In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

This line is so familiar and iconic, that you probably didn’t even notice when your own chumash said something else entirely. If you’re using the Hertz chumash, you’re excused; that’s precisely how it begins. Whereas:-

Artscroll says:

In the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth – when the earth was astonishingly empty, with darkness upon the surface of the deep…

NJPS says:

When God began to create heaven and earth – the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep…

They both understand the opening verse in agreement with Rashi and Ibn Ezra, who both contend that here the word בראשית means “the beginning of”, not just “the beginning”. Still, these medieval commentators were potentially influenced by the science of their day, and certainly by the vowels on the Torah text, which were first written down only a few centuries before them. (Had the Masoretic scribes written בָראשית, the reading “In the beginning, God created…” would be clear. Instead, the Masoretic vowels seem to indicate “in the beginning of” or “in a beginning”, as the LXX translates.) Yet, it makes sense that the translation בראשית ברא אלהים is introducing the Bible’s whole first chapter, which concludes with ויכולו השמים והארץ (“the heaven and the earth were finished”).

We already see from this that a good translation takes account of fiddly grammar, textual context, and cultural context. Seeing as none of us are native speakers of Biblical Hebrew, translations are a very important part of how we understand the bible, among other essential Jewish texts.

Never mind tricky words like תהו and בהו and תהום (which are tricky because they are rare nouns from rare roots, with abstract meanings). Instead, take the common, simpler words שמים “heaven” and ארץ “earth”.
If we instead say “God created the sky and the land”, it means something subtly different. Through the word heaven, the reader views the action from a distance, either a transcendent heaven, an abode of gods; or what Jenny described as “a sort of cosmological David Attenborough, sunrise breaking over the globe viewed from a spaceship”. But with “sky and land”, the reader is firmly planted in the middle of the action of creation.

Not only is “sky” a plausible translation; Ibn Ezra – mediaeval grammarian par excellence – states “השמים: בה”א הידיעה להורות כי על אלה הנראים ידבר” (i.e. the definite article “the” indicates the visible shamayim); but also, the word sky didn’t mean “sky” when it first arrived in English. It came from Old Norse round-about the 13th century and meant “cloud”, and slowly took the place of the native word heofon. The word “heaven” and its ancestors have been used in all English translations of the first verse that I could put my hands on; but even as late as the famous King James Version in the first decade of the 17th century, the word didn’t necessarily imply the transcendence we now associate with “heaven”.

At least as problematic is the word “firmament” still used by the Artscroll Chumash. Who here has used the word “firmament” in conversation? In legal proceedings? In academic papers (excluding those about cosmology)? Who here knows what it means? The Hebrew word רקיע, which it translates, comes from a root meaning to beat metal, or to tread, or to spread out. The (not-so-new) New JPS translation gives the word “expanse”, but it was probably once understood as an arched physical surface, a curved metal sheet bearing the upper waters, on which stars would appear.

In reality, translators try to write translations that are accurate and readable. (Translation theory describes a readable translation as transparent, in that there should be no clue that a text was written in a foreign language.) While it is certainly possible to create translations that are neither faithful to the original nor pleasant to read – and some have placed Artscroll’s earlier works in that bucket – the two are usually in a trade-off.

Seeking to translate a text very literally will often produce something barely readable. However, when it comes to bible translations, some popular literal translations have instead just introduced new terms and turns of phrase into English, like passover and scapegoat from William Tyndale’s 16th century translation.

On the other hand, I thank Wikipedia for the following rather poncey quote from John Dryden (1631-1700):

When [words] appear … literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they should be changed. But since… what is beautiful in one [language] is often barbarous, nay sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author’s words: (’tis enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate [devalue] the sense).

When I think of translations that sacrifice accuracy for – in this case – singability, I think of the Barry Sisters.
For those unaware of two of the most celebrated klezmer singers of the 20th century, Merna and Claire Bagelman became Minnie and Clara Barry on the stages of New York, singing Kosher classics like:

tzeina tzeina tzeina tzeina
habenaut ureina chayaleem bemowshava

But they liked to add another verse for their audience without a working knowledge of Hebrew. However, instead of a literal translation like:

Go out, go out, go out, go out
Go out all the girls
and see the soldiers in the town.
Do not, do not, do not, do not,
do not hide away from a son of valour,
an army man!

No; instead they offer the following reinterpretation of the song:

tzena tzena tzena tzena
sing a happy song and celebrate this happy day
tzena tzena tzena tzena
come and join us; sing a hora
dance- the night away (whoop up)

Perhaps already by their rendition’s release in 1961, the original lyric wasn’t so politically correct. Or perhaps they deemed it unpoetic.

To that extent, when considering the art of translation, we should also factor in its purpose. For example, bible translations benefit from familiarity; after all, the congregation needs to know what’s being referred to in a sermon. This may result in large slabs of King James Version’s fossilised translations being pulled into new editions of the bible text, despite the fact that the language used in that version no longer means the same thing.

We have already mentioned “firmament”. Another important case is Kohelet’s “vanity of vanities! all is vanity!”. The word “vanity” only recently lost its primary meaning of worthlessness and futility, and now it is mostly used for self-regard. The Hebrew word הבל means “vapour”, which is not the same as the “futility” Artscroll uses. Rather, vapour carries the sense of something insubstantial and fleeting, impossible to grasp. Perhaps for ease and perhaps for familiarity, the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation simply adopted “vanity” and other fossilised King James translations.

