The Illuminated Fortress and Abraham

I was struggling in my Midrashic Literature class yesterday (probably all of the stuff on my mind that is stressing me out -- I could be elsewhere than class doing important things), but there was one thing that really struck me as fascinating and personally significant. It's the text of Genesis Rabbah 93.1-3, which is based on the text from Genesis 12:1-3. Here's the text!

And the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your native land and from your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and it will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse him that curses you; and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.

And the Lord said to Abram, "Take yourself from your land, etc..."

Rabbi Isaac opened, Listen, lass, and look, and incline your ear, and forget your mother and your father's house (Ps. 45:11)

Rabbi Issac said, This is like someone who travels from place to place, and sees a certain fortress illuminated (lit. burning, doleqet). He said, Is there no master (lit. ba'al) of this fortress? Above him, the master peeked out and said to him, I am the master of this fortress.

Thus it was when our father Abraham said, Would you say that this world has no master? The Holy One, Blessed be He, peeked out and over him and said, I am He, the Master of the World. So shall the King desire your beauty, for he is your Lord. So shall the King desire your beauty. To beautify you in the world, and to bow down to him. Hence, and "the Lord spoke to Abram." (The beautifying text comes from the end of Psalm 45, actually.)

Now, this translation isn't the exact translation that we used in class (I fudged with a version I found online), but it works.

The interesting thing about this midrash is there are really two ways that we can take this. If we read it as the fortress being ablaze, as in literally on fire, then we can understand why the wandering guy would say "who's running this joint?" Essentially, the wanderer wants to know why there's such chaos and madness at this fortress because if there were a master, it wouldn't be ablaze. Then we understand Abraham, as he sees the chaos and madness in the world and must ask if there is a master to the world, to which G-d says "Yo, it's me!"

The second reading is if we understand doleqet as illuminated. The wanderer sees this glorious and amazing fortress and asks aloud to no one in particular, Who is the master of such amazing splendor and beauty? Then we can understand Abraham's query of the world because he looks around and sees the creation and wonders who is the master of such an amazing and profound thing. Thus G-d answers and says, "Yo, it's me!"

Maybe I'm preferential to the second reading of the text, but I think it's probably the more likely because if you read it that way, then the explanation of the verse makes sense. We have to explain why G-d is speaking to Abraham. After all, when we look at Noah, it's explained that he was righteous out of all the men of the world. The text often explains WHY G-d chooses certain individuals (the prophets for example), but Abraham is just given through the genealogy and then it says that G-d spoke to him and told him to go forth. The big question is: WHY? Why Abraham? What'd he do to warrant G-d's command?

If we use the second reading, it's simple to understand! Abraham looks about, sees the splendor of creation without any prodding or pushing, and G-d recognizes that Abraham understands. It could be said, then, that Abraham is choosing the religion of HaShem, but it's more likely that they met in the middle. Abraham sees creation and is in awe -- he understands HaShem's beauty through the world around him. G-d sees Abraham seeing him and bam, G-d speaks.

I like this midrash for a simple reason: I see myself in Abraham. I didn't come to Judaism through knowing Jews or having had some significant Jewishly related experience. I developed my own set of beliefs outside of organized religion, convinced that I'd developed my own religion and set of beliefs. But really, once it was suggested -- based on these beliefs -- that I examine Judaism, I realized that this beautiful amazing way of life I envisioned was already there. In essence, I stood before the fortress saying "Who is the master of this place?" and there was G-d, waiting for me.

At any rate, I think this is a beautiful midrash. Which reading are you more inclined toward?

Each One of Us is a Snowflake, Blade of Grass, Etc.

I can't help but be absolutely obsessed with the texts on conversion lately. I'm working conversion into both of my papers for both of my classes that require papers. I never wanted to be that academic, who is a convert and throws herself into conversion study. It just isn't in my nature to do that. But as time has gone on, and I've realized how little is known about conversion by the Orthodox community (outside of the rabbis, that is), I've realized that maybe, just maybe, this could be a small calling. It wasn't uncommon when I was in Reform synagogues for half the congregation to be converts, but this is less likely in Orthodox communities, with more of the members being ba'alei teshuvah than converts.

