The Philosophy of the Bible as Foundation of Jewish Culture: Philosophy of Biblical Law 9781618110480

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BIBLE AS FOUNDATION OF JEWISH CULTURE

The Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BIBLE AS FOUNDATION OF JEWISH CULTURE PHILOSOPHY OF BIBLICAL LAW

Eliezer Schweid Translated from Hebrew by Leonard Levin

Academic Studies Press Boston 2008

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schweid, Eliezer. [Filosofyah shel ha-Tanakh ki-yesod tarbut Yisra’el (Biblical law). English] The philosophy of the Bible as foundation of Jewish culture. Philosophy of biblical law / Eliezer Schweid ; translated from Hebrew by Leonard Levin. p. cm. — (The reference library of Jewish intellectual history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-934843-01-7 (alk. paper) 1. Bible. O.T.—Philosophy. 2. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Jews—Civilization. 4. Jewish law—Philosophy. 5. Bible. O.T. Deuteronomy—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.

BS645.S39213 2008 221.6—dc22 2007051563 Copyright © 2008 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-934843-01-7 (alk. paper) Book design by Yuri Alexandrov Published by Academic Studies Press in 2008 145 Lake Shore Road Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

Contents

Preface A Fresh Reading — Freeing Ourselves of Old Stereotypes . . . . . . . . . . vii The Complementarity of Law and Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God Exodus from Slavery to Freedom as a Legislative-Political Act: The Process of Formation and Establishment of the Kingdom of God in His People . Institutionalizing the Ideal of “Kingdom of God” in the People . . . . . . . The Return to Slavery, and the Dilemma of the Difference between the Law of Slavery and the Law of Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The ideational background for realizing the transition: What is the difference between the law of slavery and the law of freedom? . . The Gradual Descent of the Kingdom of God from the Mythic to the Historical Plane: From Prophecy to Wisdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Idea of the Covenant and the Basic Values of the Law of Freedom and Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judicial Justice as Covenantal Principle — Its General Application, and the Concept of Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Justice as Fulfillment of the Vision of Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . The Problem of Poverty and the Ethic of Neighborly Love . . . . . . . . . Statutory Law that Regenerates the Egalitarian Basis of Social Justice . . . The Structure of the Kingdom of Priests: The Problem of Authority and Cooperative Functioning of All The Powers of Government . . . . Between Israel and the Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. 1 . 9 15 22 24 34 45 54 60 66 72 80

Chapter 2. Deuteronomy (the “Second Torah”) — The Beginning of Renewal of the Written Torah as Oral Torah The Difference between Moses’ and Joshua’s Leadership, and the Perpetuity of Moses’ Leadership in the People . . . . . . . . . 97

Deuteronomy’s Uniqueness as Embodiment of Moses’ Leadership of the People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Difference between Moses and Joshua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Problem of Succession Continued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deuteronomy as Oral Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Legislative Innovations in Deuteronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Transition in Deuteronomy from the Plane of Myth to History . . . . When, and By Whom, Was Deuteronomy Written? . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Transition from the “Scribes” to the “Men of the Great Synagogue” .

. . . . . . . .

101 103 105 108 112 115 121 131

. . . . . . .

138 149 151 155 162 166 172

Chapter 3. The Partnership of Man and Woman in the Law of Moses and the Prophets Equality and Inequality of Persons in the Reciprocal Relation of Individuals and the Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Reciprocal Relation of Individual and Community . . . . . The Hierarchical Relation of Man and Woman . . . . . . . . . . Man’s Acquisition-Ownership of Woman . . . . . . . . . . . . . “Acquisition of Relationship” versus Acquisition of Property . . How is the husband’s “acquisition” of his wife expressed? . . . Woman’s autonomy in the light of the Torah’s legislation . . . . The Difference Between the Wife’s Status vis-à-vis her Husband and Her Status as Mother vis-à-vis her Children . . . . . . . The Myth of Mankind’s Creation as a Couple in God’s Image: Destiny, Sin and Redemption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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. . . . . . .

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. . . . . . 176 . . . . . . 179

Chapter 4. Universalism and Particularism — Openness to Foreign Cultures, and Isolation from their Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Preface

Eliezer Schweid’s Philosophy of the Bible: Volume I recounted the narrative of the Torah from the Creation and patriarchal period through the descent of the Israelite clan into Egypt. This forms a fitting prelude to his articulating the philosophy of Biblical law in the present volume. The Biblical depiction of idolatrous Pharaonic despotism provides a negative backdrop, against which the Sinaitic legislation of a just society can be properly appreciated in literary-historical context.

A Fresh Reading — Freeing Ourselves of Old Stereotypes One obstacle to our living dialogue with the Bible is the fact that the Bible has been cited for so long in support of rigid, authoritarian establishments. Like Spinoza in his Theological-Political Treatise, Schweid bids us to shake loose of such stereotypes and to grasp the potential for seeing radically new messages in this oldest of books. Politically, the Bible offers (as the American Founding Fathers realized) strong supports for the doctrine of popular sovereignty, as every regime described in the history of ancient Israel was described as having been established with the consent of the people. Socially, it offers a message of egalitarianism, especially in the radical redistribution of wealth through the institution of the Jubilee, to which Schweid gives extensive analysis and consideration. It is hardly an accident that two modern political movements found mottos ready at hand from the 25th chapter of Leviticus. The American Liberty Bell borrowed from there its inscription: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” And the Zionist Jewish National Fund based its vii

The Philosophy of the Bible as Foundation of Jewish Culture

doctrine of the social ownership of land on the verse from the same chapter: “And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity [for the land is Mine, says the Lord].” More broadly, Schweid helps us to appreciate the broader message of the narrative of creation and settlement of the land in its ecumenical and planetary dimensions. The world is God’s creation whose resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and needs-fulfillment of all peoples and all creatures equally — a message very much relevant to the ecological crisis facing us all at the present time. Schweid pushes this reinterpretation further in re-examining the Genesis narratives of the relations of men and women, so often cited as a factor in justifying Western misogyny. He paints a more complex picture, in which equality and inequality are intermingled, and in which the “acquisition of property” is limited and balanced by a countervailing “acquisition of relationship” that leaves the central core of the personality intact in its autonomy. He also refers us to the visionary passage in Hosea 2:18-25, in which the restoration of full equality between man and woman is the keystone to the redemption of nature itself.

The Complementarity of Law and Narrative By setting his examination of Biblical law within the framework of the interpretation of Biblical narrative offered in Volume I, Schweid suggests new ways for drawing on Biblical materials in a discussion that has been taking place about the relation of narrative and law both in Jewish tradition and more generally. The poet laureate of early Zionism, Haim Nahman Bialik, initiated this discussion in 1916 with his essay “Halachah and Aggadah,”1 where he suggested that narrative and law are like water and ice, the same substance in a state of fluidity or solidity. More recently, the late legal philosopher Robert Cover advanced these issues considerably in his celebrated article “Nomos and Narrative,”2 where he pointed out that law and narrative often tug in opposite directions within the Bible itself, and that the law itself has 1

2

viii

Bialik, “Halachah and Aggadah.” translated by Leon Simon, in Revelation and Concealment: Five Essays, Ibis Editions, Jerusalem, 2000. Cover, ‘Nomos and Narrative,” in Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1993.

The Philosophy of the Bible as Foundation of Jewish Culture

doctrine of the social ownership of land on the verse from the same chapter: “And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity [for the land is Mine, says the Lord].” More broadly, Schweid helps us to appreciate the broader message of the narrative of creation and settlement of the land in its ecumenical and planetary dimensions. The world is God’s creation whose resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and needs-fulfillment of all peoples and all creatures equally — a message very much relevant to the ecological crisis facing us all at the present time. Schweid pushes this reinterpretation further in re-examining the Genesis narratives of the relations of men and women, so often cited as a factor in justifying Western misogyny. He paints a more complex picture, in which equality and inequality are intermingled, and in which the “acquisition of property” is limited and balanced by a countervailing “acquisition of relationship” that leaves the central core of the personality intact in its autonomy. He also refers us to the visionary passage in Hosea 2:18-25, in which the restoration of full equality between man and woman is the keystone to the redemption of nature itself.

The Complementarity of Law and Narrative By setting his examination of Biblical law within the framework of the interpretation of Biblical narrative offered in Volume I, Schweid suggests new ways for drawing on Biblical materials in a discussion that has been taking place about the relation of narrative and law both in Jewish tradition and more generally. The poet laureate of early Zionism, Haim Nahman Bialik, initiated this discussion in 1916 with his essay “Halachah and Aggadah,”1 where he suggested that narrative and law are like water and ice, the same substance in a state of fluidity or solidity. More recently, the late legal philosopher Robert Cover advanced these issues considerably in his celebrated article “Nomos and Narrative,”2 where he pointed out that law and narrative often tug in opposite directions within the Bible itself, and that the law itself has 1

2

viii

Bialik, “Halachah and Aggadah.” translated by Leon Simon, in Revelation and Concealment: Five Essays, Ibis Editions, Jerusalem, 2000. Cover, ‘Nomos and Narrative,” in Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1993.

Preface

a narrative in which it is grounded, and a history by which it evolves. Schweid’s reading of the Biblical account suggests that though the law is purportedly legislated by God, it is not imposed arbitrarily, rather it arises organically out of the narrative context that starts with God’s creative purpose and develops through the stages of human history, which itself exhibits a reciprocal working out of divine and human purposes. This leads to an understanding of the basis of ethics that lies midway between the two starkly contrasting positions offered first in Plato’s Euthyphro and subsequently through the debate over autonomy in Western philosophical ethics. On the one extreme is “heteronomy,” the view that God is wholly in charge and may arbitrarily lay down whatever laws God wants. On the other extreme is radical “autonomy,” the view that only human reason can legislate ethics, regardless what any god or other authority may dictate. In Schweid’s reading of the Bible, this is a false dilemma. Divine good and human good agree in principle. The “good” is a dynamic notion, arising out of the development of the created world, set in motion by God, with humanity as God’s surrogate, ruling the world by God’s appointment, subject to God’s purpose, for the benefit of all God’s creatures. The danger of radical secularity is illustrated by the Babel story, that in the absence of divine authority, human beings will fall victim to the lust for power, exalting one individual’s good at the expense of others. The Biblical law is to be understood not as arbitrary, but as the attempt to fashion a society based on fairness and justice, in which all members are accorded the respect due to creatures of a common God, with equal rights to dignity and fulfillment, working together within the framework of God’s purpose for all humanity. The divine-human mutuality in the formation of law is further highlighted in Deuteronomy, where — as Schweid points out here — the basis is laid for the law’s continual human development on its traditional foundation, a process that has continued throughout the whole postBiblical period in the rabbinic Oral Law. What is the real basis of social and political authority in the view of the Biblical authors? What does a truly just society look like? What is the destiny of man and of woman, and how is the relationship between them to be established in fairness and in love? Schweid’s original answers provoke us to formulate our own. Leonard Levin, November 2007, New York

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BIBLE AS FOUNDATION OF JEWISH CULTURE PHILOSOPHY OF BIBLICAL LAW

Chapter 1

The Law of the Kingdom of God Freedom, Social Justice and National Sovereignty in the Legislation of the Mosaic Torah

Exodus from Slavery to Freedom as a Legislative-Political Act: The Process of Formation and Establishment of the Kingdom of God in His People According to the narrative in Exodus and Deuteronomy, the legislation of the Mosaic Torah was given in stages during the whole journey of the people in the wilderness, from their departure from Egypt up until the beginning of the conquest in Trans-Jordan. This process had its first roots in the task of organizing the people to prepare for the Exodus. This phase is of great importance in two respects: 1. There is evidence here that Moses relied on the democratic tribal tradition of his people, that was preserved during the whole period of their tenure in Goshen, including the years of enslavement. It is told that when he returned to Egypt from his sojourn in Midian: Then Moses and Aaron went and assembled all the elders of the Israelites. Aaron repeated all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses, and he performed the signs in the sight of the people, and the people were convinced. When they heard that the Lord had taken note of the Israelites and that He had seen their plight, they bowed low in homage.

The speaker in this passage is Aaron, the first-born of Amram, who is known to the gathered congregation as one of the honored elders of the tribe of Levi. He presents his brother Moses as God’s prophet, and Moses announces his mission and performs the signs just as God had commanded him. The believing people express their agreement unanimously by bowing low in homage. These gestures are expressions of trust in the prophetic mission of Moses and Aaron and recognition of them as leaders who shall represent the people to their ancestral God 1

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

who has heard their outcry, and to Pharaoh. Moses is careful to obtain the agreement of the people to his plan — to go before Pharaoh and his conclave of magicians — before embarking on it. We are reminded that God commanded him to do this at the revelation of the burning bush. This means that God, who sent Moses, did not consider it enough that He sent him. The people’s trust in Moses and their agreement to his mission are also prerequisites to its success. Therefore only after the people’s agreement is Moses duly authorized to stand before Pharaoh and to demand of him: “Let my people go.” In order to understand Moses’ further activity in Pharaoh’s household, it is proper to emphasize that from Pharaoh’s perspective Moses and Aaron were the representatives and spokesmen of the Hebrew slaves, with authority to negotiate on their behalf for the easing of the conditions of their servitude. Indeed, Pharaoh insists that he “does not know the Lord,” even after the plagues have begun their course. But since he saw a danger to his land in the proliferation of these slaves, and since he could not suppress their tribal organization but was nevertheless dependent on their labor in building the cities and tending the flocks, he was forced to accept their representatives and to negotiate with them. Even when he refused their petition, he felt that he could not kill them or imprison them, and so Moses and Aaron were able to continue in their mission until they succeeded in intimidating Pharaoh through the plagues that only they knew how to bring on or dispel. 2. The awareness that the redemption in its negative sense — the removal of external constraints — is conditional on the participation of the people. To be sure, the people are not involved directly in the conflict, and once it is happening they are only required to believe and wait patiently for the walls of their prison to fall. The Exodus from Egypt was their own doing, something that only they could achieve, willingly and of their free choice, that no one could do for them. Nor was this easy. The people were not supposed to remain where they were, but only in a state of freedom, and to return to the same pursuits that they had prior to their bondage. Rather, they had to march out into the desert and prepare themselves there to enter a new land and conquer it with sword and bow from the nations of Canaan who now ruled it. Indeed, God did not lead His people to Canaan by the short route, through Philistia, because the people were not yet ready for war, but they did go out “armed” from the land of Egypt. (Ex. 13:17–18) They knew from the outset that once they arrived at their final destination, war was in store. Furthermore, they knew that positive action was required of them in order to adapt as an 2

Exodus from Slavery to Freedom as a Legislative-Political Act

organized people to conditions of life in the wilderness, and to prepare for the conquest of the land. This basic understanding was the underlying assumption of all the trials that Moses underwent with his people. God would only do that which was not in the power of mortal humans to do — to break the idolatrous regime, to destroy its mighty army, to find food and water for six hundred thousand people in the wilderness.1 But the positive action that is the essence of redemption was required of the people, to perform on its own by the word of God by the hand of His prophet Moses. This is the key to understanding the whole narrative of the episodes that befell Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness. This is also the key to understanding the democratic character of the regime of God’s governance that is based on the covenant. It is in accord with these guidelines and on the basis of respect for the communal tradition that Moses carried out his leadership from his first appearance onward. With the Exodus from Egypt he appeared before them for the first time as a commander and legislator in the name of God. On the eve of the slaying of the firstborn he again calls together the elders of the people, as the text states: “Moses then summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them…” (Ex. 12:21) He commands them regarding the paschal sacrifice as a step expressing symbolically the exodus from slavery to freedom: 3. The doorposts of the Israelites’ houses are marked with the blood of the sacrifice that will be offered on the eve of the exodus, so that the angel that slays the firstborn of the Egyptians will pass over their houses. 4. A lamb is slaughtered for each family. This act attests to freeing themselves of their fear of the Egyptians, for the sacrifice of sheep and goats was taboo to the Egyptians, who worshipped the images of these animals as gods. 1

3

Modern scholars suggest (in the absence of hard evidence) that the biblical account of the Exodus and wandering are plausible if one assumes greatly reduced numbers. The number of six hundred thousand makes sense as the number of male Israelites eligible for military service in the time of the DavidicSolomonic monarchy. It is reasonable to suppose that a few thousand Israelites may have experienced the Exodus from Egypt and wandering in the wilderness, and that their group narrative may have been adopted by the Israelite nation as a whole (much as the American nation has adopted the Pilgrim-Mayflower myth symbolically as its national tale of origin). Even so, the same moral point applies. The survival of “only” a few thousand in the Sinai desert for a generation must have called for an enormous amount of courage, resourcefulness, perseverance, and “luck” (or divine providence — whichever one chooses to call it is a matter of personal attitude and faith). (LL)

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

5. This was to be a communal meal in which all Israelites, rich and poor, participated alike. All would eat the meat of the sacrifice together with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Sitting together before God was an expression of equality and mutual responsibility among all the members of the people before God, as well as an inner demonstration of their freedom. 6. Moses established that this ritual of the paschal sacrifice was not to be a one-time event but a perpetual commemoration: “You shall observe this as an institution for all time, for you and for your descendants.” (12:24) To this stipulation, Moses again receives the agreement of the community: “The people then bowed low in homage. And the Israelites went and did so; just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.” (12:27–28) The next legislation occurs during the exodus, after it has begun (Exodus, Chapter 13). Appended to the command to perpetuate the ritual of the paschal sacrifice, the Torah adds a law connected to the rescue of the Israelite firstborn during the night when the firstborn of Egypt were slain. When the destroying angel passed over the houses of the Israelites who had performed the divine command, God fulfilled His word to Moses that Israel is God’s firstborn. In exchange, the people is required to sanctify itself to God by sanctifying its firstborn human sons as priests and its firstborn of the flock to God. This commandment confirms the symbolic meaning that was attached to Moses’ circumcision of his own firstborn son, when he was en route to Egypt to redeem God’s firstborn nation and bring it out to serve its God. The text then presents the legislation pertaining to the organization of the people on its way through the wilderness to its land and an ordered life as a free nation. At the first stopping-point on the way to the mountain of God, after the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, at Marah, the text notes: “There He made for them a fixed rule, and there He put them to the test.” (15:25) The details of the laws and rules that were given at Marah are not transmitted. Common sense suggests that the reference is to rules pertaining to the required accommodation to conditions of life in the wilderness, but it is important to pay attention to the continuation of the narrative, that contrasts Moses’ legislation to the order of life prevailing in Egypt: If you will heed the Lord your God diligently, doing what is upright in His sight, giving ear to His commandments and keeping all His laws, then I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians, for I the Lord am your healer. (Ex. 15:26)

4

Exodus from Slavery to Freedom as a Legislative-Political Act

The emphasis here is on observing the ways of uprightness and fairness, for they are the conditions of the people’s resilience and to withstanding the trials that are in store for them. Right after the legislation about sweetening the water in the desert, the law of the Sabbath is given for the first time in connection with the descent of the manna. (Exodus 16) Moses makes the satisfaction of the people’s needs in the wilderness contingent on the fair and equal distribution of God’s gifts — the water and the manna. God takes care to provide for every person in Israel a portion that will suffice for the day (like the poor man’s bread) and it is forbidden to gather for the next day in advance. The people are required to have trust in God that each day the provision will be forthcoming. This is an example of pastoral governance: the human flock feed together in the wilderness and are sustained by the generosity by which God provides for the needs of all. Each one eats until satisfied and has left over, without worrying for the morrow, for the shepherd will take care of tomorrow. But all this is on condition that the strong shall not take for themselves the portions of the weak, and everyone will be satisfied with eating to satiety from the abundance that will be enough for all in the proper measure. We shall show later that this is the model from which developed the standards of ethical rectitude and judicial fairness of the laws of the Mosaic Torah. The Sabbath, which all Israelites enjoy equally as the gift of God, free from labor, stands out as the utopian realization of this pastoral ideal in a society that once it arrives in its land will be a society of tillers of the soil. On the Sabbath, dominion over the land is suspended. It is forbidden to work it, and the human flock return to feed from it together, enjoying the divine gift that is given equally to all. All these pieces of legislation were inspired by immediate needs but also served as preparation for the major event that was the original goal of the exodus from Egypt: to serve God at the foot of the “mountain of God” from which Moses had been sent on his mission. The “service” at the foot of the mountain would be the initiation into the covenant with God that would transform the medley of separate tribes into a nation in the full political sense. Through this covenant, God’s sovereignty over the people would be consolidated, and He would descend to dwell in their midst, to be with them to lead them. But before this superlative mythic event, further organization of the community was required, this time in accord with its own tradition and by the advice of Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, to whom he transmitted a monotheistic tradition. 5

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

This story sheds light on the way that Moses understood his role as the prophet who transmits God’s instruction to his people: You represent the people before God: you bring the disputes before God, and enjoin upon them the laws and the teachings, and make known to them the way they are to go and the practices they are to follow. (Exodus 18:19–20)

These are Jethro’s words to Moses, and Moses accepts them in willing agreement. He must point the way to the mountain of God. He must represent his people before God and bring to Him the needs of the people and their (justified) complaints that bear on meeting their survival needs in the wilderness. But his principal task is to maintain patterns of law and justice among the people in order to preserve the peace of this human flock that feeds together along the way. Maintaining law and order, doing what is good and right in God’s eyes through willing acceptance of His commandments — all these are understood as the essence of a life of freedom. It is incumbent on Moses as the people’s leader to inform the people of God’s laws and to serve as a judge who implements them in their daily life. For this purpose he mobilizes the people (the “flock”, to continue the pastoral analogy). With the people’s consent he performs his judicial office from morning to evening: Next day, Moses sat as magistrate among the people, while the people stood about Moses from morning until evening. But when Moses’ fatherin-law saw how much he had to do for the people, he said, “What is this thing that you have undertaken for the people? Why do you act alone, while all the people stand about you from morning until evening?” Moses replied to his father-in-law, “It is because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a dispute, it comes before me, and I arbitrate between a man and his neighbor, and I make known the laws and teachings of God.” (Exodus 18:13–16)

Jethro, who filled a similar role in his tribe, advised Moses of a way to lighten his pastoral burden that he could no longer shoulder by himself. In effect this was a broadening of the community tradition from its tribal scope, that had been appropriate to small clans under the overlordship of the Pharaonic kingdom, to that of a large people standing on its own. Moses appoints officers of thousands, hundreds and fifties from among those men who were known to him to have earned the people’s trust as 6

Exodus from Slavery to Freedom as a Legislative-Political Act

honest and skilled in practical affairs. We may emphasize in this context that we are speaking of broadening the tradition of tribal democracy. Moses does not appoint the officers by virtue of his prophetic role. He is not carrying out a divine directive — this is rather his own initiative on the advice of his father-in-law. He is acting on the basis of the authority that the community has invested in him in order to carry out a need vital to its own interests, and moreover Moses still has no enforcement arm under his command to enforce the law on the recalcitrant. Everything here is done by agreement of the community, and in the manner in which tribal society enforces its laws on its members. Still, it is clear that this is only an intermediate stage: this is a temporary judicial arrangement required for Moses to induct his people, as a unified established community, and thus as a legally-defined communal entity, into a covenant between itself, as a collective entity, and God. Only after enactment of the covenant that recognizes God as sovereign will it be possible to set up the established judicial hierarchy within a legal-political and administrative framework as sovereign in all respects. Thus we have here a considered attempt to preserve the foundational tribal tradition while radically elevating it to the nationalpolitical level. The covenant was enacted at Mount Sinai. The Ten Commandments and the immediately subsequent legislation given with them constituted the “Book of the Covenant” that Moses wrote. The process of legislation and institutional growth that followed can be seen as a completion of the original covenant as well as its subsequent development and adaptation to changes that occurred in the life-circumstances of the people. In truth, this process did not reach final culmination in the narrative of the Pentateuch, and not even in the later books of biblical history, for it has continued into the literature of the Oral Torah even to the present day. The Mosaic legislation presented itself as an eternal law, fixed on the mythic level, but open to change and adaptation in its historical implementation. This approach is fully and clearly elaborated in the book of Deuteronomy, whose traditional Hebrew name (Mishneh Torah — “review of the law” or “second law”) indicates its role in providing the foundation of the Oral Law. But we return to the establishment of sovereignty on the mythic plane: in the Sinaitic covenant YHWH — the ruler and creator of the entire world — announces that He is the national sovereign of the people of Israel in particular, and as such He elicits the agreement of the people. In this covenant, God takes on the role as exclusive ruler of His people, 7

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

and His rule is expressed, in the Torah’s view, by taking on all sovereign authority: God is the absolute monarch. He is the supreme legislator and the supreme judge, and He takes on all enforcement authority. As political leader He determines the people’s goals and the means of achieving them, both internally and externally. Thus He is also the military commander-in-chief. In this respect, one may regard God as an absolute ruler in the Pharaonic mode. Moreover, God does not delegate a single one of His powers either to other gods, or to angels, or to mortal leaders: I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage: You shall have no other gods besides Me. You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I the Lord your God am an impassioned God, visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generations of those who reject Me, but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep My commandments. (20:2–6)

And yet this sovereignty does not become effective or implemented except with the agreement of the people and all its members, and this agreement is given on the basis of God’s absolute obligation that He will be the redeemer of the people. In other words, this is a ruler whose will to rule flows from His being the creator of the world and of all His creatures, for their preservation and welfare. We should emphasize again that the agreement to enter the covenant is not done merely on the mythic plane in submission to perceiving the ear-splitting thunder emanating from the smoking mountain, but also on the historical plane in two convocations with legally binding force on the community. The first convocation precedes the miraculous theophany on the mountain (19:1–8): Moses presents the elders with God’s proposal to rule over them and to make them His “kingdom of priests and holy nation,” on condition that they obligate themselves to perform all His commandments. The people legally accede to this proposal through the assembly of the elders: “All the people answered as one, saying, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do.’ ” The second convocation is a continuation of the first, after the miraculous theophany on the mountain, and Moses arranges it before God with the participation of the entire community: 8

Institutionalizing the Ideal of “Kingdom of God” in the People Moses went and repeated to the people all the commands of the Lord and all the rules; and all the people answered with one voice, saying, “All the things that the Lord has commanded we will do!” Moses then wrote down all the commands of the Lord. Early in the morning, he set up an altar at the foot of the mountain, with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. He designated some young men among the Israelites, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed bulls as offerings of well-being to the Lord. Moses took one part of the blood and put it in basins, and the other part of the blood he dashed against the altar. Then he took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will faithfully do!” Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord now makes with you concerning all these commands.” Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel ascended; and they saw the God of Israel: under His feet there was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity. Yet He did not raise His hand against the leaders of the Israelites; they beheld God, and they ate and drank. (24:3–11)

Of course, this account invites the question, how could the sovereignty of God in heaven be established and function on the plane of worldly history? How did God legislate for His people? How did He judge them? How did He enforce the law on the recalcitrant? How did He determine their goals and the means for implementing them? How did He command the army? In a word: How were all these sovereign powers implemented among the people? Who carried them out, and by what authority? We must search out the answers to these questions in the continuing narrative of establishing the national sovereignty in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

Institutionalizing the Ideal of “Kingdom of God” in the People In order to discern how the sovereignty of God was transferred from the mythic plane, depicted in the Sinaitic theophany, to the historical plane, depicted in the convocations enacting the covenant among the people, we must clarify the significance of the definition of that sovereignty in Moses’ words before the revelation at Mount Sinai: 9

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God Now, then, if you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, you shall be My segullah (“treasured possession”) among all the people. Indeed, all the earth is Mine, but you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. (Exodus 19:5–6)

The term segullah refers to the signs of majesty and dignity that distinguish a king when he appears amidst his people. The king appears in his splendid chariot dressed in robes of state and surrounded by his ministers, courtiers and servants who are obedient to his will. They are the testimonial that arouse a sense of majesty and reverence before his greatness and power. This is how it is with flesh-and-blood kings. In the case of God’s sovereignty, the segullah-people are the guild of priests who serve Him in His sanctuary. The segullah is the property of the king, and therefore the priests who serve God are His possessions. Their sanctity derives from this: they are devoted to the sole God, who is distinct from His world and rules it from His heights. The term “kingdom of priests” thus refers to the fact that God exercises sovereignty over the people who were entirely sanctified to Him, devoted to His service and the fulfillment of His commandments. All of its members have been made priests. Through their service to YHWH they testify amidst the other nations that He is the God of all the world, just as the priests of each nation attest to the greatness of their god within their own people. This is in fulfillment of Israel’s definition as God’s first-born. We recall that according to the law of the Torah the first-born of each family were selected for priestly service within the nation. Similarly, Israel is selected for priestly service among the nations as if they were their first-born. What is the worldly expression of this mythic-priestly status that was given to Israel once they accepted God’s sovereignty? The answer is given first of all in the status that is conferred in the original legislation to the divine Tabernacle or “tent of meeting,” and to the ritual that took place in it. The establishment of the Tabernacle was intended to implement the idea of “kingdom of priests” among the people, and therefore this was the first assignment that Moses accepted upon completion of the ceremonies enacting the covenant at the foot of the “mountain of God.” In truth, the Tabernacle was intended to perpetuate the foundational moment of convocation at the mountain through established ritual symbolism: Moses ascended with his attendant Joshua to the top of the mountain in order to receive the plan of the Tabernacle that would serve the same role as the mountain on which God revealed Himself to Moses 10

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and to the people within the camp as they progressed on their journey through the wilderness to the promised land. When he ascended to be alone with his God in the mountain, Moses left the people under the supervision of his older brother Aaron and Hur — one of the seventy elders of the community, from the tribe of Judah. For the continuation of our inquiry it is important to remark on the three personalities whom Moses associated with himself in this way as partners in the responsibility of practical leadership of the kingdom of priests that had been laid on him: Aaron had so far been his “prophet.” As first-born of the clan of Amram of the tribe of Levi, he was designated to be the high priest in the Tabernacle of YHWH. Hur represented the community as one of its dignitaries. Joshua the son of Nun is first mentioned before the convocation of the covenant before the “mountain of God” as the commander of the army whom Moses selected to fight against Amalek, who had attacked the people suddenly during its wilderness journey. Joshua was given a major role, for after the establishment of sovereignty the people had to organize in military formation for its journey in anticipation of the conquest of the land. It follows from this that in effect Moses established three essential positions — sacerdotal, civil, and military — in the national government that was about to be legally constituted. Moses went up and stayed on the “mountain of God” with his “attendant” for forty days. He was shrouded in the thick cloud that hid him from the sight of the people, and was intimate with God. (Exodus 24–31) Afterward he reported in detail the content of the words that he heard from God, and put them in writing — the detailed plan of the Tabernacle, its contents, its implements, the garments of the priests, the manner of erecting the Tabernacle as an enterprise of the whole people, and how it was to be carried out. According to the plan — which Moses carried out in exact, documented detail — the Tabernacle would be a splendid royal pavilion, all of whose parts would be interconnected in an artful way imitating the unity of a living body. Nevertheless, those who carried, erected and maintained it — the priests and other Levites — could take it apart quickly in order to transport it with all its implements from one encampment to the next. The Tabernacle would be set up in the center of the Israelite camp, and all the tribes would encamp around it in a set arrangement. In this way the Tabernacle would be like a Mount Sinai wandering together with the people. In this connection it is proper to emphasize that the Torah refrains from assigning a permanent sanctity to Mount Sinai such as that accorded to Mount Moriah, the site of 11

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Isaac’s binding. This was so as not to attribute a permanent ritual status to a place that was designated only as a way-station. The wandering Tabernacle takes the place of the mountain, and God will meet there with His prophet and His priests for the whole length of the journey until they come to Canaan. Establishing the permanent regime will take place in the people’s land, and they will then be instructed to build a proper Temple on Mount Moriah. This is explicitly stated in the “Song of the Sea.”2 The Israelites will go up to the Temple in the Land of Canaan to appear before YHWH three times a year, as is set forth in the detailed laws following the Ten Commandments in the Book of the Covenant. (Exodus 23:14–19) Around the wandering Tabernacle of YHWH is consolidated the wandering kingdom that the people maintains for the time being without the earthly enforcement that is required by a regular state. All the symbols of the Tabernacle — the ark of the covenant, the veil and the cherubim, the lampstead and the altar, the laver and all the utensils, and finally the garments of the high priest — were designed to represent the sovereignty of God in the midst of the people. How does the Tabernacle function as the focus of the wandering kingdom? First, according to the plan given in the mountain, the people establish the Tabernacle through their contributions. All the members of the people, men and women, give freely from the best of their possessions those precious materials required for constructing it. The act of contribution expresses identification, elevation and sanctification whose source is in the faith in God and in the Torah that was given at His command through His servant Moses. This is a spiritual, volitional realization of the notion of the covenant. The common faith, expressed in deeds that are the fulfillment of God’s commands in His Torah, unites, maintains, and animates all the members of the people through their serving God. This is the essence of the kingdom, the collective, living body whose common faith is the animating spirit that moves them with a united will. The priests in the Tabernacle will serve as the representatives of the people, the first-born of all the ancestral clans. (They are the “young men of the Israelites” who offered the sacrifices on the altar that Moses built at the foot of Sinai to enact the original covenant, as cited above.) The people will elevate them as a “heave-offering to YHWH,” and they will thus be connected to God their king. 2

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“You will bring them and plant them in Your own mountain, the place You made to dwell in, O Lord, the sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands established.” (Exodus 15:17)

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The sacrificial service atones for the sins of the people as a collective body, for the sins of its priests and leaders, and for the sins of each individual man or woman. The atonement of sins preserves the sanctity of the camp to which God descends from His heavens to dwell in it. The people are sanctified day by day, renewing the spirit of faith that pulsates in them and that energizes them to carry out all the commandments of God for their welfare. This applies not only to ritual commands, but to all the interpersonal deeds required to maintain the unity of the kingdom and to achieve everything requisite to the welfare of all its members. There is a special emphasis placed on the interpersonal commands of fellowship and the observance of social and legal justice. This is the core of the laws that were given alongside the Ten Commandments as the social basis of the sanctified kingdom of priests. The political significance of sanctification through commandments is expressed in the central symbol that likens the Tabernacle to Mount Sinai where the Torah was given: In the innermost sanctum is situated the Ark of Testimony, in which are placed the two tablets of the covenant on which are engraved the Ten Commandments — the work of God given through Moses to keep in the Tabernacle as proof of the perpetual validity of the covenant and of the foundations of the kingdom, its social vision (the Sabbath, which is included in the Ten Commandments), and the foundations of legal justice on which its arrangements are based. The service of God is intended to arouse and activate the moral energies required for the kingdom to function according to its laws to meet its objectives. One may compare faith to the heart of the kingdom. Its head is the Ark of Testimony, in which are placed the tablets of the covenant. Over the Ark-covering, above the cherubim, God meets with Moses whenever Moses desires to present to Him the needs of the people or to receive new instruction required for guidance, or whenever God the King desires to command the people through Moses. The kingdom is thus the conjoining of the people and the King through the mediation of the God-given legislation, of the Tabernacle designed by God and erected by the whole people, and of those who discharge the tasks mandated by the law in all domains of the life of the kingdom. Again, faith is the inner spirit that unites the people with their King and energizes them to fulfill all the commands by which the kingdom functions. When the people are imbued with faith, there is no need of external sanctions to entice them or force them to fulfill the commandments. They fulfill all their obligations willingly, because by fulfilling the divine commands they achieve their destiny. In this 13

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sense, their “service” to God is freedom not only from bondage to other human beings or a flesh-and-blood ruler, but also from bondage to egoistic urges that distance them from the true moral good intended for them. Thus God leads His people as its legislator and judge through the mediation of His prophet and priests, and through His rule over the laws of terrestrial nature. When the people are obedient to Him, they reap the reward of the inner and external good that is rightly promised to them. But when they are disobedient, they are punished with the evil that flows as natural consequence for their sins. In order to verify this conception of the importance of faith as an inner power that animates the kingdom, we should pay attention to the importance that the narrative in Exodus and Deuteronomy attaches to the people’s faith in God and Moses as a condition for the success of the Exodus from Egypt and the settlement in Canaan. God and Moses repeatedly test the faith of the people in the face of the obstacles along the journey. In each test they demonstrate again the reliability of their promises, all in order to overcome the weakness of faith of the majority of the people in the face of every difficulty that appears as a stumbling-block that the people cannot deal with through their natural powers. The “miracles” performed along the way are intended to bring the people to the secure faith of free people who rely on their righteousness before God. And yet the stories that testify to the centrality of faith in realizing the kingdom of God among His people lead finally to the conclusion that when the plane of myth, revealed through supernatural miracles, is lost sight of by the people, who are accustomed to trust only what is comprehensible in the natural way, then faith in the Commander totters, and with it obedience to His commands. The people become a rabble, stupefied and fearful, driven by egoistic urges. The order of life is disrupted, and the vital functions of the kingdom are not fulfilled. The story of the people’s journeys in the wilderness demonstrated again and again that it is impossible to realize the kingdom on the plane of natural reality without resorting to external governmental sanctions that force people to observe the law. Therefore it is impossible to rely on faith alone. One must provide the kingdom with the instruments of lawenforcement, and by their help it is possible to insure in a certain measure the perpetuation of the faith that leads to voluntary compliance. This conclusion came to fruition in the failure that occurred when Moses received the plan of the Tabernacle from God in the mountain. The people did not pass the test of the absence of the leader who had led them on the way to the mountain. They did not rely on Aaron and 14

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Hur but demanded an idolatrous substitute. Aaron provided the discouraged and fearful mob with the substitute that he had learned from Egyptian idolatry in the form of a molten golden calf, and what had started as an ascent to the height of founding a holy kingdom of priests, ended with a fall into the depths of idolatrous urges. (Exodus 32) We see again the narrative progression that was repeated so many times in Genesis: the expulsion from Eden, the bringing of the Flood, the dispersal of the valley-dwellers of Babel. Each of these was followed by a second beginning, restorative, starting out on the lower plane of reality to which the people had degenerated. The need was thus awakened to establish the kingdom anew, taking into consideration the modest spiritual-ethical abilities of the people, and in a manner calculated to enlist them to overcome the obstacles of the journey in anticipation of the war for the conquest of Canaan. The vision remained the same — “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” a kingdom of free believers who serve their God and are not enthralled to the Pharaonic idolatrous kingdom — but it has become clearly necessary to equip them with instruments of sovereign rule that can enforce the laws of freedom and the rule of equity against the disobedient in their midst, and to help those weak in faith and will-power to conquer their urges and fears through established methods of reward and punishment. It is superfluous to add that leaving the people to the consequence of their misdeeds will have one inevitable outcome: its corruption, degeneration and destruction. The great dilemma is thus the contradiction between the law of freedom, which is the culmination of the Exodus from slavery to freedom in the essential spiritual sense, and the means of rule that make it superficially similar to the regime of slavery.

The Return to Slavery, and the Dilemma of the Difference between the Law of Slavery and the Law of Freedom Wherein did Aaron and the people sin when they made a golden calf and worshipped it? Actually, they did not rebel against God and their sovereign. The people did indeed request of Aaron “a god who will go before us, for as for Moses, the man who brought us out of Egypt, we do not know what became of him.” (32:1) And Aaron, who made the molten calf from the people’s earrings, proclaimed, “These are your 15

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gods, O Israel, who brought you out of Egypt!” (32:5) Thus he sought to amend the people’s request, by stipulating that it was God, not Moses, who brought them out of Egypt, and that the molten calf that he made of their earrings had no independent worth. It is only a tangible symbol of YHWH, who brought them out of Egypt. From the standpoint of the Ten Commandments, Aaron committed two transgressions, against making a graven image (and serving it) and taking the name of YHWH in vain, but he did not transgress the prohibition of worshipping other gods. Similarly, God tells Moses: “Hurry down, for your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have acted basely. They have been quick to turn aside from the way that I enjoined them. They have made themselves a molten calf and bowed low to it and sacrificed to it, saying, ‘This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ ” (Exodus 32:7–8)

When God says “your people whom you have led out of Egypt,” He is echoing the words of the people, who regarded Moses as the man who took them out of Egypt. We will discuss later the significance of the transfer of responsibility from God to Moses. The focus now shifts to Aaron, who is considered not to have rebelled, but to have strayed from the right path and become corrupted. But if we attend to Aaron’s response, we will find that as representative of his people he saw the sin in another light. Before he saw the deeds with his own eyes, he defended his people: “Let not Your anger, O Lord, blaze forth against Your people, whom You delivered from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand….Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, how You swore to them by Your Self…” (Exodus 32:11–13)

In other words, Moses responds that he as leader is not responsible for the people, but God. God brought them out of Egypt, and will suffer harm if they are destroyed. God gave His promise to the patriarchs, and it is still in effect. God repents of His evil intent. But Moses’ anger is aroused: “When he approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses was enraged, and he threw down the tablets and shattered them at the bottom of the mountain.” (32:19) It is the ritual surrounding the calf that provoked Moses to a dramatic action, which symbolically shatters the covenant that was enacted just forty days earlier, before he ascended 16

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the mountain. Next, Moses takes charge and without instructions from God he inflicts on the people the same kind of zealous punishment that God had threatened at the height of his anger. The explanation for the turnabout in Moses’ attitude when he saw the calf and the dances is given in a single verse: “Moses saw that the people was out of control, for Aaron had let them get out of control, and they were defenseless before their enemies.” (32:25) We have here two connected reasons: (1) the unraveling of the whole moral order into whose establishment Moses had invested all his energy from the day of the exodus of Egypt through the enactment of the covenant at Sinai; (2) the danger posed to the people by their disorganization and their moral-libidinal degeneration. Their chaotic state destroyed the moral discipline, which was the condition of the people’s surviving the dangers of the journey against their potential attackers (the reference is apparently to the Amalekites, who had already tried to destroy the Israelites through a sneak-attack). The deeper significance of these considerations in Moses’ thinking becomes clear if we look at the sin of the Golden Calf as a link in a chain of events describing the trajectory through the wilderness and see in it a process intended to complement the physical exodus from the yoke of Pharaonic slavery with an exodus from spiritual-ethical bondage whose source is in the power of slavery’s attraction. Spiritual bondage inclined the slaves to prefer slavery to a life of freedom and the responsibility that goes with it, and to make common cause with the despot so long as he provided them with tolerable living conditions and did not work them beyond endurance. Slaves who adapt to their slavery are likely to prefer it to a life of freedom, especially if leaving slavery involves great dangers and requires shouldering heavy responsibility. Moses encountered the dilemma of the exodus to freedom already when he first left Pharaoh’s court to look on the sufferings of his people, and was forced on that account to flee for his life to the wilderness. When he returned from the wilderness, he found his people ready to embrace freedom to escape the burden of Pharaonic tyranny; yet the increase of the people’s load as a consequence of Moses’ and Aaron’s coming on the scene led the people to have second thoughts: They came upon Moses and Aaron standing in their path, and they said to them, “May the Lord look upon you and punish you for making us loathsome to Pharaoh and his courtiers — putting a sword in their hands to slay us.” (Exodus 5:20–21)

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The same dilemma accompanies Moses for the whole journey. When the people saw the Egyptians pursuing them at the Sea of Reeds — They said to Moses, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness?” (Exodus 14:11–12)

And afterwards, when they come to the Wilderness of Sin: In the wilderness, the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death.” (Exodus 16:2–3)

As God’s prophet and as pastoral leader of the people in the wilderness, Moses received all these complaints with understanding. He echoed the people’s complaints on the aggravation of their servitude in Egypt. At the Wilderness of Sin, he disowns responsibility on behalf of himself and Aaron and turns the people to address God directly: “What are we that you complain against us?...Your complaints are not against us, but against the Lord.” (16:7–8) And yet after all the miracles that were given in the wilderness, after the covenant was enacted at the base of the mountain, when the law of freedom was given and the people that had pledged obligation to it were encamped at the base of the mountain of God, lacking nothing and not standing in any immediate danger — the worship of the Egyptian golden calf, on account of the procrastination of the leader who had brought down the manna, produced the quails and supplied the water, must be explained as an expression of that spiritual weakness ingrained in the recesses of the soul, a proof that slavery was internalized and took root in the people’s congenital evil nature, so deeply that it would not be possible to realize the kingdom of priests as a commonwealth of freedom based on a trusting faith. A people was needed whose members were all free citizens, but the people that came out of Egypt were ensconced in spiritual slavery and could not bear a free people’s responsibility for surviving in the wilderness. This indeed constituted grounds to fear for this people’s future. In its 18

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servile state it could not survive in the wilderness and certainly could not take possession of the land; it would be destined for oblivion. Moses’ response after grinding the idol to dust is surprising in its zealous reversal, contrasting with his first appeal to God to reverse His plans to destroy His people: Moses stood up in the gate of the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come here!” And all the Levites rallied to him. He said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. Each of you put sword on thigh, go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay brother, neighbor and kin.” The Levites did as Moses had bidden; and some three thousand of the people fell that day. And Moses said, “Dedicate yourselves to the Lord this day — for each of you has been against son and brother — that He may bestow a blessing upon you today.” (Exodus 32:26–29)

Did Moses reverse himself out of a desire to save God’s people from the divine wrath? From the continuation of the story we learn the opposite: this was the only way left to him to save the people from the consequences of their actions: Moses went back to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people is guilty of a great sin in making for themselves a god of gold. Now, if You will forgive their sin [well and good]; but if not, erase me from the record which You have written!” But the Lord said to Moses, “He who has sinned against Me, him only will I erase from My record.”