Another concern is acceptability: a certain bible translation might need to be socially acceptable, and theologically acceptable. The Aramaic targum of Onqelos, for instance, is famous for trying to lessen the anthropomorphism of God found in the Hebrew text. If you’re watching closely next week you will notice that in investigating the Tower of Babel the Hebrew states וַיֵּרֶד ה (Gn 11:5), literally “God descended”; but Onqelos renders it ואתגלי ה (“God was revealed” or “God appeared”).

Social acceptability might mean euphemism is used instead of literal translation. It is hard to know whether bible texts still use the phrase “Lord of Hosts” because it is the familiar fossilised translation of King James, or because it is now more socially acceptable than “Lord of Armies”.

In other cases, the bible text and its masoretic notes already provide the euphemism,
so much so that when in chapter 4 in this week’s parasha, the text states, האדם ידע את חוה אשתו, most English editions copy it literally: “Adam [or the man] knew his wife” [or, perhaps, “his woman”]… In the words of Monty Python, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?

Nowadays, some bibles are getting with the times and the changing ideas of social acceptability, and offer less prudish alternatives: now, Adam alternately “had relations” (NASB), “had sexual relations” (NLT), “lay” (NIV), or “made love to” (GOD’S WORD) his wife Eve. I can’t help but mention the so-called Bible in Basic English, which says “And the man had connection with Eve his wife” [wtf?] which is arguably far from being either readable or accurate, but is certainly not basic English! It certainly seems to be an example of going too far in making the translation socially acceptable.

The idea of accuracy or faithfulness to the original is also complicated because a single expression might have multiple meanings. The translator might choose to convey one meaning clearly, or they might try to retain the range of ambiguities in the original word.

If you reopen your Artscroll siddurim to page 12, you’ll find a prominent word that is difficult to translate. In Biblical Hebrew, עולם apparently always indicates “remote time” or “ages” or perhaps “eternity”. This allows for allows for expressions like לעולם (“forever”, or “for an age”, or “until a remote time”), מן העולם ועד העולם (“from the remote past to the remote future”), לעולמים (perhaps “for many ages” or “for past and future ages”). [Other biblical expressions like עם עולם and חרבות עולם suggest that it is not strictly a reference to “eternal”.]

In later Hebrew, perhaps under the influence of Aramaic, עולם takes on the meaning “world” or “universe”; and the word תבל which once meant the same fades out of common usage. The poets who authored bits of our siddur could then play with the two shades of meaning, hovering between time and space. Is עולם הבא a “world to come”, or a “time to come”?

We should get back to page 12. Take a look at the first couple of lines: אדון עולם אשר מלך בטרם כל יציר נברא. If you had the choice to translate the first two words either as “Master of the world” or “Master of time”, which would you choose? The context seems to favour “time” in my opinion. Is there a translation that could get across both the sense of space and time? Perhaps that is why both the new siddurim we are considering (Koren/Sacks and Expanded Artscroll) use the same translation, “Master of the Universe”. So unfortunately, we can’t use that case to distinguish between them.

In short: Although some translations are certainly more accurate and more readable than others, ultimately, translations will change the way you understand a text. They are, effectively, interpretations, and one interpretation is never enough.

Going back to where we started, with בריאת עולם (whatever that might mean), if we refuse the common interpretation of “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”, we can understand that this description of creation is not necessarily the materialisation of everything that is and will come to be.

Once again I refer to Ibn Ezra, who says the root ברא, translated as “created”, need not mean להוציא יש מאין (creating something out of nothing). Each morning we cite Isaiah in calling God יוצר אור ובורא חושך (“fashioner of light and creator of darkness”), but if darkness is an absence of light, it cannot be created ex nihilo. Instead, Ibn Ezra suggests, the word ברא means to decree and to delineate.

The real creation is in what comes afterwards, the chain of events, מעולם ועד עתה, from ancient past to now. In our parasha, ברא is used in the past tense, but elsewhere, such as in this week’s haftara or in Psalm 146, God’s actions in creating the heaven/sky are described using what Biblical Hebrew grammarians call participles, but Modern Hebrew speakers think of as present tense. (This is in fact an interesting passage to compare between Artstroll (p. 71) and Sacks’ (p. 75) translations, but it is difficult to do so in a speech.) The tense of these words does not translate easily into English; it is not the same as present or progressive tense that we understand from modern Hebrew. Yet it could possibly be understood that God is maker of sky and land and sea, and continues to make them, as with guarding truth, doing justice for the oppressed, or feeding the hungry in Psalm 146.

Perhaps this chain of creation is also why the book of Genesis so frequently says “begat”, listing generation after generation, each person individuated by name (except, admittedly, for the women…). This idea of cycles and perpetual regeneration is borne out in the word תולדות (often translated as “generations”) used to introduce sections of Genesis, but also perhaps in the Hebrew conception of עולם, in contrast to the far-off, smooth and continuous sense of English eternity.

The Mishna in Sanhedrin (4:5) midrashically learns the value of an individual life from the story of Cain and Abel:

אינו אומר קול דם אחיך אלא “דמי אחיך” (בראשית ד:י), דמו ודם זרעייותיו… לפיכך נברא אדם יחידי בעולם, ללמד שכל המאבד נפש אחת, מעלים עליו כאילו איבד עולם מלא; וכל המקיים נפש אחת, מעלים עליו כאילו קיים עולם מלא.

It does not say “the voice of the blood of your brother”, rather “the voice of the bloods of your brother”, referring to his blood and the blood of his descendents… Therefore Adam was created alone in the world, to teach that each person that destroys one life, we consider it as if he destroyed a full world; and each person that sustains one life, we consider it as if he sustained a whole world.