When I was once-upon-a-time a member of a conversion group blog, there was a lot of debate over what makes a "Jew by choice" just that. We had many members of our blogging community who were born Jews, but considered themselves to have "chosen" Judaism instead of going a secular or uninvolved route as far as their Judaism. I never took offense to this understanding -- after all, I think all Jews should "choose" Judaism. But what it comes down to, and what the rabbis made very clear in their lengthy writings on the convert and how to approach the convert is that there *is* a difference between the born Jew and the righteous convert. The rabbis were always clear that there should be no distinctions -- once a convert converts, it is as if they were Jews their whole life (and in truth, the convert is born with a Jewish neshama!). But in truth, their responsibilities in the community are different, their histories are different, their lifestyles are different, and ultimately how they effect change in the future and past of the Jews is very different. One can't ignore the differences; it's ignorant and harmful to do so, I think. (Just as much as it is difficult and harmful to ignore politics while pursuing the conversion process in the U.S.!)

Here is just one case where I see this. Feel free to discuss in the comments whether you agree with my opinion!

Numbers Rabbah 8:2 (From MyJewishLearning.com)

The midrash immediately explains that God's love for converts is a response to the love expressed by the converts themselves:

"'The Lord loves the righteous; the Lord protects converts' (Psalms 146:8). The Holy Blessed One said, 'I love those who love Me.' This is as it says, 'I honor those that honor Me' (I Sam 2:30). 'They love Me and so I also love them.'"

"Why does the Holy Blessed One love the righteous? Because they have neither inheritance nor family. Priests and Levites have an ancestral house, as it says 'House of Aaron, praise the Lord. House of Levi, praise the Lord' (Psalms 146:19). If someone wants to be a kohen (priest) or a Levite, one cannot because one's father was not. But if someone wants to be righteous, even a non-Jew can, since that is not dependent on ancestry."

The midrash continues with a parable about a stag that attaches itself to the king's flock. Daily, the king instructs his shepherds to take care of the stag, and they ask the king why he cares so much about this one animal.

"The king responded, 'The other animals have no choice; whether they want or not, it is their nature to graze in the field all day and to come in to sleep in the fold. Stags, however, sleep in the wilderness. It is not in their nature to come into places inhabited by man. Is it not to a sign of this one's merit that he has left behind the whole of the wilderness to stay in our courtyard?' In like manner, ought we not to be grateful to the proselyte who has left behind his family and his relatives, his nation and all the other nations of the world, and has chosen to come to us?"

This parable responds to the unvoiced question/critique of the native Israelite: "Why does the Torah provide all of these protections for the convert? Does God care more about them than about me?" The midrash responds, "Consider what the convert has given up."

This section of the midrash concludes:

"Accordingly, God has provided the convert with special protection, warning Israel to be very careful not to do any harm to converts, and indeed, it says, 'Love the convert' (Deuteronomy 10:19)… Thus God made clear safeguards so that converts might not return to their former ways [which God fears they might do if native Israelites treat them poorly]."

Although some tannaitic midrashim voiced suspicions that the convert might fall back or that the convert might not entirely abandon his past beliefs, this later text places responsibility for backsliding converts squarely upon the native Israelites who disregard the protections that God put in place.

I think it's interesting that it is the responsibility of the born-Jewish community to maintain the derekh for the convert. Why? As a convert, you have to have the real oomph to put yourself through the process, a true and devoted passion for being Jewish and doing Judaism. Why should the community be expected to hold you up? Why should the community be the ultimate downfall for the convert? Is this offering a clear difference between the born and the converted Jew? You see, this is set up as such because in Judaism, community is essential!

Vespasian and the Western Wall

I've spent the past week and a half stressing out, intensely, about this semester. My stress has largely been in regards to my Talmud class, a subject which I'm well informed on the outer limits of, but of which I have spent little time in the middle. I arrived home today exhausted after spending five hours looking at archives and compiling information on various states and their populations. I ate dinner, and took a nap. I woke up, still tired, stressed out, grumpy, frustrated. I purchased a coffee, came back to my room, and dove in to papers by scholars about reading rabbinics as history, whether the Talmuds contain hardcore, one-place and one-time history, or whether people read them wrong. Perhaps, as it says, the stories tell us more about the people than about the events. Who knows. The papers were sort of dry, sort of uninteresting, very much of the ego-stroking quality. In other words, very dense materials. I decided to put aside some of the academic papers for a packet on Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai and the episode involving his interactions with Vespasian (or Titus?) and the inevitable arrival of the rabbi in Yavneh, which became the hotbed of rabbinic activity in a post-Destruction of the Temple period, where the Oral Torah became what we know of it today.