The depth of the transformation in the stature of Moses’ leadership that brought about his energetic reaction to the sin of the calf is expressed in these lines. They will be fully understood only if we read them in comparison with the first exchanges between God and Moses before he descended from the mountain. We recall that Moses rejected the definition of the people in its sin as “his people” whom he had brought out of Egypt. God had thus laid on him the responsibility to deal with this severe crisis on his own. Instead, Moses asked God to “bear” this sin for the sake of His name and for the fulfillment of His promise to the patriarchs. But when he descended from the mountain and saw the disorder, he understood the purpose for transferring the responsibility of leadership to himself. If God were to judge His people by the absolute yardstick of His governance of nature, the result would necessarily be the one that He wanted to prevent — the destruction of the people, 19

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for this is the result of the rule of “measure for measure” of natural law. In order for God to “bear” the sin and prevent this outcome, Moses needs to act with his human measures in order to repair the people’s sin, to stop their downward slide, and thus to improve the outcome of their actions. It is only in Moses’ power to do this because the people see in him the man who brought them out of Egypt. The people has not reached the level from which they can see that it is God who has brought them out of Egypt. That is the measure of the distance between Moses’ level and the people’s. Clearly, if the people could rise to Moses’ level, they would not have sinned when their leader went up the mountain to bring down the plan of the Tabernacle in which the true service of God should take place. It is this wisdom as leader that motivated Moses to take the difficult step of exercising the attribute of divine jealousy and vengeance by which God described Himself when proclaiming His sovereignty over the people, though on a human scale. Thus he would bring the disintegration to a halt and restore the people, who had started to slide into the abyss of idolatrous self-indulgence, to the discipline of law and morality, before the majority are sucked into it at the instigation of a few, and the people perish at the hands of the desert bandits. He called on his fellow tribesmen who were zealous for the divine law and condemned to death those who had seduced the people into the idolatrous revelry. In other words, from the prophetic viewpoint of the narrator, Moses acted according to the divine law, for the sake of the kingdom and of the people, and not by the capricious whim of a ruler protective of his power. He acted out of compassion for those people who had not sinned of their own accord but had been led astray, and not out of vengeful cruelty. Still, after performing this action out of his discretion as leader, Moses had to give an accounting before God his superior, on whose behalf he had acted, for God was the king and ultimate authority. The three thousand slain worshippers of the Golden Calf were His servants and His people. Standing before God after the fact, Moses returned the responsibility for the people who had left Egypt with his aid to Him who had truly brought them out from Egypt, so that God could judge the people after the reparation that had been done on their behalf. (“If you bear their sin…and if not…”) Moses then requests to be erased from God’s book (the Torah) so that he no longer be regarded as the man who had brought his people out and enacted the covenant between them and God, if indeed he has sinned against God or against the people. God’s 20

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answer to these words — “whoever has sinned against Me, him will I erase from My book” — takes on in this context decisive significance for the continuation of Moses’ leadership: retroactive authorization, tantamount to a divine command, for the actions originally performed at Moses’ initiative without such authorization. In other words, Moses had not sinned, but had done what God expected him to do, in a way that only he could do it. Moses correctly interpreted God’s directive when God said, “Go down, for your people has acted corruptly.” It seems that it is in this sense that Moses is later said to have “found favor” in God’s sight — as Noah had previously “found favor” in God’s sight — only on a much higher level. In summary: In the two exchanges described, and in the episode linking them, the political-governmental authority has been transferred from God to Moses. The decision and action taken by Moses at his own initiative took on the aspect of a decision and action by God in His role as king of His people. God delegated the authority rooted in the responsibility of the leadership to decide in God’s name in situations that justify this, and Moses took on himself the responsibility of the government to enforce the law, knowing that if he errs, he will bear the responsibility for his sin before God his King and before the people. This is a major turning-point in the history of Moses and in the history of his people. From that moment on, Moses stood between God and Israel not only as a prophet who brings the words of the divine sovereign to the people and vice versa, but as one who represents the sovereign and is authorized to act in His name according to the discretion as leader that is invested in him, relying on the covenant enacted between God and His people, as well as on the laws written in the Book of the Covenant. Thus Moses becomes the “servant of God” in the same sense that Eliezer was the “servant of Abraham”: the man who performs the bidding of God and is authorized by Him to decide and act when necessary according to his discretion, within a framework of divine legality to which the “servant” is of course subject like all his compatriots. Thus if he errs, he must be called to account. The “kingdom of God” is thus translated to the plane of historical reality as a commonwealth at whose head stands a ruler who is subject to the divine law on the one hand and responsible to his community on the other hand. We shall see later that the continuation of the story is a kind of interpretative description of the new situation that has thus been created, in accordance with which the remainder of the Torah’s legislation is to be understood. 21

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The ideational background for realizing the transition: What is the difference between the law of slavery and the law of freedom? The profound difference between the regime of the Torah’s legislation and the regime of Egyptian slavery is rooted in the place of the authority that legislates, judges and leads the people. In the idolatrous Pharaonic regime of slavery, authority is identified with the will of Pharaoh, who acts on the basis of the assumption that divine authority is vested in him personally. The people are considered his property, and the law that he imposes on them emanates from him and is identified with his will. It is self-evident that he himself is above the law and not bound by it. Thus he embodies the independence and freedom of the state, inasmuch as it makes its own law and operates without external constraint to do whatever pleases the sovereign ruler in accord with his arbitrary will. He does not need to render an account either to God above (as he embodies the divine authority that has been bequeathed to him as a son of the gods) or to his people. From the standpoint of the law of the Mosaic Torah this is not freedom but absolute servitude: servitude of all the people to a tyrant who has enslaved them and turned them — together with their property — into his property; and the servitude of the tyrant, together with his kingdom, to his will to power, which alone governs him in all his deeds, and not the welfare of the people, including his own genuine welfare as a flesh-and-blood human being. In the regime of the Torahitic law, authority is identified with the will of God, for the earth is His property because He created it. The essential difference between the two regimes is rooted in this fact. According to the Torah’s conception, the state is not, and can never be, the property of the human ruler. It is not his because he did not create it. He only rules it through the power that was given to him for a higher purpose. He has thus turned his possession of the divine estate which he has seized for his private benefit to his highest purpose. By contrast, the Lord, Creator of the world, is the true possessor of all and does not need to display His control in order to exercise ownership. No man can steal His estate from Him or wrest true ownership from Him. As the true owner of the estate, His one exclusive purpose is the good of His possession. That is the true good for whose sake He created it. Since He is the Creator who possesses His creatures for their own good, all His creatures are His servants for their own good. He is the ruling legislator, and it is incumbent on them to do His will, but since His will and all His legislation are identical with 22

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the goal of beneficence to all His creatures — to each of them individually and to all collectively — their service to God is true freedom. It is the freedom to give expression to their own full nature and to be as God intended them to be in the world that He created for their happiness. According to this outlook, the concept of freedom is defined in an opposite way from its definition in the idolatrous Pharaonic outlook. The external possibility and internal ability to choose by oneself according to one’s own consideration, not by the dictation of others, are indeed the precondition of freedom, but freedom is not identified with arbitrary caprice but with choosing the good, that agrees with the laws that God has implanted in His creatures for their benefit. Indeed, the freedom of the Creator-God is not identical with arbitrary caprice either, but with His beneficent purpose. Therefore when His human creature, created in His image, chooses to rebel against His commandment and to do evil in order to flaunt his independence, he indeed exercises the freedom with which God has endowed him, but he undermines it by his decision and its implementation. If he reexamines the motive for his capricious action, he will discover that he has surrendered to the pressure of an instinctual drive in his nature that stands in opposition to his true spiritual destiny. Thus he has forfeited his freedom through his attempt to realize it. The struggle between God and Pharaoh in the story of Egypt’s ten plagues is designed to illustrate the paradox of freedom. Pharaoh is the prototype of one who struggles to preserve his authority but becomes enslaved to it, to the point of destroying his kingdom in the bargain. The sin of the Golden Calf and its accompanying dances illustrates the same point in connection with the tendencies of the masses of the Israelite people, who wanted to demonstrate their total freedom through a choice whose true meaning was a return to slavery. This choice masked a desire for libidinal gratification, as well as the fear of the responsibility that is bound up with a life of freedom — to fulfill God’s commandments, which indeed requires a continual effort to overcome internal and external obstacles. Here we have defined the bedrock foundation of the legislation of the Mosaic Torah — the authority of God, which is revealed in legislation that creates and establishes the kingdom, and in God’s control over the forces of nature, which are the condition of human beings’ ability to fulfill the commandments for the sake of their own lives. God legislates and exercises leadership for the purpose of the good, and in this sense He Himself is obligated by His legislation and its purposes, and all citizens of His kingdom — His servants — are bound by His legislation 23

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and His judgment. All exist under the law and judgment of God, and this includes those individuals whom God chooses, with the agreement of the congregation ratified through covenant, to fulfill the tasks of the kingdom in all its various areas. Indeed, the more that their tasks require employment of a higher and more inclusive degree of authority, the more that their responsibility, expressed in their obligation to God’s law and leadership, will be more stringent and demanding — and most of all the one who has taken on himself (again, with the agreement of God and the community) the authority to enforce the divine laws through exercising sovereign power. This is the ideational foundation on whose basis we must understand the results of the revolution that occurred in Moses’ position as leader of his people in the wilderness, in anticipation of the settlement of the land of Canaan, in which it would be necessary for it to set up its special commonwealth under conditions not very different from those under which all nations establish their states.

The Gradual Descent of the Kingdom of God from the Mythic to the Historical Plane: From Prophecy to Wisdom The continuation of the historical narrative of Moses’ unfolding relationships to God and to his people is an interpretative depiction of the essence of the transition that embodies the realization of the myth of “kingdom of priests” on the historic plane, i.e., through human action and conduct. The process of transfer of authority is gradual, continuing to the end of Moses’ life in preparation for the people’s entry to their land. Its first stage is depicted in the Book of Exodus, and it begins with a redefinition of Moses’ role as the leader who has brought his people out of Egypt and must now prepare them for the conquest of their land in order to establish their unique commonwealth there. The continuation of the dialogue between God and Moses after the reparation for the sin of the Golden Calf is a negotiation over the form of direct involvement of God as King dwelling in the midst of His people and leading them by His distinctive powers as Creator Who rules over all the forces of nature, through transferring responsibility for the official administrative routines of the people to Moses and by his agency to the people itself. God is satisfied with a token punishment. (“God smote the people who had fashioned the calf that Aaron made.” — Exodus 32:35) 24

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Incidentally, we should note that the primary blame for making the calf is here laid on the people, not on Aaron, who only submitted, powerless, to the demand of the unruly mob. This is why Aaron was not punished and why he was given a central role in the subsequent governance of the people.) Through this token punishment God expresses His willingness to suspend (“bear”) the people’s sin and defer their punishment to a later time, presumably until the people compound their sin with another in the same vein (“when I make an accounting, I will bring them to account for their sins.” [32:34]) However, God’s decision to transfer the task of leadership, in all its administrative aspects, to Moses is unchanged: Then the Lord said to Moses, “Set out from here, you and the people that you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your offspring will I give it.’” (33:1)

God will fulfill His promise to the patriarchs, but He still points to Moses as the man who will bring his people into the Promised Land. The reason for this decision is confirmed again: direct intervention by God among the people is dangerous for them. Nevertheless, the people will still be dependent on God’s assistance as the Creator Who rules over nature in order to conquer their land from the seven idolatrous nations who are in possession of it. For this purpose, God will send an angel before the people, like those that were sent to Abraham and Sarah in the episode of Isaac’s miraculous birth and the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah: I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites — a land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go in your midst, since you are a stiff-necked people, lest I destroy you on the way. (33:2–3)

Nevertheless, it seems that at this stage God’s decision to separate Himself completely from the people is not irrevocable. God is testing the people, and the people pass the test: “When the people heard this harsh word, they went into mourning, and none put on his finery.” (33:4) The people’s remorse attests that they have returned to the rank that they had attained at the enactment of the Sinaitic covenant, and therefore God softens His sentence: “Now leave off your finery and I will consider what to do to you.” (33:5) The substance of the softening is explained further: not an angel will extend the supernatural aid required to survive in the wilderness and to conquer the land, but God 25

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Himself. This appears necessary because Moses attaches importance not only to the supernatural assistance in war — a role that an angel can fill — but more importantly to the people’s feeling of certainty, as well as the demonstration to all the surrounding nations, that they are God’s chosen people appointed to give testimony to God’s sovereignty. But even if outwardly God appears as a king who himself leads his armies for the conquest of the promised land, internally the governance that was established in the covenant at the foothills of God’s mountain will not return to its prior state. It is Moses who will bear direct responsibility for leadership, and he will share it with those assistants whom he will appoint from among the assembly with their consent. The transfer is expressed in an immediate change of Moses’ status within his people: Now Moses would take the Tent and pitch it outside the camp, at some distance from the camp. It was called the Tent of Meeting, and whoever sought the Lord would go out to the Tent of Meeting that was outside the camp. (33:7)

The significance of this is clear: God will continue to lead the people through Moses’ agency. Only Moses will have direct access to God, and this will take place outside the camp, not in the midst of the people as previously planned. In other words, in the people’s eyes Moses is regarded as a man elevated by God from their midst, chosen by God to rule in His name. The glory of God that is associated with him in the people’s regard bestows authority on him (and the authority conveys honor), so when the people see him going to confer with God outside the camp, they rise and stand before him, and when God descends in the cloud to speak with him, the people prostrate themselves before YHWH (33:7–9). This is the education in obedience to authority that the people need. Moses has thus arrived at a level of closeness to God higher than the prophetic rank he had previously achieved. He has become God’s confidant: “The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man will speak to his friend.” (33:11) Later, after the revelation in the cleft of the rock, the distinction between Moses and the people is further consolidated, as Moses’ face shines from the revelation that he enjoyed. It is impossible to look at his face, so Moses must put a veil on his face in order to speak with the people around him. (Exodus 34:29–31) Thus is defined the new way in which God will continue to be involved as king among His people, one step away from withdrawal to His heavenly sanctum. 26

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But in order to understand the administrative order that would be established in the wake of the transition to the historical plane, pointing in the other direction and intended to draw the people upwards towards Moses, we note an important addendum: “his servant, the youth Joshua son of Nun, would never stir from the tent.” (33:11) This is the first hint of the setting of a ladder of authority not only between God and Moses, but also between Moses and the people. As we said, Moses approached God to the extent that the people distanced themselves from him in their sin, and to the extent that God distanced Himself from the people in order not to destroy them. There thus opened a gap between Moses and the community. Moses bridges this gap by appointing intermediaries from among the elders of the community, with their approval, and thus he starts to draw them to him. Joshua, who already once filled the position of military commander in the war with Amalek, was appointed as Moses’ “servant” in parallel with Moses’ appointment as “servant of YHWH.” The reason for the choice is explained in the sequel: as they progress towards the land of Canaan, the people are deployed in a demonstrative military formation, and thus a military commander is required. After the Tabernacle is set up according to the plan that Moses received when he ascended the mountain for the first time, it will be Aaron’s turn to be appointed High Priest, and his sons will be appointed priests to assist him and to be “waved” before YHWH to draw near to Him. After Aaron’s sons, all the adult Levites will be appointed to serve in the Tabernacle, and as such they will also serve in an educational and judicial capacity — all by virtue of their powerful standing at Moses’ right hand in the episode of the Golden Calf. In the continuation of the story, God’s direct intervention in leading the people will be further diminished, and in its place the leadership responsibility of the communal elders will be further broadened. Their scope of authority, rooted in the will of the whole community, will grow relatively to Moses, who will be required to render an accounting to them. The narrative in the Book of Numbers takes us deeper into the historical plane and attests to these developments in narrating the quarrels that broke out between Moses and Miriam; between Moses, Joshua, and Caleb (taking Hur’s place) versus the rest of the “spies” who were sent out at the community’s instigation to reconnoiter the land; and between Moses and Aaron versus Korah’s company. Nevertheless, a contrary testimony to weigh against all the protests that the people voiced against the exclusive authority that Moses took on himself and shared with his underlings, is Moses’ request to God to relieve him of 27

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the sole responsibility for sustaining the people in the wilderness. This is a quasi-repetition of the advice that Jethro gives Moses before the Sinaitic covenant, but with a definition that establishes a new institution that represents the community next to Moses: God responds to Moses and imparts prophetic authority to seventy Israelite elders “of whom you have experience as elders and officers of the people, and bring them to the Tent of Meeting and let them take their place with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will draw upon the spirit that is on you and put it upon them; they shall share the burden of the people with you, and you shall not bear it alone.” (Numbers 11:16–17) There is an obvious resemblance between the assembly of elders that God and Moses appointed in the Tent of Meeting, and the Great Sanhedrin that met in the Temple during the Second Commonwealth period. As we said, this was done in response to Moses’ request, with his blessing. The progressive democratic tendency in this appointment is confirmed in Moses’ response to the “youth” Joshua who demanded that Moses arrest two elders who prophesied in the camp outside the authorized assembly: “Are you jealous on my account? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord put His spirit upon them!” (Numbers 11:29) We return to the theoretical discussion implicit in the transfer of divine authority to persons appointed by the community. The important question dealt with in Moses’ continued dialogue with God on the change in his status is the actual spiritual rank of which Moses becomes worthy in order to fulfill his task. Clearly, his elevation to the rank of the man with whom God speaks face to face “as a man speaks to his friend” is the highest rank that mortal man can achieve, if not higher, according to the testimony of the end of Deuteronomy: “Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses — whom the Lord singled out, face to face.” (34:10) It follows that for a human being to reach this level is among the wonders that are beyond human nature. Yet we should note the great importance of Moses’ elevation to the mythic plane, as founder of the “kingdom of priests,” from the standpoint of the political philosophy of the Mosaic constitution. On the one hand, it explains the quasi-divine authority invested in Moses in order to make him and his Torah the source of judicial authority for posterity. On the other hand, it explains the unique, non-recurring character of his appearance as a human embodiment of a political ideal: in his sovereign role as founder of the commonwealth, Moses had no heir or appointed successor. Joshua, who was invested with the leadership of the people 28

From Prophecy to Wisdom

after him, was only a general and military commander in time of war, but not a stand-in for God as king of the nation. This eliminates any possibility of equating Moses with Pharaoh, who presumed to embody divine authority and bequeath it to his heir. But does this mean that Moses’ task ceased with his death? Could it be possible to perpetuate the commonwealth without anyone filling this role? If not an individual, maybe an institutionalized body, based in the covenantal law enacted between God and the community? The full answer to this question is given in Deuteronomy, but it is already hinted at in the story cited above about the assembly of elders in the Tent of Meeting. The theoretical basis of the whole process is found in the dialogue, replete with symbolic significance, that took place between God and Moses prior to his second ascent into the mountain to reestablish the covenant and acquire a second pair of tablets to replace the ones he shattered at the sight of the dancing before the Golden Calf. This time Moses went up alone. Joshua, his loyal servant, remained with the people, and the people were required to stay away from the mountain. During the second forty-day period that Moses stayed in the mountain without food and drink, God engraved the Ten Commandments on the second set of tablets that Moses himself had carved and brought with him. Thus Moses became a participant, representing the people in this event: both the giver and the recipient played active roles. Afterwards, God responded to Moses’ daring request to receive a one-time revelation transcending prophecy, to certify him for his role as founder of the commonwealth. (Exodus 34:1–10) The story thus mythically depicted is full of grandeur and mystery, yet Moses’ request is formulated in an exchange that precedes the special revelation, and it is transparent in its political significance: in order to fulfill his role for the people and find favor in God’s sight, Moses needs to have a more intimate knowledge of his Sender than he had as prophet: He said, “Oh, let me behold Your Presence [or ‘glory’]!” And He answered: “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name Lord, and I will grant the grace that I will grant and show the compassion that I will show. But,” He said, “you cannot see My face, for man may not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “See there is a place near Me. Station yourself on the rock, and as My Presence passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with My hand until I have passed by. Then I will take My hand away and you will see My back, but My face must not be seen.” (Exodus 33:18–23)

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The key word for understanding the kind of knowledge of God that Moses dared to request, in order to fulfill his task, is the word kavod (“presence,” “glory”). God’s answer helps him to understand its significance by substituting for it the expression, “all My goodness.”3 The glory is identified with the king’s panoply that displays to his citizens the symbols of the power embodied in him and its sources. As prophet, Moses testified to the power of the divine will that ruled over creation, but in contrast to the Egyptian magicians he did not pretend to argue that he understood its ways. Now, when the responsibility for leading the people rests on his shoulders, when he is obligated to lead the people in the way that will find favor in God’s sight, so that no calamity should befall him and his people on account of an action contradicting the direction that God implanted in creation — now Moses wishes to know something about the inner logic of the creative will, and the dangers of which one must be wary, so that God’s involvement in the leadership of His people should not disturb the internal balance that He established in creation, thus bringing about destruction whose source is in the inexorable power of divine judgment. Far be it from him to pretend what the Egyptian magicians pretended! He does not expect that he will be granted knowledge enabling him to appear to control the forces of nature, but he wishes to know what is the logic of the will that rules the forces of nature and directs them for good or evil. God responds to this daring request, but only within the limits of what is possible given mortal humanity’s spiritual abilities, “for man may not see Me and live.” God promises Moses to “pass” before him. Moses will be witness to the divine power that creates and annihilates. He will be conscious that the will of YHWH, embodied in His name, directs it. But during the proclamation of the divine Name, YHWH will cover Moses’ eyes so that he will not look on the numinous glory. Only after the divine “face” passes over Moses’ face, God will remove His “hand” and Moses will see his “back.” What is the meaning of the “face” and the “back” of the glory that was revealed to Moses? The key, given to anyone who examines the Biblical story itself without resorting to extraneous philosophical or mystical theories, is found in the sentence: “I will cause all of My good to pass before you, and I will grant the grace that I will grant and 3

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Schweid’s interpretation of Moses’ vision “in the cleft of the rock” here draws on his discussion of Maimonides’ and Crescas’ interpretations of it. See The Classic Jewish Philosophers, Brill, 2007, pp. 233ff., 247ff., 390ff.

From Prophecy to Wisdom

show the compassion that I will show.” According to this sentence, the divine “face” is identified with the power of the divine will, that directs the power of creation towards its objectives but wipes out whatever stands in its way. It is these powers that no person can look upon and live. Does this assertion contradict what was said, that God spoke with Moses “face to face”? Certainly not. God spoke with Moses face to face, but Moses, from his side, heard the utterance but could not see the face. This is elucidated by the fact that God appears to Moses in the Tent of Meeting while concealed behind the cloud. The cloud is thus the veil that God places on His face in order to speak to Moses and through him to the people. Moses did not see the “face” speaking to him, he only saw the veil (the covering “hand”) and heard the utterance. What, then, could Moses see and know? “All the goodness” of YHWH, what God created by His word and maintained by His providence after He saw “that it was good.” Moses could learn to know the wisdom of divine value and purpose, of will and morality embedded in the marvelous composition of each creature and in the marvel of amalgamation of all creatures into a unified world, of which it was said at the end of the narrative of creation: “God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) All God’s goodness that Moses could observe in creation after it was created, in its perpetuation if not in its coming into being, is the beneficent wisdom by which the balance of justice and truth is maintained among all the world’s creatures. This wisdom is summarized on the mythic plane (as opposed to the plane of jurisprudence) in the “attributes” by which God governs His world: The Lord came down in a cloud; He stood with him there, and proclaimed the name Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed: “YHWH! YHWH! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of fathers upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.” Moses hastened to bow low to the ground in homage… (Exodus 34:5–8)

It is easy to see that this is only an expansion of what was said in the earlier portion of the Ten Commandments. What Moses saw is not limited to the assertion of these general “attributes.” Moses learned the sustaining wisdom of creation. More than this, he learned to implement these attributes in notions of legislation and ethics that unify and preserve 31

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a commonwealth that is appointed to be a model for the nations. This fact is confirmed and elucidated by the covenant that was enacted with Moses and the commandments that he received in the same covenant after God revealed Himself to him in the cleft of the rock. When Moses bowed low, he again requested: “If I have gained Your favor, O Lord, pray, let the Lord go in our midst, even though this is a stiffnecked people. Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your own!” (Exodus 34:9) The repetition of the same request, while voicing the very reason for which God had decided to distance Himself from His people and appoint Moses as an intermediary, is at first sight astonishing: is the fact that Israel is a “stiff-necked” people a good reason to forgive their sin and return to accompany them to help them possess their land? Two observations help resolve this astonishment: (1) In this request to God, Moses does not address Him by the name YHWH, the name specified in the preceding declaration, but by the name ADNY (= “Lord”)4; (2) God responds to him: “I hereby make a covenant. Before all your people I will work such wonders as have not been wrought on all the earth or in any nation; and all the people who are with you shall see how awesome are YHWH’s deeds which I will perform for you.” (34:10) The use of the divine name ADNY (= “Lord”) hints at a more distant presence. Moses does not request the direct presence of YHWH as Creator in the midst of the people, but a tangible expression for the people of God’s lordship that will give support to his status in his people. God’s responsiveness to Moses’ request through the covenant that he makes with him confirms this: YHWH promises to go before the people in their way to the land and to subdue their enemies. The “awesome deeds” that He will perform for this purpose will insure Moses’ status within his people in the face of the difficult tasks connected with the possession of 4

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The English reader is likely to be confused by this distinction. The personal divine name YHWH was euphemistically substituted in Hebrew by Adonai, translated “the Lord,” from rabbinic times onward; on the other hand, the Bible occasionally (as in this passage) refers to God by the name spelled ADNY, vocalized Adonai without any substitution, and also translated “the Lord.” A reading of the standard English translation of Exodus 34:6–9 shows “the Lord” in both verse 6 and verse 9, with apparently no difference. Only a careful read of the Hebrew shows that in verse 6 the divine name is spelled YHWH, whereas in verse 9 it is spelled ADNY. Schweid interprets this difference, saying that the name ADNY (Lord) connotes a more distant God than the personal name YHWH: we might say that Moses is addressing God as “my Lord” rather than on a first-name basis.

From Prophecy to Wisdom

the land. The commandments that were given to Moses as obligations that he must accept on behalf of his people in the same covenant are connected to his role as leader in the conquest of the land, and a careful reading will show that they exemplify the implementation of the divine attributes that were just revealed in the cleft of the rock. The attributes of vengeance are exemplified in the commandment to destroy all the idolatrous practices in Canaan and not to enter into any covenant with their practitioners, lest they corrupt the Israelites and bring about their destruction: “because the Lord, whose name is Zealous, is a zealous God.” (34:14) The attributes of loving-kindness, justice and mercy are exemplified by the commandments of Passover, the Sabbath and the three pilgrimage festivals, in which the secure and prosperous habitation of the people in its land will be confirmed: “I will drive out nations from your path and enlarge your territory; no one will covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times a year…” And the Lord said to Moses: “Write down these commandments, for in accordance with these commandments I make a covenant with you and with Israel.” And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he ate no bread and drank no water; and he wrote down on the tablets the terms of the covenant, the Ten Commandments. (Exodus 34:24–28)

In summary: In the cleft of the rock God revealed to Moses the principles of His governance of the world by the attributes of loving-kindness, justice and truth on which the world is based, which must be implemented in the process of leading the people from within on their way to take possession of their land. By this revelation in the cleft of the rock, Moses rose in stature from a prophet who simply transmitted the commandments of God as he received them, without any authority invested in himself personally, to a sage who walked amidst his people and led them from the force of his knowledge of God’s ways in governing the world, and from his wisdom in implementing them in the trials that were in prospect for his people in the coming events. From this we can also learn in what way Moses’ role could continue to be filled in the leadership of this kingdom of priests: through the institutionalized transmission of his Torah, inclusive of his legislation and wisdom, from generation to generation, by sages whose status as leaders of the people would be conferred by virtue of their study of his Torah and of the attributes for implementing his commandments. 33

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

The Idea of the Covenant and the Basic Values of the Law of Freedom and Justice The law of freedom and justice that Moses gave his people was intended to implement the principles of the covenant whose ratification was the ritual-political-judicial act by which Moses established the kingdom of priests — the commonwealth designed to bridge the gap between the divine vision and its realization in creation. As we recall, the covenant was an action that fixed the pattern of the political structure based on it, and these were its principles: People are created in God’s image and likeness. As such, they are equal before their creator in respect of His responsibility as Creator for the welfare of all His creatures, each in accordance with what he needs for a good life and its perpetuation through his offspring. Their grouping into families, clans, tribes and peoples, and the establishment of peoples in their lands as states are necessary conditions for humanity’s survival in nature, for only thus can they be God’s partner in governing the world, improving it by means of that overlay of cultural creation that is entrusted to man for the sake of his life. The individual by himself will not develop into a human being whose divine image — reason and choosing will — render him human, nor will he sire and rear children to carry on his humanity, except through a family. Families will not be able to fulfill their tasks and responsibilities for the individuals comprising them, without the clans and tribes to which they belong, and these will not be able to carry out their duties except as part of a people, whose inherent powers of creativity enable it to hold on to its land and there cultivate its “garden.” YHWH, Creator of the world and humanity, bequeaths to each people its designated land. It is charged with establishing its “garden” there in partnership with the resources of the land and with the life that grows on it, from which and by whose aid it can extract all the necessities of its existence. Thus the improvement of the “garden” designated for man becomes the improvement of the entire habitat in which man lives, for his benefit and its benefit. In order to set up the “garden,” to work it and tend it, one needs a state based on laws and just institutions. This is the Creator’s will, and it is implanted in man’s reason and choosing will. From the outset this is no imposition on man, but the opposite: providing him with tools to realize his freedom. However, two factors operate to impede man in operating his “garden”: his lustful, egoistic and covetous nature as an animal, and the hard, rigorous labor that he must invest in order to set up his garden, to extract from it 34

The Idea of the Covenant and the Basic Values of the Law of Freedom and Justice

his life’s necessities and to guard it from deterioration and from enemies. There is thus a basis of coercion and force that come into conflict with the libidinal tendency of the human animal to find the gratification of all his life’s needs readily available for him in the natural state. Among other animals, who are a part of nature, the regularity that governs their lives and mediates between them and their environment is maintained by instincts that serve their survival, whereas in the case of man, who depends on the “garden” that he builds by himself on the basis of his values, these instincts become a root of evil, subversive of the values of his “garden.” Indeed, if those libidinal tendencies take over and become the basis of the state that establishes the garden, then coercion and force will be the principle of the state. An idolatrous, tyrannical state will develop, a kingdom of slaves, that will ultimately bring about its own destruction because of the contradictions that it embodies. But prior to its collapse, its rulers will seek to defend their supremacy by intensifying the exploitation, oppression and enslavement of their subjects. In the Biblical narrative, this process is illustrated by the stories of the Tower of Babel, of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of the development of the Pharaonic regime of slavery in the Joseph story. The idea of the covenant is intended to establish a different kind of state, one that is not based on man’s congenital evil impulses but on ethical values that YHWH commanded and implanted in the human spirit. The idea of the covenant also has a basis in human nature: in counterpoint to egoistic urges, there also operate feelings of fellowship that stem from physical and spiritual connections that draw human beings closer together and reduce the power of the egoistic, acquisitive, envious and competitive drives, by instituting ethical and legal relations of interdependence, in such a way that the sanctions of the laws of the covenant requiring social cooperation are implicit in that very arrangement. People bind themselves to one another, thus transforming the egoistic motive into a positive altruistic motive. They discover that by assisting and taking responsibility for one another they can benefit more than if each takes for himself without cooperation. Individuals, families, clans and tribes pledge themselves not to trespass on the lives, property, or welfare of their comrades who stand before them, but to assist them to the best of their ability — all in return for a like pledge from the side of their comrades. In this way, an immediate benefit is realized from observance of the mutual pledge — security against hostile trespass, a sense of trust and avoidance of enmity, assistance in achieving common task-goals. Corresponding 35

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

to this reward, there is also a tangible penalty — abrogating one’s responsibility will bring about cancellation of the other’s responsibility toward oneself, and loss of the benefits that it brings, not to mention the renewal of conflict and hostilities, that would require considerable effort to defend against them. This is the logic of the covenant between equals that establishes a community. It can be defended as establishing human beings’ rule over themselves through pledging obligations to each other, in which each party exacts the fulfillment of obligations due to him as a condition of delivery on his own obligations. Nevertheless, this covenant needs to be made complete by super-adding an obligating authority that stands transcendent to it and above it. First, because those human individuals who are equal to one another in respect of their ethical and legal status before God and before the institutions of their society, are not equal to one another in their talents and abilities, and a foriori in respect of their property and status that they have acquired in this society. Second, because the differences generated by their inequality in talents, abilities and property accentuate the egoistic drive and the temptations bound up with it. The contrast of wealth and poverty, as well as the crises of the society (war, scarcity) are liable to cancel the efficacy of the sanctions implicit in the mutual compact. In order to cope with this danger, the society requires a legal code and judicial system that serve the objective values of faith and justice, and in order for this system to operate in fidelity to the laws of faith and justice, it must be independent of the private litigants, yet able to enforce its judgments on them. The covenantal society thus establishes its own courts of law and policing institutions. But the law according to which it judges must stand on its own, and the authority in whose name the police operate must emanate from above them so that they do not operate capriciously. In the Mosaic Torah, it is impossible to generate this kind of authority from the community itself. The only available solution is to rely on the supreme will that was originally assumed as the foundation of the covenant: the will of God, Creator and Ruler of His world, is the source of all its laws. It thus turns out that the covenant between equals that establishes the community must be complemented by a covenant between unequals: the community and its king YHWH. The covenant, too, is based on mutual consent entered into from free choice, from the recognition that it is for the benefit of both parties, and in which reward and punishment are implicit in the covenant itself, so that its fulfillment automatically generates its reward, while its abrogation 36

The Idea of the Covenant and the Basic Values of the Law of Freedom and Justice

brings about inevitable consequences, in the form of conflicts both within the society and with neighboring nations, not to mention that violating YHWH’s laws violates the laws of creation itself. Sooner or later YHWH will render an accounting of the sins of the people who have violated His covenant, and the vengeance will be that of a “jealous God” who operates by rules of absolute truth and justice. It is thus better that the community and all its constituents should take good care to heed the dictates of the courts who judge them by YHWH’s laws and enforce them in His name. The covenant between the community and its king YHWH transforms the society of equals into a state, with all its hierarchy of functionaries, whose authority to enforce its laws is rooted in the consent of the community on the one hand, and in its members’ willingly-accepted pledge to obey the divine sovereign on the other hand. These two complementary covenants are combined in the single common “Book of the Covenant,” whose essential contents were heard by the people through YHWH’s royal proclamation in the Sinai theophany, then written on a parchment scroll by Moses and read aloud before the assembly in the ceremony of ratification of the covenant after the Sinai theophany, and finally engraved by God on the stone tablets that Moses, representing the community, had prepared, in order to place them in the Ark of Testimony in the Tabernacle. These are the Ten Commandments which enunciated the values and the basic laws implementing them, defined in terms of positive commands and prohibitions. The first three commandments articulate the norm of YHWH’s exclusive, absolute authority over His people. This is the value of “fear of God” that God wanted to implant in His people through His awesome manifestation in the sight and hearing of the whole people. In that awesome collective experience, the individuals, families, clans and tribes were welded together into a single body to whom YHWH spoke as one individual to another, and the congregation responded in a single voice affirming their unconditional readiness to hear, obey and do whatever was commanded them at that gathering. We should note that this description of the formative event establishes unconditional mutual responsibility of all the constituents of the community to each other, as well as between each constituent and the community before YHWH, obligating them to obey His commandments. This means that the sins of the individuals to each other, or of individuals against the community, or of the community against individuals, are turned into sins against YHWH, who judges them as individuals within the community and 37

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

as a community responsible for its individuals, for their reward and punishment. Thus the community is granted full legal authorization to enforce the law against individuals, while at the same time individuals are given the right to demand justice from the community and its judges in accordance with YHWH’s laws and standards of equity, without favor or preference. The rules of justice stand supreme over all, and individuals and the community are equal before them. The first commandment is a proclamation of God’s sovereignty based on His delivering them from slavery to freedom. By bringing Israel out of Egypt, YHWH — who is Lord of existence, Lord of all His creatures, and Lord of all humanity — for He created them — acquired a special prerogative, the prerogative of choice and preference, over the people of Israel, who will be sanctified to Him as a kingdom of priests. All these implications are compressed in the quintessential short utterance: “I YHWH” (by this name He is creator of all existence and its sovereign from creation) “am your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (I am your God by virtue of My having brought you out from slavery — Exodus 20:2). Through this assertion, and through the following prohibitions that elaborate on it, absolute, exclusive dedication is demanded of the people. The negative specifications forbid the people to worship “other gods” — the forces of nature, created by YHWH, that other peoples worship “in YHWH’s face,” because they regard them as intermediaries assigned specifically to them. In contradistinction to them, YHWH Himself rules directly over Israel. This sets absolute bounds to idolatry, for turning to the mediating forces of nature, over which one is able to exercise a certain degree of control through magic (or through science, of which magic is a precursor) easily turns into the self-deification of powerful human rulers. The Israelite people are forbidden to relate to YHWH through symbolic objects such as statues or pictorial representations, after the manner of the worshippers of other gods, for such symbols and images, which people fabricate according to their imagination, are the means through which they attempt to control the divine forces appointed over them. YHWH Himself is beyond the reach of imagination and symbolization. Any attempt to represent or symbolize Him would be an attempt to relate to Him as an “alien” deity. This would be lese majesté, and would have as its purpose the legitimization of action that stemmed from selfish interest contrary to YHWH’s commands. The “jealousy” which YHWH attributes to Himself is the negative aspect of His absolute sovereignty as legislator and judge: the willful violation 38

The Idea of the Covenant and the Basic Values of the Law of Freedom and Justice

of any of God’s laws on principle will necessarily give rise to a punishment of equal severity — a requiting action whose purpose is the restoration of the balance that was disturbed in God’s creation, as well as deterrence of further violations. On the other hand, God-fearing respecters of the law are promised a reward of beneficence and kindness in excess of what their positive actions deserve, which has the purpose of reinforcing the good intention and empowering it by encouraging the effort to be worthy of such kindness. (20:3–6) We emphasize that in this way YHWH’s control over the laws of nature is presented as the exercise of moral judgment. In the story of the transfer of leadership from YHWH to Moses, it is emphasized that it is impossible that there not be agreement between the judgment decreed by God’s will and wisdom, which create and govern the forces of nature and all its creatures, and the judgment that human beings devise according to God’s laws as they relate to human society. The purpose of the human legal system is to prevent the intervention of divine judgment by putting bounds to sin or applying corrective punishment that leads to repentance. Finally, it is forbidden to use God’s name “in vain” (20:6) — i.e., it is forbidden to use YHWH’s name in oath with a deceitful intention. Using YHWH’s name requires telling the truth insofar as one knows it, for YHWH is the God of truth. Thus is emphasized again the assertion that the proclamation of God’s kingdom is the recognition of Him as sovereign, who in His relation to the people of Israel combines the three principal powers of just government: legislation, adjudication, and execution / enforcement of the law. Later we will show that the human agencies that were appointed to carry out the legislative, judicial, and executiveenforcement tasks of implementing the law were in fact separate. Only the divine ruler combines them. Thus the value of “fear of God” that is the basis of the first three commandments receives definition. Only a god-fearing person recognizes freely, and out of identification with the divine authority that stands behind the laws, that it is the role of human legal institutions to implement them in the realm shaped by human activity out of responsibility to that higher authority, and only he does so out of obedience to it. In the Fourth Commandment, the Sabbath day is ordained as a day of symbolic realization of God’s vision in creation, for it is the end-goal for whose purpose the kingdom was established. Despite the present imperfect state of human existence in nature, the Israelites will live on the Sabbath day an ethical life befitting humanity’s destiny in accord with God’s vision of creation. The law of the Mosaic Torah 39

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

ascribes exceptional importance to the Sabbath: it is the “sign” of the covenant between YHWH and His people, therefore its profanation is considered a wholesale breach of trust vitiating the very covenantal connection itself. It follows that the importance of the Sabbath derives from its being a paradigmatic realization of the priestly commonwealth’s mission: repairing fallen reality, sunken in sin and suffering, by a proper life according to the Torah’s commands. In the six working days the Israelites are instructed to work to provide for themselves and their households — in careful compliance, of course, with the injunctions of mutual responsibility, cooperation, justice and equity. By contrast, on the Sabbath they are commanded not to work for satisfaction of their needs (this is not a prohibition in the usual sense, for working to satisfy one’s needs is in and of itself a commanded act, not a sin, hence refraining from work has an active positive significance defined by the term “rest,” which should not be confused with idleness), so that they will devote themselves to the service of YHWH their Creator and King. As service to God as Creator, the Sabbath is a memorial or sign of the world’s creation, as attested in Genesis. But as service to God as King, the Sabbath is a memorial or sign of the Exodus and liberation from slavery, as attested in Exodus. The value expressed in observance of the Sabbath is the value of faith in God’s goodness and kindness. This is the counterpart of the value of fear of God that is expressed in obedience to the first three commandments. The value of faith is conceived in this context as trusting reliance on the kindness of YHWH who rules over the world and is jealous of His sovereign status not for the sake of His control over His creatures, but for their own sake and welfare. Therefore even God’s avenging jealousy against the wicked who violate His covenant is the measure of His kindness to the righteous who observe His covenant. In this respect, too, the Sabbath is a “sign” in the sense of a testimony that is realized in actuality, for a person’s exclusive dedication to His service is the fulfillment of his destiny, his good and happiness in body and spirit, for only through dedication to God’s service does the work that the person performs for himself during the week achieve its objective, both for the laborer and for the one for whom he labors. The paradox embodied in these ideas is the paradox of the freedom that is realized through subjugation to God: man tends by his nature to immerse himself in self-supporting labor in order to insure his survival, prosperity and happiness, not just for today but tomorrow and the next day. Anxiety for the future drives him to this. But along the way he 40

The Idea of the Covenant and the Basic Values of the Law of Freedom and Justice

becomes subjugated to his labor and to the physical benefits that the labor insures him as an immediate reward; by subjugation to his labor and the material compensation for its pains, he loses his spiritual freedom. This is the psycho-social motive that drives mortal tyrants to dominate their compatriots and make them into slaves; this is the motive that leads slaves to collaborate with their oppressors as long as they provide them with a pot of flesh. The Sabbath’s prohibition of needs-providing labor and the command of rest incumbent on all workers without respect of their workday social status, so that they shall be freed for the service of God, before whose laws they are all equal — this prohibition and command transform all Sabbath-observers into free people who partake equally of the abundance that God generously bestows on His creatures. We recall that these realizations were first enunciated at the start of the wilderness journey after the crossing of the Sea in the story of the distribution of the manna. (Exodus 16:4–31) The version of the Sabbath-commandment in Deuteronomy emphasizes more explicitly the social dimension of the Sabbath injunction as well as the antithesis between the regime of service to YHWH and the enforced servitude of Egypt: Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; you shall not do any work — you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your ox or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the stranger in your settlements, so that your male and female slave may rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:12–15)

According to Deuteronomy, the Sabbath is a day in which slavery is abolished, root and branch. Social solidarity takes its place, and the command to “love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:18) is observed even toward “your ox, your ass, and all your cattle.” Nevertheless, we should note that at bottom this institution expresses the distinction between the Sabbath day, symbolizing the future to which one aspires, and the six days of labor dominated by the necessity to live by the conditions of unredeemed natural and social existence. We might expect that the memory of Egyptian slavery, which the Torah’s legislation seeks to negate, would require uprooting the institution 41

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

of slavery in its totality. But the Torah, by commanding the Sabbath, defers this to a future fulfillment. It is an objective to strive for. The Torah’s legislation is only a first step toward perfection, pointing the way: slavery is defined as a time-limited phenomenon, the result of social-economic pressures that cannot yet be overcome. In this way it abolishes the idolatrous notion of slavery according to which slaves, like beasts of burden, are the absolute property of their masters, who can do with them whatever they please, even to the point of killing them. According to the idolatrous conception, slaves are not defined as human beings created in the divine image, as their masters are. But according to the Sabbath command, slaves are human beings created in the divine image, the same as their masters; even animals’ souls are regarded as the property of God, not of their masters, which will have practical implications, as we shall see. It follows from this that a master cannot treat his slave however he wishes. This will be elaborated in the legislation that is included as part of the “Book of the Covenant” (Mishpatim), immediately after the Ten Commandments. The first commands in this legislation relate to the Hebrew male or female slave. Their service is defined for a term of six years, after which comes their personal “sabbatical year”5 that frees them from slavery and restores them to their former social status. Furthermore, the law sets humane conditions of employment. According to these conditions, the Hebrew male-slave is defined in effect as a hired wage-laborer for a double period, whereas the Hebrew maidservant is granted marital status within the family that cannot be taken away from her. (Exodus 21:1–11) Even with animals, the limits of ownership are defined. Not only should one treat them kindly and provide for their needs, but it is forbidden to eat their blood, which is identified with their “soul.” The blood should be returned to God. (This topic was discussed earlier in connection with the Noahide covenant.) Thus we have legislation that aims at utopian goals but adjusts their degree of realization to the conditions of non-utopian reality, because it demands realization and will not be satisfied with proclaiming ideals that will never be realized at all. 5

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This is admittedly an imprecise analogy. The general “sabbatical year,” described in Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15, was fixed on the calendar, common to all. The term of a Hebrew slave’s service, on the other hand, ran for six years starting whenever the period of servitude happened to begin, which did not have to coincide with the general sabbatical year.

The Idea of the Covenant and the Basic Values of the Law of Freedom and Justice

The Sabbath commandment enshrines the value of faith in God. The next commandment (“Honor your father and your mother, that you may long endure on the land that the Lord your God is assigning to you” [Exodus 20:12]) complements it by enshrining the human value of fidelity. Honoring one’s father and mother (obeying their commands and observing their instruction) guarantees long life on the land for two complementary reasons: fidelity to parents is a person’s fidelity to her origins, the source of one’s life, the source that determines one’s identity as a child of one’s people; it is also fidelity to the spiritual heritage that unites the people in a connection of obligation to its first origin — the assembly at Mount Sinai. For nurturing a kingdom of priests, this commandment has no equal in importance, for it strengthens the people’s sense of obligation to defer to the discipline of God and fulfill His Torah’s commands perpetually; thus in every generation the children will renew their responsibility to the Sinaitic covenant by the testimony of their parents, and this in turn will renew YHWH’s obligation to His people, to keep them in possession of their land. We will explain the Tenth Commandment (“Do not covet…” — Exodus 20:14) out of order, before commandments Six through Nine, because it is the source for understanding these four ethical commandments that, together with the Tenth, conclude the Ten Commandments on a note of absolute prohibition. As we recall, it was desire that motivated Adam and Eve to sin against God and themselves by eating the fruit of the tree “for it was a temptation to the eyes and desirable for enlightenment.” (Genesis 3:6) In desire, the power of man’s congenital evil urge is revealed, that moves human beings to commit the most heinous moral crimes. By including arousal of temptation in the legislation that deals with deeds, which alone can be counted as sins, we are doubly puzzled: (1) Is a person able to control his impulse, to the point of not being aroused in the face of objects that incite it? (2) Can coveting in and of itself be counted as a deed that one may regard as a sin? Inclusion of “do not covet” in the Ten Commandments answers both these questions in the affirmative. Indeed, we should draw a fine distinction between “desire” and “coveting.” In the Ten Commandments, “coveting” is not used in the sense of the desire that is aroused by the sight of inciting or enticing objects, but rather in the sense of a person’s craving to appropriate for himself such things that are found in his neighbor’s domain — his house, his wife, his male or 43

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

female slave, his ox or ass. The law is not addressed to the desire for such objects inasmuch as they are attractive and enticing, but rather inasmuch as it is the neighbor who enjoys them and not he. The sin in coveting is thus envy, which adds to desire the yearning for mastery over every good thing that belongs to others, i.e. it stems from the yearning to steal away the other’s happiness, more than the yearning for the object that arouses a natural desire. Such coveting is thus more than an instinctual-emotional arousal, for it contains an element of malice that it is indeed possible and necessary for one to control, and it finds expression in schemes that the covetous person plots in order to transfer ownership of his neighbor’s property to himself even by legal means. Coveting in this sense is already a kind of deed, even if it is in the form of thought, for it is such thoughts that lead to the most disastrous crimes. This embodies a crucial principle of the Torah’s law: God’s law does not recognize the distinction that human law is forced to recognize, between judicial obligation and moral obligation. At least as far as God is concerned, moral value in and of itself is a law by which human beings are accountable. Furthermore, by including “do not covet” in the Ten Commandments, coveting is presented as the source from which the most serious moral crimes between persons spring. It is thus not enough to forbid these crimes themselves. One should forbid their root causes. From these considerations we can learn the depth of the positive significance of the preceding four prohibitions: “Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness against your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:13) The text speaks here of the sanctity of the possessions that are the basis of the life, freedom and honor of each person insofar as created in the image of God. Each person in his/her uniqueness belongs to God, and whatever is given to him by God for his life’s sake is given to him by God. Whoever violates them affronts God, and so no flesh-and-blood person, no matter what his social status, may infringe on these sacred entitlements: his title to himself, body and soul (“do not murder”); his entitlement to connubiality, which according to the Mosaic Torah is the unit of life’s completeness, with the power to beget and rear offspring (“do not commit adultery”); his title to property, which is God’s gift to every person, and the property that he acquired by his honest labor (“do not steal”); and finally the entitlement that secures all the other entitlements: the right to a true judicial process. A lying judiciary is tantamount to murder, adultery, and theft all in one. 44

Judicial Justice as Covenantal Principle...

These are the basic values that establish the commonwealth on a foundation of justice, which it is obligatory to realize in the national society and to defend by its judicial practice.