It is interesting that in listing the children Cain, the torah specifies “Yaval was ancestor to those with tents and herds”, and “Yuval was ancestor to players of lyre and pipe” and “Tuval-cain forged instruments of iron and copper”. So despite the Rabbinic understanding that this entire family line was wiped out by the flood, still they may each leave a heritage. And as Nachmanides says many times when commenting on the stories of Genesis, מעשה אבות סימן לבנים, “the deeds of the fathers are a sign to the sons”; so the ages of the past are like the ages of the future.

So while we rest on delineations set out from the beginning of creation, we needn’t be restrained by them; we each have the opportunity to act in the image of God, and to create a world, an age, an eternity.

Shabbat shalom.

What has been is what will be, and what was done will be done again, for there is nothing new under the sun.

Though often deeply profound, the words of Kohelet can be depressing.

Some have said that’s precisely why Ecclesiastes is read on Sukkot; to temper its joy, and its famed frivolity the likes of which led to the institution of the mechitza in Second Temple times.

Others connect the book to the theme of transience and fragility we feel in our sukkah, not certain if we’ll be eating dinner with a garnish of rain; how we sit there despite the prefabricated hut convulsing around us, like it did during Thursday’s breakfast. We are vulnerable to the elements, and are forced to understand that the world is turning and life will pass quickly.

A poetic approach might say that the book was written in the autumn of Solomon’s life, and so its connection to sukkot is seasonal; a chassid could suggest a theme of letting the divine shine into the mundane.

I, a lover of words, will note that the common translation of Kohelet as “assembly” is a synonym for one translation of Shemini Atzeret, “the eighth, a day of assembly”. Now, the pedantic could point out that we read it on shabbat of Sukkot, not always Shemini Atzeret; I would point right back and say: that it’s always read on the eighth day by Yemenites, Italians, some Sefaradim and others.

The custom to read Ecclesiastes on this festival was a late one, first evidenced in the 12^th century Machzor Vitry. As well as being the last book to join our festival rite, it was apparently the last book to join the Bible. The Mishna in Yadayim makes clear that there was debate regarding whether Kohelet was to be canonised, but Beit Hillel essentially forced the Sanhedrin to include it, against the will of Beit Shammai.

What makes Kohelet so controversial?

The Babylonian Talmud in Shabbat relates that the Sages wanted to destroy Kohelet because of numerous internal contradictions, but did not, for its beginning and its end are words of Torah; which presumably justifies the 11 chapters in between.

The Midrash complains about its heretical advice: “Rejoice in your youth, … and walk in the ways of your heart” is the opposite of the shema‘s “do not turn after your heart and your eyes.” Once people are given free rein to follow their desires, the midrash claims, “לית דין ולית דיין”, there is no law and no lawmaker! But Kohelet completes its passage: “for all these things God will bring justice.” And once again, it is redeemed.

The Tosefta brings the argument of Rabbi Shimon ben Menasia, that Kohelet is the unholy word of man, in contrast with the almost-as-controversial Song of Songs which was divinely inspired (written with רוח הקודש).

But Ecclesiastes isn’t the only thing we read today that has been criticised for its unholy authorship.

We recited the prayer of Geshem by Eleazar ben Kalir, instead of simply declaring: God is the One who makes the wind blow and the rain descend. This piyyut begins by introducing an angel named Af-Bri whose role it is to bring the rain, and whose name is derived from a midrashic reading of a verse in Job.
The Artscroll Siddur cites Rashi for the midrash, which makes little sense as the piyyut‘s traditional attribution precedes Rashi by centuries. For all we know, Eleazar Kalir may have come up with this interpretation himself.

Modern readers of such a piyyut may be worried by the latent polytheism in seeking an angelic intercessor whilst otherwise acclaiming the One God in the opening of the Amida. Medieval Rabbis were concerned just the same. Certainly, it is hard to tell in such poetry: what is authentic doctrine, and what is newly introduced by the poet who, Maimonides exclaims, was often not a scholar?

Piyyut, a cousin of the English word poem, can broadly refer to all Hebrew poem-prayers. They are often given purpose-specific names such as selichot, yotzerot, hosha’not, kinot, zemirot; they count among their ranks such distinguished members as Yigdal, Adon Olam, El Adon, An’im Zemirot, Vechol Ma’aminim, etc.

Piyut is certainly a poetic art-form, though quite different from the proverbs of Kohelet. For example, Solomon’s words: “a name is better than scented oil, and the day of death than the day of one’s birth”. This mini-poem condenses deep meaning into a single line with beautiful chiastic structure and alliteration. Listen to it: טוֹב שֵׁם, מִשֶּׁמֶן טוֹב; וְיוֹם הַמָּוֶת, מִיּוֹם הִוָּלְדוֹ.

Though it retained some of these literary methods, the Kaliric piyut focused more on innovative allusions to text and tradition within witty patterns of rhyme, rhythm and acrostic, a little reminiscent of poetry in the Book of Psalms. In today’s Prayer for Rain, we asked to be blessed in the memory of each of our patriarchs, though none of them are named explicitly. Instead, the poet alludes to water in each of their lives, beginning each line with the next letter of the alphabet, and ending it with “מים”, water. The piyut was a new genre in which to transmit tradition, and a new form for Jewish poetic expression.

Yet this early genre of piyut came under fire, not only for its creation of divine intercessors; its out-dated world-view; and its anthropomorphism of God as is replete in An’im Zemirot, but also because its riddling language was often so obscure as to be unintelligible. Avraham Ibn Ezra was outspoken against Eleazar ben Kalir’s predilection toward rare words – even made-up words – and poor Hebrew grammar, which became the foundational prototype for many later paytanim. Admittedly, I do find Ibn Ezra’s poetry (e.g. Ki Eshmera Shabbat), much much easier to understand.