But, I'll blog about the episode -- and the four different accounts from BT Gittin 56b, Lamentations Rabbah 1:31, and two versions from The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan -- at another time, because it's incredibly fascinating the subtle and obvious differences between the accounts and how the rabbi approached Vespasian, how Jerusalem fell, how the rabbi and his followers ended up in Yavneh, and the tales therein. But what I wanted to blog about quickly, before I throw myself into bed, is a take on why the Western Wall still stands to this day. It's pretty interesting. This portion comes from Lamentations Rabbah after Vespasian had subdued the city. At this time, he

assigned the destruction of the four ramparts to the four generals, and the western gate was allotted to Pangar. Now it had been decreed by Heaven that this should never be destroyed because the Shechina abode in the west. The others demolished their sections but he did not demolish his. Vespasian sent for him and asked, "Why did you not destroy your section?" He replied, "By your life, I acted so for the honour of the kingdom; for if I had demolished it, nobody would [in time come] know what it was you destroyed; but when people look [at the western wall], they exclaim, "Perceive the might of Vespasian from what he destroyed!" He said to him, "Enough, you have spoken well, but since you disobeyed my command, you shall ascend to the roof and throw yourself down. If you live, you will live; and if you die, you will die." He ascended, threw himself down and died.

An interesting take on why we still have HaKotel HaMa'aravi today, no? There are a few other morsels worth noting, which you can find at this Kotel website. Oh, and for good measure, the photo credit goes to me!

On that note, I'm heading to bed. Midrash will float about my head as I hopefully fall fast asleep. Tomorrow? I get the chance to delve into the topic in class.

Back in the Saddle: Midrash!

I'm back to it. School starts tomorrow, and my first class is Wednesday morning. So, a pile of books at my side, I'm reading up on Talmud and Midrash and Hellenism and ... lots of relevant stuff. I've come across a few things and, being me, decided to share because I find them absolutely interesting. I hope you feel the same. Just as a note, midrash is sort of an explication on a verse or idea. If you think about it, gemara, the elaboration on the mishnah (Oral Torah) is a type of midrash, right? Right.

+ The moment we got to Israel last month on Birthright, exhausted from an 11-hour plane trip, we were bused to a nature preserve to plant trees. I'd forgotten the reason for doing this, the necessity for planting trees and the biblical explanation for why Israel is so big on the creation of forests and the growth of the tree population, until just now when I was reading in "Back to the Sources " a Midrashic explanation behind Leviticus 19:23, "...when you enter the land, you shall plant all manner of trees." Aha! There's the reason. The midrash, in turn, says that the reason for doing this first upon entering the land is to mimic or reenact G-d's work in the creation of the world. Brilliant! And here's my effort, I did as the Torah said (even if begrudgingly with exhaustion, bad hair, etc., heh).

Note the Barack'N in the Free World tee from KosherHam.com!

+ The second thing in this specific chapter on midrash that struck me discusses the people turning to the rabbis after terrible destruction, seeking guidance, and out of this being born midrashic texts, including Lamentations Rabbah. The following is an example from that text, where the "rabbis use the common comparison of the Torah to a marriage contract (ketubah in Hebrew as a means of offering hope to a people in despair."

"This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope." -- Lam. 3.21

R. Abba b. Kahana said: This may be likened to a king who married a lady and wrote her a large ketubah: "so many state-apartments I am preparing for you, so many jewels I am preparing for you, and so much silver and gold I give you."

The king left her and went to a distant land for many years. Her neighbors used to vex her saying, "Your husband has deserted you. Come and be married to another man." She wept and signed, but whenever she went into her room and read her ketubah she would be consoled. After many years the king returned and said to her, "I am astonished that you waited for me all these years." She replied, "My lord king, if it had not been for the generous ketubah you wrote me then surely my neighbors would have won me over."

So the nations of the world taunt Israel and say, "Your God has no need of you; He has deserted you and removed His Presence from you. Come to us and we shall appoint commanders and leaders of every sort for you." Israel enters synagogues and houses of study and reads in the Torah, "I will look with favor upon you ... and I will not spurn you" (Lev. 26.9-11), and they are consoled.

In the future the Holy One blessed be He will say to Israel, "I am astonished that you waited for me all these years." And they will reply, "If it had not been for the Torah which you gave us ... the nations of the world would have led us astray." ... Therefore it is stated, "This do I recall and therefore I have hope." (Lam. 3.21)

Wow. Brilliant, no? And appropriate for the current state of things. If ever one wonders if we've been abandoned, we merely return to this -- and to the Torah/covenant -- and know that it isn't so!