Judicial Justice as Covenantal Principle — Its General Application, and the Concept of Truth The exhortation: “Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may inherit the land that YHWH your God gives you” (Deuteronomy 16:20), that is uttered as part of the instruction for appointment of judges and officers in Israel and the definition of their task, presents the centrality of the concept of justice in the law of the Mosaic Torah inasmuch as it is the law of the covenant. Justice is the ethical principle on which the covenant rests, and its realization in the relations of the members of the community is the condition for the survival and prosperity of the society founded on a basis of fidelity and mutual trust. Every judicial act that partakes of physical or spiritual violation, extortion, cheating, falsehood, exploitation, oppression, theft, violence, damage, expropriation or breach of contract, is regarded not only in respect of its motives as an expression of egotism and meanness, but more importantly as a breach of trust that violates the social compact itself. At stake is not just the evil done to certain individuals, but the evil done to the community and all its members, to society as such, all of whom are responsible for each other: each individual expects of his fellow-citizen as a matter of right, that he should stand up wholeheartedly, conscientiously, to the best of his ability, to deliver on all the responsibilities, negative and positive, that he took on himself vis-à-vis the other as members of the same covenant, in return for his doing likewise. Mutual trust rests on the community’s delivering on its responsibility for its members; thus a breach of one person’s responsibility to another is a breach of responsibility toward the community as a whole. The community is in default of its responsibility to its members if it does not hasten to correct the wrong. In this manner, justice may be defined as the proper balancing of actions done by individuals to each other, and between them and the community. Preserving the balance requires equilibrium between positive acts and prevention of violations between the two sides. In its primary meaning, justice is the desired situation in which positive balance is maintained: all stand by their mutual obligations with 45

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

each other and with the community. Fidelity and trust are observed; no outcry is heard from any side against another protesting violation of responsibility, either positive or negative. Justice is violated when outcry is heard.6 Since justice is a balance of actions and refraining from actions between individuals, a breach occurs simultaneously from both sides: someone did not stand by his obligation to another, someone committed an act expressing evil intent (if performed with malice), while someone else suffered damage — physical, material or spiritual, or all of them together. In other words, a wrong was committed violating his trust and disrupting his status and security. To understand the notion of judicial justice in the legislation of the Mosaic Torah, we should pay attention to this two-sided aspect: the judicial process, which has the task of restoring the just balance that has been violated, must relate to all the aspects of the violation from both sides — the wrongdoer, who is required to correct what is amiss in himself and in his actions, and make reparation for them; and the victim of the wrong. It follows that doing justice is not just enforcing the legal relations between members of the society, but restoring the general balance of social relations from an objective standpoint — that of truth. As for the one who cries out, it is the duty of the court to hear his plea and that of his adversary, and to weigh their arguments in the scale of judicial truth. We must emphasize again that the court is obligated to stand by its duty of executing justice, that is incumbent on it before God, whose laws it judges, before the community that it represents, and before the two judged parties, who stand a priori as equals before it. The court will not discharge its obligation of executing justice if it is satisfied merely to defuse the conflicts through compromises. Even if the litigants prefer compromises, which are easy to achieve and to carry out by their calculus of private interests that tend to prefer convenient solutions to just ones, the court has the duty to enforce justice in the sense of restoring the objective balance that was violated between the two contending parties, between them and the community, and between the community and all its members, including whoever was 6

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The play between “justice” (tzedakah) and “outcry” (tze’akah) harks back to Isaiah 5:7: “He hoped for equity (mishpat), but behold violence (mispah); for justice (tzedakah), but behold an outcry (tze’akah).” (The translator of this verse must choose here between conveying the literal sense or the wordplay. My translation chooses the former; the latter is conveyed in the modern JPS translation: “He hoped for justice, but behold, injustice; for equity, but behold, iniquity!”)

Judicial Justice as Covenantal Principle...

found guilty, and YHWH. If the court does not act out of objectivity toward the litigants, then it will itself incur guilt because of the wrong that will be incurred to the litigants and to the community. To avoid sin from its own side, the court must carefully examine the arguments of the parties, to verify them and weigh all aspects of damage caused by all sides: bodily damage, property damage, and moralpsychological damage. In order to achieve true restoration of a just state of affairs, the judgment must address all aspects of the wrongdoing, including its root causes, for the court is responsible not only for making whole the damage caused to the plaintiff and the community, but also that atonement be made for the sin before God and the community. It follows from this that the guilty party must not only pay compensatory damages, but also suffer a punitive fine proportionate to the injury he has caused to his fellow-citizens and to the community. The justice in the punitive fine is expressed in restoring the balance that was violated by causing suffering to one’s fellow, and also in the atonement that restores the life of the community to its proper state. Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that the damage and suffering brought about by the wrong that was committed cannot be wiped out as if they had not happened. The restoration of a just state of affairs will be completed only by “atonement” before YHWH — to be achieved through repentance and sacrifice — for every wrong committed by human beings that He created in His image is a wrong against Him. The condition for atonement is retributive justice — the wrongdoer should suffer the same suffering that he caused to his fellow, which will lead him to experience true remorse for his deeds, and thus achieve atonement. Finally, a fine sense of precision is required, to relate intrinsically to each event in terms of its unique special circumstances; full justice can only be achieved by addressing each injustice exactly as it happened, and its consequences as they occurred, taking into account the unique circumstances of every act. Bearing all this in mind will help us understand the verbal repetition, “justice, justice shall you pursue.”7 The repetition is not merely for emphasis. “Justice [of] justice” is to be distinguished from apparent justice, that was not achieved by fulfilling all these juridical requirements. A just outcome can only be achieved through just means. The 7

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The Hebrew tzedek tzedek can be understood syntactically in two ways: absolute (“justice, justice shall you pursue”) or genetive (“the justice-of-justice…”). The latter can have a superlative significance (like “crème de la crème”).

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

difference between the two kinds of executing justice is alluded to by the immediate context of the injunction, which is prefaced by the stringent warning: “You shall not judge unfairly [literally: pervert judgment]; you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the pleas of the just.” (Deuteronomy 16:19) Indeed, to these admonitions we should add everything that is said in the legislation of the Mosaic Torah about the court’s responsibility to delve into the depths of the truth through cross-examining and verifying witnesses’ testimonies — “you shall investigate and inquire and interrogate thoroughly” (Deuteronomy 13:15) — and through rendering judgments that correct the wrong caused to the complainant while offering also atonement for the sin of the person found guilty. In this connection, it is important to examine the principle of retributive justice, defined in rabbinic terms as middah ke-negged middah — “measure for measure.” In the Bible it is expressed in doing to the offender what he did, or tried with all his might to do to his victim. This principle was manifested as a divine judgment in the story of the Exodus from Egypt: YHWH hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to bring on him and his people the retribution that was coming to them for all their sins against Israel — the enslavement, the rigorous labor, the exploitation, the command to drown all the male infants in the Nile. YHWH exacts from Pharaoh blow for blow, humiliation for humiliation, exploitation for exploitation, drowning in the Sea of Reeds for drowning in the Nile. Only through retribution for every “debt” owed by the Egyptians to Israel is the just balance that YHWH established as a law for His kingdom on earth, in accordance with the laws of creation, restored to its proper condition. We should not be surprised, then, that the case-laws (mishpatim) that follow the Ten Commandments in the Sinaitic covenant embody the legal principle that implements justice in civil cases involving bodily injuries (up to and including manslaughter), by inflicting bodily injury and severe beatings that may even endanger the health of the recipient. Nevertheless, the legal approach exhibited here is opposite to that of Egyptian slavery. The law of the Hebrew slave is immediately followed by laws pertaining to physical attacks, which exhibit the most humiliating, degrading and dominating relation possible toward human beings created in the divine image, a relation that is legally permitted in the Mosaic law only towards one whose status is defined as a person’s “property” — i.e., his cattle, and also, to a certain extent, his slaves. These are deeds whose consequences cannot be repaired by restoring one to life or replacing a lost limb or otherwise restoring a 48

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person’s health to its prior condition, in the way that compensation can be made for monetary or property damages. This is the principle of the lex talionis, presented here in its original context: When men quarrel and one strikes the other with stone or fist, and he does not die but has to take to his bed — if he then gets up and walks outdoors upon his staff, the assailant shall go unpunished, except that he must pay for his idleness and his cure.

When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod, and he dies there and then, he must be avenged. But if he survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, since he is the other’s property. When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results,8 but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman’s husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning. But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Exodus 21:18–25)

The last portion of this passage is a precise, normative exemplar of the principle of “measure for measure” in the Mosaic legislation’s conception of justice — a penalty that restores the balance between the aggressor and the victim, in such a manner that the court alone (never the victim or his relatives or friends) inflicts on the transgressor what he inflicted on his fellow-citizen. A correct understanding of this criterion of judicial punishment in the Mosaic law requires examining it carefully within the context of its implementation in order to avoid the categorical condemnation of the Old Testament notion of justice — seen through Christian eyes — as vengeful or primitive. By the latter view, the Mosaic law would seem to prefer the balancing of accounts through vengeance over a more positive balancing through appeasement and conciliation. But a careful reading of the entire passage shows that it does indeed prescribe the path of correction through appeasement and conciliation when it is possible to pay for the healing of the injured party or reduce the damage. The application of retributive justice is required in a very specific case: when a pregnant woman bystander is injured in consequence of an out-of-control brawl between two violent men. 8

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“A miscarriage results” — literally, “her offspring go out.” Schweid’s analysis considers the possibility that the infant survived, but suffered a lifelong deformity from the attack.

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We should first of all note that this violent quarrel is the method in which the two combatants try to achieve their own brand of justice by the rule of “might makes right,” in the same way that Moses pursued at the start of his career, when he saw the Egyptian striking the Israelite man. This in itself puts the attacker of the pregnant woman into the class of a malicious felon, on the basis of his primary actions, even though he did not intend to strike the pregnant woman, who happened by chance to be at the site of the brawl. His blows were not aimed intentionally at her, but they were intended to cause physical harm to the other combatant, so the fact that an innocent bystander became the victim only substantiates the evil inherent in the very endeavor of members of the community to take justice into their own hands. Into the complex situation generated by the usurpation of the prerogative of justice by the would-be judged, two special factors are added: (1) the damage to the maimed infant — which he must bear his entire life — is inherently irreparable; (2) the infant victim, whose situation cries out in the ears of God and man because of the terrible life-long suffering he must bear, is innocent of any guilt and powerless to defend himself. Clearly, the punishment exacted of the wrongdoer will not correct the situation of the innocent victim, but the only way to make any kind of reparation for such damage is to levy a severe penalty to the extent permitted by law, a penalty that will be an effective deterrent against such actions in the future. Furthermore, as an act of killing or maiming cannot be undone, it is impossible to completely restore the balance of the fabric of the community, or its ability to shoulder responsibility for its citizens’ welfare, and it is impossible to achieve atonement for this sin on behalf of the sinner and the community, except by visiting the same action on its perpetrator in the same way that God exacted justice of Pharaoh: “life for life, eye for eye,” etc. If we take all these considerations into account, we will find that Rashi’s commentary on this passage is not without basis in the text: Some say an actual life, and some say, monetary compensation but not an actual life…. “Eye for eye” — if one blinded another’s eye, he compensates him with the monetary value of his eye — how much less would be his value with the loss of an eye if he were sold as a slave in the marketplace, and so similarly in the other cases, but they do not actually deprive the person of his limb. This is how the rabbis interpreted the law in the Talmud, Bava Kama, Chapter 8, “One who wounds…”

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This is not the literal sense of the explicit words of the text, and yet in the fuller context there is a basis for the proposition that if there is a possible way to restore the violated balance through conciliation and through compensation that can be reasonably calculated to be equivalent to the incurred damage, the law of Moses would prefer reparation to a retribution that contributes nothing to the welfare of the injured party. Indeed, compensation has an aspect of penalization (the heavy payments that the guilty party is obligated to pay on his account and thus bear responsibility for the consequences of his deeds). With this, we come to the inner connection between the concept of justice and the concept of truth in the Mosaic law. This connection is reflected first of all in the stringent demands that require the judges to examine the testimony carefully and to refrain from any kind of bribe that would distort their judgment, as well as from any favoritism, even the kind that one might think would be ethically beneficial, namely, compassion for the poor, the weak, and the unprotected, such as for the widows and orphans, whom the Torah demands that we should protect and repair the wrong done to them. Nevertheless, one may not repair social injustice (that will be discussed presently) by means of judicial injustice. The judges are thus required to examine and verify the facts, and to determine from them who is guilty and what is the measure of his guilt, in accordance with which shall be the penalty designed to restore justice to its proper condition. Whoever examines, on the basis of these considerations, the meaning of restoration of justice by the actions of the judicial court, will discover the evidential, conceptual and existential meaning of “truth” in the theory of Mosaic law: justice is identical with the truth of a person’s life as a creature created in the divine image, from the aspect of his personal perfection and from the aspect of his relations with his fellowpersons, with his community and with his whole life environment. The identity of justice with truth is expressed first of all in the method of arriving at judgment: convicting the guilty and exonerating the innocent requires first of all the determination of factual truth, implying in turn practical conclusions that lead to reparation, and as we shall soon see, reparative action also strives for a designated truth. Truth is in this sense an agreement between reality as it really exists, and the perception and evaluation of it. In the same sense, one may define truth as the appropriate fit between sin as a blemish — a perversion or falsehood imposed on the perceived reality that emerges from the fabric of relations among members of the community — and the 51

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corrective penalty that restores this reality to its proper condition, that is to say, to its truth. In the understanding of justice as the truth of the community’s (authentic) existence, with respect to the functioning of its institutions, its civil life, its defenses, its economy and its spiritual creativity, there is a utopian aspect: the need for the existence of judicial and policing institutions in continual, unceasing daily activity underscores the fact that there is an ineradicable gap between the ideal existence of the community and the ability of its members, as human beings, to stand up to the standard of moral conduct that they are expected to achieve according to the covenantal law. The maintenance of the community at the moral level of its actual functioning is far short of the ideal, and even that requires a continual effort of the will to overcome humanity’s congenital evil impulses. Persisting in this effort of the will is a hard task, and daily experience teaches that success is only partial and accompanied by setbacks, great and small, that tend to disrupt it. It is impossible to eliminate them, but they can be minimized. Even the “righteous” fail from time to time because of their human weaknesses, all the more so ordinary folk. In order for the community to maintain itself at an imperfect moral level, it is necessary to have a continual process of correction and atonement for its inevitable shortcomings, otherwise the feelings of guilt and blame that accumulate in the hearts of the members of the community will undermine their ability to persist in their efforts to maintain it. This recognition is a crucial constituent in the interpersonal and collective relations of the community. As we saw in our analysis of the function of the Tent of Meeting, it finds expression in the sacrificial service. Thus is defined the essential role of the priests: purification and sanctification from sin through confession, expression of remorse, and the korban — the “near-offering”9 that symbolically brings them near to their God and leads to atonement for their sins by virtue of their efforts to improve themselves and overcome their urges. This social-ethical significance of the sacrificial service finds thematic expression especially in the service of the Day of Atonement, which was designed to atone for the sins of the entire community. (Leviticus 23:23–32) 9

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Korban = “near-offering” — this felicitous translation of the word korban, generally rendered “offering” or “sacrifice,” but derived from the root KRB (karov = near), was coined by Everett Fox, in The Five Books of Moses: A New Translation, Schocken, 1995.

Judicial Justice as Covenantal Principle...

The Mosaic law thus recognizes the fixed gap between the ideal level of the community’s existence — the mythic level — and its actual level, documented in history, for its failures are more numerous than its successes. Nevertheless, the myth, embodying the utopian vision, is not intended for a consolation of the Messianic End of Days, but for striving for redemption through the continual effort for improvement and renewal, both on the plane of practical judicial activity and that of edifying ritual. The vision is thus conceived as a norm in accordance with which the social and sacerdotal leadership of the community is required to shape its existence in actuality, and to set an example of it through its enactment. Through its practice of justice, the leadership is required to present the truth of the community’s existence under the sign of its destiny: as long as the community persists in striving to realize its truth, it justifies its existence by achieving it. These considerations reveal the way in which the concept of truth was understood in the thought of the Mosaic law on its primary level, that of creation and existence: the obligation of every creature to be faithful to its essence. We may define this truth as the truth that is grasped from the viewpoint of the relation between the Creator and mankind created in His image, which each person is required to discover for him/herself, and to strive for its realization because God implanted it in him: each person must not only endeavor to see truth and to speak truth, but must be truthful in that he intends10 the truth, he does that which follows necessarily from it, and is transparent in his integrity,11 i.e., he is himself as he was intended to be at his creation. To truth in this existential sense, there is general application in the creation myth: the gap between the vision of creation and its actual existence is revealed in all created beings as such, insofar as they are limited by their finite ability that maintains them in their identities before God their Creator, even though their ability derives from Him. Even those creatures that were graced with the dictum “that it was good,” and blessed with continuity of offspring, did not realize their truth as it had arisen in their Creator’s ideal conception. In them, too, their Creator implanted the aspiration to develop their nature to the fullest and to 10

11

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“Intends” — yitkavven, related to kavvanah (intention, devotion, direction) — he should be directed by the truth and oriented by it, pursuing it with unswerving devotion. “Is transparent in his integrity” — tokho ke-varo, “his inside is like his outside,” without a shade of duplicity or hypocrisy.

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perpetuate it in themselves and in their offspring, and one may see in this their truth, renewed in their offspring. Nevertheless, what is common to all creatures blessed with the dictum “that it was good” is found in the norm that is renewed in the regularity that God implanted in nature. To human beings created in the divine image He commands that it is their task to find realization in the effort of the will to rise from the plane of animal creatures to the plane of beings who act on the basis of free choice and ethical wisdom, whose source are in God’s will and wisdom. The very existence of the human being as such in his terrestrial environment is conditional on his moralvolitional efforts to be what he was destined to be. He indeed exists as he was destined to exist only to the extent that he has succeeded in realizing his destiny by fulfilling his Creator’s commandments. This, then, is for him the truth in its existential, individual, interpersonal and collective sense. As we said, truth in this existential sense is identical with justice, for it is the measure of agreement between the deeds of human beings and the existential destiny that they are commanded to realize in their lives.

Social Justice as Fulfillment of the Vision of Creation Judicial justice is the core of the covenant, as we have said. It maintains the community by its laws from the time it was founded. And yet judicial justice cannot be actualized unless the society, at the enactment of the covenant, is founded on the basis of justice in respect of the initial status of the parties to the covenant. When they enter the covenant, they must be granted recognition as individuals who are able to maintain themselves at a decent level in their society by standing on their own, with the ability to support themselves as well as the ability to demand their just rights from their fellow-covenanters and their community. The covenant is not enacted among beggars dependent on others, but among free individuals who stand on their own, for only such people can take on obligations and obligate others. In the Ten Commandments, reference is made to those goods that are conditions of human existence in nature and society. Such goods are considered a gift of God’s grace, because they are subsumed in creation or birth, because they are identical with life (the right to one’s own body and soul), or a precondition of life (air to breathe, water to drink, food, 54

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dwelling-place, spouse). The world as God created it secures these goods to its creatures; but since human beings no longer live in nature but in their “garden,” established through social cooperation, it is proper that the society that establishes the “garden” should guarantee that these goods will not be withheld from its members, nor should they become the private property of individuals who have managed to capture the power to rule. This assumption is a basic assumption that the Mosaic law adopts in opposition to the law of Pharaonic slavery. Internally, it engages in coping with the problem of poverty in its many various forms as a central task of covenantal society. We shall later expand the discussion of the ways that it coped with this problem. In respect of defining the basic norm, it is fitting that we examine two declarations, from the same passage, that at first sight appear contradictory. Their purpose is to set forth the necessary conditions for observance of the “Year of Remission of Debts,” which was intended to offer a radical legal solution to the problem of poverty. At the start of the passage, we are told: However, there shall be no needy among you — since the Lord your God will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion — if only you heed the Lord your God and take care to keep all this Instruction [Torah] that I enjoin upon you this day. (Deuteronomy 15:4–5)

Afterwards comes the admonition: the Year of Remission cancels monetary debts, and so as it approaches, people are liable to refrain from extending loans to the poor; however, “do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman; rather, you must open your hand and lend him sufficient for whatever he needs.” (15:7–8) Finally comes this explanation: “For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command you: open your hand to the poor and needy kinsman in your land.” (15:11) Reading these contrary declarations in their full context reveals that there is no contradiction here, but a complementary conditionality. The first declaration sets forth the desired truth, the ideal state of affairs that will prevail if the people fulfill the covenantal law in letter and in spirit; the second declaration sets forth a different truth, the existing state of affairs, far short of the ideal, in the everyday life depicted in history. Their combined purpose is to encourage maximization of the efforts to realize the ideal norm, for that is a condition of the people’s prosperity in their land. These two declarations are united by the fundamental 55

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assumption, that preservation of the covenantal society is conditioned on its guaranteeing all its members the wherewithal to maintain and support themselves honorably from their own property and labor. It follows from this that the justice which is the basis of the covenantal community requires insuring for its members the right to those goods on which the livelihoods of free individuals, standing on their own, depend. It is not enough that they be theoretically equal before the law. Their equality will not exist in actuality unless the law grants them true equality by securing their just claim to those goods vital for their maintenance as independent individuals. We recall that these matters were spelled out as imperative in the story of the manna and its conjunction with the commandment of the Sabbath. Enjoyment of the manna was conditional on its distribution in equal measure to satisfy the personal needs of all the members of the community every day, without distinction as to strong or weak, men or women, adults or children, rich or poor. The commandment of the Sabbath was already presented in this context as a symbolic realization of equal enjoyment of God’s gifts to man; and the commandment of the Sabbath in the Ten Commandments presents, as we recall, an idyllic pastoral vision as implemented by a society that maintains its “garden” and lives by hard work in the house and field. The aspiration to realize this ideal during the six working days requires defining norms of property that implement the principle of justice within the framework of social relations. The central question now becomes: What is the source of validity, and what are the limits, of the claim to a person’s ownership over property such that it permits one to use it freely at will and prohibits another’s use of it except with permission of the owner? The fundamental general assumption on whose basis the Mosaic law responds to this question, is that the world, including all its constituent parts and all its creatures, including human beings, body and soul, are the absolute and inalienable property of YHWH because He created them. This assertion includes the stipulation that “ownership” in its primary, absolute sense is a derivative of the self-standing relationship between the master and his property. It is his because He made it, for had He not made it, it would not be. Therefore God’s ownership of His creation is irrevocable. From the outset this is not a legal determination, but an existential one: it is impossible to separate the creation from its Creator. If it were to be separated, it would cease to be itself, and would be annulled. What follows from this in connection with ownership exercised by human beings, who were created in their Creator’s image in the sense that 56

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they were endowed with the ability to fashion their garden using those resources that only God as Creator could bring into existence? First, they, body and soul, including their ability to fashion things from the resources of the world, as well as the things that they fashion, remain under the absolute ownership of their Creator, for if they were separated from Him to try to exist independently, they would not be. Second, YHWH created the earth and all its resources for the benefit of all its creatures, so that they may be supported from it. Human beings were created in God’s image so that they might “rule” in His name over the earth and over all its resources for the benefit of its creatures and for their own benefit. In blessing mankind, God gave them mastery in the sense of the right to consume and use the resources of the earth for their needs, inclusive of plant life and those animals that they are able to domesticate in their “garden,” on condition that they take for themselves what is necessary to them from their life-environment, while respecting the same right that God gave to all other human beings — their fellow-citizens of their own nation, as well as other nations with their descendants that dwell alongside them, each nation in possession of the land that God granted them. Honoring these rights — needful consumption and use of the earth’s resources in a way that is considerate of them, of their perpetuation and renewal for the coming generations — all these are conditions for maintaining ownership over the land and its resources, for from God’s standpoint, the ownership that human beings exercise over His land is by way of a loan, and He will revoke it if the individuals or the people do not observe the terms of the covenant. Thus the Mosaic law repeatedly warns and admonishes that the Israelite people will not remain for long on their land if they do not live on it according to the terms of the covenant. Justice in distributing the land-estates and their resources is the primary condition. Third, whatever each person, each family or clan, each tribe or people create themselves by using the resources that were properly allotted to them, becomes their property in the same respect as their right of need-based consumption and use in relation to others. The same applies to all the goods that they purchase legally in exchange for what they have made or earned through their labor. What shall we say about the second kind of acquisition, in which the bounty of God and the creative powers of human beings are intermingled? If with respect to the first kind of property, justice is determined by egalitarian criteria, then with respect to the second, justice is determined by the criteria of the needs and the abilities of each individual, family, clan, tribe and people. That is 57

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to say, a person is measured against himself with respect to his needs, his talents and his good luck, but not in comparison to others, and this creates inequality between himself and others. Therefore one should set limits to it, and honor the rights of others with respect to the first kind of property, in which it is proper to preserve equality and guard against creation of dependency that subjugates those who prospered less or failed in their labor on account of the accidents of life or on account of lack of talent, becoming poorer than those who prospered and grew wealthy. In other words, it is forbidden that the relative inequality that is permissible and desirable for the sake of the prosperity of the group and its members totally efface that primary equality that mandates the goods that enable each individual, family, clan, tribe and people to stand independently on its own. The articulation of these ideas is expressed in the legislation dealing with the distribution of the land to the Israelites at the time of settlement, and their continued existence on the land. First of all, there is the law prescribing equal distribution of the land to the tribes, clans and families: The Lord spoke to Moses saying: “Among these shall the land be apportioned as shares, according to the listed names: with larger groups increase the share, with smaller groups reduce the share. Each is to be assigned its share according to its enrollment. The land, moreover, is to be apportioned by lot; and the allotment shall be made according to the listing of their ancestral tribes. Each portion shall be assigned by lot, whether for larger or smaller groups.” (Numbers 26:52–56)

In support of the idea that the measure of justice is defined as the measure of equality, we should cite also the passage dealing with the claim of Zelophehad’s daughters, who said: “Our father died, and he has left no sons. Let not our father’s name be lost to his clan just because he had no son! Give us a holding among our father’s kinsmen!” Moses brought their case before the Lord. And the Lord said to Moses, “The plea of Zelophehad’s daughters is just: you should give them a hereditary holding among their father’s kinsmen; transfer their father’s share to them. “Further, speak to the Israelite people as follows: ‘If a man dies without leaving a son, you shall transfer his property to his daughter. If he has no daughter, you shall assign his property to his brothers. If his father had no brothers, you shall assign his property to his nearest relative in his own clan, and he shall inherit it.’ This shall be the law of procedure for the Israelites, in accordance with the Lord’s command to Moses.” (Numbers 27: 3–11)

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With respect to the deeper theory of social justice in the Mosaic law, this passage is important first of all for its exacting insistence that the primary equal distribution of the land-portions among families, clans and tribes should not be infringed or undone in the course of time because of problems of transfer of holdings by inheritance from one generation to another. Second, importance is given to the connection of each family, clan and tribe to its ancestral land, for the connection to the land called by their name is a measure of their standing among their people and before YHWH, and insures the perpetuity of their remembrance among their people down through the generations. This is the existential significance that the Mosaic law ascribes to the kind of property-holding that establishes each individual as an independent person standing on his own in the midst of his people before God. We see here a vital defense not merely of the right of land-possession, but of the dignity of the person, represented by his name and perpetuated in the memory of his descendants who are called by his name. Yet we should also take note of a contrary rule restricting land-possession, which was also designed to preserve a just equality of the status of the various members of the community: The levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no territorial portion with Israel. They shall live only off the Lord’s offerings by fire as their portion, and shall have no portion among their brother tribes: the Lord is their portion, as He promised them. (Deuteronomy 18:1–2)

The background for this legislation is the Mosaic law’s opposition to the regime of Pharaonic servitude that was consolidated, according to Joseph’s advice, by centralizing all the land of Egypt in the hands of Pharaoh and his priests. If the priests and Levites had been given a territorial inheritance like all the other tribes of Israel, it would have created an inequality between them and the other Israelites on account of the generous income due to them from the people, for according to the covenantal law the other Israelites had to provide them with tithes, heave-offerings, and various defined portions of the sacrifices. In other words, the priests and the Levites, without any territory in their own name, are amply provided for in comparison to the rest of the people that do have their own defined portions of land. If in addition they had other sources of income based on proprietary lands, this would interfere with their full devotion to the task of serving God and the people whom they represent; they would have an unfair advantage with respect to 59

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the consumption and use of those resources that are God’s gift to the entire people; and finally, in addition to the sanctions of leadership that belong to the priests and Levites by virtue of their office in the sanctuary, their land-holding would afford them a power-base for dominating the whole people. The final consideration is decisive in terms of the campaign against the Pharaonic regime: depriving the priests of landownership balances the dependency of the people on the priests and Levites by a countervailing dependency of the latter on the former, thus preventing either side from using its functional advantage to achieve total dominance to the point of subjugation. This is an example of a structural political principle that we shall see again later on.

The Problem of Poverty and the Ethic of Neighborly Love The second kind of property — property acquired through labor or exchange — creates inequality, as we saw, and this raises the problem of justice in a manner that is not solved merely by the initially equal distribution of land-holdings. Differences in wealth among members of the community do not in themselves constitute any injustice as long as they have their source in honest labor or honest exchange that do not involve unfair expropriation of the resources of others or exploitative domination of another’s labor-power. And yet beyond a certain point the difference between poor and rich becomes a difference between strong and weak. This is a difference in status, influence and political power. In all these respects, the rich gain a decisive advantage and the poor are put at a decisive disadvantage, in which is latent the tendency of the rich to dominate and exploit, and the readiness of the poor to be dominated and exploited. The status of the Hebrew slave and the Hebrew maid-servant is a direct result of these tendencies, and as we have seen, legislation prohibiting these entirely is considered impractical by the Mosaic legislation. (We shall return to this topic at the end of the chapter.) Thus are increased the pain, suffering and wrong that are caused to the poor by their dependence on others for the necessities of their existence. Injustice is generated, whose responsibility lies on the shoulders of the entire community and on those individuals who have the ability to assist. Indeed, possessing greater ability is a source of obligation, which if they do not fulfill it, they sin against God and against 60

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the community. On the basis of this ability, the Mosaic law fleshes out the basic principle of social justice with legislation of two kinds: corrective ethical legislation, and regenerative statutory legislation. The corrective ethical legislation interprets and implements the great principle that sets the primary yardstick for reciprocal interpersonal relations among the members of the community. We bring it again in the context of the passage that spells out its implications. The headline of the passage sets the theme: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God, am holy. (Leviticus 19:1–2)

This introductory clause transmits the commandment that Moses took on himself in the cleft of the rock, to lead the people according to the attributes by which God governs His world, and to make them obligatory on the whole community as the commandment incumbent on every individual in its midst. The idea that this commandment applies to individuals as a way of life is highlighted at the start of the passage which shows a certain contrasting parallel to the Ten Commandments. We recall that the Ten Commandments were given to the community as a collective unified entity, whereas in the present “Kedoshim” passage we read: You shall each revere his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths: I the Lord am your God. Do not turn to idols or make molten gods for yourselves: I the Lord am your God. (Leviticus 19:3–4)

The First Commandment, stressing God’s sovereignty over His people, which opens the Ten Commandments, is repeated twice here after the commandments, as the source of their authority. Afterwards, there come four out of the five first commandments in reversed order, in a language that seems to address each member of the community individually (“you shall each revere his mother and his father,” etc.) — first the commandment to honor one’s father and mother (but the order is reversed here: the mother comes before the father, for the mother precedes the father in educating the children from infancy on, and introduces them into a pattern of religious and ethical observance by integrating them into the family life); next the commandment of the Sabbath, which introduces them into a life-pattern of religious observance and symbolizes its purpose; finally, the prohibition against 61

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serving other gods before YHWH or making molten gods (like the Golden Calf). But it is important to note that the missing command “do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” appears later on in connection with two other prohibitions from the Ten Commandments that help us understand its practical significance: You shall not steal; you shall not deal deceitfully or falsely with one another. You shall not swear falsely by My name, profaning the name of your God: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:11–12)

Whereas the Ten Commandments presents these laws from a nationalpolitical perspective, the Holiness Code does so from a personaleducational viewpoint. It addresses individuals within their families and their community to instruct them in an ethical way of life: not out of fear of the law, but out of an inner discipline that grows out of a striving for the truth. Knowledge and understanding of the truth turns fear into love, and recognition of obligation into empathy and compassion. In this context, a series of social commandments is given, culminating in the command of neighborly love: When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of our vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the Lord am your God. You shall not steal; you shall not deal deceitfully or falsely with one another. You shall not swear falsely by My name, profaning the name of your God: I am the Lord. You shall not defraud your fellow. You shall not commit robbery. The wages of a laborer shall not remain with you until morning. You shall not insult the deaf, or place a stumbling block before the blind. You shall fear your God: I am the Lord. You shall not render an unfair decision: do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich; judge your kinsman fairly. Do not deal basely with your countrymen. Do not profit [or stand idly] by the blood of your fellow: I am the Lord. You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kinsman but incur no guilt because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:9–18)

Several philosophical commentators ask: how it is possible to command love? Furthermore, is it possible for someone to love his fellow62

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person as he loves himself? The source of these questionings is in the misunderstanding caused by taking this rule out of its context, as if it were given as an independent injunction within a list of commandments each of which was similarly given independently by itself. But first of all it is proper to point out that the word “love” in the Bible is never applied to a person’s relationship to himself, but only to another: love of God, love of fellow (“neighbor”), love of women. Egotism is never described as a kind of love, but as a negative urge that stands in the way of a person’s natural tendency to engage in fellowship with members of his family, with his tribe and his people, and to be drawn toward them for the sake of his life’s fullness, from which flows love. Therefore, the meaning of the word kamokha — “as yourself” — in the sense of “as you love yourself” is clearly mistaken. The meaning of attributing the commandment (“you shall love”) to God who commands it (“I am the Lord”) is therefore: your neighbor is in My eyes as yourself. The two of you are equal before Me in My love of you. You are commanded to love your neighbor, for I love him the same as I love you, in order that you shall cause My love of you to endure. What, then, is this love, and in what sense can it be commanded? From the context of the commandments through which the major principle receives specification, comes the answer that love in its ethical-emotive sense (as opposed to its physical-instinctual sense, expressed in sexual attraction) is a feeling of covenant, a feeling of fellowship, a feeling of identification and participation in the neighbor’s pain (empathy and compassion) and in his happiness. One can certainly command expression of these feelings in the deeds that embody them: human beings created in the divine image were imbued with these feelings, and just as the feelings motivate one to perform deeds of friendship, so too the deeds activate the feelings. A person’s feelings are not always pre-determined because he is subject to alternating feelings and impulses. Rather, he is called on to assert his will on the basis of his awareness of what is required, good, and proper. If a person’s egoistic urge prevails over his will, he will experience feelings of alienation. He will invent all kinds of excuses to justify his unworthy deeds in his own eyes and to hide them from the eyes of others. If his ethical will prevails over his lower impulses, his feelings of love will be in the ascendancy and fill him. Assertion of the will can manifest itself, for example, in the deliberate, subtle, considered refraining from selfish deeds that would be to the detriment of his poorer, weaker neighbor, and in the considered (and considerate) action that assists him to regain his proper 63

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status. The command to love the neighbor is thus the command to do those deeds that are expressive of such love. A deeper understanding of the command “love your fellow as yourself: I am the Lord” may be obtained by looking at the commandments pertaining to this topic in Mishpatim (the “Covenant Code”) immediately after the Ten Commandments in Exodus: You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan. If you do mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to Me, and My anger shall blaze forth and I will put you to the sword, and your own wives shall become widows and your children orphans. If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, do not act toward them as a creditor: exact no interest from them. If you take your neighbor’s garment in pledge, you must return it to him before the sun sets; it is his only clothing, the sole covering for his skin. In what else shall he sleep? Therefore, if he cries out to Me, I will pay heed, for I am compassionate. (Exodus 22:20–26)

The prohibition against lending at interest, and against applying inconsiderate pressure on the lender to repay the debt, is repeated several times in the Mosaic legislation. The special importance of the passage cited above is in its articulation of the emotional motive of the command: the members of the community are commanded to behave toward their poorer members out of feelings of participation and identification with their unmerited suffering, for that is how their Creator feels toward them. If they do not have compassion for the poor and suffering, they will bring God’s anger on themselves. The mention of the sufferings of the Israelites in Egypt does not relate only to the memory of the distant past, for the Mosaic law strives to imprint it deeply on the awareness of all members of the people for all generations. It tries to rekindle the memory with respect to the life-experience of every individual: is there a person who has never experienced the suffering of the poor and weak in confrontation with one stronger than him? If he remembers his own feelings and his expectations from his fellows, he will understand his fellow, put himself in his place, and experience feelings of compassion and common participation. The feeling of love that is awakened in this way is expressed first of all in refraining from those wrongs that create poverty or aggravate 64

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it. But we should emphasize that refraining from such actions has a positive meaning from the perspective of the sufferer: by forgoing such enjoyments as he could have obtained by levying interest, by claiming his cloak (that was taken for collateral), or exploiting his labor because the worker has not the power to demand a full wage or payment on schedule — this restraint is tantamount to tangible assistance, both material and spiritual. We proceed from this to the positive assistance that it is obligatory for one countryman to extend to another in his poverty. We refer here to the commandments of tzedakah12 that are mentioned very briefly in the Holiness Code: the commands not to reap the corner of the field or to go back for the gleanings and forgotten sheaves, but to leave all of these for the poor. In Deuteronomy, there is added the commandment to set aside the poorman’s tithe: Every third year you shall bring out the full tithe of your yield of that year, but leave it within your settlements. Then the Levite, who has no hereditary portion as you have, and the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow in your settlements shall come and eat their fill, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the enterprises you undertake. (Deuteronomy 14:28–29)

With regard to these commandments, it is important to emphasize that they are presented as an obligation incumbent on all the members of the community, because it is the right13 of the poor that they can expect from them. It is not a matter of freewill contribution or kindness above and beyond the law’s requirement, but it is a legal obligation even if it is impossible to enforce it. At the basis of this commandment is found the ethical-economic assumption that the obligation of the landowners, to set aside part of the produce of their land that grows in their tilled fields, constitutes the right of the poor, even though the field does not 12

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The word “tzedakah” has become the primary term in Jewish practice for money given to the poor for assistance, but to translate it “charity” would be very misleading. “Charity” connotes supererogatory kindness motivated primarily by a feeling of benevolence. This is not entirely amiss here, as Schweid has just spoken of the command “love your neighbor” as being related to this whole complex of actions. But the primary meaning of tzedakah is related to tzedek, “justice.” The point here is not the opposition of justice and love, but of their integration in a societal ideal of a just society in which neighbor-love and the legal obligation to mutual assistance are mutually reinforcing. (LL) “Right” — again the word “tzedakah” with the connotation of “justice” and referring to the monetary assistance of the poorman’s tithe.

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belong to them and the labor that caused the produce to grow is not their labor. On what, then, is based their right to take a certain portion of the produce? The answer is rooted in God’s gift to all His creatures, and their right to enjoy the resources that God created for their sustenance and survival. As it was because of their unfortunate situation, not their laziness, that they were unable to support themselves sufficiently from their own land and their own labor, they are entitled to collect God’s gifts from whatever was given to the wealthy in abundance over and beyond their needs, for it was on this condition that they were privileged to possess their estates from God, and if they do not honor the condition, they will someday forfeit the gift.

Statutory Law that Regenerates the Egalitarian Basis of Social Justice We thus return to the founding principle of the law of social justice, and on its basis is established the statutory law whose purpose is to renew cyclically the egalitarian basis of distribution of ownership over the resources of the land given by God to all His creatures: The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath of the Lord. Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your untrimmed vines; it shall be a year of complete rest for the land. But you may eat whatever the land during its sabbath will produce — you, your male and female slaves, the hired and bound laborers who live with you, and your cattle and the beasts in your land may eat all its yield. You shall count off seven weeks of years — seven times seven years — so that the period of seven weeks of years gives you a total of forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the horn loud; in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month — the Day of Atonement — you shall have the horn sounded throughout your land and you shall hallow the fiftieth year. You shall proclaim release [liberty] throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to his family. That fiftieth

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Statutory Law that Regenerates the Egalitarian Basis of Social Justice year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, neither shall you reap the aftergrowth or harvest the untrimmed vines, for it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you: you may only eat the growth direct from the field. In this year of jubilee, each of you shall return to his holding. (Leviticus 25:1–13)

The law of the sabbath-year (the same as the Year of Remission in Deuteronomy) and the law of the jubilee-year introduce the vision of the Sabbath, symbolically realized each week and each festival that is a “holy convocation,” to historical realization as a cyclical process of “redemption” — redemption of the land, redemption of slaves, redemption of the poor. This is the nature of the redemption: the redemption of all individuals, families, clans, and the entire people from the situation of the loss of their proper status as free individuals standing on their own — on account of the loss of their land-holdings, or their servitude to others, or their poverty, or their orphaned or widowed state — to the restoration of their proper free and independent status. This was the meaning of the redemption of Israel when they were brought out of Egypt and brought to YHWH their Redeemer, who gave them His protection as their king and legislated for them a law of freedom. Indeed, just as YHWH redeemed His people and promised them redemption if they keep faith with His covenant, so is every person in Israel obligated to be a redeemer to his family and his less-fortunate fellow-countrymen, to save them from their straits and restore them to their proper estate. In order to consider in proper depth the idea of redemption that is symbolized in the weekly Sabbath and implemented in the sabbatical and jubilee years, we must first complete the passage briefly cited above, which continues with several legal implications of the ideas of remission and jubilee, which have application even during the intervening years: But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me. Throughout the land that you hold, you must provide for the redemption of the land. If your kinsman is in straits and has to sell part of his holding, his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his kinsman has sold. If a man has no one to redeem for him, but prospers and acquires enough to redeem with, he shall compute the years since its sale, refund the difference to the man to whom he sold it, and return to his holding. If he lacks sufficient means to recover it, what he sold shall remain with the purchaser until the jubilee; in the jubilee year it shall be released, and he shall return to his holding.

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Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, it may be redeemed until a year has elapsed since its sale; the redemption period shall be a year. If it is not redeemed before a full year has elapsed, the house in the walled city shall pass to the purchaser beyond reclaim throughout the ages; it shall not be released in the jubilee. But houses in villages that have no encircling walls shall be classed as open country; they may be redeemed, and they shall be released through the jubilee. As for the cities of the Levites, the houses in the cities they hold — the Levites shall forever have the right of redemption. Such property as may be redeemed from the Levites — houses sold in a city they hold — shall be released through the jubilee; for the houses in the cities of the Levites are their holding among the Israelites. But the unenclosed land about their cities cannot be sold, for that is their holding for all time. If your kinsman, being in straits, comes under your authority, and you hold him as though a resident alien, let him live by your side: do not exact from him advance or accrued interest, but fear your God. Let him live by your side as your kinsman. Do not lend him money at advance interest, or give him food at accrued interest… If your kinsman under you continues in straits and must give himself over to you, do not subject him to the treatment of a slave. He shall remain with you as a hired or bound laborer; he shall serve with you only until the jubilee year. Then he and his children with him shall be free of your authority; he shall go back to his family and return to his ancestral holding. — For they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt; they may not give themselves over into servitude. — You shall not rule over him ruthlessly; you shall fear your God. Such male and female slaves as you may have — it is from the nations round about you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You may also buy them from among the children of aliens resident among you, or from their families that are among you, whom they begot in your land. These shall become your property: you may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property for all time. Such you may treat as slaves. But as for your Israelite kinsmen, no one shall rule ruthlessly over the other. If a resident alien among you has prospered, and if your kinsman be in straits, comes under his authority and gives himself over to the resident alien among you, or to an offshoot of an alien’s family, he shall have the right of redemption even after he has given himself over. One of his kinsmen shall redeem him, or his uncle or his uncle’s son shall redeem him, or anyone of his family who is of his own flesh shall redeem him; or, if he prospers, he may redeem himself. He shall compute with his purchaser the total from the year he gave himself over to him until the jubilee year; the price of his sale shall be applied to the number of years, as though it were for a term as a hired laborer under the other’s authority….If he has not been redeemed in any of those ways, he and his children with him shall go free

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Statutory Law that Regenerates the Egalitarian Basis of Social Justice in the jubilee year. For it is to Me that the Israelites are servants; they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt, I the Lord your God. (Leviticus 25: 23–55)

I have cited this long passage at length because it spells out the primary assumptions that are at the basis of all the social-justice legislation, especially its ethical basis. These are its essential points: 1. As with the weekly Sabbath, so in the case of the sabbatical year and the jubilee year the land returns to the state of being the absolute property of YHWH its Creator, in that all His creatures (animals as well, and not just domesticated animals) are free to graze on it and to enjoy the produce that grows on them of its own accord. The borrowed ownership that YHWH granted to human beings over His land is revoked. They are forbidden to till their land-holds or to take the produce that grows on them for themselves, and it reverts to being a free gift to anyone. 2. The revocation of conditional ownership and the return of the land to its original owner permits the community to return to the origin-point of the covenant’s enactment. We recall that the covenant — including the legislation that requires re-establishing the kingdom of priests on its egalitarian basis — was enacted before the entry to the land, and on condition that the land should be distributed equally among the tribes, clans, and families.14 In the jubilee year, the revocation of ownership of the land-plots serves not only the just distribution of the produce of the land according to the example of the distribution of the manna to the Israelites in the wilderness, but also the restoration of the just distribution of land, that was upset by the inequality of rich and poor that accumulated over the intervening fifty years. Those who lost their status as free individuals (the Hebrew slaves and their families) and those who lost their ancestral land-plots return to their original status, and their land-holds revert to them. 3. The law includes provisions so that the renewal of the just order will not cause injustice to buyers of land who bought them legally with their money. Thus an effort is made to remove a great obstacle from 14

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Critical scholars of the Bible and its history will of course dispute the facticity of this chronological account. But as a literary document and source of values, the Bible still presents this as its narrative-legal statement. Whatever the author of Leviticus 25 had in mind must be interpreted in terms of something like these assumptions, and so the values implicit in this text may be plausibly reconstructed along the lines argued here. (LL)

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

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the realization of the idea of renewal, for enforcement of the law of redistribution would meet up with the opposition of the rich to having to give up their gains. The provision that the purchase-price of land should not negate the profit that the purchaser sought to realize legally from his purchase, removes the danger of injustice to the purchaser, and it is a just basis for restoring the just distribution. The same consideration requires different legislation for the purchase of residential houses in walled cities, for its inhabitants do not support themselves by the urban land. Selling these to others thus has a different significance from selling agricultural land, also in respect of the rules of justice applying to the relations of buyers and sellers. Special legislation is required for the Levites who have no agricultural land-holds but who live in cities. Their house in the city is their ancestral inheritance, and they should be insured against losing it permanently from impoverishment. In the jubilee year, slaves are freed and they return to their ancestral land-holds, but this legislation, as well as the prohibition against charging interest for loans, applies only to members of the covenantal community, not to slaves purchased from other nations. In accordance with the laws accepted among those peoples, they do not apply to resident aliens either. The Mosaic law warns against oppressing the alien, but it does not accord him equal status. He has no land-hold in the community, and he is not included in its covenant. It is permitted to purchase slaves from its members, and it is permitted to charge them interest, as their own law permits. We have the same kind of legal consideration that was implemented in the permission to take Hebrew slaves and maid-servants even though logically the opposition to the institution of slavery should require its total abolition. This raises the complex problem of the relation of the Mosaic law to the members of other peoples, a subject that will require separate discussion. One of the implications of this problem is manifested in the law’s special provisions for the redemption or restoration of lands and slaves to the domain of the Hebrew community after they were sold as slaves to wealthy aliens. The law here defines the obligation of the family relatives to do all that is in their ability to redeem their relatives, without waiting for the jubilee year. Finally, the principle of restoring the original equal distribution in the jubilee year creates an ethical norm that requires all sellers of landholds in the land to redeem them as soon as they acquire the means for doing so. Purchasers of land-holds are required to restore them to

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their original owners when they are able to redeem them, for a payment that is fairly pro-rated in proportion to the number of years for which they paid and were not compensated. This norm was thus intended not only to put an end to ever-growing inequality, but to encourage the responsibility of members of the community to be redeemers for each other and to turn the redemption into a process countering the generation of inequality and poverty. The legislation of the sabbatical year and jubilee crowns the striving of the Mosaic law to set up in opposition to the Egyptian regime of idolatrous slavery — which in the eyes of the Mosaic Torah was the ultimate nadir to which human society could degenerate — a regime of free persons, a kingdom of priests dedicated to YHWH their god to be His servants by walking in His ways. The Sabbath, as we said, was a symbolic realization of the vision of God in creating His world, a day of justice and freedom realized by dedication to service of God. The sabbatical year and jubilee year were intended to be the fulfillment of the vision of a life of justice and freedom in worldly social existence, out of recognition that in this world it is impossible to realize it perfectly as a permanent fixed achievement. It is possible to achieve it only through the continual effort of a covenantal community faithful to the truth of its life, for its achievement is always in the distance, just as Moses saw the promised land from a distance but did not get to it; but nevertheless one can approach it through the faithful effort to fulfill the commandments of the covenant, as long as mortal humans can call on God’s assistance. From the historical narrative of Genesis and Exodus we learned that every effort to bridge the gap between God’s vision of creation and its realization in terrestrial reality arrives at a certain level of achievement, sinks into the morass of man’s congenital evil urge, but leaves an opening for a second corrective beginning. The idea of the sabbatical and jubilee years institutionalizes this outlook in the social-political law of the kingdom of priests, turning history into the narrative of continual cyclical progress from sin, slavery and poverty to the brink of redemption anticipated as a vision, which despite its remoteness can be approached through partial realization. The utopian character of the prophetic law of renewal is especially prominent in the legislation of the sabbatical and jubilee years. The big question is not whether it was ever carried out as described in the real life of the Israelite people, but whether it is possible to imagine in the first place that it could ever be carried out as described? A negative answer would be based on attending, as recognized in the law itself, to the obstacles that stand in its path, whose source is in the nature of the human ego: 71

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it makes its compromises with slavery and poverty and does not project a way to abolish them, but only to limit them and correct them. But if these two assertions are correct, it follows from them that the utopia, which is unfulfilled, is not a consoling dream of the end of days that shall be fulfilled through a marvelous change in human nature, but is the presentation of a vision, which is not hopelessly elevated beyond the horizon of human ability to fulfill it. This vision will be a kind of directive that calls for continual effort to continue to bridge the gap between the level of the vision and the possibilities for its fulfillment in the defined realities of each present in the history of each people. This is the applied effort of the “oral Torah,” its ethics and its laws, as the Torah of the sages who walk in the footsteps of the prophets, whose origin is rooted in the “written Torah,” especially in the book of Deuteronomy whose rabbinic name is “Mishneh Torah” — the “Second Torah.”