There are other reasons these poems were controversial; the Babylonian Geonim saw it as a custom of the Land of Israel, intruding into the space of the statutory, standardised prayer service.

Maimonides blames piyutim as “the major cause for the lack of devotion and for the lightheartedness of the masses which impels them to talk during prayer” (though I think the evidence disagrees with him). These additions to the prayer, coupled with a chazan basking in the spotlight, made the service unbearably long (much like my divrei torah). Kohelet was quoted at them: “It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools!”

Yet these poems brought creativity into the prayer service. In fact, they only became popular once the regular prayers became more fixed. A curious example: it was once common to use the texts of related berakhot interchangeably. So in the Cairo Geniza we find a siddur where the blessing “ולירושלים עירך” in the Amida is replaced by “רחם נא ה’ אלהינו על ישראל עמך”, which we know from birkat hamazon; after all, both end by blessing God, “rebuilder of Jerusalem”.

But the Amida text was eventually fixed, and the piyutim began to appear. The piyut library soon also settled; very few great piyyutim were composed after the thirteenth century. With printing, congregations could select from a wider choice of poems, but eventually certain songs found permanent homes in the liturgy, and others disappeared.

To expand on the Artscroll Machzor:

A few piyutim that are omitted by the vast majority of congregations have been included in an appendix which can be read with a magnifying glass, a dictionary of obscure Hebrew words, a PhD in medieval Hebrew literature and a two-week speed-reading course we call sliches (סליחות).

We have seen that there was a time when the bible was in flux, with books like Kohelet in question; later it was the regular prayer service, and after that, its poetic supplements. So it may be no surprise that the waning of piyut in 19^th century Europe came with the flourishing of the cantorial and choral art in the synagogue, and the creation of a new song, vastly distinct from the previously chanted nusah. This change, too, has been hotly debated.

So history repeats itself. What will our next avenue of controversial creativity in public prayer be, when, somehow, the music stops?

Thus said Kohelet, “What has been is what will be, and what was done will be done again.”

Perhaps it’s not so depressing after all.

Its selection of laws to repeat and to add apparently shows different priorities to other books that have been noted by commentators since the time of its writing.

An act of intepretation which interests me is the placement of the commandment “thou shalt not cook a kid in its mother’s milk” (Deut. 14:21).

From earlier references (Exod. 23:19, Exod. 34:26), it is unclear that this law has anything to do with food. There, the statement is one in a list of laws which are not greatly connected one to another; its immediate context is pilgrimage, offerings and first fruits. (The second context is almost identical to the first, only occurring after Moses’ receipt of a second set of tablets.)

The Deuteronomy passage focusses on forbidden foods: only some animals are appropriate to be eaten; and carcasses of animals which have not been slaughtered are not to be. And then it states “do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk”, just as it did in Exodus.

(Curiously, in all cases, the statement ends a section.)

From the Exodus context alone, one would not assume that this commandment had any real impact on diet. It may only relate to sacrificial ritual: perhaps it was a pagan or idolatrous practice; Seforno suggests that it was assumed to help one’s crops or flocks. It could have particular relation to pilgrimage: Ramban and Ibn Ezra suggests this was a time that young livestock would be present with lactating mothers; Rashbam suggests that the festive season was a time for meat. Or it may be a mere ethical matter: Rashbam and Ibn Ezra compare the law to not killing an animal and its offspring in one day, and to sending off the mother bird before taking her eggs.

Unsurprisingly, many commentators pick up on the law’s food context in Deuteronomy. Certainly, the rabbinic understanding of the law as a prohibition of eating or cooking meat and milk together is only really afforded validity by it’s citation here. Perhaps this also explains the famous statement that this law appears three times “once to prohibit eating, once to prohibit benefit, and once to prohibit cooking” (BT Hulin 113b, 115b; Rashi on Exod. 23:19); the Halakhic midrash could only take one mention to refer to food, because in Exodus this doesn’t seem to be the point.

In a way, Jewish approaches to the bible often treat it as a commentary to itself. The midrash constantly connects multiple passages in ways that may have not been obvious at first, and hence treats the relationship between two apparently disparate texts.

The interpretative act apparent in the text of Deuteronomy — as a repetition of the law — allows us to see these connections within the bible, without first applying the easily-distorted lens of midrash and later commentaries.

There is plenty to talk about in this week’s parasha, but with less than a month now to the oft-neglected Tu Bishvat, I thought we could discuss agriculture. Well, not really. This week’s parasha contains the first promise of a “land flowing / gushing / oozing with milk and honey”.
However you choose to translate it, the phrase automatically conjures a delightful image in anyone’s mind (if they’re not dieting or lactose intolerant).

The cream of milk and the sweet of honey are tied in blissful sensation to our childhood. With milk comes the comfort of a mother’s breast (but we’ll leave Freud out of this). And honey is the sweetness of being a child. It has been used in many ceremonies to mark the beginning of a child’s schooling by tuning them to the taste of torah. We know of a German tradition since the 12th century where children were first taught the Hebrew alphabet on Shavuot, and would lick honey off the letters. Some communities maintain similar customs today. In a similar vein, Moroccan-Israeli singer Shlomo Bar sings of five-year olds in the Atlas Mountains acting out a marriage to the torah, licking the aleph-bet off a piece of tree-bark. These traditions may both be influenced by Ezekiel’s prophecy (chapter 3) where God feeds him a megillah which he finds to be sweet like honey. But the traditional association with childhood is pertinent. And apparently, some web site claims that Jews consume 20% of the world’s honey! (But we know that 68 percent of all statistics are made up.)

