִצְבָת עֲשׂוּיָה:

This Mishnah lists ten things created on the threshold of the first Sabbath, acts which are part of creation but are taken by creatures, humans, to be natural exceptions, or miracles.

These objects are…

• The mouth of the earth that swallowed Balaam
• The magical spring that gave drink to ancient Israel
• The mouth of the talking donkey of Balaam.
• The Noahide rainbow
• The miracle manna desert food that fed ancient Israel during the wilderness Sojourn
• The staff by which Moses performed signs and wonders in Egypt
• The worm cut the rock of the altar, not a blade, an instrument of death
• The alphabet, or script of the Torah’s Hebrew
• The writing, that is read by the active reader, supplying dots and meaning to an all consonant text. [Prof. Faur, forthcoming]
• The public tablets of the public, unchangeable and freedom giving law.

Several critical ideas are recorded in this list…

• God does not tinker with nature. What appears as a miracle is, upon inspection, part of the creation plan.
• Reading changes the visual to audible on the twilight of creation. The Torah was given to beings who could read, give vowels and meaning to sounds.
• Sounds are not merely heard, they are read
• In the first third, we see changes in nature, in the second changes for Israel, and in the third, ad hoc adjustments, damaging=20 demons, Moses’ grave, which no Man dug, as well Abraham’s grave, and the divine tongs that were used to fashion human tongs. Rabbi Obadia of Bertenoro argues that our oral Torah is saying that nature is stable, a condition of free choice. Only the first six days of creation are not natural; miracles do not enchant reality; humans, reading God’s world, enchant reality with Torah. Habad believes that the world is enchanted, like fundamentalist Baptists. Note that demons were made after and not before man.

For Judaism, the book was written to be read and to create the world; for pagans, books are written to frighten and control people lest they read. Black slaves in the 1850’s were not allowed to read. Reading makes us holy because reading engenders thinking, thinking stimulates acting, and the acts commanded in reading the word of God makes the reader free.

 

The Midrash tells us that the Sodomites would take their guests and if they were small, they stretch the bodies as in a wrack; those who are tall get cut down to size. This Midrash does not reflect the simple sense of Scripture. What is the rabbinic teaching telling us?

The Genesis narrative tells the reader that the city of Sodom was sinful, and reports that the pagan hospitality code was violated by the Sodomites who would sodomize Lot’s guests. Like Homer’s Cyclops, who eats Odysseus’s sailor/guests, the Sodomites violate the regnant moral code of that time. And like Agamemnon who, at Aulis, sacrificed his daughter, Iphiginia, after killing a sacred deer and suffering the ire of the goddess, Artemis, Lot would offer his daughters to the rapacious crowd. In a society of Sodomites, Lot’s fate is to assimilate faulty values. We recall that in the Gilgamesh epic, the killing of the bull of heaven, angering Ishtar who sought revenge upon Gilgamesh and his buddy, Enkidu. Gilgamesh was spared, Enkidu was condemned to die

Abraham’s God asks for a sacrifice, Isaac, but really wants the dedication to make the offering, not the offering itself. Artemis and Ishtar are goddesses who want blood. Greek and Mesopotamian heroes are powerful and egotistical. In pagan society, one size fits all; people are seen as things and are stretched and cut down, tortured to conform.

Abraham seeks out guests and his greatness is expressed in goodness. By being fanatically decent, he encourages individuality, creating moral agents. Religions that have powerful heroes that are cutting down and stretching subjects to fit it deny the image of God because the god that they imagine is themselves. Torah, the word of the Lord, sanctifies individuals by allowing the cultivation of the moral voice.