The Structure of the Kingdom of Priests: The Problem of Authority and Cooperative Functioning of All The Powers of Government The legislation of social and judicial justice shapes the pattern of the covenantal community as it will arise when the people arrive in their land and take possession of it. If the people are faithful to the covenant and observe God’s commandments that sanctify it as a kingdom of priests and holy nation, they are assured that YHWH will help them to conquer their land — a land flowing with milk and honey — and to live in it prosperously for a long time. The great problem latent in this scenario is that the assistance of YHWH that is assured for the conquest of the land is not to be given on the plane of myth, as in the exodus from Egypt, but on the plane of history. The tasks of the conquest and integration among the local nations must be carried out by the people on their own. Therefore they must set up a united state that represents the collective will of a sovereign nation, like the states of the peoples with which it will have to fight and among whom it will need to integrate by participating in the competition among them for consolidating their power. This task contains in itself a deep contradiction, and it is the source of the problem of realizing the idea of a destined kingdom of priests in the full sense: on the one hand it must be faithful to its moral destiny as a 72

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society dedicated to the realization of the vision of justice and freedom symbolized in the Sabbath, and to separate itself therein from all the other nations in order to be an example to them, and if not, the people will not be worthy to hold on to their land. But on the other hand, in order to conquer it from the peoples who are more experienced and stronger than they, and to contend with the cultures of the nearby peoples, they will have to learn from the ways of the peoples in whose midst they dwell, and to act like them in their dealings with them. The books of Exodus and Leviticus mainly document Moses’ struggle as a legislator with his first task — shaping the community as a holy assembly centered on the Tabernacle. The books of Numbers and Deuteronomy focus on his second task — preparing the people for the conquest of the land, the settlement in it and its integration among the other nations. This task raised two serious problems that were interrelated: the problem of authority, that must withstand the stress of the military campaign; and the problem of the relation to the peoples of Canaan and their idolatrous culture, which will have to be displaced and expelled, and to the neighboring nations, among which Israel will have to become integrated. There is a deep contradiction between these two tasks, that casts a cloud on each of them. In Numbers the problems are posed in a narrative mode: after the erection of the Tabernacle, a census was taken of the congregation and they were arranged in military formation by tribes, each tribe under its standard, under the united leadership of the elders. An arrangement was formalized for the marching and the resting of the camps. The tribe of Levi was organized as a labor force, and each of its clans was given a special assignment for the Tabernacle’s transport, erection and operation in the center of the caravan and the encampment. The rest of the tribes marched and encamped in military formation in a set order around the Tabernacle. (Numbers, Chapters 1–4) Moses organized the arrangements by God’s word. To assist him, the assembly of seventy elders who had been endowed with prophetic inspiration gathered in the Tabernacle. The distribution of tasks between the heads of the tribes and the seventy elders seems to have placed the military command in the domain of the former, while giving the latter responsibility for the internal life of the families, clans and tribes. What was the shape of the army? The active fighters were the younger men, bearing weapons, but they lived with their families, and during the march they surrounded them like a protective force. In time to come, they would have to fight in order to win the land-holds for 73

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their families. This was a popular army that traveled with their wives, their parents and their children, not a paid professional army like that of Egypt or the armies of the established states against which Israel would have to fight in Canaan. This community thus functioned on two fronts — the war front, and the home front in the camp — and each front required its own leadership, as well as close cooperation between them. Where was the authority vested to decide for war, or for the terms of peace after victory? As regarding the problem of the relationship to the peoples of Canaan dwelling in the land, the answer to this question had crucial importance, and we will return to discuss it later. At the head of the priests and Levites stood Aaron and his sons; in charge of the military command were appointed Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephuneh, the chiefs of the two dominant tribes — Ephraim and Judah. The chain of command seemed clear enough — Moses was the commander-in-chief, representing YHWH, and he determined, with the help of the individuals whom he appointed in charge of each agency, the arrangements in the administration of the Tabernacle and the organization of the camps. He also decided, by God’s advice, where and how far they would travel and when and where they would encamp in the wilderness. He decided whether to wage war or to desist from it. At the stage of setting up the new arrangements, they obeyed him unanimously, for the people had returned to their original status as of the establishment of the covenant at the foothills of Sinai. But the fact that the obedience was not established by a viable enforcement agency became clear as soon as the journey was under way: discipline depended on the good will and agreement of all the leadership cadres together, and none of them — not the seventy elders representing the community, nor Aaron representing the priests and Levites, nor Joshua and Caleb representing the military heads of the tribes — could enforce his will on the others. The same applied to Moses himself. In the eyes of the people, he was the representative of YHWH’s will through his legislation and his responsibility for the people’s fate in the wilderness. But in his leadership he relied, together with his brother Aaron, on the power of the priests and Levites, and endowed them with the authority of the priesthood, an authority that passed in inheritance from fathers to sons. They alone were permitted to serve in the Tabernacle and to supervise the ritual purity of the camp in whose midst YHWH dwelt. Only they were permitted to represent the people before YHWH and to represent YHWH before the people. 74

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Thus was apparently fashioned a unilateral dependence of the congregation on the priests and Levites, and in times of crisis it was possible to draw on their power to enforce the will of Moses and Aaron, when it was a matter of the ritual purity of the camp. The first example was Moses’ zealous action in the affair of the Golden Calf. The second example was the zealous action of Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest against Zimri, an elder of the congregation, who defiled the purity of the camp through his act of idolatrous fornication during the Balak episode. Phinehas’ zealous act saved the people from YHWH’s avenging wrath, but so too did Moses’ leadership in the face of the congregation that was at the point of rebelling against him, for Zimri was one of the elders of the congregation. Moses rewarded Phinehas for his forceful action with “a covenant of priesthood for all time, because he took zealous action for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites.” (Numbers 25:13) But we should also pay attention to the fact that even in Moses’ view these two manifestations of zealotry were problematic, from the standpoint of the covenantal law that he himself promulgated. They were legitimated after the fact, not originally, by the authority of YHWH Himself, not by the authority delegated by Him to Moses. It was not possible to operate in this fashion except at exceptional moments of crisis. Evidence for this is found in the episode of Korah and his co-conspirators, who dared to protest against the exclusive authority that Moses and Aaron claimed for themselves with respect to the sanctity of the camp — were not all the congregation holy as they were? The answer to Korah’s contention was not given on the basis of the covenantal law, but through direct intervention of YHWH as the ultimate authority: He had, at His discretion, chosen those men who had demonstrated loyalty to Him. (Numbers, Chapter 16) Indeed, the congregation could stand up to Moses and Aaron with respect to all its own areas of authority: it was the congregation that had built the Tabernacle through its contributions, it had provided to the Sanctuary whatever was required for its proper functioning, and it provided the priests and Levites with their livelihood through its heaveofferings, vows, sacrifices and meal-offerings. Thus was established a countervailing dependency of the priests on the congregation and on the leadership of the elders through whom the prophetic spirit was manifest. As we saw above, an interdependent relationship was also established between the military heads of the tribes and the civilian elders, who provided for the army composed of its sons, and between them and Moses and Aaron: without the promise of YHWH’s aid in 75

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wartime, without the faith that YHWH’s presence in the fighting camp inspired, there would be no chance that the popular army could stand up to their professional adversaries, and to the fortified walled-cities of the peoples of Canaan. In summary, each of the parties mentioned above — Moses with his power-base comprised by the priests and Levites headed by Aaron, the congregation under the leadership of the elders, and the military leadership — had its own authority. This authority was rooted in the covenantal law and was institutionalized in a way that could enforce its decisions on its own members — the elders appointed judges and police officers, who enforced the judgments on the members of the congregation; Moses and Aaron were assisted by the Levites who followed their discipline in enforcing the laws of the sanctity of the Tabernacle and the camp; and the standard-bearers and military commanders relied on the warriors who stood under their command in wartime. But none of these parties could enforce its decisions on the other parties. Therefore none of them could lead the whole people by itself. Not Moses with the priests and Levites, but without the congregation and military commanders; not the military commanders without the agreement of Moses, Aaron, and the congregation; and not the congregation without the agreement of Moses, Aaron, and the military commanders. This was so, even though they all accepted the covenantal law as a perpetual law that none of them could change. We can see in this the embodiment of the democratic principle of the rule of law and division of the powers of government with checks and balances, with absolute consistency: none of these could take the law into its own hands. However, the over-fine consistency in implementation did not give any human power the sovereign authority by which it could insure coordinated action among all the interdependent parties, so that in the end only YHWH could force unity on them by allowing their enemies to gain ascendancy over His sinful chosen people. Thus it became clear that only if all the parties come to agreement and unite, could they be victorious and find release from danger. This is what in fact happened many times in the period of the judges and of Samuel. This general description was already confirmed in the people’s first attempt to set out to conquer the land. The campaign met with disastrous defeat, as in the case of the Golden Calf. Moses instructed them on the venture at the outset, and before the decision for war he saw it necessary to test the people: were they in agreement with him, having arrived at their view on their own without coercion? This was the course which YHWH 76

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advised to Moses (without commanding it) as a need required by his leadership: “Send men to scout the land of Canaan” (Numbers 13:2). This advice should be viewed alongside a prior decision that Moses decided on his own: though YHWH had promised that His “presence” would lead the people by a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, Moses turned to his father-in-law and requested that he accompany them on their journey. He had good reason for this: “Please do not leave us, inasmuch as you know where we should camp in the wilderness and can be our guide.” (Numbers 10:31) This is the thought of a leader who is directly responsible for providing his people with food and water, and who therefore prefers to operate on the basis of certified knowledge, not faith in supernatural guidance. It would thus seem that for the same reason God advised Moses to send out scouts, where the force of the Hebrew shelah lekha (“send for you”) is: send for your own needs. Send in order that you will be able to have trust in the people accompanying you, and in their ability to prevail. Moses sent twelve spies, representatives of the tribes who are the congregation organized in military formation — the heads of the “standards” — so that they may see the land with their own eyes and search it out, with respect both to the goodness in store for their people — that it was a land flowing with milk and honey to those who worked it — and the military power with which they would have to contend. To whom were the spies responsible to report back? The answer is given in the continuation of the story: not just to Moses who sent them, nor to the two commanders of the whole tribal army who went with them, but to the entire congregation. They saw in them the decisive authority, for in the end their verdict contradicted both Moses’ view and that of the generals whom he appointed. From this we learn that Moses himself, in fidelity to his own law, wanted to obtain the considered agreement of the leaders of the people in preparation for the fateful war. He did not want the people to view the war, that would require great courage and personal risk, as a decision forced on it. He wanted the people to choose it out of conviction that it was in their interest, and that they were capable of winning it. This was a condition of victory, for Israel’s great advantage over its foes, who were superior to them in their defenses, their organization and their military technology, was in their morale and resourcefulness, whose source was in their confidence in the rightness of their cause and their faith that God was with them. The outcome of this crisis was a crushing setback, first on the internal front and then on the military front. The twelve spies agreed that the land was fertile, flowing with milk and honey, but only two of 77

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them — Joshua and Caleb — the two military commanders, closest to Moses — thought that it was feasible and possible to conquer the land. The rest of the spies saw what was clearly possible to deduce from the objective data: first, despite its fertility, the land “is one that devours its inhabitants.” It seems that they compared the agricultural requirements of the lowlands of Egypt, watered by the Nile, to those of hilly Canaan, dependent on rainfall, for bringing bread out of the earth. They could see that only by back-breaking work could the land be induced to yield its fruits. Second, they saw that the Canaanite states were fortified and their rulers were men of stature, and their military advantage over the Israelite army was indisputable. (Numbers Chapter 13) Since they felt that the responsibility for the decision rested on them based on their own estimate, they could not recommend to the congregation to engage in war against an enemy who was already prepared for war against them at the head of the overlooking mountain. Were they not right? The discouraged people thought that they were right. They rebelled against the decision of Moses and his appointed council just as at the Golden Calf. The call to appoint a different leadership and return to the fleshpots of Egypt was heard again. This was the internal setback. The military setback came as a consequence: Moses’ decision to remain in the wilderness until the sinful generation died out and there would rise a generation that did not experience the Egyptian slavery and would not yearn to go back to it, stirred the vacillating mob to a second act of rebellion. The desert surrounded them. There was no way back to Egypt, and life in the desert now seemed less endurable than the war that they had not yet experienced. Their hasty rebellion now gave way to a hasty resolve that in Moses’ view expressed mindless desperation rather than courage. The people went to war against God’s will, against Moses’ will and against the will of its supreme commanders. The inevitable result was a devastating defeat that cost many casualties of the people. (Numbers Chapter 14) Then the dissidents were forced to reverse themselves and obey Moses, but this time for lack of alternative, discouraged. From this point on, rage and dissidence never died out completely. They simmered and broke out against Moses and Aaron on several occasions in different forms. From the standpoint of the inquiry on the issue of the unity of the state and the functioning of the governing powers within it, the military disaster and the split between Moses and the popular leadership had decisive importance: it raised the question of authority in the commonwealth in which YHWH was the titular ruler but whose actual leader was a human 78

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mortal whose authority rested on prophetic inspiration, without an army or police force pledged always to obey him. The difference, enshrined in law, between him and Pharaoh — between a leader beholden to law and one who took the law into his own hands — had its price: it is easy to see that the confrontation between Moses, Joshua, and Caleb versus the rest of the elders of the congregation was a confrontation between the leader who represented the authority of YHWH over the community (for his supporters were the members of his tribe, the priests and Levites whose leader was his brother Aaron, and the two generals whom he appointed over the army) and the leaders who acted as representatives of the community itself (those who were directly responsible to it for its economic prosperity and welfare). Despite the parallel between the sin of the spies and the sin of the Golden Calf in respect of the desire to return to slavery, the essential issue over which the controversy erupted was substantially different: as opposed to Aaron, who acted in the episode of the Golden Calf in contradiction to his authority and responsibility according to the terms of the covenant, the elders in the affair of the spies acted precisely in accord with their authority and responsibility to the people. The question, who among them acted correctly on the basis of his responsibility to the congregation and his fidelity to the law, is not to be answered unequivocally. Moses recognized this and therefore prayed to God to forgive His people, and only in this way were the people reconciled to him. Moses succeeded in regaining the authority of leadership, but his hold on it was challenged. Only through the pressures of life in the wilderness (time and again YHWH is required to intervene on the mythic plane in order to rescue His servant Moses from the uprisings of the disappointed people who had left Egypt because of the promise that they would inherit a land flowing with milk and honey) did Moses succeed in prevailing over the controversies that broke out against him, not only from the mob but even from his brother Aaron and his sister Miriam, over the exclusiveness of his authority as representative of YHWH among his people. Near the end of the way, just before the settlement of the east bank of the Jordan, YHWH Himself passes judgment against Moses and Aaron for their arrogance in the episode of “the waters of Meribah.” They are condemned to see the promised land from afar but not enter it. (Numbers Chapter 20) Thus in the last analysis the people prevailed and Moses conceded their victory. There thus occurred a major change in the pattern of his leadership just before he transferred it to Joshua, a process that became crystallized in the legislation of the book of Deuteronomy. 79

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The solution that is suggested to the problem of leadership in that book was in fact the one that materialized at the end of Samuel’s career on the basis of the experiences of settled life in the land from the period from Joshua through the judges: the people requested of Samuel a king like all the peoples around them. Samuel saw in this request a rebellion against YHWH’s sovereignty over His people, and warned the people of the result: abdication of the community’s political independence before the compulsion that the king would enforce with the help of a mercenary army that would stand under his command. The people would be subjugated to a human ruler who would levy taxes and demand forcibly that they perform services to him and his army. In the end, Samuel accepted the people’s request as an unavoidable necessity, but he stipulated one condition: the king would be bound to the law of the Torah and would be obedient to the prophet-priest responsible for the sanctity of the camp in which YHWH dwells. (I Samuel Chapter 8) We shall show later that the book of Deuteronomy summarized these developments in historical retrospect, though from a literary aspect it was written from the point of view of Moses foreseeing his people’s future before his death.

Between Israel and the Nations The second problem of realization was, as we indicated, the one for whose sake were finally required the authority of a king and a professional army which represented a certain departure from the law of a kingdom of priests: the conquest of the promised land from the peoples dwelling on it so that Israel would be able to settle there and establish its commonwealth, that should be an example to all peoples of a life of justice and equity, loving-kindness, compassion and peace. The great problem is that it was impossible to realize this great vision on earth without driving out the peoples of Canaan from the land that bore their name, without taking it from them by force of arms, without uprooting their idolatrous ritual and their institutions of government, but also without taking from them their garden and the wealth that they created by working their land. In other words, it was impossible to realize the vision in its destined place without wars of annihilation, total wars of survival, in which the fateful logic is a logic of “either them or us,” dictating pursuit to the point of destruction without mercy not just for the enemy army but the enemy people, including the old, women and children. 80

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When we present this problem we must be careful to present it as it is presented in the Mosaic law on the basis of its universal values and to be careful not to confuse the prophetic world view, based on YHWH’s sovereignty over His world, with the humanistic universalism of our day. We recall that according to the prophetic world-view YHWH created the world for the sake of all His creatures. Human beings were created in His image to rule over the earth for their welfare and the welfare of His creatures. In order to realize their destiny, His creatures were commanded to be fertile and multiply, to fill the land and rule justly over it. This is their need and the need of all the creatures that God created, for human beings need their “garden” in order to live in it and realize their destiny. The “gardens” need to be built according to the conditions of the covenant that YHWH enacted with Noah and his descendants, with all humanity. In this context we recall further that the prohibition against human beings’ spilling human blood is central among them. That is to say, human beings are commanded to fill the land, to work it and rule over it in unity as members of a single species with a single destiny, but not under one sovereign government — that would express the aspiration for self-deification of mortal rulers — but through separating out into nations, each of which should establish its state in its land-hold while accepting the yoke of YHWH’s sovereignty (through mediation of its patron demigods). Each of them should build its garden and live in it according to the commandments of the Noahide covenant, with respect to its civil charter and ritual, and with respect to its relations with the peoples living nearby. It follows from this that each people has the right from God to possess its land, and this is dependent on respecting the right of all peoples to live on the lands with which YHWH justly endowed them, in freedom and in peace. This is God’s program for realizing the vision of creation by humanity: “When the Most High gave nations their homes and set the divisions of man, He fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel’s numbers.” (Deuteronomy 32:8)15 To each of the peoples the “Most High” granted a land-hold, including His special chosen people. He designated for them the land over which He exercises direct supervision: the land situated directly opposite 15

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The argument is strengthened even more by the scholarly reconstruction of the original form of this verse (substituting benei el for benei yisrael): “He fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to the sons of God” (i.e., each people ruled in its territory by its patron demigod — LL).

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the place where the gates of heaven are opened — this is His holy land, and it is proper that in it should be established the kingdom of priests that should be an example for all peoples. However, the “Most High” also granted the peoples of Canaan their land in their day, until they sinned in violation of the Noahide covenant. Their garden was defiled by idolatry of the most repugnant kind, precisely in the holiest of lands. This assertion stands at the basis of the severe decree that was declared against the Canaanite peoples, and so it is proper that we be precise in our formulation of it: we saw that according to the narrative of Genesis, that idolatry which strives for self-deification of human beings was developed by the tyrannical regimes desirous of dominating the world, in the river-lands where with relative ease human beings are able to control vast resources, that seem ready, appointed and secure for a long time, and to exploit them. Abraham left the sinful culture of Babylon on his way to Canaan to serve YHWH there. He went down to Egypt and returned to Canaan, and Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt to sojourn there, because in Canaan there was not insured a plentiful yield as in Egypt. There was a famine in the land, and the Israelites went down to the granaries of Egypt. Thus they became enslaved there and became tied to the fleshpots. When the sin of the Egyptians and the suffering of the Israelites reached unbearable proportions, YHWH requited Egypt for its sin, laid it waste, drowned its host and brought His people out from slavery to bring it back to Canaan which was already their land according to YHWH’s covenant with the patriarchs. As Egypt’s sin had reached its full measure, so had that of the peoples of Canaan, and the time had come to fulfill the promise of the covenant. But still, the sin of Egypt was not to be compared to the sin of the peoples of Canaan. When Israel went out from Egypt, an assertion that is hidden in the laconic story of the sin of Canaan, the son of Ham, the son of Noah receives some clarification and elaboration: even though the origin of sinful idolatry was in the river lands, the most impure idolatrous culture developed precisely in that hilly country, that land of delight that drinks rain water, and therefore is also punished by drought when the people dwelling on it sins to YHWH, for “it is a land which the Lord your God looks after, on which the Lord your God always keeps His eye, from year’s beginning to year’s end.” (Deuteronomy 11:12) How does the sin of the peoples of Canaan surpass the sin of Egypt? This is at first mysterious. The story of the exodus from Egypt to the wilderness estimates the gravity of the sin of the Canaanite nations almost on the 82

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same level as the sin of Amalek, to which it attributes a satanic evil, evil for its own sake — the desire to destroy the people of Israel so that God’s great plan to establish for Himself a kingdom of priests will not be realized. This is suggested very concisely in the commandment that was given after the war with Amalek before enactment of the covenant at Mount Sinai: Then the Lord said to Moses, “Inscribe this in a document as a reminder, and read it aloud to Joshua: I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven!” And Moses built an altar and named it Adonai-nissi. He said, “It means, ‘Hand upon the throne of the Lord!’ The Lord will be at war with Amalek throughout the ages.” (Exodus 17:14–16)

And in Deuteronomy this oath of vengeance is repeated, this time as a commandment incumbent on Israel: Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt — how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the Lord your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget! (Deuteronomy 25:17–19)

For the sake of comparison to the sin of Egypt, it is worth noting that despite YHWH’s great anger directed at Egypt, their sin is conceived mainly as the sin of the enslaving rulership, the sin of Pharaoh, the sin of his magicians, the sin of his army. This sin enslaved not only the Israelites, but the Egyptian masses as well, and the impoverished, suffering people were not condemned with being “wiped out” from under heaven. In Deuteronomy the Israelites were even commanded not to abominate an Egyptian because they were strangers in their land. (Deuteronomy 23:8) But the same is not said about the peoples of Canaan. As we said, the peoples of Canaan, especially the Amorites, are compared to Amalek. How is it possible to understand this severity? Is the fact that through their idolatrous impurity they defiled the land directly sacred to YHWH that creates this sin? Or perhaps in the sin itself is cast a satanic essence like that of Amalek? And if so, why precisely in the land on which God keeps His eye the year round is there developed the sin that surpasses in severity the sin of the peoples of the fertile river-lands? 83

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What follows here is a speculation that may be supported by the words of the early and later prophetic books concerning the worship of Baal and Astarte, especially in the words of Elijah the prophet in the public showdown in Mount Carmel during Ahab’s reign (I Kings Chapter 18): survival in the land of delight — the land whose prosperous yield is conditional on special sanctity, on keeping YHWH’s commands, on a high level of morality including “six days shall you labor and do all your work” — is difficult and requires great efforts. To the righteous of humanity this is a daily reminder to sanctify themselves in their actions, but to ordinary people, who do not control their congenital evil impulse, this is a great temptation to seek the easier and more enjoyable way to insure the rainfall and the land’s fertility, ways that also offer a sybaritic and untrammeled compensation for the back-breaking labor of tilling the soil — these ways consist in the lewd rites of Baal and Astarte, that were designed to entice the gods appointed over the rain and fertility to do their job and copulate; as well as a variety of kinds of magic, the offering of sacrifices to bloodthirsty satyrs, who were liable to cause damage to the crops if they did not receive their due; and even sacrificing human first-born to Molech for the same reason. In other words, precisely in the land in which material success was conditional on special sanctity, there developed also the temptation to turn to the creative forces of nature, the forces of evil and impurity, and to see in them more reliable means, closer to nature and therefore scientifically more persuasive than the recourse to justice and righteousness as a means of bringing the rain, increasing abundance and preventing plagues to crops. This is the great danger lying in wait for Israel. Moses, who knew the soul of his people craving for the fleshpots, was afraid of it. This danger was liable to be not less enticing for the generation born in the wilderness, a generation full of strength and craving to escape the conditions of the desert and enjoy the honey and milk that were promised to them. They would see the idolatrous culture and be persuaded that this is the correct way to succeed in Canaan, not the ways of the Mosaic law with their stringent demands of morality and sanctity. Then they would suffer the same doom as the Canaanites, for YHWH shows no favoritism in judgment. The severity of this judgment is reflected in the historical narrative of the people in the Torah and the later books of the Bible. As we recall, in the way from Egypt to Canaan YHWH threatened His people twice (after the sins of the Golden Calf and the spies) to destroy them in the wilderness, just as He destroyed all humanity in the waters of the 84

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Flood. This threat was repeated in Deuteronomy and in the historical and prophetic books. Deuteronomy is chock-filled with promises of prosperity if the people listen and obey God’s commandments, and spine-tingling threats — plague, drought, famine, conquest by arrogant and cruel enemies, slaughter, uprooting from the land, exile to all corners of the earth — if they sin in their land. Only one promise softens these threats: God will keep His covenant to the patriarchs. If Israel will return in sincere repentance and sanctify themselves from their sins in exile, they may return to their land. Thus it interprets the word of YHWH in the Ten Commandments and later in the revelation in the cleft of the rock: For I the Lord your God am an impassioned God, visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generations of those who reject Me, but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Exodus 20:4–5)

If that applies to Israel, all the more so to the peoples of Canaan! All this is said from the perspective of YHWH’s sovereignty over the world. We will find parallel complementary expressions from the perspective of Moses and the Israelites who are expected to come to Canaan, to conquer it and settle in it. YHWH will help them, but not in the way that He helped them in the exodus from Egypt, for they were not required then to fight against Pharaoh and his armies, but YHWH alone fought against them. On the other hand, journeying to their land, conquering it and settling it are a commandment incumbent on them, and therefore they left Egypt armed. What, then, is the meaning of the assertion that the peoples of Canaan lost their right to dwell in their land before YHWH, from Israel’s perspective? What is the meaning of the commandment that they, in their righteousness, should take possession of the land? From the story of the spies, from its results and implications it turns out that Israel will discover that the strength of the Canaanite peoples has been sapped, their strength of spirit is gone; for as a result of their decadence and selfish hedonism, individuals are not ready to sacrifice themselves for their people, but each one worries only about himself; despite their wealth, their fortifications, and their armaments — maybe even because of them — they will not be able to stand up to the daring and resourcefulness of the people who are inferior to them in material aspects, but whose members are full of the spirit of faith in their righteousness and in God’s help to them, they are united, responsible 85

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for each other, and ready to sacrifice their lives for their people. These things are first heard from the rebuke that Moses directed at Aaron, who had let the people get out of control so that they were a laughingstock to their attackers (Exodus 32:25), but in a clearer form in the words of Joshua and Caleb against the other spies whom Moses sent to scout the land: If the Lord is pleased with us, He will bring us into that land, a land that flows with milk and honey, and give it to us; only you must not rebel against the Lord. Have no fear then of the people of the country, for they are our prey: their protection has departed from them, but the Lord is with us. Have no fear of them! (Numbers 14:8–9)

On the basis of this consideration from two perspectives — YHWH’s and the people’s — we should thus examine the commandment that YHWH gave to Moses concerning the entry to the land of Canaan at the end of the Covenant Code (Mishpatim) after the Ten Commandments, during the enactment of the Sinaitic covenant: I am sending an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have made ready. Pay heed to him and obey him. Do not defy him, for he will not pardon your offenses, since My Name is in him; but if you obey him and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes. When My angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I annihilate them, you shall not bow down to their gods in worship or follow their practices, but shall tear them down and smash their pillars to bits. You shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will remove sickness from your midst. No woman in your land shall miscarry or be barren. I will let you enjoy the full count of your days. I will send forth My terror before you, and I will throw into panic all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn tail before you. I will send a plague ahead of you, and it shall drive out before you the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites. I will not drive them out before you in a single year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply to your hurt. I will drive them out before you little by little, until you have increased and possess the land. I will set your borders from the Sea of Reeds to the Sea of Philistia, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hands, and

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Between Israel and the Nations you will drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not remain in your land, lest they cause you to sin against Me; for you will serve their gods — and it will prove a snare to you. (Exodus 23:20–33)

First of all, we should note that Moses did not foresee a single, inclusive, once-and-for-all war of conquest in which the nations of Canaan would be destroyed and Israel would take possession in their place, but he envisioned a long historical process in which the people would be tested all along. YHWH made three promises from His side: to bless the land and water of the people when they are settled on their land; to throw their enemies into panic, thus neutralizing their resistance to Israel’s entry into the land; and to drive the Canaanite and Hittite out from the land, but not all at once. Immediate expulsion will not be to the people’s benefit. The promise to “send a plague” in order to drive out the Canaanite and the Hivite means that the expulsion will not be the result of a war of extermination by Israel, but the result of natural processes, like the plagues that broke Pharaoh’s power and forced him to let Israel go free from his land. In other words, if Israel will observe God’s commandments, they will thrive on their land. Natural plagues will come upon the Canaanites and the Hivites, their land will become desolate, and they will be forced to leave the land and to go to other places. What, then, is the commandment by which Israel is commanded? If we read carefully, we shall find that its essential part is the positive deed in which the prosperity of the people turns identical to fulfilling God’s commandments — the commandments in which the destiny of the people will be realized and by virtue of which they will endure long on the land, as opposed to their enemies. The essential part is the very settlement on the land to work it, to make it bloom, to make it a land flowing with milk and honey. When the people come to fulfill this commandment, they will encounter two kinds of opposition from the peoples dwelling in it: the one will be an attempt to prevent the spread of settlement of Israel in the land by force of arms. Israel are then commanded to meet force with force. The peoples will try to dominate Israel, and they must free themselves and thrust away the adversary. As we saw, YHWH promised that if Israel keep His commandments — and especially if they are not seduced into imitating the idolatrous rites to which the peoples of Canaan attribute their prosperity in the land — they will overcome the enemies who rise up against them and progress step by step in the process of uprooting them and driving them out. 87

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In these ways we have thus arrived at the second kind of opposition of the idolatrous Canaanite peoples: they are liable to conclude a covenant with the people of Israel and thus to corrupt them internally. This will be the severest test. The people coming into the land from the wilderness will be envious of the conspicuous abundance in the achievements of the people rooted in it, and will be seduced into believing that the idolatrous rites insure timely rains and abundant harvests in an easier and more convenient way than that suggested by the Mosaic Torah. Therefore Moses issues two commandments to the people and warns people against the consequences of violating them: first, to destroy the centers of idolatrous worship that fall into their hands, and to beware of imitating the gentiles’ rites. Second, to refrain from enacting a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for their suggesting such a covenant would be their way to assimilate the Israelites into their midst, as the inhabitants of Shechem attempted with Jacob and his sons. Moses’ conduct at the start of the campaign of conquest in the eastern bank of the Jordan is compatible with this interpretation, but with a gradualism in which escalation is noticeable, for Moses became convinced from his experience how deeply rooted and dangerous was the idolatrous decadence of his people’s adversaries. First of all, it is clear that Moses had no prior intention of conquering the lands of other peoples outside the land of Canaan. On the contrary, he always wanted his people to be integrated peacefully with its neighbors. Therefore he respected their right to dwell in their lands, and he consistently refrained from attacking the peoples whose lands Israel had to traverse in order to proceed on its way to Canaan. He turned to the king of Edom as to a brother of Israel, requesting permission to pass through on the king’s highway and to buy food and water for full price. When he was met with refusal, he changed his route and bypassed the land of Edom. (Numbers 20:14– 21) He made the same request of Sihon the king of the Amorites. Only when Sihon was not content with issuing a simple refusal but went out to battle against the Israelites beyond the borders of his land, in the wilderness no-man’s-land — only then Moses ordered the people to respond to him as he deserved. Like Amalek, Sihon wanted to destroy Israel though they had not attacked him. This was evil for its own sake, of the Amalekite variety, and by the principle of “measure for measure” Moses commanded the people to destroy Sihon’s army and to take possession of his land. He acted by the same principle against Og king of Bashan. (Numbers 21:21–35) Nevertheless, we should note that Sihon 88

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and Og were Amorite kings, members of the people that Moses had singled out as the primary enemy of Israel in Canaan.16 Therefore it was proper to eliminate them. The story of Israel’s war against Balak king of Moab and against Balaam constitutes a turning-point which signaled a considerable radicalization of Moses’ viewpoint concerning the task of his people in driving out the peoples of Canaan, and concerning the future in store for his people in their destined land. Even though the perspective of Moses, a son of the tribe of Levi, was centered on the covenantal ethic in its universal sense, he adopted the course of action of Simeon and Levi against the inhabitants of Shechem, which Jacob had condemned in no uncertain terms. This radicalization reached its fullest expression in Deuteronomy, yet not accidentally the episode of Balak received quite expansive coverage in the end of the book of Numbers. This story is important in two aspects: (1) With respect to Moses’ career, for the campaign of retribution against the Moabite tribes of Midian was Moses’ last action in his capacity as leader, exercising political and military authority over his people (“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites, then you shall be gathered to your kin.” [Numbers 31:1]). (2) With respect to the familial closeness between Israel and Moab, for just as the Edomites were the descendants of Jacob’s brother Esau, so the Moabites were the descendants of Lot, Abraham’s nephew. But it is even more important that Moses had a special family and spiritual connection with the Midianites17 who ruled 16

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See for instance Genesis 15:16: “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” The variation in the Torah’s nomenclature for the Canaanite nations is confusing. In various passages of the Torah, the primary inhabitants of the land (and hence the primary adversaries of Israel) are referred to as “the Canaanites,” “the Amorites,” or a varying subset of the nations of this family — Hittites, Hivites, Jebusites, Rephaim, Girgashites, etc. Genesis 10:15 lists the Amorites and several other nations as descendants (and therefore sub-clans) of Canaan. Deuteronomy 7:1 gives a seemingly-definitive list of seven nations, but only six of these are listed in Exodus 23:23, Exodus 34:11, and Deuteronomy 20:17. Genesis 15:19–21 lists four others in addition. (LL) To confuse matters further, Midian is listed in Genesis 25:2 as one of the many sons of Abraham by his third wife Keturah. But it is questionable whether this is to be trusted, other than affirming a general genealogical kinship between the Midianites and the Abrahamitic clan, for the Midianites are so frequently mentioned in the Bible as to be considered a generic term for “the migrant desert peoples,” like “Bedouins” and “Arabs” in later usage. (LL)

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

in Moab: Jethro his father-in-law was a Midianite, and a legatee of the same tradition of worship of God and keeping the Noahide covenant as was current in the family of Abraham the Hebrew. He was a priest and prophet of YHWH, and from him Moses received advice and guidance on how to govern his people. Afterwards Jethro was responsive to Moses’ request and joined his people. Thus Moses showed adherence to the universal substance of service of YHWH and keeping His covenant with humanity — YHWH was the God of all humanity, not just the God of Israel. Yet now the kings of Moab were also Midianites, and this special connection brought Balak the king of Moab to turn in his distress to the Midianite prophet Balaam. It is very important to understand these facts in order to understand the confrontation that was embodied in the story of the war in Moab between Moses and the Midianite Balaam: in its unfolding, the confrontation between Israel as “chosen people” and the idolatrous nations reverted to the universal point of origin of the intention of the covenant, which set all peoples and all human beings as equal before God’s judgment. For was not the tradition of the universal Noahide covenant held in common by Israel and all the peoples who still were party to it? Why did Balak, who was himself an idolator, invite Balaam, a prophet of YHWH, to execrate and curse Israel? As a clever idolator, Balak believed that YHWH was an idol like his own gods, to wit, Israel’s idol. If he could succeed in charming Him, as idolators were used to charming their gods, he could persuade YHWH to break off His covenant with Israel and ally Himself with Balak because of the latter’s more generous gifts. Thus he could succeed in overcoming Israel, who were encamped on the fertile steppes of Moab, on their way to crossing the Jordan and entering the land of Canaan. Balaam, prophet of YHWH, knew the truth — it is impossible to charm YHWH, and impossible to change His mind — yet nevertheless, Balaam was persuaded, and responded to Balak’s honorable invitation. What was he hoping for? His instructions to the king of Moab, to erect altars to YHWH on the lookout points overlooking the Israelite camp teach us that he wanted to discover the weak points in Israel’s moral armor, with respect to their faithfulness to the covenant with YHWH and the sanctity of the camp. He knew that this armor was the foundation of the people’s prosperity. If he could discover the breach through which it was possible to penetrate the fortress of Israel’s ethical armor and to arouse YHWH’s wrath against them, perhaps he could satisfy Balak’s request. According to the main portion of the story, he was unsuccessful, 90

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and was forced to bless the Israelites several times (Numbers Chapters 22–25); but afterwards it becomes clear that he was able to give cunning advice that almost succeeded: by extending sexual temptation through the lewd Moabite fertility rites. This is the meaning of the action of Zimri that almost caused Israel’s destruction, were it not for Phinehas’ zealous intervention. What is the lesson of the story from the standpoint of Moses and Israel? First, Israel’s near-total isolation among the surrounding peoples, with respect to the realization of its mission to be a special people, an example to the nations. Not only Amalek, not only the peoples of Canaan, not only the Amorites who dwelt outside Canaan, but also their brother-nation Edom was unwilling to extend them a helping hand. Even Moab, also close kin, felt threatened by them, and even the Midianites — who were carriers of the tradition of the universal Noahide covenant and included priests and prophets of YHWH — were jealous of the choice of Israel to be a kingdom of priests, and willing to lead them astray. Second, the collaboration of a prophet like Balaam in the alliance of idolatrous opposition to Israel revealed to all Israel’s weak point, the way that it was possible to trip up the people who were coming fresh from the wilderness, thirsty for life. Now Canaanite idolatry became seven times more dangerous — since the Canaanite peoples could not prevent their settlement by force of arms, Israel will be forced to cope not only with the negative examples that they see beside them, but with intentional schemes to ruin them through decadence, to swallow them up and absorb them through “friendly” alliances. What they could not achieve on the battlefield, they would achieve through “peaceful” means, by breaching the people’s moral fortifications. Thus they will bring on the people YHWH’s vengeful anger, and He will uproot them from their soil and exile them from His holy land. The war will thus necessarily be a general war of survival: to follow their path and realize their destiny, they will have to fight their enemies on a principle of “measure for measure” in respect of their readiness to destroy them. In other words: the people will have to conduct themselves by the criterion of absolute justice by which YHWH acts toward them, for otherwise YHWH will act toward them by the same principle. After the episode of Zimri and Phinehas, nearing the end of his term of leadership, Moses arranged the legal preparations necessary for the campaign of conquest of the land, including centrally the division of 91

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the land by tribes, “according to the enumerated names” (Numbers 26:53). Then comes the story of the war against the Midianites, but it applies to preparing the people for the war of conquest of the land: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites; then you shall be gathered to your kin.” Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Let men be picked out from among you for a campaign, and let them fall upon Midian to wreak the Lord’s vengeance on Midian. You shall dispatch on the campaign a thousand from every one of the tribes of Israel.” So a thousand from each tribe were furnished from the divisions of Israel, twelve thousand picked for the campaign. Moses dispatched them on the campaign, a thousand from each tribe, with Phinehas son of Eleazar serving as a priest on the campaign, equipped with the sacred utensils and the trumpets for sounding the blasts. They took the field against Midian, as the Lord had commanded Moses, and slew every male. Along with their other victims, they slew the kings of Midian: Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. They also put Balaam son of Beor to the sword. The lsraelites took the women and children of the Midianites captive, and seized as booty all their beasts, all their herds, and all their wealth. And they destroyed by fire all the towns in which they were settled, and their encampments. They gathered all the spoil and all the booty, man and beast, and they brought the captives, the booty, and the spoil to Moses, Eleazar the priest, and the whole Israelite community, at the camp in the steppes of Moab, at the Jordan near Jericho. Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the chieftains of the community came out to meet them outside the camp. Moses became angry with the commanders of the army, the officers of thousands and the officers of hundreds, who had come back from the military campaign. Moses said to them, “You have spared every female! Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so that the Lord’s community was struck by the plague. Now, therefore, slay every male among the children, and slay also every woman who has known a man carnally; but spare every young woman who has not had carnal relations with a man. “You shall then stay outside the camp seven days; every one among you or among your captives who has slain a person or touched a corpse shall cleanse himself on the third and seventh days. You shall also cleanse every cloth, every article of skin, everything made of goats’ hair, and every object of wood….On the seventh day you shall wash your clothes and be clean, and after that you may enter the camp.” (Numbers 31:1–24)

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These matters are self-explanatory,18 and the connection between them and the lesson that we learn from the story of Balak and Balaam, Zimri and Phinehas is also sufficiently clear and obvious. Together with this, we should pay attention to two points of emphasis in Moses’ instructions that stand in complementary opposition: on the one hand the command to enforce the full extent of the divine judgment on the part of the Israelite warriors, for this is a visitation of the sins of the fathers on the children in the plain sense, killing all males without distinction, including the old and children. Only the girls were spared, and it is hard not to be reminded of the terrible parallel to Pharaoh’s command: “Every boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.” (Exodus 1:22) As we recall, Moses himself was saved from this wicked decree by the kindness of Pharaoh’s daughter. On the other hand we find the ample worry that the war, with all its bloodshed, booty and spoil, might have a destructive effect on the moral fiber of the warriors. Shedding human blood by humans, especially when we are speaking of killing the adult male and female captives, and the male children, is a sin of bloodshed before YHWH. One must therefore undergo purification from it before entering the camp where YHWH dwells, even if the killing was done by His just order. To the commandments of purification from bloodshed are added in the continuation the commands pertaining to fair distribution of the spoils of the war to all the people, not just to the warriors who might wish to take it all for themselves, so that there should not be a cause of inequality, jealousy and controversy among the people, and they not fall into division at the very time that unity is the highest need. One must recognize, then, that all members of the people performed their jobs during the war, each in his sphere, hence all are worthy to participate in distribution of the spoils. These two points of emphasis attest that Moses weighed in his moral judgment both the measure in which such vengeance was necessary for the people’s success in settling in its land and surviving as a people of the covenant, and the moral dangers involved in executing the divine judgment by the hands of flesh-and-blood human beings, for perhaps the deed that is intended to prevent falling into the trap of idolatrous sin will result in falling into the same trap from its other side — the side of 18

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Though this passage seems self-explanatory (and shocking in its violent injunctions), judgment should be deferred until the end of the current chapter. The most elementary issues (did Moses command all this? Did the war take place as described?) are all open to radical questioning, as will be elaborated. (LL)

Chapter 1. The Law of the Kingdom of God

cruel, twisted zealotry that was manifested in the action of Simeon and Levi in Shechem. Is it possible to see in these words a justification for the hard commandments that Moses gave to his soldiers when they set out to take vengeance on the Midianites? Is it possible to find justification for them that is rooted in the values of the Noahide covenant? If we examine the commandment pertaining to the destruction of the peoples of Canaan that is constantly repeated in the book of Deuteronomy on the basis of the universal values of the covenant, the answer is negative: it is forbidden that people take into their hands the law of God, Creator of the world, source of life and death, for only His is the prerogative of vengeance and recompense, as it says in Moses’ valedictory poem Ha’azinu (Deuteronomy 32:35). But if we read the book of Deuteronomy from the later perspective, from which it was written, one can find in it the ironic justification that set the prophets on the opposite path, with the same consistency as Moses: absolute abstention from involvement in the wars between the powers and the states dependent on them, that bordered on the kingdom of Judah, absolute abstention from all bloodshed, and after the Babylonian Exile, a return to Zion that took place “not by might and not by power, but by My spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.” (Zechariah 4:6) A discriminating reading of the book of Deuteronomy reveals that when he commanded his people to fight a war of annihilation against the peoples of Canaan, Moses19 knew in advance that his people would not fulfill his commandment. They would not follow the example of the tribe of Levi, but they would establish their kingdom in the way of the tribe of Judah, who did enact a covenant with the inhabitants of the land! He knew the future as if it was happening before his eyes: The Lord said to Moses: You are soon to lie with your fathers. This people will thereupon go astray after the alien gods in their midst, in the land that they are about to enter; they will forsake Me and break My covenant that I made with them. Then My anger will flare up against them, and I will abandon them and hide My countenance from them. They shall be ready prey; and many evils and troubles shall befall them. And they shall say on that day, “Surely it is because our God is not in our midst that these evils have befallen us.” Yet I will keep My countenance hidden on that day, because of all the evil they have done in turning to other gods. Therefore, 19

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I.e., the literary figure of Moses in the later chapters of Numbers and Deuteronomy in what may well have been a retrojected scenario — see close of this chapter. (LL)

Between Israel and the Nations write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this poem may be My witness against the people of Israel. (Deuteronomy 31:16–19)

Moses thus knows that his people will not do to the peoples of Canaan what he had done to Sihon, Og and the Midianites; he knows that King Saul will not follow Samuel’s command to destroy Amalek to the point of leaving no living males; he knows that his people will enter into covenants with the inhabitants of the land, will try to live with them in peace, will be seduced and drawn into the worship of their gods, and will follow their decadent ways. He knows all this because the difficult commands that he commanded his people, to act in accord with the divine attributes of judgment, are beyond the ability of ordinary human beings, whose moral virtues are all-too-human, and that they will not measure up to him or to Phinehas. The failure is thus determined in advance, and so is the punishment. The people will pay the full price: the deeds that they will not inflict on their enemies, will be inflicted by their enemies on them, and God will hide His face from them. But there is also consolation, for which Moses entrusted to his people the song Ha’azinu (Deuteronomy Chapter 32) to be a witness that God warned them in advance, and He also promised them that despite their sins, He will stand by His promise to them. After they pay all the prices for their sins, whose source is in being like all other human beings, they will return in repentance and return to their land in a way that will not set obstacles in their path that human beings are not made to overcome. From an analysis of the end of Deuteronomy, the conclusion arises that Moses’ commandments to destroy the peoples of Canaan mercilessly was not given in prospect, but in retrospect, and was an attempt to explain the way that things historically turned out — the failure of the first attempt of the people of Israel to hold onto their land and establish in it the kingdom of priests that they had been commanded to establish, but not a commandment that the people would have to carry out in their second attempt to return to their land. The reason for this is clear historically, to the point that historical research of our own day is able to confirm: when the book of Deuteronomy was written, whether in the generation of Josiah or of Ezra — the peoples of Canaan had disappeared from the map, either retreating into the great Hittite Empire or assimilating and disappearing as a separate entity. The kingdoms that had bordered on Israel no longer posed a danger, and the war between the two great river powers — Egypt with its Nile 95

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to the south, Mesopotamia straddling the Tigris and Euphrates to the north — had concluded with the victory of the northern kingdom. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, who destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and exiled its inhabitants, aspired to unite under his rule all the kingdoms of the Middle East in an all-inclusive empire, with him as the King of Kings. He gave an honored place in his land to the exiled king of Judah, which attested to his special interest in his people and legacy. Jeremiah saw him as the servant of YHWH, doing His mission. He believed that Israel would eventually be restored to its land in peace, to rebuild its Temple and its commonwealth, and that it would fulfill its destiny as a kingdom of priests and holy nation, without having to be involved in wars of conquest or defense. This great hope started to be realized by Cyrus, king of Persia. Like Jethro and Balaam, Cyrus was a prophet of the God of heaven, but in contrast to Balaam he supported Israel as a chosen people. YHWH commanded him to re-establish the Temple in Jerusalem, and he fulfilled his command by restoring Israel to their land. (Ezra 1:1–3) This was a marvelous transformation in the status of Israel among the nations: through their sufferings, Israel paid the price of their sins and the price of the sins of all the peoples against them, for all the curses of Moses that were uttered at the end of Deuteronomy and in the song Ha’azinu were fulfilled to the last detail. But the exile atoned for the sins, and the people returned in complete repentance to God and to His Torah. The abominable acts of Israel’s enemies filled their iniquity to the brim, for God requited them for all their iniquities by way of the kings of Assyria, Babylonia and Persia. Now Israel could return to their land as to their ancestral inheritance, but not through a war of conquest, and could re-establish their commonwealth there as they were commanded by the law of the Mosaic Torah, for the sake of all the peoples who would come to learn from his Torah. The vision of God in creation was close to being realized in accordance with everything written in the books of the later prophets, especially the visions of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