This is beside the point, as honey (דבש, devash) mentioned in the bible usually (with a few notable exceptions) refers to that squeezed from dates or figs, not bees, just like the cognate Arabic word dibs.

So a land flowing with milk and honey is really one with agricultural abundance, one with healthy pastures and sumptuous fruits. Towards the end of the Gemara in Ketubot, our sages describe the abundance of the Land of Israel anecdotally: Rami bar Yechezkiel relates seeing goats eating from fig trees in Bnei Brak; the figs dripped their honey, which mixed with milk dripping from the goats, and thus he declared: “a land flowing milk and honey!” Yakov ben Dostai walked ankle-deep in date honey for three mil from Lud to Ono. And so on, each tale more extravagant than the last…

Quite apart from this sensationalism, commentators on our parasha emphasise that a land flowing with milk is one good for livestock. Ramban suggests that good milk requires good air, good water, good pasture; and these don’t necessarily coincide with good land for fruit, so we are also promised devash, fruit with its nectar gushing forth. Seforno emphasises the sense of copious livestock and nourishment, pleasant and fulfilling; Ibn Ezra looks at the verse in context, contrasting the promised land of goodness and breadth with the suffering in Egypt.

But we find this rich and sweet description of Israel too good to be true. While in our passage, the promise of bounty is clear, Devarim occasionally depicts a more temperamental land that responds to the worthiness of its inhabitants. Indeed, the first biblical descriptions of Eretz Yisrael tell of famine in three successive generations, and as we know, the tales of our forefathers are a sign of things to come (מעשי אבות סימן לבנים).

In Parashat Korach, Datan and Aviram throw the expression back at Moses, blaming him for bringing the people from a land flowing with milk and honey to instead kill them in the wilderness. Isaiah (7:21-22) also uses the image ironically, suggesting that the land and its people will be in such a poor state of desolation, that they will be sustained on only cream and honey.

Over the centuries, olim from the Jewish diaspora, such as Ovadia of Bartenora and the Ramban have sent back dark reports of desolation upon arriving in Israel, rather than the wondered suggested by the biblical promise. Things have improved a lot in the last century, but the land’s agriculture is increasingly limited by a shortage of water, and the newspaper reminds us constantly that not everything is peachy.

It is often debated within our community, in schools and in youth movements, whether to use utopian images of Israel when teaching children or talking to the wider world. Judaism reminds us often that it is important to have images of perfection and idealism at the back of our mind,
but it more importantly stresses looking at and acting within a harsher physical reality. For example, though the performance of mitzvot may bring us to a world to come as is often attributed in the mishnah, we focus on the mundane acts themselves, and their inherent deed, rather than their reward.

Returning to the pedagogic debate, we should be willing as a community to discuss both the importance and the problems inherent in Israeli society and its actions, not to mention the many challenges of modern halakhic Judaism. In order to help us understand an eventually ideal world, the bible first inverts the image, with slavery in Egypt and with desert wanderings. It emphasises that to get to that destination, there is an arduous journey, an exodus.

I hope that we can all travel together – in open discussion of morality and necessity, debating tradition and modernity, and in positive action – towards that ever-present but elusive honey-flowing promised land.

Shabbat shalom.

Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not acquit one who takes His name in vain.

Rashi follows the translation of Onkelos in suggesting that the repeated “taking in vain” is once an injunction against those who swear by the Name falsely, and once against those who swear needlessly.
((*dibrot:”Commandment” might be a misnomer here, as the Hebrew term for commandments is clearly mitzvot (or huqqim, mishpatim, etc.) The Ten Commandments are only ever referred to in the bible as aseret hadevarim (Ex. 34:28; Deut. 4:13), or in later writings as aseret hadibrot. Devarim would often mean “words” or “things” or “utterances” or “statements”; its root means “to speak”.*))

Judaism abounds in traditions of protecting the sanctity of Divine Names in writing, and avoiding them in speech except when necessary. In fact, (להבדיל) the Rabbinic manner of protecting the divine name has taken on characteristics commonly found in linguistic taboo associated with swearing (the other type), euphemism, or political correctness.

Taboo is a favourite topic of many sociolinguists, largely because it is a lot of fun to explore trends in how people refer to reproductive organs and things you can do with them, but also because it is one of the most lexically dynamic parts of language, tied into a number of social factors. Terms are often invented or borrowed with a changed meaning to cover up things we do not want to say plainly. Some euphemisms then take on similar negative or embarrassing connotations (ask any American who’s worn a “roots” sweater in Australia), or can alternatively broaden to become a more generic swear-word, losing the particularly dirty connotations it once had (arguably like “screw”). Numerous options (with greater or lesser offensiveness) for replacing some forbidden concept come and go in trends.

In a curious case, the word “hanged” once was appropriate for hanging a painting or laundry, but eventually got associated exclusively with the stigmatised criminal on the gallows. Eventually “hung” was invented as a past/passive participle (by analogy with “sang”, “swam” or “rang”) for these everyday uses in order to steer clear of the otherwise negative connotations the word might bring. In short, stigmatisation provokes avoidance.

In the world of political correctness and etiquette, terms change regularly and could even cycle: a term that was once used to avoid offense itself may become offensive and is replaced, and so on, or on the contrary, a term that was once offensive may become an identity symbol and return to vogue! Just consider the variety of terms (and their fashion trends) used over the last hundred years to refer to dark-skinned people descended from Africans who live on the North American continent. It is this continuous leapfrogging change (and possibly the unwarranted offense) that generates a contemporary distaste for excessive political correctness or for the outlawing of “foul language”.