A Stream of Consciousness Post

My coat -- a fluffy, bright pink Lands End piece -- makes me feel like that kid in "A Christmas Story." I walk around, arms stiff, like a penguin, unable to move or rotate my head, but feeling quite warm nonetheless.

I'm not really sure what this revelation has to do with the bigger picture, namely that I'm feeling all out of sorts in a number of ways, but it seemed like a good segue from point A to point B, wherever point A might have been. And suddenly, as I write this, I realize I had no idea how to spell "segue" prior to now (why did I think it was segway?).

I've traded a relatively painless life for a life of uncertainty and difficulty. I went from schluffing around an economics department at one of the country's most prestigious schools, making good money and saving up, but being subjected to emotional and verbal assault on some ocassions, to academia, where I spend every day wondering when my fingers will find their way to the keys so that I might put something down on paper to impress the holy prophets -- that is, the professors. On winter days like this, I'm reminded of sitting for hours on end at the Coffee House in Lincoln, Nebraska, during my undergraduate years, studying biblical Hebrew and preparing editing marks for the school newspaper (which, it seems, is where most of the excitement I remember about school arose from). I'm also reminded of my time in Washington D.C. when I was working at the Washington Post, when I'd get out of work at midnight and schluff over in the cold to my favorite little coffee shop haunt in Dupont Circle to read the week's parshah and dish out a d'var Torah for the blog. I miss that kind of dedication where I provided the reader of this very blog with something Jewishly substantial as far as the Torah went.

It's something about this time of year makes me want to crawl into coffee shops for days and days, drinking mochas and running into old friends, conversing about tout le monde. Unfortunately, my university is devoid of any coffee shops like what I'm familiar with -- couches, dank corners, intellectuals waxing poetic over a chess board. The coffee shops on campus are all loud and filled with people and aren't really coffee shops at all, they're just places that sell coffee that happen to be inside various campus buildings. The ambiance, which I found so inspiring during my undergrad, just isn't here.

I called my little brother last night, to get peace of mind about how he was coping with the whole dad thing. He managed to brighten me up, like he always does, with his infinite wisdom and interesting outlook on life. When I asked him how he was feeling about things, he aptly responded, in the Edwards way, "There's always something bad happening around here, I'm just used to it." That, folks, is wisdom. 

I've signed up for classes next semester (though the large chunk of graded work for this semester still has yet to be penned), and I'm quite excited about them. I think they'll offer more intellectual stimulation than this semester managed to, though, I think it will be a much more difficult semester. My classes? Of course there will be Hebrew, there will also be a class on Holocaust cinema, but it will be focused on the cinema of the decade at the end and following the Shoah, specifically in Europe and Russia, and I think it'll provide some interesting insight into little-known film. And then, my third class will be Talmudic and Midrashic thought, which is a graduate seminar that should be advanced to the point of forcing me to get really damn good at my Hebrew really damn fast.

To be honest, I'm nervous about writing these two papers. It's sort of going to set the stage for the next three semesters, I think. Will I impress the professors with my Judaic studies prowess and mad writing skills? Will they be wowed with my punctuation and verbage? My choice of words (I'm anti-big words and anti-thesaurus, for what it's worth)? My rhythm and flow? I think, to be sure, that I'm far too worried about what people think of my writing. When I tell people I was a journalism major they always say "Oh, you like writing?" forgetting that there's a whole editing -- not to mention design and photographic -- component to journalism. I was never a writer in the journalistic sense, but I've always been a writer. A poet, anyway. I like to think I have a sense for how something is meant to sound and how the words are supposed to be paired.

But enough about me.

I pose a question for my readers of the academic or religiously curious persuasion: Recently in my Bible course we were discussing the Trinity and Jesus/G-d. Now, I can't seem to get a really straight answer about how Christians reconcile the following things. Assume the following are all accepted as true.

1) G-d is all powerful and cannot suffer

2) Jesus is G-d

3) Jesus is flesh, and thus able to suffer

So how do Christians reconcile the idea that G-d cannot suffer but Jesus does suffer if Jesus is G-d (which he has to be, otherwise it's idolatrous)? I'm asking this seriously, as an academic. It seems to me that all explanations boil down to the following: "We cannot know, for G-d's ways are mysterious to man." And that, unfortunately isn't good enough for me. Sure, there's a lot in Judaism that people throw into the same category, but at least we argue about it!

Anyhow, for this week's parshah, Chayei Sarah, check out G-dcast.com , and have a good Shabbos!