Chapter 2

Deuteronomy (the “Second Torah”) — The Beginning of Renewal of the Written Torah as Oral Torah

The Difference between Moses’ and Joshua’s Leadership, and the Perpetuity of Moses’ Leadership in the People The Hebrew name of the fifth book of the Pentateuch is Devarim (“Words”), after the opening (“These are the words which Moses spoke to all of Israel”). But the rabbinic name for this book, Mishneh Torah — “a review of the Torah” or “second Torah” — corresponding to the Greek-English “Deuteronomy” — points us to its central agenda. This name relates to the problem of authority that arose with the transfer of leadership from Moses to Joshua, and to the various personalities that rose to leadership in later times. According to the narrative at the end of Numbers, Moses suggested a solution in the context of his preparatory instructions for the conquest of Canaan, before the punitive campaign against Moab and Midian. God decreed that Moses be gathered to his people on the top of Mount Abarim after the punitive campaign, which was intended to be a demonstrative exercise for Joshua for the conquest of the land, for it was decreed that Moses would not lead his people into Canaan on account of his sin. He would see it from afar but not enter. His preparations for his leave-taking express the magnitude of his pain and his concern. After forty years’ wandering in the wilderness, he finds himself at the start of the road to the realization of his vision. But how will it be realized? His concern stems from the memory of his struggles with his people in the wilderness. Balaam looked upon the camp of Israel from the outside craftily with an invidious eye and was nevertheless forced to say, “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your habitations, O Israel!” (Numbers 24:5) Moses saw from within, with a friendly disposition, and knew how much the good appearance that Balaam glimpsed 97

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was evanescent and fleeting. The exhortations that fill the pages of Deuteronomy, recalling at length the people’s misbehavior in the wilderness, express uncertainty in the ability of the stiff-necked people to withstand the tests anticipated for them after his departure. Moses also had little faith in the leaders who would succeed him, for he knew they would not rise to his stature — and even he almost despaired and in the end stumbled and was punished. But the verdict was irrevocable. There was no choice but to appoint a successor who would take Moses’ place as leader of the people. Aside from the question who would be the most appropriate candidate for the role, there was a question of legal procedure. The selection of successor was easy: Joshua — Moses’ attendant and general — was the natural candidate in view of the anticipated wars. But Moses — who had been appointed directly by YHWH (with the agreement of the community, after they saw that God had supported him every step of the way) — was not authorized to transfer his office to anyone else. He had been appointed personally because God approved of him, but the office was not his to dispose of. According to the law that he himself laid down, he was not authorized to act arbitrarily like Pharaoh, as if the law was rooted in him. YHWH remained the true ruler in perpetuity, the source of the law, the source of justice, the source of leadership. Moses was only authorized to choose his representative from among the people and to impart to him a portion of his wisdom and dignity. But the responsibility was entrusted to Moses, and as prophet he was allowed to present his petition to God: Moses spoke to the Lord saying, “Let the Lord, Source of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone over the community, who shall go out before them and come in before them, and who shall take them out and bring them in, so that the Lord’s community may not be like sheep that have no shepherd.” (Numbers 27:15–17)

YHWH responded to this request, but remained true to His decision to act only through Moses. Moses remained unique in rank before God, and there will never be another representative like him. Therefore God granted him authority to choose and appoint his successor in his name: And the Lord answered Moses, “Single out Joshua son of Nun, an inspired man, and lay your hand upon him. Have him stand before Eleazar the

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The Difference between Moses’ and Joshua’s Leadership... priest and before the whole community, and commission him in their sight. Invest him with some of your authority, so that the whole Israelite community may obey. But he shall present himself to Eleazar the priest, who shall on his behalf seek the decision of the Urim before the Lord. By such instruction they shall go out and by such instruction they shall come in, he and all the Israelites, the whole community. Moses did as the Lord commanded him. He took Joshua and had him stand before Eleazar the priest and before the whole community. He laid his hands upon him and commissioned him — as the Lord had spoken through Moses. (Numbers 27:18–23)

Exact analysis of the form of agreement documented in the above citation shows that in addition to solving the problem of the transfer of sovereignty after Moses’ death, it defines the constitutional problem involved from the standpoint of the three autonomous estates that the authority must unite under itself: the community, the Levitical-priestly caste, and the military leaders of the tribes. The first two estates are mentioned explicitly in the charter of agreement. The third estate is represented by the man who was appointed as leader — Joshua. His selection gave him a preferred status over the heads of the other two estates, for in addition to the military commanding role that he already held, he received the role of judge, and as will be apparent in the sequel, the latter office gave him the authority to mobilize the officers of the community, appointed by the elders to enforce his instructions on the people who were prepared to set out on the campaign. But ratification of the major decisions was contingent on concurrence of the high priest representing YHWH on the one hand, and of the elders of the community representing the community on the other hand. What was the difference between Joshua’s status and Moses’? They differ first in the source from which the authority of leadership derives: at the outset Moses as prophet mediates between the people and YHWH, who acted directly on his own: YHWH fought Pharaoh single-handedly, and single-handedly led the people in the wilderness in a pillar of fire and cloud, feeding the thirsty and hungry people water, manna and quails, and imparting His laws. Moses communicated these to the people, and he transmitted the people’s requests to God and God’s will to the people. After the sin of the Golden Calf, Moses continued to fill the role of prophet through legislation and seeking God’s direct intervention in moments of crisis that he could not resolve on his own. But as for conducting the day-to-day affairs of the people, he was granted the 99

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authority of the sage based on the covenant enacted between God and the community at Sinai. By comparison, Joshua is described as “a man in whom there is spirit.” YHWH imparted His spirit to him, but he is not considered a prophet like Moses. Prophecy of Moses’ rank was a supra-historical one-time event required for the founding of the kingdom. This was a necessary elevation of the plane of history to the plane of myth in order to bring the people out of Egypt and establish the kingdom of priests, but after God gave the basic law to Moses there was no longer justification for the activity of a second prophet on such a high level, surpassing human ability. His task of legislation and of enacting the covenant establishing the kingdom was now complete. By that fact, the prophecy of Moses, together with the basic law and the Torah that he gave to his people at God’s bidding, were made permanently effective. Whoever succeeded Moses could not be his equal in this respect, for the Torah that he gave his people would continue to play its essential role representing YHWH’s sovereignty among His people. Through his Torah, Moses would continue to be present among his people even after his departure, and to govern them by it. A close reading of Deuteronomy, especially toward the end, will bring out that this was the object that Moses achieved through the high drama of his leave-taking from his people — as if he returned to the myth from which he had emerged, and was subsumed by the narrative that he himself told: he concluded the exhortation of his Torah with the poem to whose eternity he called to witness the heavens and the earth, which stand forever; he blessed his people, which from now on must conduct itself on the convoluted plane of history; he ascended Mount Abarim and was gathered to his people; and the place of his burial is not known. He saw the land of Canaan from afar and did not enter it; but his spirit is bound up with God’s Torah that bears his name and contains his story, that accompanied the people on their journeys and guaranteed their perpetuity. If they heed it, they will prosper and inherit the land; if they rebel against it, they will suffer defeat and exile. As we said, Moses knew in advance that the people would not listen. They would be uprooted from their land and would be dispersed in exile. But the Torah would always be with them, and in the end of days they would be redeemed as they were redeemed from the slavery of Egypt.

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Deuteronomy’s Uniqueness as Embodiment of Moses’ Leadership of the People

Deuteronomy’s Uniqueness as Embodiment of Moses’ Leadership of the People The Torah that Moses spoke orally and that was written as the book of Deuteronomy was indeed the second Torah, given at a second Torah-giving convocation. It was the same Torah, yet different. The gathering was the same gathering, yet not the same. On the second occasion, the Torah was not engraved on stone tablets nor written on rolls of parchment, but was impressed on the people’s hearts. Indeed it was later written on parchment and placed for safekeeping in the Ark of the Covenant, but the objective was to teach the generations who had not stood at the foot of the smoking mountain. The members of the second and following generations had need of it for their own present, each at its own time. Writing was a necessary means, but in order to fulfill its proper role it had to be read aloud in order to transmit the instruction orally. Thus it would be “today’s” Torah in each and every day. This is the outstanding uniqueness of Deuteronomy. This is the book in which Moses’ leadership is bound up and impressed on the consciousness of the people as living memory, self-renewing, gathered and accumulated, transmitted from generation to generation, providing the foundation and direction for the vision of the future for whose sake Moses established the kingdom of priests. The leaders who arose to rule the people after him and after Joshua earned the right to rule in accordance with Moses’ Torah. Thus it entered Canaan with Joshua, fought in all his battles, struggled with his struggles, worked through all his problems, commanded his commands, and was victorious in all his victories. Joshua did not receive authority to appoint a successor. After his death there arose no military-judicial leader like him, and the two domains of leadership went their separate ways. The worship of YHWH and instruction of the Torah resided with the levitical priests in Shiloh, while the political community, governed by its elders, was divided among the various tribes and cities. According to the report of the book of Judges, the people grew distant from the worship of God and worshipped the gods of the local people. They forsook the Torah. Everyone acted as he saw fit. The neighboring powers gained supremacy after the Israelites and subjugated them. But the people’s recognition of their obligation to the basic law of Moses’ Torah did not fade out entirely. In times of trouble military-judicial leaders like 101

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Joshua arose on its basis; they saved their people as he had done, and like him they returned to dwell among their people. One can appreciate this situation in two ways — positively, because this was the realization of the notion of God’s sovereignty over His people without the mediation of a flesh-and-blood sovereign; and negatively, because this was a period of national disorder in which each man did as he saw fit. The picture is familiar from the books of Joshua and Judges, but Deuteronomy predicts it in advance: “Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this poem may be My witness against the people of Israel….When many evils and troubles befall them, then this poem shall confront them as a witness, since it will never be lost from the mouth of their offspring. For I know what plans they are devising even now, before I bring them into the land that I promised them on oath.” That day, Moses wrote down this poem and taught it to the Israelites. And he charged Joshua son of Nun: “Be strong and resolute: for you shall bring the Israelites into the land that I promised them on oath, and I will be with you. When Moses had put down in writing the words of this Teaching [Torah] to the very end, Moses charged the Levites who carried the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, saying: “Take this book of Teaching and place it beside the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, and let it remain there as a witness against you.” (Deuteronomy 31:19–26)

Thus was crystallized the moment of decisive formation — momentous and eternal — of Moses and his Torah in the midst of his people, as indicated in the closing of the book of Deuteronomy: Now Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands upon him; and the Israelites heeded him, doing as the Lord had commanded Moses. Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses — whom the Lord singled out, face to face, for the various signs and portents that the Lord sent him to display in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his courtiers and his whole country; and for all the great might and awesome power that Moses displayed before all Israel. (Deuteronomy 34:9–12)

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The Difference between Moses and Joshua

The Difference between Moses and Joshua On the basis of these considerations, we return to the issue of the succession of leadership in the people after Moses. As we said, Moses appointed Joshua on the basis of the special authority that God granted him. In the beginning of God’s answer to Moses’ request, there is a kind of repetition of the formula advising sending spies to scout out the land of Canaan. In that earlier message the text says “send for you”; here it says, “take for you Joshua.” Take him as you desire, by your choice. Take him by exercise of the authority that I have granted you. For that reason, it is not YHWH who conferred His spirit and dignity to Joshua, as He had done to Moses, but it is Moses who has chosen Joshua of his own discretion, because he approved of him. There are two reasons for this. Joshua was “a man in whom there is spirit” — a God-fearing man, who had proved his faith and fidelity to God’s will, who would obey God’s laws. He was also a general who had already proved his fitness to the community. In this way a parallel develops between God and Moses and between Joshua and Aaron. Moses was God’s prophet and Aaron was Moses’ prophet. Joshua was appointed to be Moses’ emissary (not his prophet, like Aaron) and to fill the role that Moses filled after the sin of the Golden Calf. For this purpose it was necessary for Moses to impart to Joshua what YHWH had imparted to Moses: something of his wisdom and dignity, so that he could perform his task. Moses seems to have imparted his wisdom to Joshua by the laying on of hands, as confirmed at the end of Deuteronomy: “Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him.” (Deuteronomy 34:9) The conferral of dignity was performed in the public transfer of the authority of leadership from Moses to Joshua in a ceremony that gave Joshua the mantle of leadership as YHWH had given it to Moses. But we should be precise here: just as YHWH did not confer all His wisdom and dignity to Moses but only what was necessary for him to perform his task, so Moses did not confer all his wisdom and dignity to Joshua, but only so much as Joshua needed by the terms of his role. We have here not rhetoric but measured words of wisdom: Joshua was appointed to be “shepherd” to his people, “to bring out and bring in” the people when they set out to take possession of the land. In addition to his role as commander of the army, he had to bear responsibility before God and the community for the peace of the people, their welfare, and the conduct of their lives according to law and justice. This is the kind 103

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of wisdom that he needed. He was thus not endowed with Moses’ wisdom to give instruction and legislation on behalf of God. Moses’ uniqueness as founder of the kingdom of priests was expressed in his imitating God’s wisdom as legislator. Correspondingly, Joshua had to imitate Moses’ wisdom as one obligated by the Torah that he received from him to lead his people in accordance with it. Joshua also did not receive Moses’ prophetic power to turn directly to God and ask for His command for everything pertaining to guiding the people when he stood to receive fateful decisions, but he had to inquire of Eleazar the priest. But Eleazar also could not inquire directly of God like a prophet, but had to have recourse to the ritual oracular device of the Urim and Thumim. At the same time, Joshua had to obtain the agreement of the community in everything pertaining to major decisions affecting the destiny of the nation. It follows from all this that Moses appointed Joshua in the name of God to be a military commander and judicial arbiter. In this capacity, Joshua was subject to the basic law of God as given by Moses. It was forbidden for him to deviate from it, to add to it or detract from it. The wisdom that Moses imparted to him was the wisdom to interpret and apply the eternal law to the changing conditions of life. He was responsible to remain faithful to the law before the head of the Levitical priests on the one hand, and before the elders of the community (who were also wise in the Torah and subject to its laws) on the other hand. Thus the unity of the people was assured, as long as all these estates were obedient to the basic law of the covenant that united them. Joshua’s obligation of fidelity to the law of Moses’ Torah is not explicitly stated in the ceremony of agreement, documented twice in the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, but it is emphatically stated in the opening of the book of Joshua, where he actually embarks on his role and YHWH turns directly to him in confirmation of his appointment: After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ attendant: “My servant Moses is dead. Prepare to cross the Jordan, together with all this people, into the land that I am giving to the Israelites…. No one shall be able to resist you as long as you live. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you. “Be strong and resolute, for you shall apportion to this people the land that I swore to their fathers to assign to them. But you must be very strong and resolute to observe faithfully all the Teaching [Torah] that My servant Moses enjoined upon you. Do not deviate from it to the right or to the

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The Problem of Succession Continued left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Let not this Book of the Teaching cease from your lips, but recite it day and night, so that you may observe faithfully all that is written in it. Only then will you prosper in your undertakings and only then will you be successful.” (Joshua 1:1–8)

Moses is here called “the servant of the Lord,” whereas Joshua is called “Moses’ attendant.” These are clear differences in rank. YHWH promises to Joshua that He will be with him as he was with Moses, but only on condition that he will not deviate from the Torah that Moses commanded him. Furthermore, according to the continuation of the book, it is not YHWH who accompanies Joshua but an angel befitting his rank and assignment. YHWH accompanied Moses directly, but Joshua, commander of the army of Israel, is accompanied by an angel who goes by the title “commander of YHWH’s army.” (Joshua 5:13–15) In the continuation of the opening chapter, Joshua’s responsibility is confirmed before the elders of the community: Joshua thereupon gave orders to the officials of the people: “Go throughout the camp and charge the people thus: Get provisions ready, for in three days’ time you are to cross the Jordan, in order to enter and possess the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession”…. They answered Joshua, “We will do everything you have commanded us and we will go wherever you send us. We will obey you just as we obeyed Moses; let but the Lord your God be with you as He was with Moses. Any man who flouts your commands and does not obey every order you give him shall be put to death. Only be strong and resolute!” (Joshua 1:10–11, 16–18)

The Problem of Succession Continued Evidence confirms that the community freely accepted Joshua’s leadership as judge and commander, and on this basis Joshua was authorized to enlist the officers of the people, appointed by the community’s elders, to carry out his orders. Of course the agreement of the community was rooted in the covenant enacted between them and God, and so their obedience to Joshua was conditional on his keeping faith with the basic law of the covenant and not acting arbitrarily on his own. As we said earlier, Joshua’s role was defined as that of general and judge. His sovereignty was not vested in him personally, but was entrusted to him by the agreement of the high priest (representing God) and of 105

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the community. If Moses was not authorized to appoint a successor on his own, how much less so was Joshua! Thus there was a principled difference between the status of Joshua as commander and judge and that of a king over his people. The question, how a leader of comparable authority could be appointed, remains open through the books of Numbers and Joshua. Indeed, by the evidence of the books of Judges and First Samuel, the problem weighed on the people and grew worse, until it was so aggravated that there was no other way but to adopt the pattern of monarchy that was in practice among the neighboring peoples. Only a king would be able to unite the people in a stable framework of sovereignty that would be passed in inheritance from father to son in order to hold their own against their enemies who functioned as monarchies, with paid standing armies at their disposal, all of which gave them an advantage over Israel. Deuteronomy, which precedes Judges and Samuel in the narrative sequence, anticipates this development. It seems intended not only to address the transfer of leadership from Moses to Joshua, but also to solve the long-term constitutional problem that was not solved by Moses’ ordination of Joshua. Here is the solution proposed by Deuteronomy: If, after you have entered the land that the Lord your God has assigned to you, and taken possession of it and settled in it, you decide, “I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me,” you shall be free to set a king over yourself, one chosen by the Lord your God. Be sure to set as king over yourself one of your own people; you must not set a foreigner over you, one who is not your kinsman. Moreover, he shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since the Lord has warned you, “You must not go back that way again.” And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess. When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching written for him on a scroll by the levitical priests. Let it remain with him and let him read in it all his life, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as well as these laws. Thus he will not act haughtily toward his fellows or deviate from the Instruction to the right or to the left, to the end that he and his descendants may reign long in the midst of Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:14–20)

We shall clarify later the significance of the historical references alluded to in this passage — the people’s request of Samuel to appoint them a king like the other nations, the founding of the Davidic dynasty and the rise to its zenith of flourishing, its first sins against YHWH 106

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and the law of His covenant in the latter days of Solomon. At this stage we may emphasize the difference between Samuel’s negative presumption against the people’s request for a king versus the positive presumption of Deuteronomy to the same request. As for the relation of this institution to the basic law of the covenant, one should note that in the passage just cited, the appointment of a king is not obligatory but is permissible at the discretion of the community if they desire it. This means that the king is regarded as the chosen representative of the community. He is responsible to it and must respect its status. From this follows the requirement that the king not be a foreigner (nor should he rule with the aid of a foreign mercenary army) but he should be “from among your brethren” — a member of the community who lives among his people and is faithful to them. He may not exploit his position to fortify and exalt his rule above the people’s consideration; he may not aggrandize himself like a tyrant; and he may not imitate the ways of the regimes of the idolatrous kingdoms, particularly that of Egypt, in all these respects. But we should also note that the choice of the king from the members of the community, as one identified with them and reigning with their consent, is made by YHWH. The practical implication of this fact — drawing the parallel with Joshua’s appointment by Moses on behalf of YHWH — can only be one thing: the high priest, whose appointment to stand before YHWH passes in a hereditary line, will inquire of YHWH through the oracle of the Urim, by whose signs he will know whom God chose as king over His people, and he will anoint him before the community as did Samuel, who was high priest and prophet. Thus was reestablished the covenant that was first enacted at Sinai between YHWH and the people, then re-enacted by the appointment of Joshua, by confirming the legal standing of the general-judge or subsequently the king, who combined these powers in his office. Thus the king acquired sovereignty by the law of the covenant, and he could pass it on to his son, on condition that the high priest endorse the selection of the heir on behalf of YHWH and anoint him before the community, which would accept the new king as its sovereign. On what condition was the consent of the priest and the community contingent? On the condition that the king rule by the fear of God, and be subject to His command expressed by the basic law of the covenant. (This was demonstrated by Samuel’s replacement of Saul with David.) Thus the king was subject to covenantal law, and the legitimacy of his rule was conditional on his carrying out the same command that Joshua was commanded — to write out a copy of “this 107

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Torah” and to study it day and night. What is “this Torah”? The same Torah that provided the basis of his sovereignty over the people, namely Deuteronomy, whose name Mishneh Torah (in the sense of “a copy of this Teaching”) is mentioned in this very context.

Deuteronomy as Oral Law Thus the law of the king that is unique to Deuteronomy presents it as a book whose special role among the books of the Pentateuch is to implement the basic law of the Mosaic Torah through the leaders of the people who will come after Moses after the people is settled in its land. This is the book that leaders and people alike are bidden to study day and night, and by which they should govern their lives and each other. This mission is implicit in the multiple meanings of the Hebrew name of Deuteronomy, Mishneh Torah. “Mishnah” means teaching — for it is the Teaching that Moses taught the people and Joshua at the time of the latter’s ordination. “Mishnah” means review, for it is the Teaching that Joshua reviewed for himself and the people. “Mishnah” means second, for it is the second Torah, which interprets the first in order to bring it to realization. These three meanings are all part of the notion of Mishneh Torah. In all these respects, it must be an “oral Torah” in both senses of that term: the Torah that Moses spoke to Joshua, the elders and the people; and the Torah that would be learned orally by Joshua, the elders, the judges and the kings, and transmitted orally to them by their successors. Only by oral instruction and study could it fulfill its designated role as a regenerating living Torah, a Torah found in the hearts of the leaders and citizens of the people, a Torah, that leads them on the way to realization of their destiny. Nevertheless, like the other portions of the Pentateuch Deuteronomy was transmitted in written form. According to the above-cited passage, Moses himself set his words down in writing in order to place them as a scroll in the Ark of Testimony in the Tabernacle, but from the content we learn not only of Moses’ desire that the book should be learned orally but that it was not he who set down in writing all the words attributed to him, nor he who put these words in the Ark of Testimony. The opening verse of the book is a narrator’s report of Moses and the grand assembly in which he delivered his message face to face to the people: “These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel.” (Deuteronomy 1:1) This 108

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is not the language of autobiographical narrative, but a third-person report of someone who heard or read of the events. By comparison, the laws and commandments in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers are presented as the words that YHWH spoke directly to Moses and which he transmitted as the words of God to him, as he heard them and wrote them for posterity. But Deuteronomy says explicitly that here are the words that Moses spoke on his own behalf directly to his people. In the earlier books, God was the source and Moses was the intermediary. But here Moses is not just an intermediary but an interpreter of God’s word by his own insight, yet he was dependent on a scribe to transmit what he heard or received, by the light of his own understanding, to the succeeding generations. We must present the matter in this fashion if we wish to understand the essence and quality of Deuteronomy as oral Torah. Just as God’s words were transmitted by Moses in a way that the people could hear and understand, so too did Moses’ words pass by way of his scribeprophet as he heard and understood them, in a way that the succeeding generations could hear them, understand them, and transmit them to their children after them. It is a record that aims to describe precisely what the listener heard and what he understood, and this includes a process of applied interpretation that prefers the oral saying to the written word. Deuteronomy indicates this in the continuation of the opening, when it describes the connection between Moses’ own words and those words that he previously heard in prophecy but now reinterprets on his own: “Moses undertook to expound this Teaching.” (1:5) The two central words of this short sentence are key: “undertook” and “expound.” “Undertook” — in the sense that Moses asserted his own initiative and will in saying what he did at that time. “Expound” — in the sense that Moses transmitted what he had received from God but did not rest content with what he had heard but wished to bring his listeners to the point of understanding and conviction, so that they should fulfill God’s commandments as understood from knowledge and inner identification. Not as if compelled and forced, not as rote obedience, but as deed that expresses their own thought and volition. Moses thus intended to set in motion a spiritual process different from the one that resulted from his legislation in the wilderness — a process of in-depth study that takes place only through oral discourse fostering an inward relation between speaker and listener, that includes also mutual attentiveness, consideration for the problems and questions of the listener, and in this sense includes the beginning of conversation, for the 109

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speaker situates himself in the circle of interest of his listener. How is it possible to transmit instruction of this kind to generations yet unborn at the time of that gathering? For this is required a reliable auditor, whose prophetic inspiration or wisdom qualifies him to be an interpretive transmitter of Moses’ words to the members of his generation, just as Moses was qualified to transmit God’s words to his people. To achieve this, it is not enough to convey Moses’ words. The scribe considered it necessary to reconstruct the convocation himself in order to preserve it in the memory of the generations, and thus the narrative is not offered as the speaker’s own record, but a record about him. Indeed, the fact that it was not Moses who recorded the events of his life but a scribe who heard of them from those who witnessed them, is so clear that even the official canonical tradition could not ignore it. It is obvious that the account of Moses’ ascent to the summit of Mount Nebo, his death and his burial to a place that remains unknown “to this day” (Deuteronomy 34:1–7) could not have been written by Moses, but only by a scribe who received a tradition and wrote it down much later. Obviously, too, the verdict that “there arose no prophet in Israel like Moses” (34:10) could not have been said by Moses, but only by a much later witness. We may add to these clues the indirect allusion to developments in Israelite history that are documented in the books of Judges, Samuel and Kings long after Moses’ death. The fact that all these things are nevertheless ascribed to Moses himself, the man whose memory is bound up with this Torah that was transmitted from generation to generation, and that was recorded in every generation, is intelligible only if we see it as a reliable tradition whose task is not only to transmit matters in the exact spoken words, but also to apply them and interpret them for the needs of all listeners in the present, each time anew, because the future at which the words were directed is the general vision which Moses’ Torah is intended to realize. It follows from this that setting these words down in writing does not exclude these words that originated orally from the category of “Oral Torah.” This remains their nature even in writing, and that is how they should be studied, by freeing them of the written medium and restoring them to the oral discourse of students reciting them and delving into their meaning. This follows not only from their rhetorical style and pedagogical-interpretive character, but from the explicit directive that is repeatedly expressed, especially in those passages that the sages of the Oral Law commanded every Jew to recite daily in a prayer recited from memory: 110

Deuteronomy as Oral Law Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. (6:6–7)

But the pedagogical interpretive purpose is embodied in the book’s style, as we said. This book does not legislate and command. Rather, it is a book that teaches, explains, advocates, persuades, exhorts, promises, threatens, and promises again, raising all the possible reasons to explain why observing these commandments and laws is the true good, true success and happiness for the people and all its members. The style of Deuteronomy is not that of written prose, but rather of gushing, overflowing oratory, that waters the hearts of the listeners in order to make them fertile, as the waters of wells and springs water the earth, or in the image of the poem at the end of the book: “May my discourse come down as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, like showers on young growth, like droplets on the grass.” (32:2) To be sure, the discourse is monologue and does not turn into dialogue throughout the book; yet the gentle expression in the simile of the rain, that fructifies the earth without smiting it or its growth, and the dew that trickles but does not flood or suffocate them, expresses the sensitivity of the orator to his listeners, his alertness to their life experience, his attentiveness to their travails, to their expectations and wishes. In response to all these, the words of the book are offered as the fruits of sound wisdom, inviting the listeners to satisfy their desire, fructifying and nourishing their thought when they rehearse it by themselves or with their children and students. Thus did Moses conduct his discourse, and he thus offers another interpretation of Mishneh Torah — a second recital of the Torah which he spoke during the whole journey of the people in the wilderness, which is the same Torah and yet a different1 Torah, the Torah that was spoken for the time that the great change between the life of the people in the wilderness and its life on land was about to take place, the time when it would have to support itself by working the land and taking full responsibility for its national desiny in all respects — social, political and military. Wherein does the legislation of Deuteronomy differ from that of Exodus and Leviticus? First of all in the choice of matters with which Moses chose to expound in the latter convocation, especially those dealing with subjects that became especially imminent 1

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“Different”: shoneh; “change”: shinnui (both plays on Mishneh Torah).

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at the time that he transferred the task of leadership to Joshua, who would bring the people into the land. In this area will be found also the most prominent legislative innovations of Deuteronomy, those on which the stamp of the present that is impressed on them is for Moses an indicator of the future that will be realized after him.

Legislative Innovations in Deuteronomy All these innovations are indeed well-rooted in the principles and values of the first Mosaic legislation, but they are not comprised in it. One may categorize them along three main lines. The first is the preservation of the centrality of worship in YHWH’s Tabernacle through the transition from the situation of the wandering encampment, centered on the Tabernacle, to the situation in which each tribe will be settled on its homestead, engrossed in working the land and unable to maintain daily contact with the Tabernacle. The gravity of the problem arising then pertains to preserving the sanctity of the camp, in which YHWH is said to dwell, as well as to withstanding the temptation of idolatrous cults that have many local centers. Second, issues arose from the sovereignty of a government that must be strong enough to deal with the conquering armies of other well-established sovereign states, yet must at the same time remain faithful to the original basic law of the covenant, according to which YHWH is the true king and sovereign. Third, dangers arose from the conduct of frequent wars of purgation on behalf of the ritual sanctity of the community and its moral purity. And these are the principles of legislative innovation of Deuteronomy focusing on these three themes: 1. Observance of the centrality of worship in the Tabernacle and in the Temple that will be built in the place that YHWH shall choose; prohibition of the local rites in the shrines that are an idolatrous legacy, and emphasis on the thrice-annual festival pilgrimage, along with permission to slaughter and eat meat at one’s pleasure in any place. 2. Establishing the Israelite state as a sovereign hereditary monarchy that is yet subject to the sovereignty of YHWH, expressed in the basic law of the Torah. At the same time, the instruction of the Oral Law is institutionalized as a living teaching, expounded and reapplied constantly according to the needs of changing times: 112

Legislative Innovations in Deuteronomy If a case is too baffling for you to decide, be it a controversy over homicide, civil law, or assault — matters of dispute in your courts — you shall promptly repair to the place that the Lord your God will have chosen, and appear before the levitical priests, or the magistrate in charge at the time, and present your problem. When they have announced to you the verdict in the case, you shall carry out the verdict that is announced to you from that place that the Lord chose, observing scrupulously all their instructions to you. You shall act in accordance with the instructions given you and the ruling handed down to you. (Deuteronomy 17:8–11)

3. In response to the prerogatives of the king to render decisions pertaining to the future of the people and his standing among the people, and in order to preserve his subservience to divine authority, critique of royal conduct shall find institutionalized expression. The intent here is to ensure the lives and freedom of speech of the prophets who shall arise after Moses as emissaries chosen by God. How is this choice expressed? By prophecy itself, as occurred with Moses and afterwards with the elders of Israel as described in Numbers (Chapter 11). Of course, just as Moses was required to demonstrate his mission through the fulfillment of his word, so the prophets who arise after him will have to demonstrate their mission through the fulfillment of their word. But the law of Deuteronomy guarantees their personal security and freedom of expression because of absolute commitment to the truth that was revealed to them, and to it alone, without fear of the king or other powerful men, and without the need to flatter the people so that their words would be heard. This legislation is called for by the need to prevent reliance on augurs and soothsayers of all kinds, as is the habit of idolators: The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your own people, like myself; him shall you heed. This is just what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb, on the day of the Assembly…whereupon the Lord said to me, “…I will raise up a prophet for them from among their own people, like yourself: I will put My words in his mouth and he will speak to them all that I command him; and if anybody fails to heed the words he speaks in My name, I myself will call him to account. But any prophet who presumes to speak in My name an oracle that I did not command him to utter, or who speaks in the name of other gods — that prophet shall die.” And should you ask yourselves, “How can we know that the oracle was not spoken by the Lord?” — if the prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and the oracle does not come true, that oracle was not spoken by the Lord; the prophet has uttered it presumptuously: do not stand in dread of him. (18:15–22)

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Yet we should note that although a positive comparison is drawn between the latter prophets and Moses (“The Lord will raise up for you a prophet like myself”), the injunction to heed them emphasizes the difference between their prophecies and his. The prophets after Moses will have no legislative authority, and the people will turn to them to learn how to act in accordance with God’s will in political decisions pertaining to the people’s future. Thus the people will not resort to augurs and soothsayers, but will heed the commands of their King also in matters not involving legislation. Yet even in these matters the prophets have no power to enforce their words even after they prove their mission through signs. Therefore God Himself will punish those who do not heed their instruction. 4. Legislation relating to the morality of war, to the limits of obligation to participate in war, to the treatment of captives and division of spoils. (Deuteronomy Chapter 20) 5. The severity of the war of extermination against the idolatrous nations of Canaan, and the severity of treatment of the man, woman or tribe (the “idolatrous city” of Deuteronomy 13:13–19) who betray the covenant of Israel with YHWH and serve other gods; opposition to all forms of imitation of idolatrous worship (Deuteronomy 16:20–22, 17:1–5). As Deuteronomy was intended as a guide to establishing the civil society in Canaan, it deals with the topics of legal justice, social justice and covenantal ethics between persons. Indeed, on these topics there is no substantive innovation in Deuteronomy compared with the legislation of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, but there is expansive explanation that is required for implementation, especially in order to prevent the shedding of innocent blood in the land: the commandment to set aside cities of refuge to which involuntary homicides can flee in order to escape the avengers of blood. We can however compare Moses’ written and oral teachings in the realm of social justice by juxtaposing the respective versions of Deuteronomy and Exodus of the Fourth Commandment, in which the social vision of Mosaic legislation is expressed in the commandment of the Sabbath: Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God: you shall not do any work — you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8–11)

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The Transition in Deuteronomy from the Plane of Myth to History Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; you shall not do any work — you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your ox, or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the stranger in your settlements, so that your male and female slave may rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:12–15)

These two visions are identical with respect to the essential precept of the Sabbath. The difference between them is focused on two points: (1) Deuteronomy says “observe” in place of “remember,” and adds: “as the Lord your God has commanded you.” This instructs us to examine in depth what God commanded originally. What did God intend in commanding the Sabbath just after the Exodus from Egypt, that needs to be impressed on the child of the second generation, born in the wilderness? The answer, which is the basis for Deuteronomy’s preference of “observe” over “remember” (though one clearly cannot observe without also remembering) is given at the end of the paragraph: “therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” In other words, you should remember that remembering the Sabbath is not a theoretical exercise, btu it must be observed through action. Second, one must observe the Sabbath as God intends for the sake of its social interpersonal objective: “so that your male and female slave may rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt…” Here is the deeper explanation for the difference between remembrance and observance, for only through observance of the Sabbath is the remembrance of the Exodus made into a reality that is experienced in the present. The Sabbath is thus made a perpetual exodus from Egyptian slavery as well as a perpetual striving to realize its vision in the future.

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legislation for which the time has arrived to begin its realization. This is the great turning-point, and it requires a fresh examination of the relation between the plane of myth — that embodies God’s direct action in creation, in the redemption of the people of Israel, in enacting the covenant with them, in His guiding them in the wilderness, and in Moses’ status as a prophet-legislator in YHWH’s name — and the plane of history, in which the people must act on their own, with their limited natural powers, to cope with the problems of human existence in nature and society — as it relates to regularly recurring events in the cycle of natural life as well as the changing, the common as well as the unique, the fleeting as well as the fateful, the capricious as well as what was done out of a serious ethical decision. This is the characteristic of the field of activity peculiar to mankind, and because he is a part of that worldly field itself, only he can correct what has gone awry in it in the order of creation. But the internal correction of creation can be grasped only from within, so that in a certain respect creation is correcting itself. But the definition of the task of correction is a definition of the obstacles that stand in mankind’s path, and the source of those difficulties that he cannot overcome without God’s help in the form of His laws, His commandments, and His direct intervention in times of distress. As a “second Torah” and “oral Torah,” Deuteronomy is the book in which was finally embodied the transition from the outlook on the plane of myth — which represents the aspect of divine providence in history, to the extent that human beings are able to discern and interpret it — to the plane of history, that represents the aspects seen and experienced out of human beings’ personal experience, though relying on their knowledge of God as their sovereign, legislator and guide. The human perspective, within nature and within history, is emphasized in Deuteronomy first of all on the narrative plane, and in order to give an example of this, we compare the description of the scene of enactment of the covenant between YHWH and His people in Exodus to the scene in which Moses gives his people the “second Torah.” All the mythic dimensions that characterize the scene described in Exodus, whether with respect to YHWH’s self-display or His appearing to Moses when Moses spoke to God or to his people, are omitted from the later description. The manner of depiction is also different. The opening of the book of Deuteronomy is a historical-perspectival introduction; the narrative of Exodus, described in a continuous flow of action, did not require such an introduction. The introduction to Deuteronomy ascribes great importance to the factual reliability of the depiction: an 116

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exact description of the location, an exact pin-pointing of the time, exact specification of the circumstances that gave rise to the scene that will be elaborated in the main part of the book (see Deuteronomy 1:1–5). The speaker, Moses, also opens his words with a historical overview whose purpose is to remind his listeners, the generation born in the wilderness, for what purpose and how they arrived to this point. Precisely because they have been groomed for the coming future, he sees the need to remind them of the past, and since we are speaking of a collective future, the future of the people, he comes to remind them their people’s past. Yet they must also identify with their people’s past as individuals, because in respect of their responsibility to its future — to their children after them — the people’s past is the personal past of every one of them, just as their present-day deeds will become the past that obligates their children. This insight is the source of the importance that Moses attributes to the historical reliability of his story with respect to the unique facticity of the events, for their obligating significance is embodied in it. In other words, in the book of Deuteronomy the source of the people’s obligation to the motivations and purposes that brought them to this point does not rest in God’s direct revelation as legislator and leader, but in the embodiment of His leadership in the historical journey itself. Therefore, in order to arouse the awareness of obligation and to perpetuate it, what is required is not awe of the power of the selfrevealing God coming down to the people from His high places, but rather the opposite: the spiritual fortitude that prepares one for study, contemplation, and absorption of these lessons. Thus in the second covenant no supernatural event occurs contravening nature’s order; no pillar of fire or cloud accompanies the people on their journey; nor does God speak to Moses before the people, as He spoke to him in the Tabernacle from the cloud. Just the opposite; most of Moses’ words are said directly on his own authority, on the basis of his experiences and prophecies in the wilderness. Only at the end, before his leavetaking from his people, in order to re-ascend to the plane of myth and be submerged in it, he reverts to speaking as a prophet foreseeing the future for his people, admonishing them and blessing them. In this way a new image of the prophetic leader is portrayed — as a teacher of instruction, as a moralist, as a visionary of the future. Indeed, Moses’ appearance in Deuteronomy is surprisingly different from his appearance in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, and surprisingly similar to the images of the later prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. 117

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The tongue-tied stammerer, who called on Aaron to be his mouthpiece when he delivered his message to Pharaoh and to his people; the man who after his face-to-face intimacy with God needed to put a veil over his face so that ordinary mortals could stand in his presence — this man appears as a public speaker to the masses, a rousing preacher whose speech is gushing and flowing, dropping as the rain and dripping as the dew on the furrows of people’s hearts, a popular revivalist. The exalted distance, fearful respect and hushed admiration that previously stood between him and the people seem to have vanished completely. Like a popular lecturer Moses is able to come down to his audience’s level, to speak to them as one who shares their life experience, to see the circumstances of their lives as they see them, to explain to them the meaning of God’s commandments from a viewpoint with which they can identify, and to present his teaching as one that responds to their day-to-day concerns, showing them the way to prosperity, good life and happiness: Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it. See, I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity. For I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His laws, and His rules, that you may thrive and increase, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land that you are about to enter and possess. But if your heart turns away and you give no heed, and are lured into the worship and service of other gods, I declare to you this day that you shall certainly perish; you shall not long endure on the soil that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life — if you and your offspring would live — by loving the Lord your God, heeding His commands, and holding fast to Him. For thereby you shall have life and shall long endure upon the soil that the Lord your God swore to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them. (Deuteronomy 30:11–20)

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that Moses retrospectively recalls the events of the past: the exodus from Egypt, the scene of enacting the covenant at Sinai, the wanderings in the wilderness. The myth is pushed into the past as a founding but distant memory, legendary, an experience that present-day people can no longer experience. On the other hand he emphasizes the eternal validity of the words that were spoken at those encounters — the laws, the judgments and the instructions. The words are still new and striking today, just as they were new and striking when first spoken. Therefore even in his narrative of the exalted encounters of the past, the Moses of Deuteronomy emphasizes the historical aspects that put them in perspective. In this respect, one finds striking the way in which, in his retrospective historical survey, Moses recalls the convocation at Mount Sinai: the emphasis is placed on what was said, namely the Ten Commandments, not the drama of theophany at the mountain. On the contrary, Moses sees the need to warn the people of the disastrous error that can result from focusing on the manifestations of God Himself in sights and sounds before the people: But take utmost care and watch yourselves scrupulously, so that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes and so that they do not fade from your mind as long as you live. And make them known to your children, and to your children’s children: The day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to Me, “Gather the people to Me that I may let them hear My words, in order that they may learn to revere Me as long as they live on earth, and may so teach their children.” You came forward and stood at the foot of the mountain. The mountain was ablaze with flames to the very skies, dark with densest clouds. The Lord spoke to you out of the fire; you heard the sound of words but perceived no shape — nothing but a voice. (Deuteronomy 4: 9–12)

Who is in need of the warning not to forget that they saw no shape but only heard the sound of words? Surely not those who themselves stood at the foot of the smoking mountain and perceived only the sounds, but young people, of the new generation, who if one could say that they too stood at the foot of the mountain, it would not be by virtue of themselves but by virtue of their parents, on the basis of their testimony. These young people were thus liable to err out of pure intention and to try to form a concrete image of the foundational revelation in the manner of idolatrous representation. Therefore this warning is required: 119

Chapter 2. Deuteronomy (the “Second Torah”) At the same time the Lord commanded me to impart to you laws and rules for you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy. For your own sake, therefore, be most careful — since you saw no shape when the Lord your God spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire — not to act wickedly and make for yourselves a sculptured image… (Deuteronomy 4:14–16)

Again and again, the fact is emphasized that in the mythic memory there was no idolatrous basis that could be a source of inspiration for plastic representations for ritual use, and therefore Moses reiterates that the words that were heard are the main thing, not the circumstances of their utterance. We thus see that rather than being interested in impressing on his people’s memory the awe-inspiring supernatural dimension of the Sinai revelation, Moses sought to dispel the danger that could arise from it. It was his objective that they should remember the eternal lessons, that were perpetually obligatory, whose power lay in the depth and gravity of their content. Indeed, the emphasis was on the present, on the obligatory power in the here and now of the words that were spoken at Sinai: The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. It was not with our fathers that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, the living, every one of us who is here today. Face to face the Lord spoke to you on the mountain out of the fire — I stood between the Lord and you at that time to convey the Lord’s words to you, for you were afraid of the fire and did not go up into the mountain — saying: “I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage…” (Deuteronomy 5:2–6)

Note: with these words Moses identifies the present in which he spoke before the people on Mount Sinai burning in fire, with God answering him in a divine voice, with the present in which he is standing amid the people who hear the same words but in his human voice. The Ten Commandments as presented here are the revelation that stands for all generations. In respect of their obligatory force that endures and stands eternally, the Israelites of all generations are considered as if they stood at the foot of the mountain. Wherever they are, every time that they study the Torah in recognition of their obligation to fulfill its commandments, they stand before Moses who speaks in God’s name, and they hear his words. Thus the founding event of the covenant is renewed for them, just as it was renewed at that hour when Moses spoke to the people on the steppes of Moab. 120

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When, and By Whom, Was Deuteronomy Written? On the basis of these considerations we come to the literary-historical question that has been raised: how, and by whom, was the book of Deuteronomy written, by its own evidence? What historical reality stands in the background that the Biblical narrative itself depicts? This question has its source not in scientific curiosity, but in the legal and ethical lessons and the narrative that are embedded in the framework of Moses’ words, that flow in waves, one after the other. They are not arranged in the book like a systematic presentation, but rather like instruction that is given in answer to questioners who come to learn what each one needs at their particular moment. The question of how the book came to be thus develops from its character as a “second Torah” and as “oral Torah,” and it arises from the correct understanding of its instruction in response to a certain reality in the people’s history. Indeed, confirmation of this fact can be found both in the book of Deuteronomy itself and in the historical books of the Hebrew Bible, from Joshua to Ezra and Nehemiah, that relate to it. If we examine the evidences that support and elucidate each other, in order, we can consider the retrospective character of the book that was created in a process of repeated reflection on the past from several increasingly remote vantage points in the people’s history, in order to find guidance and to define a direction for the continuing realization of the vision of Moses’ Torah into the future. The first conclusion, that arises from considering the book of Deuteronomy from the aspect of its process of composition, is that this book depicts a tradition that was passed down, accumulated and became crystallized over the course of generations, not having its origin in one stratum or from one author. There is indeed a tradition that regards Moses — or more precisely, his Torah — as its first source. Everything that was transmitted by its agency stems, in the view of its transmitters, from Moses’ Torah, just as their authority as prophets or scribes is rooted in Moses’ authority, but they know that their task as transmitters is not limited to passing on the information exactly as received, but extends to teaching it as a living teaching for their changing times. It follows from this that the creation of the book proceeded for several generations in a process of exposition and study until it finally was crystallized and sealed, and committing it to writing was accomplished on account of conditions which were marked by an important turning-point, in 121

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which was felt the need to re-establish the covenant between YHWH and His people on the basis of the legal tradition of the Mosaic Torah. In these circumstances, the “second Torah” (Deuteronomy) was read as the book of the covenant, and the additions that were required for the need of the hour were integrated into the totality that had been accumulated up to that point. Afterwards, the updated book was stored in the Ark of the Covenant. This conclusion can be confirmed, as we said, by examining the implicit reference to certain historical situations or events within the book of Deuteronomy itself, in a way that determined its structure, as well as by uncovering testimonies to historic re-enactments of the covenant that are mentioned explicitly and emphatically in historical books — from Numbers to Ezra and Nehemiah, which contain direct allusions to Deuteronomy as a second Torah, to its being committed to writing and placed in the Ark of Testimony. We emphasize again that the purpose of a literary-historical inquiry is not to determine the reliability of the Bible’s testimony from a philological-historical standpoint, but to understand the historical consciousness that shaped, interpreted and established the authoritative status of Deuteronomy within the canonical sequence into which it has been integrated, as a foundation of the literature that the rabbis called “oral Torah”; like the testimony of the Mishnah, which is like a successor to Deuteronomy: “Moses received Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets transmitted it to the men of the Great Synagogue…. (Tractate Avot, 1:1) The point of departure of the Book of Deuteronomy as “oral Torah” in Moses’ own teaching, both written and oral, is found as we said in the Book of Numbers. This was sufficiently explained previously — in the account of Joshua’s investment as leader of his people. According to what was told there, Joshua came into Moses’ place and by virtue of his authority, but did not inherit his status or stature. This transition signifies, according to the account in Numbers, the turning-point that will take place in the life of the people in the transition from the circumstances of living in the desert to the circumstances of living in a settled land, so that the covenant that was enacted at Sinai will have to be renewed in another form, for the people will no longer subsist on manna and wild quails. The land of Canaan flows with milk and honey, but only for those who will till the soil and fight for it. This is the meaning of the difference between life in the wilderness and life in Canaan, and this substantive difference requires a re-establishment 122