Like much foul language, the Divine Name (YHWH) is a “four-letter-word” (להבדיל). Indeed, its academic title, “the Tetragrammaton” means exactly that! Masoretic texts of the bible commonly print the vowels for the word “Adonai” (a name or title for God derived from “my lord”) mismatched upon the letters of the ineffable name as a hint not to say the letters as written, but “Adonai” instead, in order to keep well away from needless utterance of the Name, or indeed any utterance at all.
((*consonantal:In general, only consonants are written as letters in Hebrew, and the bible text was originally transmitted consonantally. Vowels, usually dots below or above the letters have been written in according to traditional pronunciations since at latest around the 9th century.*))((*qere:Other words in the bible that are not to be read as they are written are treated in similar manner, with strange vowels squeezed in on the word, and usually the replacement word to say written in the margin. The case of the Divine Name where the reader is expected to understand the change without the replacement letters in the margin is supposedly known as qere perpetuum.
The Masoretic text also uses this “qere and ketiv” on occasion as a means of euphemism, indicating that the word “שגל” (“have sex with”) should be read as “שכב” (“lie with”). See for instance Deut. 28:30. This also indicates changing trends in offensiveness: it would seem that at the time the text was written, the word was acceptable, but at some later point it was seen as excessively obscene and replaced.*))

A few verses on from our quotation above, God indicates that “in each place that I cause my name to be mentioned I will come to you and bless you.” Sifri (as quoted by Rashi) reads this midrashically to say that one is not permitted to utter the Divine Name (שם המפורש) except in the abode of the divine presence (the tabernacle or temple), when the priests alone use it to bless the congregation. So we see that the Jewish prohibition on saying this divine name became much stricter than the simplest implications of prohibiting false or needless swearing as mentioned in the Ten Commandments.

In possible contradiction with this midrash, the biblical prophets often use the formula “Adonai YHWH”. In these cases, the Masoretic text marks the ineffable name with the vowels of “Elohim”, another name or title for God derived from the word “god”, rather than using the usual replacement and thus saying “Adonai Adonai”. This seems to indicate to me that at least in prophetic times, the Name was clearly effable in prophecy, or at least probably not “effed” as “Adonai”.

Even if the “inneffable” tetragrammaton was not often uttered, certainly its abbreviations “Yo” and “Yah” and “Yeho” and “Yahu” were once used all over the place. Take the word “halleluyah” (“Praise Yah”), for instance, or many popular biblical names. It is curious that they have been allowed to remain and be used in non-holy contexts. Also, the full divine name (all four letters) does not appear in personal names, possibly precisely as a protection from the profanity with which personal names can be used. These abbreviations could then also be understood as guards around the Name, although we have no real evidence that this is their purpose.
((*elephantine:Interestingly, the Elephantine Papyri that refer to a Jewish temple on their island refer to it as the temple of YHW and not of YHWH (Cowley AP33). Because the documents are essentially profane, this may be further support for such an idea. This idea could also be refuted easily through profane documents that utilise the full name. I might investigate this a little.*))

Contemporary Judaism avoids uttering these abbreviated names by replacing a letter with a “k”. For instance, my name, Joel, should probably be uttered as “Kokel”! Some might say that names are excluded because there is something inherently holy about a person’s name, although they are allowed to be uttered in the bathroom, unlike names of God (and unlike “Shalom”).
((*elokim:I imagine this practice may have originated with elongating the leg on the letter ה in אלהים when writing it. Writing divine names has often been more of a problem than saying them, for the reason that the writing could then not be destroyed, so אלהים would naturally be defaced as אלקים to indicate that the paper it was written on was not to be held sacred. My guess is that this trend spread to turn אל into קל and יה into קה.*))((*shalom:While the major divine names that cannot be erased are certainly not to be uttered in the bathroom, Jewish law also guards against is the saying of the word “shalom” at certain times. The word can mean “peace”, “completeness”, “hello”, etc., but it is also understood to be a divine name. (See Jdg. 6:24 which could be read as Gideon calling God “Shalom”.) As such, it is not meant to be said inside the bathroom, or as a greeting to a friend before greeting the Almighty with prayer in the morning. (See BT Shabbat 10b; Shulchan Aruch Orach Chayim 89:2.)*))

While “Adonai” replaces the tetragrammaton in prayer and reading from scripture, from early Rabbinic times this too was not used excessively, and the word “Hashem”, literally “the name”, might be uttered in its place. Ultimately, “Hashem” expanded in its generality and became equivalent to “God” rather than an equivalent to the Name which it replaced. Most would think of Hashem as a being rather than a name; or it is a name, rather than a placeholder for the name. Historically, “Adoshem” was also used, a strange (and nonsensical) mix of “Adonai” and “Hashem”, although it was discouraged by some halakhic authorities.

There are many circumstances where it is disputed which is better to use: “Adonai” or the more innocuous “Hashem”. Among them are the zemirot or songs which are sung at the shabbat table. It could be argued that the mere use of these names in the lyrics would indicate that the poet intended them to be said, and more especially because the song “Tzur Mishelo” only rhymes if you say “Adonai” and is a syllable short with “Hashem”.