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of the founding covenant that was enacted at Sinai: everything has changed, including what the people may expect from their God, and what God can expect of them. The linkage of Deuteronomy with Numbers is indicated not only by the recalling of the investment of Joshua, described at the end of Deuteronomy, but also at the beginning of the book, which mentions the place, the time and the background of the depicted scene, as well as at the start of Moses’ words. Just as Exodus begins by echoing the end of Genesis (mentioning the names of Israel’s sons who came down to Egypt), so Deuteronomy starts by echoing the concluding episodes of Numbers: summarizing the route that the people traveled from the Exodus from Egypt until their arrival to the steppes of Moab in preparation for crossing the Jordan (compare Numbers 33 with Deuteronomy 2–3). The parallel is clear: one assumes the memory of the past as the basis for charting the course for the future; but the difference is also clear: in Deuteronomy Moses intends to draw the lessons from the experiences that the people of Israel underwent in the wilderness for the sake of the present mission, the conquest of Canaan. Not only with respect to the conquest itself, but with respect to the way of life of the people on its land. The new situation that was created with the entry to Canaan came to expression in a renewed emphasis on sanctification through refraining from the idolatrous rites of the peoples of Canaan. Against this backdrop, a commandment is presented in Deuteronomy, ascribed to Moses, to re-establish the covenant between YHWH and His people in Shechem opposite Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal — the first as the mountain of blessing, if the people observe YHWH’s commandments and abstain from all the ways of the idolators, and the second as the mountain of curse, in the event that the people do not pass the test. (Deuteronomy 11:26–32) One can say that this scene is parallel to the one in which Moses invested Joshua with leadership, and stands in counterpoint to it: after Joshua proved his leadership in his victory over Jericho and Ai, and after he overcame the crisis and defeat that Achan’s sacrilege triggered — he saw the need to re-establish the covenant with YHWH on the basis of the Mosaic law, but on the strength of his own leadership status. The question of the relation between the written Torah and the oral Torah arises in this context in all its clarity: was it Moses who himself commanded this ceremony, or did Joshua perhaps base it on what followed logically from his master’s teaching? The answer is given in 123

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the book of Joshua, where reference is made to a “copy of the Torah” (mishneh Torah, i.e. Deuteronomy): At that time Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had commanded the Israelites — as is written in the Book of the Teaching of Moses — an altar of unhewn stone upon which no iron had been wielded. They offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord, and brought sacrifices of well-being. And there, on the stones, he inscribed a copy of the Teaching (mishneh torat Moshe) that Moses had written for the Israelites. All Israel — stranger and citizen alike — with their elders, officials, and magistrates, stood on either side of the Ark, facing the levitical priests who carried the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant. Half of them faced Mount Gerizim and half of them faced Mount Ebal, to bless the people of Israel. After that, he read all the words of the Teaching, the blessing and the curse, just as written in the Book of the Teaching (sefer ha-Torah). There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua failed to read in the presence of the entire assembly of Israel, including the women and children and the strangers who accompanied them. (Joshua 8:30–35)

One can easily infer from these verses in what sense the command to renew the covenant opposite Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim is attributed to Moses: erecting the altar, assembling the congregation on the one side and the levitical priests opposite them, the words of the blessing and the curse — all these ingredients of the scene, including the role that Joshua played in the ceremony, are faithful to the instructions that Moses laid down in his Torah. But the event itself was decided on by Joshua on his own initiative, in order to cope with the crisis of leadership that developed from his special role as army commander and judge, which differed from that of Moses. This should teach us that the attribution to Moses of the command to carry out this ceremony was done retroactively, by the authority rooted in the “second Torah” in its capacity as oral law. The same applies to the legitimization of the monarchy in Deuteronomy, on condition that the people want it. Do we have here an extrapolation from the possibilities that Moses opened up when he appointed Joshua as his successor, or perhaps a direct teaching of Moses himself? The fact that Moses did not himself appoint Joshua to be king negates the second alternative. However, it is important to pay attention to the description of the scene in which Samuel — the priest-prophet who at that time filled Moses’ own role as priest and as prophet, but not as head of state — accepted the people’s request to appoint them a king like the other nations: 124

When, and By Whom, Was Deuteronomy Written? And Samuel said to the people, “Do you see the one whom the Lord has chosen? There is none like him among all the people.” And all the people acclaimed him, shouting, “Long live the king!” Samuel expounded to the people the rules of the monarchy, and recorded them in a document which he deposited before the Lord. Samuel then sent the people back to their homes. (I Samuel 10: 24–25)

The answer is thus direct and clear. Samuel, who at that time stood in Moses’ place, was the one who gave legitimization to the appointment of a king whom he, as prophet-priest, had selected from among the people with the consent of the community, and it was he who based it on the law of the Mosaic Torah as a possibility that could be inferred from the way that Moses had appointed Joshua, and committed it to writing! The additional limitations that the Book of Deuteronomy imposed on the king who ruled his people in accordance with the Mosaic law — that he should not have too many horses or wives, and should not turn the people back to Egypt — express clearly the lessons from the corruption of the monarchy of Solomon towards the end of his life. According to the Book of Kings, these led to the calamitous secession between the northern kingdom of Israel — that was established with the help of a covenant between Jeroboam, who was rebelling against Solomon, and the king of Egypt — and the southern kingdom of Judah, that continued to vacillate for several generations between imitation of the ways of the idolatrous kingdoms and obedience to the law of the Mosaic Torah. Also the institution of the continuance of Torahitic instruction to the people by the priests and Levites who dwelt in the central site chosen by God (the Temple in Jerusalem), and institutionalizing the status of the prophets — the two agencies that were destined to continue Moses’ task as legislator and prophet who was privy to God’s will — are rooted in the same crisis that continued as a steadily worsening rift between the kings who “did that which was evil in the sight of YHWH” and the levitical priests and prophets in the kingdom of Judah, who did not spare the sinful kings the rod of their warning admonitions. Certainly these provisions were in the spirit of Moses’ Torah, but it is no less certain that it was not Moses who spoke and wrote them, but they were spoken and written at a rare historical moment, when a righteous king arose who returned penitently to YHWH and to His Torah, and decided to re-establish the covenant with YHWH before the High Priest, before the scribe and before the entire people assembled as a community: 125

Chapter 2. Deuteronomy (the “Second Torah”) Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jedidah daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. He did what was pleasing to the Lord and he followed all the ways of his ancestor David; he did not deviate to the right or to the left. In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the king sent the scribe Shaphan son of Azaliah son of Meshullam to the House of the Lord, saying, “Go to the high priest Hilkiah and let him weigh the silver that has been deposited in the House of the Lord, which the guards of the threshold have collected from the people. And let it be delivered to the overseers of the work who are in charge at the House of the Lord, that they in turn may pay it out to the workmen that are in the House of the Lord, for the repair of the House: to the carpenters, the laborers, and the masons, and for the purchase of wood and quarried stones for repairing the House. However, no check is to be kept on them for the silver that is delivered to them, for they deal honestly.” Then the high priest Hilkiah said to the scribe Shaphan, “I have found a scroll of the Teaching [sefer ha-Torah] in the House of the Lord.” And Hilkiah gave the scroll to Shaphan, who read it. The scribe Shaphan then went to the king and reported to the king: “Your servants have melted down the silver that was deposited in the House, and they have delivered it to the overseers of the work who are in charge at the House of the Lord.” The scribe Shaphan also told the king, “The high priest Hilkiah has given me a scroll”; and Shaphan read it to the king. When the king heard the words of the scroll of the Teaching, he rent his clothes. And the king gave orders to the priest Hilkiah, and to Ahikam son of Shaphan, Achbor son of Michaiah, the scribe Shaphan, and Asaiah the king’s minister: “Go, inquire of the Lord on my behalf, and on behalf of the people, and on behalf of all Judah, concerning the words of this scroll that has been found. For great indeed must be the wrath of the Lord that has been kindled against us, because our fathers did not obey the words of this scroll to do all that has been prescribed for us.” So the priest Hilkiah, and Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went to the prophetess Huldah — the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah son of Harhas, the keeper of the wardrobe — who was living in Jerusalem in the Mishneh, and they spoke to her. She responded: “Thus said the Lord, the God of Israel: Say to the man who sent you to me: Thus said the Lord: I am going to bring disaster upon this place and its inhabitants, in accordance with all the words of the scroll which the king of Judah has read. Because they have forsaken Me and have made offerings to other gods and vexed Me with all their deeds, My wrath is kindled against this place and it shall not be quenched. But say this to the king, who sent you to inquire of the Lord: Thus said the Lord, the God of Israel: As for the words which you have heard — because your heart was softened and

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When, and By Whom, Was Deuteronomy Written? you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I decreed against this place and its inhabitants — that it will become a desolation and a curse — and because you rent your clothes and wept before Me, I for My part have listened — declares the Lord. Assuredly, I will gather you to your fathers and you will be laid in your tomb in peace. Your eyes shall not see all the disaster which I will bring upon this place.” So they brought back the reply to the king. At the king’s summons, all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem assembled before him. The king went up to the House of the Lord, together with all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and prophets — all the people, young and old. And he read to them the entire text of the covenant scroll which had been found in the House of the Lord. The king stood by the pillar and solemnized the covenant before the Lord: that they would follow the Lord and observe His commandments, His injunctions, and His laws with all their heart and soul; that they would fulfill all the terms of this covenant as inscribed upon the scroll. And all the people entered into the covenant. (II Kings 22:1 — 23:3)

We have here an account of a historical event, scrupulously specifying the details worthy of memory for the generations, and attesting to the reliability of its facts. The king Josiah is presented as the disciple of Hilkiah the priest and Shaphan the scribe. When he came into his majority and the kingdom was firmly established in his hand, he decided, under the influence of his teachers and mentors, to correct what his predecessors had perverted when they had broken faith with the ritual of YHWH in the Temple, with the law of the Mosaic Torah, and with listening to YHWH’s word through the prophets. To set things right, he re-enacted the covenant, as Joshua and Samuel had done before him, following the example of the covenant that Moses enacted with his people on the steppes of Moab. First of all he took care to restore the Temple to its prior glory as in the days of Solomon, as the sole site of worship, under the supervision of the High Priest, the Levites, and the royal scribe. Afterwards he took charge to renew the absolute obedience to the law of the Mosaic Torah and its instructions, under the supervision of the priests, Levites and scribes, and under the supervision of the prophetess of YHWH who was recognized in that generation. Thus he re-established the power and status of the priests and Levites, of the scribes who knew the Torah, and of the prophets who knew YHWH’s will under the circumstances of the time. He did this according to the law of the Mosaic Torah in a festive scene before the people of Judah and Jerusalem, who were standing in the 127

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Temple as a single community, and at his side were the High Priest and the palace scribe. Everything took place as written in the “Book of the Covenant” that the High Priest had found in the Temple and that his scribe had read to him. The reading of the book to the king, so that he should hear the words as oral Torah and take them to heart, and afterwards the reading of the words of the book by the king to the people so that their elders and all their children should hear them as oral Torah — all this is the heart of the story and the heart of the event whose purpose was to recreate the historical convocation of the giving of the Torah and its acceptance as the Book of the Covenant, as Moses had done in the steppes of Moab. If we pay attention to the lessons that the king derived from the book that was read to him, and to the scenario itself, this leaves no room for doubt that the book in question was Deuteronomy. The matters that would have most disturbed the righteous king in the new book that was discovered in the Temple are those that pertain to the manner of appointing a king, to the institution of instruction in the Torah proceeding from the Temple site, to the obligation to listen to the words of the prophets who would stand in Moses’ place in every generation, and to the stern prophecy concerning the destruction and exile that would soon come. What, then, is the meaning of “finding” this book in the Temple at that fateful historical moment? Is the reference to an ancient book that disappeared and turned up in the Sanctuary, or perhaps finding the words that were directed for that hour, derived from the Mosaic Torah in the book of the “second Torah” stored in the Sanctuary by the High Priest and by the scribe who assisted him? Huldah the prophetess envisioned for her people the stern scenario: the king’s submission to YHWH would defer the destruction that had already been decreed on the Temple and the kingdom, but would not cancel it. And yet this does not mean that Josiah’s re-enactment of the covenant was considered a failure in respect of assuring the people’s future. On the contrary, it insured that the covenant that YHWH had enacted with the patriarchs and with His people by Moses, Joshua, Samuel and David would never be annulled. The destruction of the city, the Temple, and the kingdom, and the people’s exile from their land would be the punishment required to atone for the sins of the people, but after the people will have expiated their sins, they will return in perfect repentance, just as King Josiah returned in repentance, and then the covenant will be truly re-established and will endure forever. With respect to the future, the importance attributed to the ceremony 128

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of re-enacting the covenant in Josiah’s time was quite considerable, and it became a model by which the covenant was again renewed after the people’s sin was atoned by the sufferings of exile and the time of redemption had arrived. At that hoped-for time, the first long period in the people’s history — the one that had begun with the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah by Moses — would come to its completion. At the same time, a second period would begin, one that would be parallel yet different from the first in its purpose, beginning with the return from Babylon to Zion and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, in preparation for realization of the great hope of messianic redemption, which all the prophets of the destruction had promised, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In the initial stages of this great turning-point, there would again be required a founding event of giving and receiving of the “second Torah” in a form that would be appropriate to the progress of the people, under conditions that could not be equated with the circumstances in which the Torah had been propagated throughout the whole first period. The expectation that such a turning-point should occur was rooted in the words of the prophets who anticipated it and prepared for it, once there were indications that a great, unavoidable catastrophe was looming. Signs of thinking about renewal of the Torah for the days that would come after “the end of days” are already recognizable in the words of the first Isaiah: “Bind up the message, seal the instruction (torah) with my disciples.” (Isaiah 8:16) But the clearest of these is Jeremiah, who led his people to the Babylonian Exile in the faith that the destruction and exile, with all their fearful aspect, would be the threshold of the revival that would come with a new reality in the world. He expected that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylonia, who destroyed the Temple and the monarchy as a punishment for the sins of the people of Judah, would lay a basis for a new world order, an order of international peace. On the basis of this expectation he instructed the exiled people to settle in the land of their exile, to pray for the welfare of the government where they resided, and to prepare for their peaceful return to their land, their city, their Temple and their commonwealth when seventy years had passed. (Jeremiah Chapter 29) Then would begin the Messianic age in which the vision of YHWH in creation would come to its fulfillment. Faith, justice and peace would be the lot of all humanity, and the Torah would receive renewal for that sanctified reality: 129

Chapter 2. Deuteronomy (the “Second Torah”) See, a time is coming — declares the Lord — when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers, when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant which they broke, so that I rejected them — declares the Lord. But such is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after these days — declares the Lord: I will put My Teaching (torah) into their inmost being and inscribe it upon their hearts. Then I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No longer will they need to teach one another and say to one another, “Heed the Lord,” for all of them, from the least of them to the greatest, shall heed [or know] Me — declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquities, and remember their sins no more. (Jeremiah 31:31–34)

What, then, is the difference between the covenant that was enacted on the basis of a Torah written on scrolls and carved in stone, versus a covenant that would be enacted on the basis of a Torah written on people’s hearts? Already in the words of Josiah, that are based on the book that was found in the Temple, an explanation is given that is taken from the same book: “To follow the Lord and observe His commandments, His injunctions, and His laws with all their heart and soul.” (2 Kings 23:3) That is what Jeremiah meant, by intensifying the meaning of performing the commandments with all one’s heart and soul. The background for the vision of the new covenant that would be written on hearts is depicted in the continuation of his words: when the campaign of Nebuchadnezzar for the conquest of Jerusalem was already being conducted in full force, and the dreaded catastrophe was in prospect, then the king Zedekiah, who all his life had vacillated between the advice of his ministers and that of the prophet, performed an act of repentance in the spirit of Jeremiah’s pleadings and made a covenant with his ministers before the people to set free all Hebrew female and male slaves, as was written in the book of Moses’ Torah. However, this quickly proved deceptive: after fulfilling their obligations, they reversed course and subjected their male and female slaves to an additional term of servitude (Jeremiah 34:8–11). In Jeremiah’s view, this reneging on their own covenant sealed the doom of the city, the Temple and the people (34:6–22), and the lesson that he learned can be inferred from his vision: there is no hope for the survival of the kingdom of priests that Moses established, as long as the people are obedient to the laws of the Torah just out of fear of divine wrath, and not out of an inner response and devotion to performing God’s will and commandment out of full knowledge. The vision will be realized 130

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only when the people and its leaders internalize God’s commands and fulfill them as the commands of their heart and their soul’s desire, as is written in Deuteronomy in the passage beginning “Hear, O Israel.” In his own words, Jeremiah struck at the deeper meaning of the verse, “These instructions with which I charge you this day shall be on your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:6) — i.e., they should be fluent in one’s mouth and known by heart until they are stamped on the depths of one’s personality, so that one’s own will is in harmony with God’s will. Thus did the rabbis understand the essence of the oral Torah and the purpose of its study.

The Transition from the “Scribes” to the “Men of the Great Synagogue” Until now we have surveyed the combined evidence of the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Jeremiah about the relation of the “second Torah” to the oral Torah that was transmitted from YHWH to Moses, from Moses to Joshua, from Joshua to the elders, from the elders to the prophets, and from the prophets to the scribes. The transition from the scribes to the men of the “Great Synagogue” was the work of Ezra the Scribe, documented in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. As we said, we cannot compare the return to Zion from the Babylonian Exile to the Exodus from Egypt and conquest of Canaan in the days of Moses and Joshua, for Cyrus king of Persia was himself a prophet to the God of Heaven, and on the basis of YHWH’s word to him he called on the exiled Jews in his land to return to their land and rebuild YHWH’s Temple in Jerusalem from its ruins. Through them he returned the implements of the Sanctuary and set aside for them the necessary means for rebuilding, and he furthermore extended his political protection to the caravans of returnees who responded to his call, with Ezra the Scribe at their head, and defended them against the attacks of the local inhabitants. The Samaritans wished to participate in the rebuilding of the Temple, but when Ezra rejected them as idolators, they did everything in their power to interfere with the rebuilding. These historical events are documented to the satisfaction of historical scholars, and in the narrative of Ezra and Nehemiah there is no admixture of myth. But the time was laden with heartfelt expectation for the fulfillment of the messianic hope that the later prophets had planted in 131

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the hearts of the exiles, for according to their vision history would return to the mythic plane and arrive at its culmination with the realization of the vision of creation. When the hour came that it was possible to reestablish the covenant on the basis of the ancient-but-renewed book of the Covenant, it thus came to pass, and it was at the background of the great tension between the “day of small beginnings” (Zechariah 4:10) that began with the arrival of the returnees to Jerusalem and taking the first steps toward reconstruction of the Temple, and the sky-high expectations that at first seemed on the verge of fulfillment, but with the return of the exiles to their land appeared to recede into the distance. This disappointment came about first of all because of the opposition of the inhabitants, but also because of the inconsistent support of the Persian kings following Cyrus, not to mention the human weaknesses of the returnees themselves, which were manifested in their relation to their idolatrous environment (marrying alien women from the local inhabitants2), their relations to each other (injustice, exploitation, slavery, quarrels over status and honor), and their measure of devotion to the sacred project for which they had come. Ezra was a scribe of the Mosaic Torah, and he drew on his knowledge and teaching of it to establish his authority of leadership over his people, and thus defined his mission — to implant the Torah among the people, to guard scrupulously the purity of the community and its sanctity with respect to segregating itself from the local inhabitants, distancing themselves from foreign worship and fulfilling all the commandments of the Torah, particularly those connected with the land, out of absolute fidelity to their spirit. Thus he hoped to realize the prophetic vision of the “end of days.” But Ezra did not know how to cope with the practical difficulties that were laid bare before him — of the economic, social, and political kind, and relating to security and authority — and the rescue came by virtue of the initiative of Nehemiah, a minister in the court of Artaxerxes king of Persia, who received the agreement of his king and came at the head of a second caravan of returnees to salvage the projects of the building of Jerusalem and the Temple and see them to completion. If Ezra was like Moses, then Nehemiah was like Joshua, for he acted in 2

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This is a complicated issue indeed. We have seen (Volume 1, “Judah,” pp. 185ff.) that marrying local women was not unequivocally to be condemned, provided they were integrated religiously into the fabric of the people. There are even theories that the book of Ruth was composed during the period of Ezra, expressing dissent from his anti-intermarriage policy. (LL)

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the capacity of judge and general, organizing the human resources for the tasks of construction and defense. Nehemiah’s authority derived from his appointment by the Persian king, rather than from the Torah, but he willingly subjected himself to the law of the Torah and enabled Ezra the scribe to complete his task as a second to Moses — to give the “second Torah” to his people in preparation for the great days that would come after Jerusalem and the Temple would be built. This is the background for the founding ceremony in which it is possible to see the closure of the Book of Deuteronomy as a “second Torah” and the beginning of the creation of an oral Torah of a new order, an order that will be appropriate to the new period in the history of the people: settlement in the land not by might and not by power, but by the spirit of YHWH. It is possible to understand the special essence of the oral Torah that Ezra established with the help of the great convocation in which the returnees celebrated the completion of the building of the Temple, which was extended for several days and divided into several portions (Nehemiah Chapters 8–10). The first portion was the teaching of the Torah in public to the whole people — men and women — who were assembled in Jerusalem by Ezra the scribe-and-priest and his assistance: “They read from the scroll of the Teaching (torah) of God, translating it and giving the sense; so they understood the reading.” (Nehemiah 8:8) The result of the study attests to its substance and purpose, and these introduced the people into the second portion of the festivities: They found written in the Teaching that the Lord had commanded Moses that the Israelites must dwell in booths during the festival of the seventh month, and that they must announce and proclaim throughout all their towns and Jerusalem as follows, “Go out to the mountains and bring leafy branches of olive trees, pine trees, myrtles, palms and [other] leafy trees to make booths, as it is written.”3 So the people went out and brought them, and made themselves booths on their roofs, in their courtyards, in the courtyards of the House of God, etc….The whole community that returned from the captivity made booths and dwelt in the booths — the Israelites had not done so from the days of Joshua son of Nun to that day — and there was great rejoicing. He read 3

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The interpretation by Ezra’s generation of the laws of the Festival of Sukkot differed significantly from later rabbinic interpretation, as we see here: gathering the tree-fruits was done not for the purpose of waving festive wands (the lulav) but for building the booths — an instructive example of the historical evolution of Jewish ritual practice from its Torah roots. (LL)

Chapter 2. Deuteronomy (the “Second Torah”)

from the scroll of the Teaching of God each day, from the first to the last day. They celebrated the festival seven days, and there was a solemn gathering on the eighth, as prescribed. (Nehemiah 8:13–18) Learning leads to action, and action leads to clarification of the details of the commandments more than their elaboration in the text, in order to carry them out properly. The third portion is a continuation of the same tendency: faithful realization, not rote practice, but out of understanding the deeper intention of the Torah. After the festival, Ezra called a plenary meeting, “fasting, in sackcloth, and with earth upon them” (9:1) in order to separate themselves from the alien population, especially from the foreign women, and to guard the purity of the people’s lineage and their faithfulness to the Torah. After they took on the obligation to do all this, they went back to read from the book of God’s Torah and to pray until “one-fourth of the day, and for another fourth they confessed and prostrated themselves before the Lord their God.”4 (9:3) In the same manner that the Israelite community sanctified themselves prior to the convocation at Mount Sinai, so did Ezra sanctify the Israelite community in Judah and Jerusalem in preparation for the concluding event — the climax of his achievement — enacting the “pledge.” We should note the double difference between the convocation of Sinai in its time and that which Ezra staged in Jerusalem: as in the steppes of Moab, all the trappings of myth that inspire fear are absent, but in their place comes an assumption of strong personal obligation from which no one is exempted, and this is the difference between the first covenant and the enactment of a “pledge” — acceptance through vow and oath, and the personal signing of all representatives of the community with their knowledge and in their name. The first portion of the long scenario opens with a prayer recited by all the people and apparently composed by Ezra. In parallel to the historical survey by Moses that opens Deuteronomy, the prayer that Ezra puts in the people’s mouth (so that the words should express their thoughts and come from their hearts) contains a poetic survey of the basic elements of historical faith based in the Biblical narrative: God as creator of the world, His choice of Abraham to give the land of Canaan to him and his seed, God’s bringing the people out from Egypt and drowning Pharaoh’s 4

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It has been plausibly suggested that these events of Ezra’s time may have set the precedent for the solemn observance of the Jewish New Year that has continued to this day. (LL)

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host in the See of Reeds, His leading the people in the wilderness by means of a pillar of fire and cloud, giving the Torah at Sinai through Moses, giving the people the Sabbath, providing the manna — all the goodness that YHWH bestowed on His people, and in counterpoint to this, the mention of all the people’s sins and stiff-necked behavior. YHWH kept His promise, brought His people into Canaan and gave them possession of their land, but the ungrateful people continued to rebel and harden their necks until they were punished. The parallel between this prayer and Moses’ opening speech and closing poem Ha’azinu in Deuteronomy is clear. They are directed at a moral self-evaluation, an acknowledgement and assumption of responsibility on the part of the children returning to their land for the sins of their ancestors. In that respect too there is an instructive parallel to Moses’ words to the members of the younger generation with whom he reenacted the covenant in the steppes of Moab: the children are required to view their people’s history as if it happened to them personally, for they carry the responsibility for its continuation. They must return in complete repentance in the name of their entire people, to accept as just the punishment that has come on their ancestors and on themselves, for although they have returned to their land, they are not yet redeemed: Today we are slaves, and the land that You gave our fathers to enjoy its fruit and bounty — here we are slaves on it! On account of our sins it yields its abundant crops to kings whom You have set over us. They rule over our bodies and our beasts as they please, and we are in great distress. (Nehemiah 9:36–37)

This acknowledgement, together with the expectation of complete redemption, constitute the basis of enactment of the “pledge” — “on the sealed copy of which are subscribed our officials, our Levites, and our priests… [here follows the list of all the subscribers] …join with their noble brothers, and take an oath with sanctions to follow the Teaching of God, given through Moses the servant of God, and to observe carefully all the commandments of YHWH our Lord, His rules and laws.” (10:1–30) To this general promise are attached immediately defined obligations that are required for the need of the hour, and they are the test for the seriousness of the event: not to marry with the “peoples of the land,” not to buy or sell from the “peoples of the land” on the Sabbaths or holy festivals, and to observe all the commandments of the sabbatical year. In addition: 135

Chapter 2. Deuteronomy (the “Second Torah”) We have laid upon ourselves obligations: To charge ourselves one-third of a shekel yearly for the service of the House of our God…We have cast lots among the priests, the Levites, and the people, to bring the wood offering to the House of our God by clans annually at set times…and to bring to the House of the Lord annually the first fruits of our soil…and to bring the firstlings of our sons and our beasts, as it is written in the Teaching…the first part of our dough, and our gifts of grain…and the tithes of our land for the Levites…We will not neglect the House of our God. (Nehemiah 10:33–40)

The similarity between this convocation and the one documented in Deuteronomy, in which Moses undertook to expound the Torah to the people and renewed the establishment of the covenant, is clear, but the difference also jumps out at the eye: Moses did not read the Torah that he had already written before the people in order to expound it, but he expounded it orally. The exposition thus became a continuation of his Torah that remained open-ended. Ezra read the Torah of Moses from its written form, and thus fixed it as the “written Torah,” sealing it. Those words that he spoke as oral Torah from his deep wisdom flow from Moses’ Torah, but they stand in addition to it as a second Torah, rooted in the same supernal source — God, who revealed Himself to Moses and caused His wisdom to rest, by means of Moses’ Torah, on him as well. The explanatory project thus received added depth. Not just elucidation through expansion and repetition of words, but “understanding.” To bring the people to understanding means to bring them to the point that they will delve into the Torah in depth on their own, in the way that the official interpreter delves into it. The process of arriving at independent inquiry, searching through the Torah in order to know it, this is the kind of absorption that “writes” the words on people’s hearts! Study of this variety means not just to know the surface meaning of the Torah, but to live its study as an activity with independent value, as a higher level of serving God. And as we saw, in the ceremony of enacting the pledge, prayer becomes added on to the study of Torah, and the content of the prayer is permeated with words of Torah, that a person utters before God from his own heart, as an expression of his own belief, his own repentance and yearning for redemption beating within him and thus forming his personality. In this way they bring a person to a performance of religious action that is precise and filled with devotion. The goal is thus to achieve three objectives that are bound up with each other: (1) That the Torah should be written in the hearts of all members of the people — in the heart of each and every individual, who will 136

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understand it according to his ability, and in the last analysis that the entire people shall internalize the Torah, and it shall shape their collective thought and feelings; (2) that the internalization of the Torah should come to expression in correct observance of the commandments, that leads as we saw to additional depths of delving into the question how to fulfill each and every commandment, such that in the last analysis every deed should be faithful to the original command; and (3) finally, to bring it about that the people and all its individuals should set commandments for themselves of their own initiative, thus enacting the necessary enactments to insure that the [divine] “service” [ethical as well as ritual] should be maintained always in its proper state. This is the special essence of the “oral Torah” which originated with Ezra and the men of the “Great Synagogue.” From all this we can deduce that it was Ezra — who sealed the Book of Deuteronomy as a written “second Torah” — who formulated once and for all its literary form, and especially the dramatic ending that describes Moses’ leave-taking from his people, and it is he who testifies at the end of the book that there arose not another prophet like Moses, nor will there again. There is thus a basis within the Torah itself for assuming that the literary plan that includes the books that were canonized as “written Torah” in all their layers — the myth, the history and the genealogies, together with all the connections between them — was done out of a profound and understanding examination from the ending to the beginning by the men of the “Great Synagogue” in order to lay the broad foundation of the written Torah for the continuation of the oral Torah, which would be developed by the scribes and sages, filling the place of the prophets, in the coming generations.

Chapter 3

The Partnership of Man and Woman in the Law of Moses and the Prophets

Equality and Inequality of Persons in the Reciprocal Relation of Individuals and the Community The law of relations between one individual and another, between an individual and his social groups (family, patriarchal house, tribe or nation), and among the various social groups, according to the law of Moses and the prophets, is based on two opposing principles: equality of all human beings as such, and their inequality insofar as they belong to different genders, different peoples, different tribes, or different statuses and roles, whether religiously, socially or politically. These two opposing principles are taken not as contradictory but as complementary in the context of the covenantal ties that bind human beings together for their individual benefit, for the realization of their destinies, and for the welfare of their social groups. The equality of all persons has its source in their common descent from the first couple — Adam and Eve, who were created as one body “in the image and likeness of God.” The ethical-judicial expression of their equality before God their Judge is found in the equal application of the negative injunctions of the Noahide covenant on all human beings, and the equal application of all the Ten Commandments (which are mostly negative injunctions, and include the prohibition of work on the Sabbath) on all Israelites, both men and women. The essential principle that all humanity is created in the image and likeness of God is emphasized in the categorical and emphatic prohibition of murder, whose primacy stands out prominently in the story of Cain and Abel, as well as in the first covenantal legislation between God and all humanity, represented by Noah and his sons: 138

Equality and Inequality of Persons in the Reciprocal Relation... You must not, however, eat flesh with its life-[soul]-blood in it. For your life-[soul]-blood, too, I will require a reckoning: of every beast will I require it; of man, too, will I require a reckoning for human life [soul], of every man for that of his fellow man! Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God was man created. (Gen. 9:4–6)

The basic primal nature of this prohibition of bloodshed is emphasized in these verses through its application to all animal creatures insofar as they are ensouled, living beings, for the blood is the life (nefesh).1 To understand the universal application of this idea, we should recall that according to the creation narrative all animals were to be nourished only by plant-life: God said, “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food. And to all the animals on land, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is the breath [soul] of life, I give all the green plants for food.” And it was so. (Gen. 1:29–30)

The reason is to be inferred from these texts and from their juxtaposition to the creation narrative. The nefesh (soul or life) is identified with the power of independent life of physical creatures. The body comes from the earth and has no inherent sanctity. (According to the creation narrative, the earth brought forth all vegetative life from itself, and this was designated by God’s decree to become food for the animals that will come forth from it.) But the soul was placed in the earthly body by God, for the force of life is uniquely harbored in Him. The soul that comes from God is sacred to Him, and so taking the soul of a living creature 1

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The Hebrew word nefesh (translated alternately “life,” “self,” or “soul”), both in the Bible and in Schweid’s paraphrase, refers to the spark of life, whatever distinguishes a living (or more specifically a sentient) being from a non-living being here and now, without any necessary implication of immortality or survival after death. It does not imply a radical body-soul dualism, as modern scholars have correctly pointed out. However, in Plato’s Phaedo, as well as in medieval Judaism and Christianity, it was indeed interpreted in a dualistic sense, as a separate substance that survives death, and this dualism was then read back into the Biblical sources. Here, the importance is to emphasize an ethical distinction: all creatures possessed of “soul” — breath, animal life, consciousness — are to be treated as having a special spark of divinity and therefore their lives are not to be extinguished with impunity. (LL)

Chapter 3. The Partnership of Man and Woman in the Law of Moses...

is an affront to God Himself. Only He, who has the power to give life, has the right to take the soul and return it to Himself. (Hence this, from God’s point of view, is not extinguishing life but returning the soul to its source.) It follows that God’s permission to the descendants of Noah to eat the flesh of living beings is the consequence of sin, for as a result of the curse of the earth, Adam’s descendants were not able to overcome their appetite for eating animal flesh. But the principle that the soul of living beings is sacred to God is strictly observed in the prohibition of eating blood, which is identified with the soul. The blood is offered as a libation to God in order to return the soul to its Maker. It is clear that if even the souls of animals are sacred, how much more so the soul of the human being, created in the image of God, whose spirit was breathed into him from the spirit of God Himself! What is the basis, then, for human beings to carry out capital punishment on certain sinners? The answer to this question is given in the Noahide covenant together with the prohibition against shedding human blood — this is the punishment that God decrees against murderers and felons whose deeds impinge directly on God’s sanctity. Thus the death penalty is not an act that a human being performs on his own authority, but it implements God’s own sentence after the most stringent inquiry and examination as to whether the accused persons who were arrested and brought to judgment indeed committed these crimes.2 People are required to exercise judgment and enforce the law because they bear responsibility to protect their lives and good character before God from whoever endangers them through his sins. The same principle applies to taking life in war. It is permitted because the fighter is defending himself against a lethal attacker. The right of life possessed by every creature, especially the human being, is the right to sustain oneself and to appropriate life’s necessities from the natural resources that God created for all His creatures. As applied to mankind, this is the right to possessions that a person acquires legally for her livelihood. It is forbidden to take them from her except where the law of God so provides, for the created world belongs to its Creator, and He created it in order that sentient creatures might live on it and be sustained from its resources, each according to the natural needs with which God has endowed it. 2

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These procedural strictures in cases of capital punishment are not to be found explicitly in the Bible (though broadly based on Deuteronomy 13:15 and similar passages) but in the rabbinic legal corpus, especially in the Mishnah and Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin. (LL)

Equality and Inequality of Persons in the Reciprocal Relation...

So far, the principle of equality applies. The principle of inequality is rooted in the very same reason: all living creatures are equal inasmuch as each was created distinct from the other in its form, its qualities, its abilities, its needs, and its contribution to the environment, i.e. the role it was appointed to fill in the totality of creation. In this respect, each of the world’s creatures has not only rights but obligations to the other, and these obligations qualify the rights and delimit them. This applies again to the animals that differ from one another in the hierarchy of genera and species: the fishes after their kind, the fowl after their kind, and the land animals after their kind. Their contributions to the lifeworld, which unites its many facets into a larger whole, are distinct for each species in accordance with the qualities and capacities embodied in each. The human species is considered in the story of creation as one of the animal species, and yet it is distinguished from them by a difference in kind, for it displays a life of the spirit, which is to say a life of consciousness, deliberated action and creativity. The human species creates for itself a unique sphere of life, through which it develops a world separate from other living creatures (though — we should emphasize — without ceasing to be equal to them in physical characteristics). In its own unique plane of existence the human species organizes itself (in parallel with animal species) into families, clans, tribes and nations, each with its own characteristics, abilities and unique contributions. But in addition to these distinctions, the human species is unique insofar as all its individuals are uniquely distinct from each other and are not merely representatives of their species, families, tribes and nations. Each has a unique value from the standpoint of God who created her as an individual in His image as well as from the standpoint of the various families, tribes and nations, and of course of the other individuals who associate with her and in whose midst she lives. Thus is manifested the special relationship of the human species to the one unique God: like Him, every human being who has regard for the divine image in which he was created is an individual standing apart, unique and irreplaceable. From this follows the special severity of molesting a human soul, for murdering a human being is a heinous attack on God Himself. In the Noahide covenant and in the Ten Commandments this proposition is given explicit ethical-judicial expression. Indeed, the moral equality of human beings as individuals is expressed in these legal sanctions only with respect of the relations of human beings to each other, and not with respect to God’s relation to them. It is obscured by the revelation 141

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of God as “visiting the sins of parents on their children.” However, this confusion is dispelled by the words of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Jeremiah asserts concisely: In those days, they shall no longer say, “Parents have eaten sour grapes and children’s teeth are blunted.” But every one shall die for his own sins: whoever eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be blunted. (Jeremiah 31:29–30)

And Ezekiel articulates the principle in explicit form: Consider, all lives are Mine; the life of the parent and the life of the child are both Mine. The person who sins, only he shall die. (Ezekiel 18:4)

Every person in his or her unique individuality is important before God, and so s/he is judged separately before Him. By these criteria, it is possible to reconcile the equality of all human individuals in their uniqueness with their inequality in all the aspects detailed above. Their equality is expressed ethically and legally in the prohibition against molesting them in their lives, their possessions, their honor and their liberty with respect to their ethical choice. (The Torah’s position on slavery will be discussed below.) Their inequality with respect to their difference is expressed in the positive injunctions that determine the relations and patterns of life prevailing among nations, tribes, clans, families, social classes and occupational groups, as well as among individuals. The relations between men and women fall into this category. While the principle of equality places all individuals on the same level before God, the principle of inequality creates a hierarchical ladder with ranks of importance expressed in the framework of interpersonal relations. Each rank has its own role to play in the conduct of communal life, and in accordance with each role is determined a status that carries with it responsibility that constitutes authority. The essential hierarchy of the creatures of creation is depicted in the narrative: God is the Creator. He is the king who rules over all, and His responsibility and authority are absolute. All creatures are subject to His will insofar as they are what they are or who they are — the sun, the moon, and the stars of the heavens were created to set the orders of time and to enable animals and human beings to exist in their habitat. With this responsibility that is laid on them, they rule over the earth and all its living creatures. Human beings were created to work the 142

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earth and tend it. This is the responsibility that goes with the authority to “subdue” the earth and its creatures. In this respect, being created in God’s image makes them the rulers of the earth in God’s name. At first sight it appears that the same hierarchical principle is applied in the creation story also to the relations between man and woman, since on their expulsion from the Garden of Eden it is decreed: And to the woman He said, “I will make most severe your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bear children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16)

But the man is also punished for his sin: “Because you did as your wife said and ate of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed be the ground because of you; by toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles shall it sprout for you, but your food shall be the grasses of the field. By the sweat of your brow shall you get bread to eat, until you return to the ground — for from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” (3:17–19)

Close reading of these texts bears out that the man’s punishment was more severe than the woman’s. He was saddled with the heavier responsibility of providing for her and her offspring, to give them protective shelter in an accursed, rugged and hostile environment. His lordship over the woman is a consequence of the responsibility that was laid on him to work and tend the land as a habitat in which human beings would be able to live and fulfill their destiny. Moreover, a closer reading reveals that together with her lowered status in relation to the man, toward whom is her urge while he rules over her, she is given an advantage in life over him. The decree of death falls also on her, inasmuch as she is a physical creature and part of Adam’s flesh-and-blood, but not without reason is the sentence of death pronounced specifically on the man and not on the woman. The reason is given in the continuation of the passage just cited, in Adam’s response to the curse decreed on him: “The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.” (3:20) In other words, the principle of life and its perpetuation throughout the generations by bearing children who continue in their own individual lives the life of their parents, their heredity and legacy, is rooted in the woman. Thus she is the one who vanquishes death, and 143

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thus she is appointed to redeem herself and her husband — through their conjugality — from the curse that was decreed on them. Therefore Adam calls her “the mother of all the living.” It is possible to summarize all this and to say that the existential mission of the woman as a mother who bears and raises children, thus bringing about the perpetuation of human life from within, is greater than the mission of the man as father, who has the job of insuring the survival of the external cultural environment, which nevertheless requires the authority to rule. Moreover, the inequality of the man and the woman is not unilateral but reciprocal, for in certain respects the man’s status is superior to the woman’s, while in other respects hers is superior to his. These distinctions exclude the inequality that was established between the man and the woman after their sin from the general hierarchical pattern that was established in creation from the beginning. The double aspect of this inequality generates a complex kind of equality that is embodied in a complex of mutual relations and complementary powers whose purpose is to bear joint responsibility for uniting the man and the woman into a single collective entity — the family, which alone (and not either of its members in isolation) constitutes the basic cell that generates, establishes and maintains human societies in ever-widening circles. What, then, is the inner power that maintains this complex equality within the united couplehood of the family? It is a covenantal ethic based on mutual respect, complementarity and love. Attention to the mutuality directed at cooperation and unity in the relations of man and woman requires delving even deeper into the issue of the equality and inequality of man and woman, as well as the issue of the hierarchical gradation of the created world generally, including the relation between the Creator-God and the world that He created in order to exercise His sovereignty over it. As for the relation between man and woman, we should note that according to the narrative in Genesis, their hierarchical relation as ruler and ruled was the result of sin. The human male and female were originally created — in decided contrast to the males and females of other species — as one body.3 The spirit of God was breathed into the male-female body in its unity, and the status of humanity as created in the divine image was established in this way equally for its male and 3

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This reading of the Genesis narrative, though possibly based on the hermaphroditic myth in Plato’s Symposium, was already regarded as the normative Jewish reading by the rabbis of the 2nd century in Midrash Rabbah. (LL)

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female members in their mutual relationship, for only in that mutual relationship was their physical-spiritual identity manifested in its wholeness. Mankind’s physical-animal nature required afterwards that the male and female components be separated so that they could not only be together but also live and fructify each other, for as long as the male and female were ensconced in a single individual, the human being was solitary and sterile. According to the story of creation, he came to realize this when he observed the other animals. In order to escape his solitary state, he required an “alter ego” who could complement him by her difference. All this is implied in the dictum, “It is not good for man to be alone.” (2:18) But in our view this is another way in which humans are distinguished from other animals. In the creation narrative there is a separation not only between male and female but between man and woman. Out of the rib that God takes from Adam, He fashions the woman as a whole body and a whole personality. He also fills out the divided body of the man, “closing up the flesh,” and sets him up as a whole person. (2:21–23) Thus the two stand facing each other as two individuals created in the divine image, so that they can procreate and raise offspring who will be human individuals like them, as we can infer from the continuation of the narrative: “Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gained a man with the help of the Lord.” (4:1) Two features of this description deserve special attention. First, the proper mating of Adam and Eve (in contrast to the first bestial mating in which they sinned against each other) is called “knowing,” a word that ascribes spiritual significance to the act of physical sexual consummation. Second, Eve sees in Cain not only the product of her mating with Adam, but also the realization of the connection of the two of them with God their Creator, by whose virtue her son has become a “man” like Adam and like her, as opposed to an animal born of the mating of male and female. The man and the woman complement each other spiritually and not just physically, so that together they can realize their appointed connection to God their creator. Thus out of their love they create a family — a collective entity, unified physically and spiritually, from which will develop not only isolated individuals, but more families that can consolidate into ever larger collective entities — clans, tribes, and nations. The idea of the covenant that we discussed earlier on the ethical-judicial and social-political plane is thus rooted in the story of the separation of man and woman: (1) There is a cutting-off that sets each “half” of the 145

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totality by itself in a way that the two “halves” can recognize each other as wholes standing in their own domain by virtue of their obligatory connection to one another; (2) there is an affiliation that redeems the isolated individuals from loneliness and from physical and spiritual sterility. In place of an involuntary physical connection comes a bond of fellowship in the social sense — a bonding that takes place willingly from mutual choice, and it is this that sets the two individuals in their isolation and their difference from one another as equal to one another as individuals, in respect of their status in the family, in respect of their complementing each other in their mutual give-and-take. In the language of the biblical narrative, their equality is expressed in the phrase, “a fitting helper.” (2:20) It is the counterpart of the phrase, “he shall rule over you,” that alters the previous relation of equality. The first phrase connotes one that is his equal, that is like him, as another famous injunction says, “you should love your neighbor/fellow-person as (=like) yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18) Scripture clarifies and emphasizes this fact through the appellation that the man gives his mate immediately after she was separated from him, which is not yet the name that he gave her after their sin: Then the man said, “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called Woman (ishah), for from man (ish) was she taken.” Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:23–24)

The names “man” and “woman” point clearly to a difference among equals who stand each independently on their own, without subordination of one to the other but in a relation of love (“clinging”), a mutual belonging born of free choice. Only after the sin, whose source was in the animal urges that were aroused in the man and his wife when they were naked like animals and not ashamed of their naked animal sexuality, their relation of mutuality was degraded to that of animals, among whom the male assumes a superior position when copulating with the female. The need was then awakened to correctively call the woman by a name that would distinguish her from the man by their family roles — Eve, the mother of all the living, corresponding to Adam, the man of the soil (adamah). These names refer to the consequences of sin and punishment, of the curse, indicating that the sin that degraded the relations of man and woman stemmed from a corruption of creation and the need to restore 146

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it. In Genesis the notion that the punishment leads to restoration is hinted but not spelled out. The prophets spelled it out more, most emphatically the prophet Hosea: And in that day (declares the Lord) You will call [Me] Ishi [my husband/my man] And no more will you call Me Baali [my master]. For I will remove the names of the Baalim from her mouth, And they shall nevermore be mentioned by name. In that day, I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; I will also banish bow, sword, and war from the land. Thus I will let them lie down in safety. And I will espouse you forever: I will espouse you with righteousness and justice And with goodness and mercy, And I will espouse you with faithfulness; Then you shall be devoted to the Lord. In that day, I will respond (declares the Lord) — I will respond to the sky, And it shall respond to the earth; And the earth shall respond With new grain and wine and oil, And they shall respond to Jezreel. I will sow her in the land as My own; And take Lo-ruhamah [“not-accepted”] back in favor; And I will say to Lo-ammmi [“not-my-people”] “You are My people,” And he will respond, “[You are] my God.” (Hosea 2:18–25)

All the details of this exalted prophecy present it as a vision of the restoration of all creation from the consequences of Adam’s and Eve’s sin and the curse that resulted from it. When this vision is realized, the relations of mutual equality between man and woman will be restored to their proper state. From this we come to the second issue: the two-sidedness of the hierarchical relation between ruler and ruled in creation, in which from the outset we may see relations not only of dependency and dominance but in their inner essence relations that express a reciprocal connection of attraction, need and mutual fulfillment. This applies also to the relations 147

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between God and the world that He created for the benefit of Himself and all His creatures. The work of creation expresses the generative nature of the Creator, who is beholden to the world that He created in order to express His wisdom and goodness, and on account of His longing to escape His loneliness, as well as His striving to be known, appreciated and loved through His dominion. In all these respects, YHWH cannot be truly God unless He reigns beneficently over the world. Thus the notion of supremacy and sovereignty is laden with ambiguity: the greater status gives rise to greater responsibility. The ruled are not just a means for the self-aggrandizement of the ruler, but they are an end for him: he rules them for their sake and not only for his sake, and only this deserves the name of true sovereignty. This outlook on the essence of sovereignty creates an egalitarian basis for the hierarchy of ruler and ruled, both with respect to the independent value and status of the ruled vis-à-vis their rulers, and insofar as it binds the ruler to his subjects no less than the subject to his ruler, though in opposite ways: without the goodwill of the subjects, who see that the rule is for their benefit, the ruler cannot rule. But with respect to human beings, whether in their relation to God or to each other, a greater measure of equality is demanded between ruler and ruled. God creates humankind in His image so that He should have a “fitting helper.” He needs them as a dialogue-partner and to rule the terrestrial realm in God’s name. Surely God and mankind are not equal in their roles as ruler and ruled, commander and commanded, but God’s grace raises mankind to be God’s companion insofar as He endows man with the ability to stand on his own and gives him freedom of choice in respect of God’s commandments, which are always intended for his good. In the exclusive relationship that God strives to create between Himself and humanity it is thus possible to see a grace that expresses God’s greatness in putting the divine self on an equal plane with humanity in relating to them, thus enabling the human partner to raise herself through the divine love in order to stand level with the divine. If such is required in the relationship of sovereignty between God and humanity, then the same is certainly required in the relations between human rulers and their subjects. First, their sovereignty is not theirs but is delegated to them by God, and second, it is conditional on the consent of the ruled because these are human beings like themselves, and so the advantage that they can afford to their rulers is justly conditional on the advantage that they receive from them. 148

The Reciprocal Relation of Individual and Community

The Reciprocal Relation of Individual and Community The principles of equality and inequality thus complement each other by their amalgamation in the reciprocal relation among the individuals who join together in the community to form those unities in which and by which they maintain themselves. The complementarity of the two opposing principles stems from the expression of the self-worth of each person by virtue of her humanity in her relations to all the “others” — those who turn to her and to whom she responds — and those to whom she turns and they respond to her and relate to her as a unique individual. In this way balance is achieved also in the opposition that we can perceive in the social-ethical worldview of the Mosaic Torah between the assertion of individual worth, sacred to God, of every individual as such, as long as the divine image is preserved in him, and the overriding importance of the group-identities — the family, the tribe, the people — over the individuals, and of the general good over private good. For this overriding goal the individual is occasionally obligated to sacrifice himself for the general good when the community requires it for its survival, for as long as the community keeps faith with its destiny and is pledged to the welfare of all its members subject to their good behavior, the general welfare is identified with the welfare of all its members. This identification is made not only on account of the portion that each individual receives of that good, but especially on account of the outlook that the good of the whole, as a collective entity, is the greatest good in the view of the individuals who participate in it; it is the good that it is proper for every individual to regard as his life’s completion and happiness. In this way, the good of the generality — the family, clan, tribe (or community) and people — becomes the yardstick by which the good character of each individual is defined. He will be worthy of being rewarded by honor, of influence and moral authority among his people in accordance with his contribution, the responsibility that he shoulders with devotion and integrity, and the difficulties with which he grapples in carrying out his duty. The equilibrium that is achieved in this way between the value and right conduct of individuals and the value and right conduct of the community is the foundation of the covenantal ethic. On the basis of this equilibrium is defined also the essence of success and happiness: the good of the individuals is not fully specified in the rights guaranteed them, for these are only instruments with which to strive for the good expressed in the commandments (or obligations) which they take on themselves 149

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through performing them for the sake of their relatives and friends, for the sake of their families and their people. The true prosperity of every individual is expressed in the fulfillment of his destiny, which is the destiny of his group within his people and the destiny of his people among all peoples. All kinds of material and spiritual success are instruments for fulfilling these destinies. In summary, the value and status of all these collectivities for their members follows on the one hand from the fact that they exist before the members who are born into them, and on the other hand from the fact that the groups, as collective entities renewed in every generation by the individuals born into them, enable those individuals to contribute to them on the basis of their ability, thus making their impress in the memory of their people. To disturb the material and spiritual wellsprings of the group would disturb the basis of existence of its members. Betrayal of the group would betray the individual himself in his unique identity, his mission and his legacy. It follows that the identity of each individual within his people is shaped by the connections between himself and the collective entities from which he was born and within which he lives. This is the existential basis of the notion of the covenant. It is axiomatic that individuals do not develop from their natural constitution alone. Their spiritual4 being is a divine endowment that is activated through the connections that are concretized between them and those close to them in their families and their people. By this conception, the nuclear family — the parents and their offspring — play a formative role, both in shaping the personalities of individuals and in constituting the society. The nuclear family is the primary cell of human society, and therefore the myth of creation depicts the original creation of mankind as a couple-unit, a unit that is composite within itself and that combines with other similar units. The couple is the complete module, capable of constituting a society, whereas the individuals that comprise it, by themselves, cannot generate the body of the society or contribute their whole being to it. The Mosaic Torah regards the children of the society as its builders5 because it accords 4

5

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“Spiritual” (ruhani — compare with German Geist) is here intended in all its senses, cultural as well as religious, comprising the totality of what gives an individual of the species homo sapiens individual personality as well as group identity — in short, what makes them human. (See Chapter 1 of The Idea of Modern Jewish Culture for the content and significance of this concept in Schweid’s thought.) Banim (children) = bonim (builders). This play on words is taken from a famous rabbinic midrash (see Talmud Berakhot 64a).

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them social status not as isolated adults but only in the context of their family — the collective entity that makes whole their incompleteness. This social-existential axiom translates into a legal principle: a man and a woman have legal status in the basic Mosaic law as a couple, i.e. their status as individuals is accorded to them in and through their familial status as a couple. Thus the husband’s “dominion” over his wife finds its ethical-legal formulation: the husband-father is the head of the family, and his authority is the protection that he gives to his wife and children when they stand before the society. In this sense, the law regards him as their “redeemer.”6 He bears responsibility for their welfare. If they were injured or taken advantage of in any way that is remediable by human agency, he is obligated to act with all his power to restore them to their proper state. In this ethical-legal framework, the wife and children acquire their status through a covenant. They do so not merely as underlings but as those who take their part in a patrimony, as “fitting helpers” and responsible participants and (junior) partners in the domain of the paterfamilias. This is the full ideational foundation on whose basis we should interpret the Mosaic Torah’s legislation dealing with the status of men in relation to women and women in relation to men, within the family and with respect to it, in the concentric social circles of clan, tribe and people. We must examine them continually in comparative perspective, looking at the reciprocal relations among the members of the couple, and between them and their offspring, keeping in mind how rights are conditioned on obligations and vice versa.

The Hierarchical Relation of Man and Woman The first question requiring clarification in this context is: What is the justification for giving the man preferred status over the woman as husband (ba’al, master) in the superior, dominant role? We do not find any theoretical treatment of this question in the Torah, and the answer is assumed in the basis of the law as an axiom whose factuality cannot be challenged: the man is the ruler because that is the order of things by their nature. Nevertheless we may infer a reason from the creation myth. The man’s dominance is based first of all on the physical 6

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See the role of the familial relative as “redeemer” (go’el) in Numbers 35:16–29, Ruth 4:1–10, and Jeremiah 32:6–14.

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aspect of the male role in sexual intercourse, where the male must give seed to the woman to impregnate her and beget children. In sexual relations, in man and beast alike, there is on the one hand commingling and consummation (becoming one flesh); on the other hand there is a craving which partakes of oppositional tension — a possessive desire that is manifested in different ways on both sides: enthralling seduction from the one side, dominating penetration from the other. This animallibidinal confrontation expressed in the sexual act is the basis of the story of Adam’s and Eve’s sin against each other: the naked woman appears as seductress, and the seduced man lusts to possess her. The result is the blame that the man casts at the woman and the woman at the serpent, so that the very thing that ought to have united the partners in covenant caused enmity between them, thus generating the need to establish relations of authority and control between them, without which their conjugal tie — which is the condition for maintaining the human family — might break apart. If nature determines who will be ruler and ruled, rule is the manifestation of superior force. Thus the answer is that whoever is stronger, whether by reason of his ability to subdue others or to establish the conditions of existence, will rule over the other whose assistance he needs to satisfy his natural functions and purposes. The superior strength of the male, manifested in his sexual role in possessing the female, is also manifested in family interactions outside the sexual sphere, and in the latter case the male “prevails” over the woman to enlist her in the maintenance of his household. But the principal exercise of power of the male-husband of the human species is in the social position that he achieves for himself through his superior prowess in building the “garden” that is necessary for human beings to live by that quality that distinguishes them from other animals, especially in those stages in which the foundations of material civilization are being laid. According to the biblical narrative, the human male is the tiller of the earth that was cursed on his account; it is he who is able to labor with rigor and to bring forth bread from the earth; it is he who is able to master metallurgy, to fashion tools, to build houses, to pave roads, to hunt, to fight in order to conquer territory, to hold it and defend it. In all these respects, it is the man who fulfills the command that was given him at Adam’s creation to rule the land and its creatures. The members of his household — his wife and children — are dependent on him in all these respects. He keeps them, sustains them, gives them protection, and also rules over them, while they receive his rule willingly or unwillingly, obey him, and do as he commands. 152

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But alongside these areas of performance that manifest the man’s power to rule over his family, there are many areas of performance that display the talents and special vital strengths of the woman. These are no less important for the maintenance of the family and realization of its goals than the man’s abilities, and through them she exercises her mastery. We attend first to the woman’s role in sexual mating. The power of sexual attraction of the female for the male is no less significant for the power of dominance that it embodies than the power of conquest of the male over the desirous female. As the urge of the woman is for the man, so is the urge of the man for his woman. The male does indeed have the physical power to overcome the female whom he desires, and according to the Mosaic law the man has the legal power to reserve for himself exclusive access to his wives, while the woman cannot claim exclusivity over her husband or prevent him from taking other wives. Nevertheless, this fact does not negate the exclusive attraction that a woman has over her husband when he yearns for her, and all the more so when he loves her with the love of a man for his woman. The connection of sexual desire, and all the more the connection of personal emotional love, craves exclusivity. Therefore even after the sin and the curse, the woman’s status of a “fitting helper” for her man has not been effaced. It remains implicit in the relationship itself, in its fulfillment. The tangible physical expression of this is that a man’s mating with his wife takes place face to face, so that they may be one flesh, in contrast to the mating practices of other species. It follows that if a woman’s desire for a man is the basis of his dominion over her, then the man’s desire for his wife is the source of her dominion over him. Their respective powers of dominance — his over her, and hers over him — are different, and their mode of action is different. One may define the difference between them by the notions of objectivity and subjectivity. The dominion of a man over his wife is on the plane of objective, power-based social relations, bound up with the survival of the family in nature and society, whereas the dominion of the wife over the husband is on the plane of inter-subjective relations. Thus the man rules in the legal framework of the family, while the woman rules in its inner dynamics of belonging. It is not easy to answer the question, which of the two kinds of rule is stronger and more lasting, but it is clear that they are interdependent, and while love’s power of belonging tends to last without compulsion, the power of compulsion will not last unless it rests on the inner voluntary readiness to be “a fitting helper.” 153

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And yet it is not only the power of attraction that stands at the basis of the woman’s dominion over the man, but also that object which longing and mutual love subserve as their ultimate goal — the woman is the childbearer, who also raises the children to become adults, and she similarly oversees the activities of her household. All the moral qualities of the family that pertain to and shape the character of the home depend on her. If the man builds a structure on his land for his family to dwell in, maintains it and guards it, thereby making him the master of the house, the woman forms the character of the home and is thus its queen. The Mosaic law gives this fact moral and legal expression, for it not only imposes on the man the responsibility to support his wife and satisfy her needs, but also to accept her commands as director and pedagogue under her roof. This pattern is described in the stories of the matriarchs in Genesis, and more emphatically in the primary role that the book of Exodus attributes to the redemptive actions of the women in the Exodus from Egypt. The expression of this in the ethical literature is found in the ode to the “woman of valor” at the end of the book of Proverbs. The legal expression will be discussed shortly. We must therefore add what we said earlier: the degradation of the manwoman relation to that of the biological male and female as it exists in nature is the result of the unavoidable sin whose origin is in man’s animal character. The legislation which is intended to correct what man’s congenital urge has perverted, must address reality as it is, to define it as given and to correct the perversion by an effort to raise the moral standard of the human lifestyle. This moral elevation is achieved through restrictions, obligations and injunctions that are within the ability of the majority of people to control their animal urges. This is the general principle that determines the considerations of Torahitic legislation, and its implementation is manifested in many moral-legal areas in all domains of social and political life: without declaring it officially, the Mosaic law effectively assumes that practical legislation must take account of the limitations of human moral and spiritual ability. Utopian legislation, which demands from people a moral level beyond their ability, whether in controlling their urges or in respect of the circumstances of their lives, will achieve neither correction nor elevation, but the reverse: it will lead to failure and falling deeper into the abyss of sin, for those who first sin unwittingly by weakness and ignorance will end up sinning maliciously. According to the biblical narrative, God Himself was forced to learn this lesson after the Flood when He enacted His covenant with Noah, and 154

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again after the sin of the Golden Calf. The utopian vision of the Torah’s legislation is given expression in Hosea’s prophecy, but the legislation itself purposely falls short of that exalted vision. It accommodates to a lower reality, in the effort to reform it to the extent that appears possible, respecting the limitations of mankind’s ability and the circumstances of his life of labor. If truth be told, this measure of the possible seems meager.

Man’s Acquisition-Ownership7 of Woman Rulership is a form of ownership in which the ruler owns/acquires his subjects: the ruler “possesses” his subjects, and they serve him in a variety of ways. And yet the mutuality of relations required between rulers and ruled assumes a degree of independence that cannot be abrogated by the ruler subject to law (according to the Mosaic Torah). Therefore we must distinguish between mastery in the sense of rule, and mastery in the sense of ownership or property-relations, that applies to objects which a person uses to satisfy his life-needs. The first ethical-judicial topic that must be discussed in order to define correctly the status of the wife in relation to her husband and the status of the man in relation to his wife is thus whether the woman is conceived in the Mosaic law as the acquisition of the man in the same sense as ordinary property? This question is raised in the judicial plane from looking at the Ten Commandments: does the command “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female slave, or his ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:14) set the woman under her husband in the same property relation in which his male and female slave, his ox and his ass stand under him? Maybe we should turn the question around: perhaps there is in the status of the male and female slave, who are human, and in the status of the ox and the ass, which are living creatures, an element that obligates even in their case a certain limitation of the property relation in a way that creates a hierarchical proximity between the relation of wife as “helpmate” and the relation to the male and female slave, whom one should treat as 7

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Kinyan has the sense of ownership or acquisition — both the instantaneous action of acquiring property, and the permanent status of ownership that results. It will generally be translated “acquisition” in the following discussion, but both senses are implied. (LL)

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creatures in God’s image, and even to animals, who as living creatures may not be arbitrarily mistreated or burdened with loads beyond their strength, and who must be given rest from their labors on the Sabbath day? Confirmation of the preference of the second interpretation can be found in the fact that the prohibition “you shall not covet” is said twice, thus drawing a clear boundary between the categories of ownership of a house, which is an inanimate object to which the owner can do whatever he wishes, and the ownership of a woman or other living creatures. Detailed examination of the laws that define the relations between man and woman will find in many of them a prominent element of propertyrelations, starting with the payment of a bride-price by the groom to the father of the bride. In betrothal, the groom-to-be “acquires” his wife from her father, who holds the rights to her as his property, for a monetary payment. This is a kind of purchase transaction. The rest of the marriage process completes this: the groom “takes” the wife to his house and in so doing transfers her from the father’s domain to his own domain. From now on, she is “his” in the sense that she is required to live in his domain and is forbidden to any other man with respect to marital relations, which she owes to her husband at his pleasure and exclusively. Any violation of this prohibition, which is treated almost as seriously as manslaughter, is grounds for the husband’s “jealousy,” which refers here not to the husband’s subjective feeling of being robbed, deceived or deprived of a possession which is a prop of life, but an objective legal claim that can be brought before God and the court.8 We should note that the word for jealousy (kin’ah) is related to that for property (kinyan). The jealous man is one who sees that his property is in another’s hands. In this respect, the feeling of jealousy is similar but the obverse to that of coveting, and it applies to every property-item that may arouse craving, that a man demands for himself and it is found in another’s hand. But the uniqueness of the feeling of jealousy applying to a married woman according to the law of the Torah is expressed in that it is grounds for a legal proceeding even if the wife is not caught in infidelity toward her husband, and if there is no conclusive evidence against her. The spirit of jealousy aroused in her husband generates guilt against which the wife is obligated to defend by proving her purity. We shall expand on the significance of this in the following discussion. 8

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See for example the law of the suspected adulteress (Numbers 5:11–31), and the suit over virginity (Deuteronomy 22:13–21), both of which are relevant for the ensuing discussion.

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In the Ten Commandments, the sanctity of the property that the husband has vested in his wife in this sense is expressed in the prohibition against adultery, which is mentioned between the prohibitions of murder and theft — violation of a man’s entitlement to his life, and violation of his entitlement to his property. The property aspect of a man’s entitlement to his wife is expressed also in the fact that only the husband can abrogate the marital relation at his pleasure by giving a “bill of divorcement” to his wife (Deuteronomy 24:1–4); the wife has no parallel power. She cannot divorce her husband, whereas he is permitted to take additional wives while still married to her. Nevertheless, we must stipulate incidentally that the ethics of matrimonial practice as reflected in the Biblical narrative requires the father to elicit the daughter’s consent to be married to the groom that he has selected for her, and she may refuse him. There are also situations in which the law requires the husband to surrender jurisdiction over his wife in defense of her rights. These two limitations are evidence that in the relations of a man to his wife or a father to his sons and daughters, there come into play feelings, values and obligations that greatly transcend ordinary property relations, and we shall examine these later on. However, these do not have the power to do away with the legal-proprietary aspects mentioned earlier, but only to limit them. The law of the Torah through which we can penetrate to the deeper connections between the proprietary aspects of the husband-wife relation and that which transcends and limits the proprietary aspect, is the same law that at first sight seems to express the husband’s proprietary ownership of his wife in the most absolute terms, as if she belonged body and soul to him as an object: the power mentioned above that the Mosaic law gives unilaterally to the husband to declare “jealousy” of his wife. It is permitted to him to blame and punish her because she has aroused in him the feeling that strikes hard against his sense of absolute ownership of her womanhood, even though from her standpoint her female sexuality is her most intimate property, just as the male sexuality of the husband is his intimate property. Jealousy as a subjective feeling is generated from the inner contradiction that pulsates in love when it reaches its extreme: the desire for union to the point of clinging as one flesh, on the part of two separate beings that nevertheless each preserve their individual identity and egotistic urge. Jealousy thus paradoxically expresses the conflict between the yearning to realize mastery to the point of identifying the body and soul of the woman with the body and soul of her man, versus the frustrating feeling that such conquest and acquisition of the body and soul of another is 157

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not possible even if both desire it, and all the more so if one of the two yearns for it and the other does not. Therefore the desire to realize the absolute love-drive is fated in the end to contradict and destroy it. Its necessary failure turns the love into the most abysmal hatred, a hatred that can motivate one to murder. That “love is strong as death” has its origin in the ecstatic self-abnegation in the experience of coalescence; and the hell of jealousy that is liable to break forth from it has its origin in the egoistic demand that the beloved should show the same selfabnegating devotion to oneself. The inevitable failure of this endeavor is what arouses the “spirit of jealousy” — the husband’s suspicion that the wife has “strayed” from him — even though neither he nor anyone else saw her do it. The husband feels in the wife’s conduct toward him something that arouses his suspicion, and the gravity of the possible violation confers on this suspicion the stamp of certainty. From his viewpoint, his suspicion is the evidence for the factuality of her “straying.” Since we are speaking of the life of inter-subjective emotion, it would seem that such suspicion can find no remedy. Even if the wife should deny her guilt and take a solemn oath to that effect, the husband, whose trust in his wife has been undermined, will not believe her. If she was so brazen as to violate the sanctity of matrimony, she would certainly not hesitate to profane the sanctity of the oath; if she was false to her covenant with him, she would certainly not hesitate to falsify her oath in order to save herself from the serious punishment that awaited her. The solution that the law of the Mosaic Torah found to this emotional imbroglio is the humiliating ordeal of making the woman drink the “waters of bitterness bringing the bane.”9 The priest makes the woman drink them, instructing her to swear to her innocence, thus calling on God to execute judgment through the reaction of the woman’s body to the baneful bitter waters that she has drunk. The response of the woman’s body is considered objective testimony that is beyond all doubt, for the woman has no voluntary control over it. The sinful body becomes deformed after the drinking and the oath, whereas the innocent body persists in its integrity. This is an unequivocal objective proof that leaves behind no room for doubt. If the woman proves her innocence in this 9

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Everett Fox’s translation captures the alliteration of the Hebrew “mayim hamarim ha-mearerim.” Others translate: “water of bitterness that induces the spell,” or “bitter waters that bring the curse.” The effect of the waters is of course conditional: the woman is cleared if innocent, cursed if guilty.

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striking manner, the husband’s suspicions should be dissipated and his love should be reconstituted. If the opposite is established, the woman is brought out to be executed, and there is no further need of such evidence as the Torah’s law generally requires. (Numbers 5:11–31) We thus have here a cruel and humiliating law that considers only the husband’s feelings, honor and rights, and shows no consideration either for the wife’s feelings, or for her honor or her rights. It is as if she has no moral claim against her husband. It seems as if the law treats the woman’s body and soul as the proprietary chattel of the husband, without qualification. And yet precisely the extremity that contradicts in effect the concepts of judicial justice of the Mosaic law is evidence of the supra-proprietary value that the Mosaic law ascribes to the connection between husband and wife, and especially to their sexual union as male and female. Precisely because the wife is intended to be a help-mate to the husband, to complement him in fulfilling their common destiny and to perpetuate their conjugality, that establishes the family as a single collective entity, to which alone is given full legal standing within the community — precisely this fact turns adultery into a crime comparable to murder, i.e. violation of the essence of the husband’s life and in this sense violation of the wife on the essence of her own life. We are not speaking here of the desire that exists between the members of the couple, but of the propagation of offspring that continue the lives of them both. Thus adultery is more than just a private incident between the husband and wife. God — creator of humanity as male and female in His image, who commanded them to fulfill through their conjugal unity the injunction to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” — is directly involved. He confers on matrimony a status of sanctity, and therefore the woman’s violation of the sanctity of marriage becomes a violation of the absolute proprietary rights of God, Creator of humanity, the same as murder. The ceremony of administering the bitter-baneful waters supports this interpretation through all its particulars and details. First, we should emphasize that according to the Mosaic law, it is not the jealous husband who judges his wife, and it is certainly not he who carries out the final sentence if the woman is found guilty. The jealous husband must bring his wife to the priest who ministers in the sanctuary, who is the representative of God in all matters of his service. The meaning of this requirement becomes clear if we compare this law — the law of the suspected adulteress — to parallel provisions in tribal law that were practiced among peoples of ancient times, as for instance the ancient Roman law that gave husbands and fathers the jurisdiction to judge 159

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their wives and children — if they perceived them to be committing a grave offense against them — on their own authority, and to take them out to be executed by their own hands. Having to bring his wife to the priest may be seen as defending her from the uncontrolled wrath of her husband, and an attempt to assure her of a proper hearing, but beyond this, it is evidence of God’s direct involvement in the sanctity of human conjugality. Second, the bitter-baneful waters are made by mixing earth taken from the ground of the sanctuary into the drinking water. This means that the earth that was sanctified by God’s presence in the sanctuary — when swallowed by the woman — is what reveals her purity or impurity: if she preserved the sanctity of her body, it will respond welcomingly to the holy earth that it ingests; if she was defiled, it will react violently. In this understanding, God Himself intervenes in passing judgment, for the response of the woman’s body to the holy substance is identified as the execution of judgment by God Himself, who is omniscient. The moral-judicial inequity of the law of the suspected adulteress is thus supposedly extenuated by the supremacy of the value of sanctity, on which the Torah bases the validity of all its laws. And yet in equal measure it follows also from the necessity of adapting the Torahitic law to the limitations of man’s instinctual nature. This is the most extreme example of such adaptation, even to the point of violating the sanctity of justice that is based on the principle of the equality of man and woman who were created together in the divine image. The only explanation that one can give for this violation of divine justice is consideration for that primary, deepest motivation that breaks forth from the root of the male man’s physical-spiritual being and generates in him the drive to unite with his female counterpart. In this connection it is right that we should focus also on the full impact of adultery on the begetting and birth of the offspring who continue the line and legacy of their parents. As we said, the man’s jealousy of his wife does not stem just from his sexual desire for her, for he demands her exclusive fidelity to him in order to insure that she bear him his sons and not another man’s. This is a primal life-instinct, that is identical with the self-affirmation of every living creature, and that male humans have in common with the males of other animal species. In this instinct is rooted also the sanctity of conjugality between man and woman before God, for their fulfillment of the commandment “be fruitful and multiply” is a kind of continuation of the creation of humanity in God’s image in purity. And indeed, the deeper significance of this conclusion can be 160

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learned from the tragic, irreparable status of bastards — the offspring of adultery — in the Mosaic law. Their parents’ sin is embodied tangibly in them and disqualifies them from entering the holy community, even though they themselves did nothing blameworthy. By virtue of this primal sacred instinct for existence, the male thus demands of the female that she bear and rear only offspring of his own seed. The female from her side is free of such worries: the investment of her heredity in her offspring is a sure thing even if several males have impregnated her, and precisely for this reason even animals tend to keep their females for themselves and to drive away male competitors. This is also the natural motivation at the root of the permission given to males to have many wives by which they can insure the future of their own line, while the woman is required to show absolute fidelity to a single husband, and no consideration is given for her feelings of jealousy for her husband, who may take other wives with her knowledge. The sanctity of relations between him and her is conditional on the trust that the husband places in his wife without being able to verify it beyond all doubt, and the anxiety that the offspring that his wife will bear might not be his indeed explains the relationship that was established between man and wife after the sin of Adam and Eve: the curse of the woman (“your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you”) is focused on mating and propagation. For this purpose, the man was given dominion over his wife, so that he could trust that she would bear only his offspring. For this reason, the more that a man loves his wife and wants to have his children just from her, the more that his anxiety and mistrust of his wife may also grow, to the point that the “spirit of jealousy” takes hold of him. This, then, is the emotional-instinctual logic, raised to the level of sanctity, that is at the basis of the law of the bitter-baneful waters. Yet as we said, this logic comes into frontal conflict with the logic of judicial justice of the Mosaic law, which is also rooted in sanctity. For this reason, in the oral Torah the ceremony of administering the bitter-baneful waters remains only as a historical reminder of the severity of the act of adultery, affecting human conjugal relations as well as the relation between God and humanity created in His image, while its actual implementation was made impossible under the oral Law tradition, that prefers the principle of judicial justice — which is the tool by which it implements all the laws of the written Torah. How, then, can the principle that is at the basis of this ceremony be implemented by the oral Torah? Only by absolute abolition of the 161

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execution and administration of this judgment by human beings. Only God can execute and administer such a sentence.10 Therefore, when the trust of a couple is undermined to such an extent on the instinctual, emotional, existential and sacred levels, there is no counsel or understanding sufficient to repair the relations between them, and they must separate. In this paradoxical way, this legislation that seems so proprietary and compulsory in its orientation has given rise to a legal approach that protects the freedom of the man in his relation to the woman, and the freedom of the woman in her relation to the man, on the basis of which they can enact a covenant with each other and obligate themselves to each other to fulfill together the purpose for which they were created. The husband is not only permitted but obligated to divorce his wife if his trust in her is undermined, and when the oral Law accepted the principle of monogamy binding males,11 the woman received the right to obligate her husband legally to divorce her if her suspicion that he was unfaithful to her is verified. Thus the judgment on infidelitous acts on the part of the husband or the wife was left in God’s hands, although this notion has a real effect for the moral consciousness of a society that believes and is faithful to the commandments, and therefore it affects the husband’s judgment of himself and the wife’s judgment of herself, depending whether they feel or do not feel existential guilt in relation to each other. If they feel themselves innocent before God and man, they will be happy in the new marital ties that they form with a new husband or a new wife. If they feel guilty before God, their happiness will be spoiled.

“Acquisition of Relationship” versus Acquisition of Property The key to understanding the special sense in which the man “acquires” his wife — not in the sense of acquiring chattel — is in the nature of their connection as a couple, a connection that is exclusive, unique, and formative of the of the personalities of the members of the couple through 10

11

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In fact, though an entire tractate of the Mishnah and Talmud (Sotah) is devoted to explicating the laws of the ordeal of the suspected adultress, it ends with the historical note that this ritual was abolished by Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai in the First Century. (LL) By the edict of Rabbenu Gershom, 10th century.

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mutual complementarity. Despite the absolute superiority of God to man, and the relative superiority of the status of man to woman in the Bible, God’s possession of man is at the same time man’s possession of God, and the man’s possession of a woman is at the same time the woman’s possession of her man. The difference between acquisition through relationship (i.e., through love) and acquisition of chattel is expressed in the differential punishment of infringing on these two types of acquisition. Stealing a man’s material property denies him the use of external means for maintaining his life, but it can be remedied through material restitution. The transgressor makes good what he has misappropriated, and he is forgiven. But murder and adultery impinge on life itself. The wife is the “bone and flesh” of the man who left his father and mother in order to cleave to his wife so that they might be “one flesh.” (Gen. 2:23) Acquisition through relationship (love) raises the one acquired to the level of identity, and this has implications for several aspects of the proprietary rights that the law recognizes for the husband with respect to his wife within the framework of the family unit. The goal of these legal connections is to establish the family as an organic partnership within the economic and social frameworks of worldly life. But in this context, anchoring the worldly partnership arrangement in the dedicated family connection requires that the difference between the husband’s authority and the wife’s authority over the material acquisitions of the family, and similarly the difference between the roles of service and representation assigned to the man and those assigned to the woman, should not be taken as a hierarchical difference of authority versus submission, but as a difference of degree in practical authority within a common proprietary framework. The property of the man belongs to the woman, just as the property of the woman belongs to the man. In other words, the superiority of the husband’s proprietary rights does not negate the wife’s proprietary rights. This applies not only to the property she brings from her father’s household, but to all the common property of the family. Therefore the division of role prerogatives between the husband and wife, as well as certain circumstances that affect the situation of the family, will increase in practice the authority of the wife over family property to the point of equality and even sometimes to the point of superiority. In order to clarify the legal implications of this complex notion of acquisition, we must first clarify how the notion of acquisition is applied in the Torah. How and in what sense does a material object or any other commodity become the belonging of a person in a legal transaction? 163

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According to the creation narrative, the created world is the primary possession of God. From this basic assumption we learn that on the primary level, the right of ownership of every natural creature over the natural resources is conditioned on his having contributed to their formation or having prepared them for his needs. God “owns” everything that He has made. The world is His in this primary and absolute sense, for the existence of the world flows exclusively and absolutely from His will. The persistence of the world’s existence flows from the persistence of God’s will that the world should continue to exist according to the laws of nature that He implanted in them. This notion of essential ownership applies only to the God who is the creator of all. A creature who arrogates this kind of ownership to himself is a usurper, assuming lordship over what God gave to all the creatures in his domain so that they should all enjoy it as befitting their needs. Even if another creature is able by dint of strength to overpower his rivals, it is clear that he cannot have the absolute lordship over his property that God has over His possessions. Whoever does not create such objects cannot own them absolutely — not only because he must secure his property against would-be thieves, but because he is dependent on his possessions more than his possessions are dependent on him. It follows from this that human individuals’ acquisition and ownership over all kinds of property that they may have need of is secondary and not primary, derivative and not original, relative and not absolute. We return to the creation narrative. God endows mankind, by creating them “in the divine image and likeness,” with the ability and the privilege to rule the earth. The privilege to rule includes the privilege to acquire ownership of two kinds: (1) ownership of whatever a person is permitted to take from what God created for the sustenance and happiness of His creatures, according to his fair share, out of consideration of whoever else has need of those resources; (2) ownership of whatever he made himself out of the resources of creation that stand in his domain, in parallel with God’s ownership of God’s creation. Whatever a person, created in the divine image, makes from his own talent and his own labor, is his possession. Other people are legally permitted to use it for their needs only if he gave them permission willingly or if he sold it to them through the normal procedure of exchange. Of course it is proper to limit the comparison between divine creation and human creation: God’s creation is total and absolute, whereas man creates something with the talent that God has given him out of the resources of nature, that he has also received as a gift from God. Therefore God can limit 164

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the ownership of a person over his own handiwork. This has legal significance in the laws of the Torah, for a court that operates according to God’s laws is permitted to expropriate a person’s possessions when there are overriding ethical or legal considerations for doing so, just as a court can condemn a person to death if he has committed a capital crime according to the laws of the Torah. It follows from this that a person’s products belong to him only by virtue of what he has put into them himself from his thought and his labor. But even in this respect they are his only vis-à-vis other people, not visà-vis God his Creator. Even this conclusion has implications that are defined in legislation. First, human ownership is expressed in a person’s exclusive right to use one’s “own” products. Second, the act of creation and its use are legitimate only if they were performed out of respect for the original purpose of natural resources, consistent with what God established in creation. Third, inasmuch as God created natural resources for the good of all His creatures, especially for the good of human beings, the right of acquisition — both of natural resources and of what is derived from them — is conditional on honoring the right of other creatures and especially of human beings who must support themselves from the same land. The basis of this Torahitic definition of property is found again in the story of creation (Genesis 1:29–30). According to this story God gave all cultivatable grasses and the fruit of trees, nourished by the earth, for the sustenance of humanity and all other animals. The later narrative tells of the spread of human beings in accordance with God’s will by their branching-out into nations, tribes, clans and families. God provides each nation with a territory from which it can support itself justly. The story of the Exodus from Egypt is based on denying Pharaoh and his magicians control over the land of Egypt, its water and produce, and thereby also over all the citizens of the commonwealth whom he has turned into slaves. What are slaves according to Pharaoh’s law? People whose will is subjugated to work for the benefit of their master according to his command, and who have no right to do anything of their own will and for themselves. Since it is impossible in fact to control the wills of other human beings without their consent, the slave-master has to resort to cruel means of coercion that attempt to force the slave to act according to his master’s will. According to the Pharaonic law of slavery it is permitted to the lord to do to the body of his slaves whatever he wishes in order to suppress their rebellious will: to imprison them, to torture them, to abuse them, to maim them and even to kill them in 165

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order to deter others. The law of the kingdom stands behind the lord, and his slaves have no defense against him. The law of the Mosaic Torah is the opposite of the Pharaonic law. It is the law of the Exodus from slavery to freedom, according to which the Israelite people is intended to possess its land as a people of free individuals. According to the law of the Mosaic Torah, the territory of the land, which is God’s gift to His people, should be divided equitably to all the tribes of Israel, to all the ancestral clans within each tribe, and to all the families within each clan. Canaan is a land of hills and valleys that drinks the rainfall from heaven. According to the Torah’s law its waters are God’s gift, and given to everyone. The gift is given straight from heaven, and is not under the general control of human beings like the Egyptian government’s control of the Nile. The Torah’s law takes care to preserve an equitable distribution of land, one that should not be effaced or perverted by the differences between the rich and the poor. This concern was articulated by the laws of the release-year and the Jubilee, and also symbolized by the laws of the Sabbath, which limit the Israelite’s proprietary control over their property through the prohibition of work. Thus all Israelites are made equal: men and women, lords and slaves, aliens who are not of the Israelites, and even the animals that work their farms. All of them rest on the Sabbath from labor, enjoy God’s blessing and become in effect free. In this way man’s proprietary claim on his living property reverts to the ideal status that God determined for all His creatures and especially for human beings in His world. The laws of tzedakah in the Torah were instituted according to the same principle. They obligate those with sufficient means of support to share with the poor the enjoyment of the products of the land. Not as a gift of generosity and kindness, but as their legal entitlement: it is forbidden to the rich to deprive the poor, and they have the obligation to restore to them the portion that comes to them as God’s gift, since the surplus over their necessities for survival is regarded as the portion of the poor, who were not fortunate enough to get the little that they require.

How is the husband’s “acquisition” of his wife expressed? Against the background of these limiting definitions of the rights of property we can now examine the special meaning of the husband’s “acquisition” of his wife and the father’s jurisdiction over his sons and 166

How is the husband’s “acquisition” of his wife expressed?

daughters, and especially to the special significance of the limitations of property-rights, the definition of the domain of its application, and the ways it is realized. We shall first consider the implementation of the distinction between the property-rights over resources such as land and water, minerals, plants, fish, fowl, domesticated and other animals, versus the propertyrights over human beings created “in the image and likeness of God.” Examination of the laws of the Torah that determine the legal ways of use of each of these classes of property will point us to a hierarchy of distinctions. In the case of minerals, a person may do with them what he wishes and derive from them whatever benefit he can find in them, as long as he does not cause damage to another. Plants may be consumed in their entirety, as long as one preserves the seed that insures their growth afresh.12 However, the permission to slaughter and eat animals is not an original right in the Torah. According to the story in Genesis, plants were intended to be the only source of sustenance for people and animals, and the permission to slaughter and eat animals was granted according to the Torah after the episode of the Flood, in forced concession to human instincts, yet together with that permission a strict limitation was set: the blood, that is identified with the animal’s soul, should not be eaten, but should be returned to God, Creator of souls. Eating the blood is conceived as a violation of the sacred, a violation of God’s absolute property. It follows from this that God gave mankind the right of total ownership over inanimate and vegetative resources, expressed in using them for his needs, whereas pertaining to animals He did not give mankind such total ownership, for inasmuch as they are ensouled creatures, they are comparable to mankind. How much more so when we are speaking of human ownership over other human beings who are fully equal in status to them before God! This is an absolute rule, and as we recall, it was established as a general law for humanity in the Noahide covenant — in the prohibition against eating the blood of animals. From this legislation it follows that the souls of all human beings are not only God’s property because He created them, but they are also His acquistion-by-relationship because of His relationship to Himself, i.e. through His giving Himself to His choice creation because He has need of a partner in dialogue. It follows from this that no person, be his 12

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With fruit trees there is an additional restriction: they may not be destroyed for ulterior purposes, such as in the siege of a city (see Deuteronomy 20:19–20).

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dominant-coercive power ever so great, has the right of possession over what is the essential essence of human beings: their souls, their minds and their wills. First, it is impossible, as we said, to control people’s minds and wills by stronger minds and wills, but only by breaking their physical strength and threatening their lives, and here too it means that a person cannot truly control the mind and will of another even when he forces him to act contrary to his mind and will. Furthermore, a person cannot sell or mortgage his mind or will to another, for it is impossible to willingly surrender one’s will. This is a conclusion whose ethical and legal implications apply to all human beings insofar as they are thinking and willing beings: men and women, Israelites and members of other nations, rich and poor, kings and subjects, masters and slaves. From this we come to the topic of the law of slavery in the Torah, which is connected to the topic of the status of the daughter as the acquisition of her father and the status of the wife as the acquisition of her husband in its most problematic perspective — the status of the Hebrew bondswoman vis-à-vis her master. Does her status pass the test of the universal principle according to which the soul of a human being cannot belong to another person, but only to God? At first sight the law of the Torah, inasmuch as it is the law of the Exodus from slavery to freedom, ought to have abolished slavery altogether. In actuality it did not abolish the institution of slavery but moderated it, and even this only for Israelite slaves. We have another example of the Mosaic law’s compromising with an order that appeared necessary in its time, and in this sense natural. (The question whether this assumption has been refuted in our time is worthy of investigation in its own right. We shall only remark that the institution of slavery still exists in undeveloped countries. Even under enlightened “liberal” regimes, that have abolished slavery and deplore it with every term of deprecation, it persists in the guise of employment under conditions that are in effect tantamount to forced labor of the employees for the sake of the employer, for what is given in exchange for work is far less than the conditions of humane subsistence, and far less than the value of the labor.) Along these lines, we can say of the law of the Torah that it assumes in principle the absolute negation of the principle of slavery, like the liberal states in our time, but it deferred the full implementation of this principle out of submission to what appeared the natural order. Nevertheless, it brought about a principled legal change: limitation of the property-rights of the slave-owner. The essential revolution is embodied in the beginning of the law that limits the right of coercion by defending 168

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the slaves against extreme abuse. According to the law of the Mosaic Torah it is forbidden to strike them with a blow that causes death or disability (Exodus 21:20–27); furthermore, the Torah obligates the lord to give his slaves humane conditions of life that will permit them to rest, to recover their strength and to live a family life. The essential innovation is the application of the rest of sabbaths and festivals to all slaves. The principle at the basis of these limitations — defending the slave’s status as a human being created in the image of God — is expressed in the sweeping prohibition against delivering a fugitive slave to his master. (Deuteronomy 23:16) The meaning of this prohibition is that slavery is considered legal only if the slave is assured of humane living conditions. If the slave is forced to flee even though he has no other means of support, it may be inferred that his master abused him, and his legal rights over him are revoked. As for the Hebrew male or female slave, the definition of their slave-status is converted in effect into a double period of indentured labor: six years instead of the usual three-year term. The conditions of hired labor must be compatible not only with the basic ethical obligations of one person to another, but also with the basic ethical obligations that Israelites owe each other as members of the same people. The definitive outcome of the Torah’s treatment of the issue of slavery is the transformation of slavery into indentured labor. The significance of this transformation, in comparison to the Pharaonic conception of slavery, is that even in the case of a gentile slave the lord is not given mastery over the soul. The status of the slave as the acquisition-by-relationship of his Creator is not revoked. Human ownership does not apply to his soul, but only to his labor-power. The labor-power of a gentile slave may be sold by his master without receiving his consent, and he is permitted to use certain methods of punishment in order to keep the slave on his land. Thus this is still slavery in the real sense; the labor-power of the Hebrew slave is sold to his master by himself, and he himself receives his sale-price. (Usually the Hebrew slave was sold on account of a debt that he could not pay, which he would defray through his labor.) It was impossible to sell him to another without his consent, and one assumed that he was doing the work imposed on him voluntarily in order to repay the debt and support himself and his family. In summary: According to the law of the Torah one may not “own” another person’s spiritual resources in the manner of chattel, nor may one own the other’s discretion-of-acquisition, which is a basic condition of proper life; the most one can own of another person is his labor-power, and yet a condition for proper use of that power is the responsibility for 169

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providing conditions that will enable the slave to perform his labor out of voluntarily coming to peace with his destiny. Do these conclusions apply equally to the male-slave, the female-slave, and the bondswoman? In the anti-slavery legislation that was legislated at the encounter of giving the Torah at Sinai (Exodus 21:1–9) a distinction is made between the male-slave and the bondswoman who was sold by her father: the Hebrew male-slave goes free after six years, whereas the bondswoman who was sold into a matrimonial state does not go free as the male-slaves. But if we examine the normative limitations of the law, a kind of equality is manifest: the Torah protects the bondswoman legally sold into a matrimonial state by insuring her status as the wife of her master. He is not permitted to sell her to others. His possession of her turns into an acquisition-by-relationship that is not on the same level as chattel. The right of the Hebrew male slave is more limited in comparison: if his master gives him a wife and he has children of her, she and her children will remain in the domain of his master after he is freed, and if he refuses to be separated from them, his ear is pierced and he becomes a perpetual slave, with the same conditions of indenture being lengthened. In Deuteronomy, the equality of the male-slave, Hebrew female-slave and bondwoman is asserted unequivocally: If a fellow Hebrew, man or woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall set him free. When you set him free, do not let him go empty-handed. Furnish him out of the flock, threshing-floor, and vat, with which the Lord your God has blessed you. (Deuteronomy 15:12–14)

And in the continuation, concerning piercing the ear of the slave who wishes to remain in slavery, it says: “Do the same with your female slave.” (15:17) In the context of the woman’s status as her master’s acquisition we should also cite the law of Deuteronomy about the “beautiful captive woman.” (Deuteronomy 21:1–14) Its importance in connection with a man’s acquisition-rights over his wife stems from the fact that it deals with the case of a gentile woman who was taken captive in war: if her captor desires her as a wife, he is required to honor her feelings, her desires and the rights of her status as his wife, just as a man is required to honor the feelings of his Hebrew wife and the rights of her status. If he does not want her as a wife, she is no longer his acquisition. He must free her, and he may not sell her to another. 170

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The implications as pertaining to the status of the daughter in her father’s household and the status of a legally-married free woman in the house of her husband are sufficiently clear: the father has responsibility for raising his daughters just as he has responsibility for raising his sons. The sons and daughters are considered a blessing — they are God’s gift to their parents, because they continue their parents’ lives and perpetuate their memory by perpetuating their standing within their people and their estate (this is the meaning of their being the legal heirs), and also because they strengthen the power and status of the family within their people, and thus the power and status of their father in his community, for in the course of their maturation they participate in carrying the common burden of responsibility for providing for the family, defending it, and embellishing its reputation. When the father marries his daughter to a man, he first of all fulfills his responsibility for the happiness of his family in general and his daughter’s happiness in particular: according to the Torah’s family ethic, it was the daughter’s destiny to be married to a man worthy of her, and she worthy of him, to bear him sons and daughters and raise them. The fulfillment of this destiny was her happiness. The father thus fulfills the desire of the daughter when he marries her to a man. For what, then, does he receive the bride-price? The answer that arises from the preceding discussion is clear: for the right to her labor that he surrenders to the man who marries his daughter. This then is the tangible good that the man marrying the daughter acquires, which indeed has an aspect of property about it. Nevertheless, we must emphasize again that the daughter brings with her from her father’s house a certain property that remains her personal property, and by laboring in her husband’s household she participates in the goods of the family and is supported from them generally as well as from her husband’s labor. This conclusion can clearly be inferred from the legislation relating to the food-offerings and tithes that were the perquisite of the priests and the Levites as their financial support from the people. It is spelled out there that whatever is given to the male recipient is designated for the support of his “household.” The wife is the major member of that household, and the Torah adds: “I give them to you, to your sons, and to the daughters that are with you, as a due for all time.” (Numbers 18:19) This, then, is the basis of the legislation according to which daughters do not inherit their father’s estate together with the sons. The Torah does not see this as a deprivation, because the estate in which the daughters will participate through inheritance is that of their husbands, and they 171

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transmit their right to this estate to their sons. The definition of their rights in matters of inheritance and bequest can be inferred from two explicit laws: first, the father cannot transfer the right of the first-born son, if he is the son of the despised wife, to the son of his preferred wife. (Deuteronomy 21:16) Second, the law of the “daughters of Zelophehad” who died without leaving sons. In order that his estate should not pass from the domain of his family, it was legislated that in such a case the daughters should inherit their father’s estate. Afterwards a further correction was established that they would have to marry within their tribe and clan so that the family estate should not pass to another tribe or clan. (Numbers 27:1–11, 36:1–13) It follows that in principle the daughters too had the right to inherit in order to perpetuate their family’s holding in the estate of the people.

Woman’s autonomy in the light of the Torah’s legislation In all the topics discussed above, the woman’s right of acquisition to the goods of the family is determined in the conjugal framework in commonalty with her husband, which is to say it is relative: it is the man who assumes the general responsibility, and therefore the overall decision as to the disposition of property is generally his. The question may then be raised, what is the measure of autonomy of the woman in fulfilling her tasks as wife and mother in the family framework? In its more inclusive form, this question overlaps with the more basic legal question: how does the Torah apply its laws, judgments and commandments to women? Are they directly commanded by God? Or perhaps only indirectly, through their fathers and husbands? We begin the discussion again by analyzing the legislation that at first sight seems to negate the independent status of women vis-à-vis the Torah’s commandments — the law relating to the annulling of vows (Numbers 30:1–17). The Torahitic legislation opens by emphasizing the absolute obligation binding on vow-takers, that they must fulfill their vows. An obligation before God in matters pertaining to the sanctuary is sacred, and it is forbidden to “profane”13 it, i.e. to abrogate its sanctity. On this 13

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See Numbers 30:3: “He shall not break (ye-hal) his pledge,” where the verb ye-hal has the usual sense of “to profane.” The typical vow was to pledge a donation to the sanctuary, thus consecrating the object that was pledged, or to perform or refrain from performing specified actions (see below for the implications).