Sometimes even “Hashem” is avoided. Some people sign the corner of a page they are about to begin writing with ב”ה (b”h), standing for “with the help of Hashem” (בעזרת השם). I recall having been told that the reason some prefer the Aramaic בס”ד (bs”d), “with divine assistance” (בסייתא דשמיא), is because it lacks a reference to God’s name, or at least the letter ה (He) which is found in God’s name. To a similar end, many refuse to write “God” in ordinary writing (on paper intended for disposal), and use G-d instead. These both are protections very distanced from any violation of the direct prohibition, but are certainly popular in practice.
((*bsd:For what it’s worth, Hebrew Wikipedia details:

Parallel expressions to בס”ד include בע”ה for בעזרת השם, or ב”ה for ברוך השם, or בעזהי”ת for בעזרת השם יתברך, while Yemenite Jews write at the head of their letters לק”י for לישועתך קויתי ה’. The reason for the increased preponderance of בס”ד would seem to be that the letter He that hints to God is not present, and hence a page upon which בס”ד has been written does not require sacred disposal (geniza), but can be thrown into an ordinary bin without any concern for defiling the Name. Most halakhic authorities do not consider abbreviations containing the letter He to restrict ordinary disposal of the page.

*))

But Hashem is not alone in Rabbinic names for God. Just as with euphemism, a number of names or titles are given to avoid those considered forbidden, although likely also in the manner of the numerous honorific titles bestowed upon royalty. We have, each popular in different times and uses: Hamakom, “the place”; Hakadosh Baruch Hu, “the Holy One, Blessed is He”; Ribono Shel Olam, “Master of the World”; Hashem Yitbarach, “The Name, may it be blessed”; or even Der Eybishter; and surely many others.

The manner in which Judaism treats the taboo of the Divine Name is not far from other linguistic taboos, in the sense that guards are heaped upon other guards as each new expression becomes too familiar and adopts some of the sacred forbidenness of the original taboo. The same mentality that argues that euphemism is unnecessary, political correctness futile, and public use of swearing reasonable may similarly propose that the rabbinic shields over violation of the third commandment create excessive censorship to the point of absurdity. But, of course, for the Rabbinic tradition, this practice of lexical layering is not just a matter of linguistics, sociology, and over-legislation, but is a fulfillment of the imperative to build fences around the commandments (in this case one with great force), and to guard their keepers from any plausible misdeed.

You have seen that which I have done to Egypt, and how I have carried you upon the wings of eagles, and how I have brought you to me.

How should we understand the allegory of being carried on eagles’ wings?

The commentaries, of course, differ in their descriptions, and so I review some:

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan

I, God, carried you on clouds—as if on the wings of eagles—from Raamses.

Rashi quoting Mekhilta

The eagle carries its young on its wings, unlike the remainder of birds that carry them between their talons, saying ‘I will receive the attacker’s arrow, and not my child’. So too did God protect us with his angel; and the clouds, rather than the Israelites, received the arrows of the Egyptians.

Rashbam

I brought you on dry land through the Red Sea, just as eagles spend their days in full flight, and you came unharmed under the eagle’s watchful eye.

Ibn Ezra

I, God, carried you from Egypt as if you were upon the wings of eagles, who soar higher than all birds; who fear no other, while others fear them; who brood carefully over their young; who spread their wings as I have spread my cloud over you for protection.

Seforno

I brought you on a path that no man could traverse alone, as an eagle takes its [flightless] young at great heights. And this I did to separate you from the abominations of the Egyptians in order that you should be mine.

Or Hachayim

See my great love for you, as a father feels love for his child, that I even lightened the labour of your legs, setting the clouds beneath you… And God uses these expressive words to awaken Israel’s love (fear is much easier to teach, and God only hints “that which I have done to Egypt”).

Being taken upon wings means: protection; being set apart; parental love.

Within the Jewish liturgy, we also find God being likened to a winged bird as the carer of Israel. The memorial prayer, el malei rachamim begins thus:

O God full of mercy, who dwells upon great heights: make proper comfort upon the wings of the Godly presence … for the soul of [...] who has departed to his world…

Tragically, the world loses many great people, and for some time feels it has been cheated. Dave Burnett always seemed destined to be the eagle, to take others upon and under his wings, and to soar through many worlds of dedicated activism. The many he has touched, and the many more he may have touched if given the chance, only deepens the wound. Hopefully, they too have learnt and some will grow to lead, to fly, themselves. Tragedy brings a need to believe that Dave’s soul will find its nest of heavenly shelter; it will certainly find a cherished home in the memory of the thousands that already miss him.

יהי זכרו ברוך

For instance, the hand-under-thigh oath that we see between Eliezer (?) and Abraham, and between Joseph and Jacob. Rashi takes this practice as akin to swearing on a bible: Eliezer and Joseph swore on the place of circumcision. Ibn Ezra’s comment is not clear on whether “thigh” is mere euphemism as Rashi takes it, but claims that:

It was the law (custom?) in those days for a man to put his hand under the thigh of authority … as if to say: behold, my hand is under your authority to do your will. And this is still the law in India.

I am not aware of any such custom today, unlike where Ibn Ezra reports that the Hindus are vegetarian. Pharaoh commands that Israel and his sons should reside in Goshen, as “those who herd sheep are an abomination to Egypt.” Rashi says that for Egyptians, sheep were sacred. Ibn Ezra says that the Egyptians of that time were vegetarian, and he compares them to Hindus that “do not eat and do not drink all that comes from a feeling creature, even today.” Later he expands:

India and Egypt are both descendants of Ham, and each relates to the other… The [Egyptian] practice [of vegetarianism] did not change, until the Ishmaelite Kingdom overtook them, and they acquired its religion.

There he also notes that Indians believed “one cannot speak with God and live,” which, he argues, the Egyptians also would have held and hence doubted Moses.

These comments may say a lot about Ibn Ezra’s image of ancient sociology and anthropology. He seems to see the Hindus as continuing an ancient tradition that the Egyptians and Jews had a share in.

Ibn Ezra might have find his respect for Indians in Hindu mathematical and astronomical scholarship. He is known for bringing Hindu numerical and arithmetic concepts to some of the minds of Europe, and for translating to Hebrew some early Arabic works based on Hindu astronomy. A few times in his bible commentary he mentions the Indians with regards to their study of the stars and reckoning of times.

Rabbi Ibn Ezra did a lot of travelling in his life, living off the hardly dependable sales of his intellectual produce. Yet, while there is a tradition that he visited India, academics have endeavoured to prove otherwise. Possibly even more remarkable, then, is his oriental intrigue that shows itself on occasion in his religious commentaries. (Was Ibn Ezra a Jubu?)

Jacob, innocent of any knowledge of his wife’s theft, is outraged by the accusation and basically exclaims:

Nu! So search us. If, somehow, you can find one of us has taken your gods, that person shall not live!

This harshness is from personal upset, but is also theological: Jacob could not understand one of his family having the motivation to take possession of forbidden idols.

The question is: was Rachel’s early death a result of this “curse” from Jacob?

Rashi thinks so. Ibn Ezra of course disagrees:

There are those who say that [Jacob's declaration] is a prayer [or curse], and for this reason Rachel died on the journey. If so, such a person should let me know who cursed Pinehas’s wife [who also died during childbirth].

Ibn Ezra, prefers simple literal readings, and needs not see the patriarchal stories as supernatural. And usually I would agree with him, enjoying critical, plain readings of the text and his precise attention to language.

But in this case, I think Rashi is right: although the stories are told quite separately, the text clearly juxtaposes Jacob’s promise that the perpetrator will not live and the fact that he did not know of Rachel’s theft, implying that he was unwittingly cursing her. The story of her stealing the teraphim nearly seems meaningless without this accidental curse. And it just adds to the unlucky image of Rachel’s life: replaced at the wedding by her sister; barren and jealous; eventually with one son, but dying giving birth to the second, in the great irony that it was her loving husband’s curse in innocence that sentenced her to death. Indeed, this does not prove Ibn Ezra wrong, but it is easy to lose the bigger picture and its narratives when focussing on literalities.

Possibly the ambiguity is intentional, and the link between the two narratives is meant to be irresolute. It represents the uncertainty of fatalism and causality and irony.

Do others out there think Ibn Ezra is right on this one and the two narratives are unconnected? Siding with Rashi? Prefer the intentional ambiguity?

Ibn Ezra first blasts those who try to make the text not as harsh to the Jewish matriarch, saying they project their own ideas onto God. He then brings the commentary of a Karaite that he was not particularly fond of:

ובן אפרים אמר שהוא חסר אל”ף, וטעמו ארוכות. והוא היה חסר אל”ף.

And Ben Ephraim said that it (“weak”, rakot) is missing an Aleph, and should mean “long [eyes]” (arukot). Yet he was [the one] missing an Aleph!

Ibn Ezra here not only implies that Ben Ephraim had a screw loose, but that if he indeed was missing an Aleph, he would be a בן פרים, a “son of cows”!

Definitely up there in the top-ten.

• Here I venture to speak to my Lord, I who am but dust and ashes… (הנה-נא הואלתי לדבר אל אדני ואנכי עפר ואפר)
• Let not my Lord be angry if I go on… (אל-נא יחר לאדני ואדברה)
• And again: Here I venture to speak to my Lord… (הנה-נא הואלתי לדבר אל אדני)
• Let not my Lord be angry if I speak even this last time… (אל-נא יחר לאדני ואדברה אף-הפעם)

Appropriate language to speak with God? Maybe, but when it comes to negotiations with men, the relationship is more equal. Abraham discusses the purchase of a burial site for his late Sarah in chapter 23, and from both parties involved, the speech introduction is usually “my lord, hear me” (אדני שמעני) or “hear me, my lord” (שמעני אדני) or “no, my lord, hear me” (לא אדני שמעני) or “but if you will hear me” (אך אם אתה לו שמעני). Listening skills are in high demand, but…

… the story is not that simple. The text strangely introduces a few of these portions of direct speech with “וידבר פלוני את פלוני לאמר לו” (“And so-and-so spoke with so-and-so saying to him”). But why do we need this “to him”? In this passage and throughout the bible, “לאמר” (“saying”) indicates the beginning of direct speech.

Notably the word “to him” (לוֹ) can also be read “if only” (לוּ), the same word we find when Abraham says “if you will hear me” (לו שמעני), which is one of the few places in the passage the text doesn’t redundantly add “to him”.

One of the other times when “to him” is absent is when Ephron says “no, my lord, here me”. There is no לו (“to him”) there, but there is לא (“no”). Both are read lo!

What I may dare suggest is moving the ends of some verses that currently end with “saying to him” so that they end with the usual “saying”. Then change the vowels of “to him” to “if only”, and we end up with a much more poetical dialogue, and even a pun:

• A to Hs: I am a resident alien among you
• Hs to A: If you will hear us, my lord (Lu shema’enu adoni)
• A to Hs: (no intro, but a bow)
• E to A: No, my lord, hear me (Lo adoni shema’enu)
• A to E: But if you will only hear me (Akh im ata lu shema’eni)
• E to A: If you will hear me (Akh im ata lu shema’eni)
• A takes out the chequebook.

A very gentilic conversation, but a beautiful almost-homophonic play between the harsh “no” and the mannered “if only”. If only it was there in the masoretic text (before I changed it), people might see the beauty and poetry in this back-and-forth.