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basis it is determined that a father is allowed to “restrain” his daughter from her vow on the day that he hears of it. Only if he heard and “was silent” [i.e., offered no objection] to her, is she obligated to fulfill her vow, and the father may no longer override her vow. The same rule applies to a wife in her husband’s household: if her husband heard her vow and restrained her on that day, she need not fulfill her vow, even if she vowed through an oath. The reason for this legislation is basically economic: vows entail necessary expenditures or refraining from specified actions, either of which materially affects the interests of the father or the husband. Carrying them out thus depends on the man’s willingness to stand by the results of fulfilling the vow, and the woman is not allowed to force her obligation on her father or her husband, even though it is clear that the daughter or wife has no parallel right to restrain her father or her husband from vows whose results will also affect her. This is a direct limitation of the woman’s autonomy affecting what she regards as her personal property. But does this imply that God’s commandments do not apply directly to the woman, and that she is not permitted to assume an obligation before God on her own authority? No — and the negative answer follows clearly from the precise language of the law. First, the vow of a widow or divorced woman obligates her before God the same as a man’s vow, because these women stand in their own domain without limits in all matters concerning property-acquisition or decision-making about their actions, i.e. they are regarded as heads of their own households. Second, the Torah determines that any woman, in her capacity as a person standing directly before God, is obligated by her vows. She need not ask for the prior consent of her father or husband. If they never heard her vows at all, or heard them and were silent, the vow obligates her the same as it obligates a man. Finally, the father or husband are not authorized to cancel the vow itself, and so the woman’s obligation before God is valid and not cancelled. The father or husband are only authorized to “restrain” her, i.e. to prevent her from fulfilling her vow; thus they force her, as it were, to sin against God, and so the Torah determines in advance that God will forgive her, for it is not her fault. The recognition that the woman is autonomous like the man in response to God’s command, that she is personally obligated by the commandments of the Torah, bearing personal responsibility for her sins and righteous acts before God and mankind, personally responsible to correct what she has done wrong, to repent and atone for her sins and misdemeanors, and that there is no one who is allowed or able to restrain her from fulfilling 173

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the commandments incumbent on her, is spelled out in many texts. Her special status in the framework of the familial conjugal covenant with her husband comes to expression in special commandments that the Torah directs at her womanhood, her sexuality, and her duties as daughter to her parents, as wife to her husband and as mother to her children. These special commandments are known and there is no need to mention them, but we will indicate here several of the commandments in which women are explicitly equal to men. In the convocation at Mount Sinai women are not mentioned separately. The Sinaitic covenant was enacted between the people as one collective entity and God as its king, and the people answered and accepted on itself the divine commandment in its unity as a people. Therefore even though the commandment heard at this convocation was spoken in the grammatical singular, the reference is to the entire people, men and women, and by inference the reference was also to sons and daughters in the present and for the future to come. It is clear that all the individuals united as a people were accepting the divine commandments on themselves as a personal obligation before Him, for we are speaking of commandments that pertain to their conduct as individuals to one another. As to their content, except for “you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” all the commandments that were heard in the convocation at Mount Sinai apply equally to men and women. If any doubt remained in the matter, we should mention first of all the appearance of Miriam, Moses’ daughter, as a prophetess representing the women and their obligation to the covenant. In the story of the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, Miriam assists Moses and participates in the “song of the Sea” and leads the Israelite women in dance and timbrels (Exodus 15:20). Afterwards she appears independently as a prophetess when she complains against Moses (Numbers 12:1–11). Indeed in that story Miriam is judged to have sinned against Moses, yet neither God nor Moses disputes her independent status as prophetess. In the narrative plane we should further mention the stories of the voluntary contributions for the establishment of the Tent of Meeting (Exodus 35:21–29, 36:6), for the story specifically singles out the women’s contributions, which exceeded that of the men in the gifts of precious ornaments, whether of their possessions or their handiwork in spinning, weaving and embroidery. The personal contribution of the women was not mediated through the heads of their families nor was it contingent on their approval. This is a general principle: the women are obligated directly and are 174

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personally responsible for all the commandments, which unlike vows are obligatory on every person in Israel, whether in interpersonal matters or those between the individual and God. In ethical matters between one person and another, this is self-evident: the husband does not bear judicial responsibility for his wife’s crimes, nor does the wife bear judicial responsibility for her husband’s sins. Sacrifices of thanksgiving, guilt-offerings and sin-offerings fall to each individual, man or woman, on each occasion that this commandment falls on him or her. The Torah expresses the obligation of confession and atonement through use of the expressions “When a person (adam) presents” (Leviticus 1:2) or “when a soul (nefesh) sins” (Leviticus 4:2), and even more specifically “When a man or woman (ish o ishah) commits any wrong” (Numbers 5:6). All these terms are gender-neutral; adam was created male and female (Genesis 1:27, 5:1–2), and “soul” (nefesh) can only be understood as applying equally to women and men. When a woman feels guilt that requires a sacrifice or when she feels the need to make confession, her obligation is fully binding, and neither her father or her husband can prevent her from carrying it out. There are sacrifices that a woman is obligated to bring on account of her sexuality, such as the sacrifice of purification after childbirth, after her period or after recovering from a defiling venereal disease (Leviticus 15:19–33). It should be obvious that the obligations of purification and of sacrifices that emanate from her are obligatory on the husband no less than on her — he is not allowed to prevent her from carrying them out, and if he tries to do so, he sins gravely and will be punished either by human law or by God’s law. The prime example that is evidence of the woman’s equal status before God (as well as to the hierarchy of personal status that derives from the family hierarchy) is connected to the laws of vows, namely the chapter on assessments (Leviticus 27:1–34). The concept of “assessment” (erkecha) is the minimum that anyone who vows a gift to the sanctuary is required to pay. A vow is conceived as a symbolic dedication of the person himself to the sanctuary, and he is required to “redeem” himself by paying an equivalent of his value, depending on his standing within the community. Each person has his own “assessment,” which is determined by the independent economic power that a person of his status generally has. In keeping with this approach, the “assessment” of an adult male in his prime, twenty to sixty years old, is set at fifty silver shekels; a women of the same age is assessed at thirty shekels; a youth from five to twenty years old is assessed at twenty shekels; 175

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a girl of the same age three shekels; and as for elderly people over sixty years old, the males are assessed at fifteen shekels and the women at ten shekels. The Torah reveals the criterion by which these measures were determined at the end of the passage: “But if one cannot afford the equivalent, he shall be presented before the priest, and the priest shall assess him; the priest shall assess him according to what the vower can afford.” (Leviticus 27:8) This is an exact determination at whose basis is assumed the equality of all Israelite persons before the law — every person in Israel, whether male or female, elderly, adult, youth or child from age five and up, has a “valuation” and its monetary expression varies out of consideration of that person’s economic ability, based on his or her labor-power: the higher the valuation of his labor power in the labor market, the more his “assessment” increases; the less his labor value is valued, the lower the assessment.

The Difference Between the Wife’s Status vis-à-vis her Husband and Her Status as Mother vis-à-vis her Children The tension between the woman’s autonomy and equality before the law and her economic subordination in her husband’s domain, as he represents the standing of the family within the people, comes to its fullest expression in the tension between her status as wife and her status as mother of her children. We saw that her status as wife to her husband is influenced by the man’s masculine urges, whereas her status as mother not only toward her children but also before their father fulfills her primeval destiny and preserves her pre-lapsarian status as “help-mate” to her husband, for Eve was given her name to indicate that she was “mother of all life.” It is the woman who is the nurturer of life, and it is proper to express in this context that when we speak of giving birth to human children, the connotation is to living beings on the level of mankind who was created in the image of God. The differential equality between man and woman in respect of parenthood, which is the the woman’s principal role as “fitting helper” to the man, i.e. a helper who is his equal in status before God, comes to legal expression in that the father — who gives seed — is viewed in his parental capacity as the one who endows his children with their legacy in the physical sense (estate) and in the spiritual sense (instruction), whereas the 176

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woman who bears her offspring within herself, suckles them and raises them until they develop the ability required of them to participate independently in the family and thus in the community and the people — is considered to be the person who determines the biological endowment of her offspring. Indeed, according to the narratives of the patriarchs and matriarchs, the offspring who are considered the primary heirs in respect of the continuation of the identity of the family, the tribe and the people are the sons of the women who are regarded as the matriarchs of the nation because they are the daughters of the “homeland” of the clan. In consistency with the same outlook, the mother is regarded as the authority figure who directs the life-pattern of the family from within, in parallel and as helper to the father, who represents the family, bears responsibility for it, and directs its ways toward the outside world. In this respect the authority of the mother toward her children parallels the authority of the father. Furthermore, if we examine the family ethos as it is described in the Biblical narratives, it becomes clear that when we speak of the inner life of the family, the father is required to accept the demands of the wife-mother and to adapt his will to hers. Indeed, from these stories we learn that the status of the wife vis-à-vis her husband changes substantially after she has succeeded in fulfilling her vocation, identified with that of the family, and borne to her husband her first child. The equality in respect of honor commanded by the Torah toward father and mother is quite emphatic and pronounced. It is singled out as one of the central positive commands on whose fulfillment is contingent length of days of the people on its land, for the honor due to father and mother represents the honor due to God who commands it, and by it the children are educated to fear God, love Him, and fulfill His commandment: “Honor your father and your mother, that you may long endure on the land that the Lord your God is assigning to you.” (Exodus 20:12) In order to make the honor of the mother equal to that of the father, the commandment recurs in a passage similar to that of the Ten Commandments in Leviticus: “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. You shall each revere his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths: I the Lord am your God.” (Leviticus 19:2–3) If in the first formula the father is mentioned before the mother, in the second the mother is mentioned before the father, and the connection between honoring father and mother and honoring God is especially emphasized. 177

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To these two primary commands we may add what is said in the Book of Proverbs: “My son, heed the discipline of your father, and do not forsake the instruction of your mother” (Proverbs 1:8) — because it interprets the notion of honor in its pedagogical significance, which is the significance on whose account the honor of father and mother represent the honor of God: the father and the mother educate the sons and daughters in the ways of Torah and ethical living. From this follows the logic that obligates the father of the family to honor his wife, who is mother of his children: through marriage the man is considered to be continuing the task that the father filled in the life of his wife, in everything connected with giving protection and the responsibility that he takes on himself as her “redeemer,” therefore the wife should honor her husband as she honored her father. When the wife has the good fortune to fulfill her vocation and becomes a mother, her husband should honor her as mother of his children the same as he honored his mother, as she perpetuates for him the function and status that his mother filled in his life and in his father’s life. The gravity that the Torah attributes to the commandment of honoring father and mother is expressed in the extreme legislation of its enforcement. In the legislation that was given immediately after the giving of the Torah at Sinai it is said: “He who strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death…He who curses his father or mother shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:15–17) The same extreme severity is also expressed in the law of the “wayward and defiant son” (Deuteronomy 21:18–21), and here too we should emphasize the equality of honor of father and honor of mother in these laws. And yet the equality of the woman’s status as mother and the man’s status as father is expressed in its most important practical form socially in the possibility that a woman can fill the tasks of leadership not just in her family but also in her community and her people. We mentioned above the legal norm that determines that a widow or divorced woman, or a daughter who is heir to a father who had no sons, are considered independent heads of family in their people. This means that not only because of special circumstances, but generally, a woman who manifests inspiration and qualities of leadership as a mother of her family is considered worthy to be accepted in her people and her community and to fulfill roles of religious, social and political leadership on the highest level, while her husband stands by her side and sometimes in her shadow — the role of a prophetess, the role of a judge, or the role of a queen. The figures mentioned in the Biblical narrative (the matriarchs 178

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Sarah and Rebekah, Miriam the prophetess, Deborah the judge, Naomi and Ruth the Moabitess, Bathsheba the queen, Huldah the prophetess, and others) are indeed individual examples but striking, and in principle they are portrayed as a normal phenomenon, not as diverging from the accepted norm — the Biblical narrative finds no need to explain it to its readers because it is presented as a well-known matter that is not supposed to arouse amazement. In this context it is proper to note the status of the king’s wife who bears the son recognized as heir to the throne (the “queen mother”14) and the status of the mother of the king in the royal court. Modern biblical history ascribes to these women direct and sometimes decisive influence on important decisions in all matters of governance, especially in appointment of heirs, and this is rooted in the law of monarchy that was accepted also among neighboring peoples. The woman’s status as mother vis-à-vis her husband in his role as father of her children thus tends to correct the inequality in her status as sexual partner dominated by her husband. It is possible to describe this as a corrective process that occurs in the course of conjugal life, binding husband and wife together as a single collective entity, with its own ethical-legal standing before God and before the society. Prior to marriage, in which the man “knows” his wife and propagates through her, the aspect of seduction in the woman is prominent, which is liable to be the source of the sin that brought about the expulsion from the Garden of Eden; we therefore find as prominent in these relations the aspects of desire and erotic love on the one hand, mastery and domination on the other hand. After marriage, and especially after birth of the first child, who unites both parents in himself, there comes into prominence the aspect of ethical love, including the roles of the man and woman as redeemers for each other, bearing their common responsibilities together.

The Myth of Mankind’s Creation as a Couple in God’s Image: Destiny, Sin and Redemption Our discussion of woman’s legal status is rooted in the myth of creation, in which the value-concepts at the root of the Torah’s legislation come to concrete expression. As a summary of the discussion on the 14

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See I Kings 15:13, II Kings 10:13, Jeremiah 13:18 and 29:2.

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theoretical, meta-ethical and meta-legal level, we shall present a systematic interpretation of the human creation narrative in its entirety. According to the description of the action of the sixth day of creation (Genesis 1:24–31), the first human being was created male and female. Nevertheless the text uses a grammatical singular: the Hebrew word adam [which refers both to the individual named “Adam” and to “the (generic) human being,” individually or collectively]. Concerning this “adam” in the singular, it says that [s]he was created in the image and likeness of God, but this testimony makes reference to the one God who says it about Himself (“God said…” — a singular verb, though the word elohim [“God”] is itself a grammatical plural) as if He were not one but many (“Let us make adam in our image and our likeness”). The conundrum embodied in this strange lexical hodge-podge occupied all the interpreters up to our own age, and it underlines the double parallel — one human being who is two — male and female — was created by a single God who is plural. But if we indeed have a parallel, then the plural elohim reduces to two. Mankind was created male and female in one body. Is there a suggestion here of the same kind of duality in the Creator-God? Against the background of medieval philosophical monotheism, which emphasizes absolute unity, daring is required to answer this question in the positive, yet a reading of the story of creation from its beginning lends support for a positive answer. The first verse of Genesis distinguishes between the Creator-God and the “spirit of God” that hovers over the face of the waters. Is the same duality hinted in the continuation of the story of creation in the two stages of formation of each portion of existence? First God says what ought to be formed in a language of decision and command. Afterwards the text tells us that God did what He had said, and that the action corresponded to what was said. It is possible to understand this that the divine duality — the “He” that speaks and His spirit — act in creation as one: we have here a planning and deciding will (in the continuation of the story the text refers to the willing-commanding aspect as YHWH) and a spirit that answers, procreates, shapes, sprouts forth substance from the primal chaos that was fertilized by the divine command. If this speculative interpretation has a leg to stand on, it can be supported in the continuation of the story by the creation of mankind: just as heaven and earth were separated from each other so that the heaven could rule and the earth could generate life, so in humanity, which God Himself made from the earth and in which He breathed His spirit, the female was separated from the male. Then the man called the woman who was 180

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separated from him “Eve” because she was “the mother of all living beings.” (Genesis 2:4–24) This is a parallel between the plural God and the plural human being: the man speaks (calling things by their names) and the woman fulfills, giving birth to the living beings from herself, in parallel to God speaking and the “spirit of God” fulfilling. It thus appears that it was from His self-knowledge that God knew that “it is not good for man to be alone.” “Good” according to the story of creation is a complete creature that is able to maintain and perpetuate itself after it was created as God commanded. In respect to animals and human beings, the good is the blessing that they should be fertile and multiply and bring forth their offspring in their image and likeness in order to perpetuate their existence until the earth is filled with them. Again, if this interpretation to the story of creation is viable, then the description of separation of the human into two — male and female, man and woman — is a mythological description of enacting a marriage covenant. The separation is done in order that the male and female should “cling” to each other, face to face instead of rib to rib, as members of a couple each of whom is a body unto itself and a soul unto itself. In this way they can be “fitting helpers” to each other in the act of reproduction (and raising the children). The covenant is enacted by a symbolic splitting-apart that is a prerequisite of recombining.15 The splitting symbolizes the separation of the two parties who are going to enter into the framework of the covenant as independent individuals. In order that they can operate together voluntarily and not out of force of mutual coercion, the individuals or families or tribes and peoples that enact a covenant must recognize each other as separate entities each with a will of its own. It is this mutual recognition that gives legal validity to the obligation not to have resort to methods of coercion and force. But only on the basis of this recognition, which affords to a member of the covenant standing as a legal personality, can each of the parties accept that obligation on himself. Only thus, when each of them has mutually-recognized rights, can they combine into a collective entity that unites them, and this is their “clinging” through their common action. When we are speaking of marriage, the man and woman cling together to become again a “single flesh” through their offspring, which will however become separated from them when it comes time to establish their own family. 15

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Note in Abram’s “covenant of the pieces” (Genesis Chapter 15) the animals are split in half as part of the covenant ceremony.

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The conception of the covenant represents equality as proceeding from difference that enables mutual complementarity, which is the basis for the conjugal entity of the family. The Hebrew word ke-neged [“fitting” in the phrase “fitting helper,” with its connotations of facing, opposite, and equal] together with ‘ezer [“helper”] expresses a kind of equality: that the woman stands opposite her man implies that she is equal to him, in respect of their being compatible components that complement through their virtues the deficiencies of the other standing opposite them, so that through cooperative action their functioning can find fullness. It thus turns out that the family conjugality purposed by the plan of its creator is based on the equality of the different qualities of the male and the female when they come to be man and woman for each other. The continuation of the story explains the eruption of inequality into the relations of the members of the couple, in an action that partook of profanation of the sanctity of the covenant of marriage by something that appeared good but was in fact evil. The covenant of sacred marriage between Adam and Eve was defiled when they came to concretize it by a naked physical encounter as male and female animals. They understood all this themselves, for the text tells us that shame took hold of them when they saw their nakedness revealed to all. Immediately they felt the need to hide from whoever could see them in their nakedness and to judge them for it. The purity of the first covenant was profaned and its sanctity was defiled by that sensuous, physical-covetous, seductive-dominating nature in which something naked is embedded, not because of what it uncovers, but precisely because of what it hides in its depths of seductive unveiling (cunning16): outwardly the naked is “pleasant” and full of life, outwardly it looks “good,” but when one tastes of it, one finds that something evil is embedded in it, something that is not life but death. These insights lead to a comprehensive interpretation of the Garden of Eden story. God planted the garden for the man and appointed him “to till it and tend it,” and thus to rule it on behalf of God, who created him in His image. Within the garden God planted the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In choosing between these two trees the man and his wife are faced with a test of the continuation of their human lives. God commands the man and his wife not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but the cunning-naked serpent, 16

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The Eden narrative plays on the Hebrew verbal similarity of ‘arum (cunning) and ‘erom (naked).

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who himself embodies the evil that appears good, is also found within the garden. Since God created all the creatures, one must assume that He also created the serpent and appointed him to guard the tree of knowledge of good and evil. His job was to explain what Adam and Eve did not understand on their own. Thus it appears that God contradicted Himself, for He warned the man and his wife that death lurks in the fruit of this tree, but He did everything necessary to persuade them to violate His prohibition. We have already discovered in the Creator-God a duality of the founding will and procreative spirit, and that is a duality of masculine and feminine. Now there is manifest in Him a duality in His relation to the distinction between good and evil, for in the serpent’s enticing words, that incite the couple to rebel against the divine command, there is not only rebellion against God’s autocratic rule in His garden, but at the same time there is also a fulfillment of the mission for which God appointed him over the tree. The explanation that the serpent suggests for the divine command forbidding eating from the fruit of the tree that is a delight to the eyes, contains at least a partial truth17 that the human being must know in order to fulfill his honorable task on earth. There follows from this the conclusion that the result of the test was known in advance: the “human being” in its two constituents — the male and the female — did not pass the test. They had to complement each other in their good creative qualities with which they were endowed, and in an ethical way, but in the event they complemented each other in their bad traits: they were seduced by the serpent and became a seduction for each other. They thus sinned against their God when they violated His commandment, and thus they sinned against themselves when they had contempt for themselves and brought about curse instead of blessing. After they were expelled from the Garden of Eden — the protected place where everything was prepared for good living without labor — they found a land that was cursed on account of their sin together with all its creatures: the opposite of the Garden of Eden. Only by back-breaking and grinding labor could mankind succeed in extracting from the earth what was necessary to sustain life and fulfill his mission — to be fertile, multiply and fill the earth; and only through pain and anguish could Eve fulfill her destiny — to bear and raise her children. It all turned out not as people tend to dream in their youth, 17

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Namely, that knowing good and evil is one of the key things that makes human beings similar to God.

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but rather like the reality that appears on their doorstep when they wake up from their courting and honeymoon. In respect to the conjugal relation of the man and his wife, this is the background for their mutual blame-casting: the expectations that they had of each other did not come to pass, and their disappointment reveals, aside from the fact that they are stuck with each other, the clash of egotisms that was well concealed in their act of physical desire: the primal conflict of two libidinal egos that seek in their conjugal togetherness not only mutual completion but also domination over the other who completes him/her and on whom s/he is dependent; each of them uses their advantage in order to reinforce in the “fitting helper” the awareness of their dependence. The inevitable result is disruption of the equality of the two, for in order for their common destiny in nature to be realized, one of them must be dominant and rule, and the other must complement him, by obeying and responding. As in all animals similar to man, the dominance of the male is key to realizing their common task. In all these respects, the Genesis story of sin and its punishment is a dramatic symbolic reflection of the trivial prose of human life up to our own day. From the standpoint of clarifying woman’s status in the Torah’s outlook, the essential question that needs clarification is what explains, according to the Torah narrative, what appears as the frustration of God’s objective in creation, to the point that after several generations God “repented” concerning it and sought to drown it in the waters of the Flood? What is the connection between God’s will to create a world that can make Him sing for joy, as at the end of the sixth day, and the evil that was manifested after the first Sabbath? The simple narrative answer is that it is all Adam and Eve’s fault because of their sin. But from what has been said above, it is clear that this answer is too simplistic for a sophisticated narrative that does not lack in cunning and deft irony. The God who appointed the cunning snake over the tree of knowledge of good and evil knew in advance the result of the test in which he placed the couple who were on the verge of fulfilling their obligation to be fruitful and multiply. Did he command his dearly beloved ones not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, yet without recommending that they eat from the tree of life, only in order to incite them, the pair of cunning innocent adolescents that they were, to a temptation in which they would “reveal themselves,” in other words live according to their nature, who were indeed created in God’s image, but also with a lustful body like that of every other animal? 184

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If we miss the divine cunning embedded in the story, that appears on the surface as innocent as the innocence of the adolescents who do not yet know their bodies or their minds, we shall be thrust into perplexing contradictions that have no solution. Did God want the chosen couple to eat from the tree of life and live forever? It seems that in the explicit command not to eat from the tree of knowledge, that would bring about their deaths, God severely tested the conflict that would take place in the souls of his pampered children between reason and passion. If they knew how to distinguish between good and evil in advance, without any prior experience, it was up to them to take the hint and eat at once from the tree of life. But it appears that this young couple were full of natural life to the point that they did not feel any need to insure their eternal future. They felt a much more pressing need to experience real life through the wondrous satisfaction of the physical union that brings life to the world. The decision of the loving couple, who loved each other out of an egoistic self-love, was far too natural than to be overruled by their reason, and at that moment, acting “rationally” would have been interpreted by them as betraying their “real life” that they were living in the present, in favor of an abstract timeless existence. But understanding the meaning of the existential decision from the standpoint of natural man points to an uncovering of the divine cunning: if the couple chose to eat from the tree of life, they would live eternally, as heaven and earth endure eternally, as the Creator-God lives eternally, but this was not the way of God’s blessing and of His first commandment, in which was said, “Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth.” This commandment would in fact not be carried out, because its fulfillment displaces the perfect singular creatures that live for ever, whom God created (the heavens and their lights, the earth and the sea) with those animal species whose perpetuation is not by means of a single eternal “copy” but by means of multiple “copies” who perpetuate their species through the passing of generations. The cycle of life from birth to death is the condition for this kind of continuity. Therefore, had Adam eaten from the tree of life and “lived forever,” he would be upsetting his Creator’s plan, for he would not have multiplied through the cycle of generations, and he would not have filled the whole earth, as he was forced to do only after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. In these two respects, it clearly seems that God commanded the human beings created in His image what was for their own good, but He intended that they not obey His commandment, so that they could rather fulfill their destiny; or perhaps He thought that only after they disobeyed His 185

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commandment would they understand on their own why they were obligated to fulfill it, and they would seek a less innocent but wiser way to repair what they have spoiled. The last thought is the opening to a second look at the anthropology of Genesis: The human being is portrayed there as an intermediate type. With respect to his physical constitution he is one of the animals; with respect to his soul he differs from them. This double existence has an element of destiny, which exalts man to the level of God’s covenantal partner, created in His image, but it also has a tragic element. This consists not merely in his being subject to illness, pain and death like other animals, but in the fact that he is aware of his fate, hanging like a shadow over his whole life from the moment that he arrives at selfconsciousness as a natural creature who deviates from nature. According to the story of Genesis it appears that in the man’s copulation with the woman in order to bring forth continuity of life he arrives at his maturity, and then, out of the supreme realization of life’s enjoyment, there awakens in him the awareness of death that lies in wait for him after he has entrusted something of his life to another — his offspring — who will live after him. Only then is there awakened in him the wish for eternal life, which in its essence would be a spiritual life above nature, life that would obligate the human being to reach higher than his natural life. How? By absorbing the insight that it is not the libidinal urges, which must be satisfied after their fashion for the sake of procreation, that should guide the totality of men’s and women’s connections to their parents, their marital partners, their brothers and sisters, their sons and daughters, their countrymen and their people, but the covenantal moral laws that sanctify nature and raise it to a transcendent purpose. If human beings, men and women, take this path, they will succeed in correcting their unavoidable misdeeds and realizing their destiny — to create a level of existence that is not ruled by libidinal instinct, and in whose realization is rooted the secret of eternal life that is promised to humanity as the being created in the divine image. The continuation of the meta-historical narrative in the book of Genesis and afterwards in Exodus confirms this interpretation of the myth of creation and elaborates it. The narrative of Genesis starts with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden and concludes with the descent of Jacob and his sons, the fathers of the tribes of Israel, to Egypt, the pit of exile and slavery. The efforts of the human race to achieve redemption by returning to the Edenic existence — which they attempt to create for themselves through their labor by striving to dominate nature on their 186

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own — fail again and again through the natural-libidinal sin embodied in their deeply-seated wish to return to the place from which they were expelled. Therefore their whole technical-cultural enterprise that strives to replace the lost paradise ends up in another “expulsion” in which they fall deeper into exile and alienation. However, in the command “lekh lekha — go forth [to you]” that was given to Abraham — the command to leave his “garden” in Ur of the Chaldees and to journey to the land of Canaan — is signified the beginning of the mission of correction that expresses a turning-point from the striving to return to the point of origin to a striving to push forward to a different future — a future of ascent towards moral, social and political perfection, by which will be manifest the kingdom of the God of heaven and earth. And yet the enterprise of the patriarchs, too, who strive for redemption from their sins in their land, stumbles on account of their perpetually recurrent sins and concludes with the attempt to return to the lost “garden,” where food and everything necessary for human existence grows easily and securely: Egypt. But the fertile “garden” in the land of Goshen turns into the pit of slavery and the threat of destruction in the waters of the Nile, symbolic of Egypt, her abundance and her gods. From the standpoint of the myth of human conjugality, it is worth mentioning the equivocal role of the matriarchal women in the narrative of the transition from past to future: as their husbands’ wives they all play a part in the sin of descent that represents the patriarchs’ failure, although we should emphasize that it is the men who initiate it and bear full responsibility for it; however, as mothers they are the redeemers and generate the hope for continuity and the future. This distinction is prominent in the conjugal relationship of Tamar and Judah — he who was destined to be the progenitor of the royal dynasty of Israel in its land. One can consider that the “seduction” is transformed, by Tamar’s initiative and afterwards by that of Ruth, into a “reparation,” and what was considered as Eve’s “sin” becomes the “kindness” of the two redeeming women. This distinction brings us to the second opposite part of the historical myth as narrated in the book of Exodus: the story of the expulsion-exodus from the “paradise” of Goshen, which had turned into a pit of exile and slavery, to the redemption in the kingdom of God in the Promised Land. This story too also has its high-points and low-points with respect to acceptance of the kingdom of God in place of the kingdom of mortal flesh-and-blood for the sake of true freedom, however the overall downward trajectory of the book of Genesis turns in the book of Exodus to an upward trajectory. 187

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The mythic panorama of the opening chapters of the book of Exodus incorporates several allusions to the myth of creation and the expulsion from Eden in Genesis, but we can focus here on its treatment of the theme of male-female conjugal relations. What is the role of women compared with that of men in this narrative? The answer is — a complete reversal. The story of Genesis starts with the sin of the woman, which causes the man to sin with her; whereas the story of Exodus starts with the righteous deeds of the women-mothers, who enable the men to succeed and motivate them to the enterprise of redemption. Only by their merit were the people — and especially Moses the redeemer himself — redeemed from destruction, and only by their merit does Moses himself go free from slavery and liberate his people not just from outer slavery but also from the more profound inner slavery that is spiritual, moral and psychological. The beginning of redemption is the work of Shiphrah and Puah — the two midwives; of Moses’s mother Jochebed (we are told nothing about the father Amram); of Pharaoh’s daughter; of Moses’ sister Miriam, and his wife Zipporah. Each of these women performs a decisive task, without which Moses and Aaron, the two redeemer-brothers (do they appear as the reverse of the first two brothers, the sons of Adam and Eve — Cain and Abel — in the historical myth of Genesis?) would not have themselves been saved, redeemed, directed and prepared to bring their people out of slavery and give them their charter of freedom. The agreement between this interpretation of the fundamental conjugal relationship of the man and the woman — the father and mother — the parents and the children — and the results of the discussion of the covenantal laws that shape family life according to the law of the Torah, lends force to the conclusions of the ethical-legal discussion and adds the meta-ethical and meta-legal dimensions of faith and spirituality to the outlook of the Torah pertaining to the relative statuses of woman and man, both as to the inequality proceeding from the instinctuallibidinal basis of sexuality, underlying the relations of husband and wife, and the equality proceeding from their moral destiny, underlying the relations of father and mother whose honor represents the honor of their Creator.

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Universalism and Particularism — Openness to Foreign Cultures, and Isolation from their Influence

The notion of a kingdom of priests, for whose realization Israel was chosen in order to be the “special treasure” of the God of heaven and earth, created a contradiction-laden relationship between Israel and the nations. In respect of its being a familial-tribal collective entity, and in respect of the conditions of the “garden” required for its existence — territory, a productive economy, an established society and a unifying and defending state — and in respect of its aspiration to worldly happiness, Israel is considered in the Mosaic Torah and in the prophetic books to be a nation like all the nations, and in order to survive and to arrive at its goal of happiness it had to fight for its place and its status under the conditions and in the ways that were determined by its neighboring nations. The Torah not only permits this, but also commands it. According to God’s commandments in the Noahide covenant, all peoples must live in justice and peace on their territories, but the fulfillment of that covenant by all nations is a distant vision; peace as a condition of security and paradisiacal happiness is the aspiration of all human beings and all peoples, but in the fallen condition of the world most of them strive to realize it in the egoistical way that brought about the expulsion of the sinful couple from the Garden of Eden — out of the competitive effort to achieve control over the resources that will insure their happiness in the present and future, without consideration of other human beings or other nations, and at the price of their oppression and exploitation. Wars of offense and conquest, liberation and defense, preparation for them or threatening them through diplomatic maneuvers — all this has been the rule throughout world history. Thus wars motivated nations to build up their states, and that has been their primary preoccupation. The “kingdom of priests” that Moses established had not war but redemption as its purpose, but the war for the conquest of Canaan was its first 189

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task, and defense from the neighboring peoples and from conquering empires continued for the whole period that Israel dwelt on its land. It knew only short intervals of peace between the wars, and in order to survive among the nations and enjoy a measure of prosperity, Israel was forced to take stock also of its own internal political, social and economic arrangements. In other words, it had to cope with the neighboring peoples, to be familiar with their cultures, to know the sources of their strength and to adopt the achievements of their civilizations, including those of a scientific and technical kind, that provided them with advantages in terms of their power and prosperity. In the Mosaic law there are no explicit commandments in this spirit, but apparently the opposite. Moses and the prophets exhorted the people not to imitate the cultures of the surrounding peoples, and not to follow their ways of life, so that they do not become like them, do not betray their God and their Torah, suffer defeat and exile, and become assimilated. In all these respects, it was desired and expected that the other nations would imitate Israel, for by seeing Israel’s prosperity they would be convinced that this is a wise and understanding nation, as we cited earlier from Deuteronomy. However the frequent despairing warnings, that foresaw in advance their own ineffectiveness, indicate that Moses and the prophets knew that their people had no other alternative. Moreover, if we pay attention to the content of the instruction and legislation in the teachings of Moses and the prophets, we will become convinced that they were familiar with the cultures of the neighboring peoples, and that they learned from them and were influenced by them in the process of coping with them. We shall see that they distinguished between idolatrous decadence, of which they should beware and keep their distance, as against the positive elements of the cultures of those peoples, from which it was permissible to learn. We dealt at length earlier with what they learned from their struggle against the Pharaonic law of slavery. We also dealt with the Torah’s testimony concerning Jethro’s influence on its legislation and on the ways that the people survived in the wilderness. We discussed the adaptation of the institutions of the communal assembly from the Canaanite peoples according to the patriarchal narrative, as well as the adaptation of the institution of the monarchy from several neighboring peoples. As we recall, Samuel submitted reluctantly to the people’s request as an unavoidable necessity, but the book of Deuteronomy adopted the institution of the monarchy while subordinating it to the Mosaic Torah. On this basis the later prophets shaped the ideal image of the monarchy 190

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of David and Solomon as a paradigm of the vision of the Messianic end of days, when “the land shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:9) A third example is reliance on Egyptian crafts in setting up YHWH’s Tabernacle in the wilderness, and afterwards Solomon’s hiring Tyrian architectural and craft expertise in building the Temple in Jerusalem. From these and similar examples a sufficiently clear message can be inferred: the decisive rejection of idolatry, caution against practices and institutions that are liable to lead to it, correction of what idolatry got wrong in its conception of human nature and destiny, preserving the distinctive identity that is rooted in absolute fidelity to God and His Torah — but along with this, openness to positive things that can be learned from the cultures of the peoples, provided that they pass the general human tests of morality, faith and wisdom. Furthermore, the Mosaic Torah is far from wholesale condemnation or disqualification of the cultures of the peoples among whom Israel lives, or in their close surroundings. Just as Moses was educated in Pharaoh’s household in Egypt and demonstrated his mastery of their culture in the course of fighting against it, so the patriarchs of the people came out of the culture of Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They regarded it as their land of ancestral origin, carried its heritage with them, and passed it on in the narratives of Genesis. Even their faith in the God of heaven and earth they received from the same legacy. According to the narrative of Genesis, they salvaged that primeval pure faith from the idolatrous corruption that took hold of it in the culture of their ancestral home, which they left for that reason. It is the place here to emphasize again the fact which we will revisit in connection with the topic of universalism and particularism in the teaching of Moses and the prophets: according to the biblical narrative, idolatry was not the original faith of all the nations, nor was it the Israelite people that introduced the world to the faith in YHWH as the sole God, Creator of heaven and earth. According to the story of the primeval covenant with Noah and his sons after the Flood, it was this faith that was the first religion of all the peoples. Idolatry developed as a result of their corruption. The Biblical narrative reinforces this picture when it points to the priests and prophets of the Supreme God among the neighboring peoples surrounding Israel: Melchizedek king of Jerusalem, Jethro, Balaam. Even the belief in individual national gods among the peoples is not considered a betrayal of the God of Heaven as long as they see in them the “princes” that YHWH appointed to 191

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rule over the various peoples.1 Even the peoples of Canaan are not disqualified, and uprooting them from their land is not justified until their “iniquity is complete.” The profundity of this conclusion is in its recognition that when corruption and idolatrous wickedness dominate all domains of a people’s culture and all its patterns of life, there is no remedy for it. Idolatry is a process of self-destruction, and it collapses of its own weight even if there are no enemies conquering it from outside. This was the secret of the faith of Moses, Joshua and Caleb, that their people could prevail over the Amorite that dwelt in the land despite its fortified cities and gigantic rulers: “their protection has departed from them, but the Lord is with us. Have no fear of them!” (Numbers 14:9) But the flip-side of that conclusion is that as long as a people shows a collective will to life, inner cohesion and cultural creativity, so long does the positive original basis of its culture stand and endure, on which it can succeed to survive and thrive. The people of Israel — since they are younger than the nations around them, especially as compared with the cultures of the great river civilizations; a people that carries with it the ancient legacies that it brought first from its land of ancestral origin, and afterwards from the legacy it absorbed in Canaan before its descent into Egypt, and finally from its living in Egypt for several centuries — not only did this people absorb elements of these people’s legacies in the course of its contacts with them, but it is even proper to continue to adapt the positive elements of the cultures of the peoples in whose proximity it finds itself, so that as a people they will not just be God-fearing, but also wise, understanding, and prosperous in all their ways. King Solomon provides the most prominent example of this. The story of his history glorifies him as the king who gathered wisdom from all the peoples of the East and surpassed them, whereupon his fame spread to the distant ends of the earth. (I Kings 5:9–14) We should remark that Moses’ words concerning the recognition by foreign nations that Israel is a wise and discerning nation innocently confirm the positive evaluation of their wisdom: had he not assumed that they had wisdom and understanding, how could he expect them to appreciate the superior wisdom of his Torah? 1

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See Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 4:19–20, 32:8–9 (especially with emending benei yisrael to benei el in the last selection to read: “When the Most High gave nations their homes and set the divisions of man, He fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to the numbers of the demigods; but YHWH’s portion is His people, Jacob His own allotment.”).

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So much for the relation to the positive general-human elements in the cultures of the peoples. And yet in counterpoint to affirming immersion in the wisdom of the nations, stands the principle of sanctity as the demand for absolute self-determination, which implies national, social and cultural segregation, to the point of yearning to concretize Balaam’s panegyric of Israel: “See, this is a people that dwells apart, and is not reckoned among the nations.” (Numbers 23:9) As we recall, sanctity implies absolute identification for the sake of God on the one hand, and separation from whatever is opposed to it on the other hand — separation from everything that involves contact with ethical evil or ritual impurity or anything that is liable to lead to such evil and impurity. The Torah requires adding hedges upon hedges. For the sake of its sanctity, then, Israel must distinguish itself from all the nations more than the nations distinguish themselves from each other. It must keep faith with the covenantal law that established it, for in that way it will be set, eternal, and perpetually enduring without change. The other nations are perpetually changing, for better and worse, in the development of their cultures. Israel, however, always implements its written Torah anew through its oral Torah, but its being wedded to the eternal Torah limits the possibility of broadening and developing creatively. The implementations of the oral Torah also become sanctified, therefore the change that occurs in the course of events — implementation after implementation, adaptation after adaptation — is necessarily gradual, restrained, and from a certain stage one sees it as submitting to necessity rather than expressing a free creative urge responding to an inner law and striving for its own objectives, as is the way of the cultures of other nations who have reached a high level of development and variegation. This tendency is already noticeable in Deuteronomy: there are tangible differences between it and the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, where God legislates directly, but it prefers the power of continuity and regularity over the power of change and innovation. From this follows Israel’s double self-differentiation from the other nations — its differentiation from them in the “normal” way that each people differentiates from the others, and its special differentiation, that stems from its destiny as a kingdom of priests and holy nation. As we said above, in the Biblical narrative and the words of the prophets, the vision of the unity of the human race does not negate the special character of each people. The Biblical narrative rejects the consolidation of all humanity into one garden and one kingdom in which “everyone had the same language and the same words,” for it 193

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sees in this aspiration a source for idolatrous sin, and it cannot turn it into an ideal for the end of days. When God’s vision is realized on earth, the peoples shall accept YHWH’s sovereignty and will serve Him as required by the covenant that was enacted for Noah and his family, but each people will live in its land under its own government, will speak its own language and will cultivate its own “garden.” It follows from this that the ways of worshipping God and the patterns of social and national life will also be unique for each people, in accordance with its culture and the conditions of its life. This is not spelled out in so many words, but it can be inferred from the limited application of the Mosaic law to Israel alone. The Torah was given to them, and obligates only them. It contains no command to try to spread it and impose it on the members of other nations. The Torah requires that it be imposed on the members of other nations only when they come voluntarily to live as “strangers”2 among the Israelites. Even from this provision, a limitation can be inferred: Israel are not commanded to proselytize, to win many converts for its Torah among the nations. They alone are commanded to observe it as a testimony to God’s sovereignty in heaven and earth. As Israel is a nation like all the nations, it is distinguished from them first of all in the way that they are distinguished from each other by their characteristics and the circumstances of their histories. This kind of distinction is expressed in the law of the Torah through preserving the cultural-historical memory of Israel in respect of its nationality, language and culture. This applies especially to shaping the image of the Sabbath and the festivals in the Mosaic law. They include aspects of nature festivals that are similar to the festivals of the peoples that lived in Canaan, but to these are added the memory of the creation and the memory of Israel’s history, especially the Exodus, the receiving of Torah at Sinai, and the settlement of Canaan. Furthermore, to the uniqueness expressed in recalling its historical memories is added a spiritual uniqueness, whose value-content has universal human significance, while the symbols expressing them are particular and unique: 2

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The word gerim evolved from “strangers” in Biblical Hebrew to “converts” in Rabbinic Hebrew. It is clear from Exodus 12:43–49 that non-Israelites living in the borders of Israel had the option of becoming circumcised and amalgamating into the people of Israel if they desired, but were not forced to take this step. It is also evident from Exodus 23:9 and Leviticus 19:33–34 that non-Israelite resident aliens were to be treated equally under the civil law, while preserving their separate identity.

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First, from Israel’s conception of service to God — as “a kingdom of priests and holy nation” Israel is commanded to worship the One God of the Heavens and Earth, the Only One, directly. Not so the other nations — as we said, these worship the “princes” that God appointed to rule them for their benefit. Second, in respect of the status and honor whose source is in direct closeness to God — when Israel pass the test of fidelity to God and fulfill His commandments, they are blessed with majesty, glory and honor in the sight of the nations. This is expressed in an elevated quality of life, which the whole people enjoy. It is symbolized in the Sabbath, which distinguishes and elevates Israel from all the nations and is a “sign” of the covenant between them and God. Third, in respect of the obligations and commands incumbent on them as a people — and again for the same reason. God’s providence over this people is on the one hand a promise of happiness, and on the other hand a trial that it is hard, almost impossible, to endure. The God of Heaven compensates His people for this in that His attribute of love, which is equal to His attribute of jealousy, insures that His covenant with His people will never be abrogated, and the promise of glory and happiness bound up with it will endure to the end. But for the sake of fulfillment of their destiny, God deals strictly with His people and punishes them for their sins with the jealousy of a lover that can turn to hate, “for whom the Lord loves, He rebukes, as a father the son whom he favors.” (Proverbs 3:12) As for other peoples, in contrast, He puts up with their sins, even those directed at Israel. In the end, Israel bears a mission that carries significance for all humanity, whose fulfillment is the condition of its arriving at the purpose of its happiness as a people: to establish and maintain a society and commonwealth that will be an example of justice and peace. There is no contradiction between those aspects in which Israel is considered the same as all other nations and required to mingle with them and learn from their wisdom, and those aspects in which it is required to be distinct and separate from them. From a philosophical, ethical and religious viewpoint, the former and latter aspects are complementary and mutually reinforcing. But living up to the task in its entirety required the ability of spiritual geniuses like Moses and the prophets. The expectation that the people and the majority of its members would display such supreme ethical-spiritual ability was a vision for the Messianic end of days. In practice, however, the demand for separate identification created deep contradictions between opposing aspirations within the people: the aspiration to be rid of that special destiny and be like the other nations, 195

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on the one hand, and the aspiration to keep faith with the sacred mission on the other hand. The debate generated deep internal hostilities and divisions, whereas the self-segregation in the name of the sacred task, and the Jewish protest against gentile idolatry, generated external hatred that exceeded the normal dislike of peoples competing with each other for conquest and resources. This fact comes to expression both in the narrative of the Egyptian enslavement and in the books of Daniel and Esther: Haman then said to King Ahashuerus, “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws…. (Esther 3:8)

If truth be told, a contradiction was born that Israel failed to understand throughout its whole history: in order to maintain itself as a people in its territorial garden, it must adapt to the peoples around it and those among whom it lives, and to act toward them in the way that they act toward Israel. But in order to keep faith with their special identity as a holy nation, they must live on their land in absolute fidelity to the commandments of peace that distinguish them absolutely from the peoples around them. The depth of this dilemma is expressed in the fact that the Torah’s demand that Israel discharge both these contradictory tasks together as a condition for continuing living as an independent nation on its land was confirmed by the special circumstances that prevailed in Canaan — a mountainous land dependent on rainfall and located between the two great cultural empires that strove to rule the world and fought each other over the realization of their ambitions. The prophets warned their people that if they did not keep faith with the teaching of peace, justice and equity, they would be conquered, oppressed or exiled, but they did not succeed in persuading their people, and the calamities of which they warned indeed came to pass. The Torah of Moses and the prophets grappled with this dilemma in the three aspects outlined above: the relation between faith in the sole God, ruler of heaven and earth, to the gods of the nations on the one hand, and to idolatry on the other hand; the relation between the Mosaicprophetic law of freedom and the social ethic of justice, the ethic of the covenant, versus the idolatrous laws of slavery and their ethics; the relation to the peoples who were entirely corrupted by idolatry, especially those of Canaan, whom Israel was forced to expel so that 196

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they could settle in their land and keep possession of it according to the commandment of the Mosaic-prophetic law. These three topics were already discussed above at length. In summary consideration from the standpoint of the oral Torah we should rise to the philosophical level, that unites the solutions that were envisioned for the future to come in their essentials. We return thus to the philosophical origin of our inquiry and close the circle: what is the relation between the universal dimension of the law of the Mosaic Torah, whose fulfillment should be an example to all the nations, and the special-particular dimension expressed in Israel’s maintaining its identity among the nations and separating itself from them? The integration of the universal and particular dimensions is of substantive concern to all cultures, because they are all destined to grapple with the tasks of survival of the human race in its natural environment. The universal dimension stems, first, from the common characteristics and qualities of all human beings insofar as they are human, both in their common heritage with other animals and their distinctness from them; second, from the most general conditions of the natural environment, on which humanity is dependent as an inseparable part of it. The “garden” that mankind must build in it in order to survive as a social creature must respond to several constant fundamental requirements of human existence, whether the creators of these cultures are aware of their equality that follows from this fact, or not; when they encounter each other they can size themselves up in this respect, and discovering it is a ground of dialogue and mutual influence. The particular dimension also follows necessarily first of all from the individuality of natural creatures, especially of human beings and their collective groups, from their awareness of it and their desire to maintain it and perpetuate it; second, from the variation and change in nature and human beings; third, from the factor of accident and chance in nature, and the freedom that people have to choose among a variety of possible solutions to deeds and problems thrust on them to deal with them; and finally, from the creativity that distinguishes the human being, enabling him to shape his environment at will and reshape himself as well, out of the overflow of his creative energies. Just as each person has his or her own individual biography, different from any other, so every human collectivity that has created its own “garden,” in the spot of land it calls home, has its own history, by virtue of which it is a uniquely individual entity. The integration between the universal and particular dimensions is thus expressed in the many forms of implementation of the constant 197

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fundamental requirements of human existence in nature. We can also summarize this as follows: the unique identity of each culture is a universal characteristic of all cultures. On the basis of these conclusions we should now discuss the relation of universalism and particularism in Jewish culture. The power of the internal and external contradictions in the history and legacy of Israel eventually gave rise to philosophical theories that defined the Jews as human beings with superhuman moral-spiritual talents, and thus defined the Jewish people as a people with a superhuman spiritual capability, a people that represents a higher level of natural existence and thus stands closer to God.3 These theories were based on a philosophical or mystical interpretation of the narrative and law of the Mosaic Torah. It is worth remarking that this interpretation developed special tools to ground in the narratives of the Torah new meanings that were representative of a certain layer of development of the oral Torah tradition, but that the real source of these ideas was not in the Torah but in doctrines that grew up in response to specific historical crises. If we read the Biblical narrative with literary-critical tools that delve into its plain sense, we cannot validate such an interpretation. On the contrary. The Biblical narrative is steeped in the unequivocal recognition that the Israelite people are ordinary human beings — descendants of Adam, of Noah, of Shem — and in that respect they are equal to others in the qualities that distinguish human beings as creatures created in the image and likeness of God, as well as in the qualities that stem from their congenital evil urge. The people of Israel is also not unusual in respect of the human characteristics of all other nations. We saw that the Biblical narrative is not especially flattering either to the patriarchs of the nation or to their descendants. Even Moses is caught in his sin, while he famously describes his people as a stiff-necked people. That people was not chosen to be God’s special treasure and holy nation on account of any special distinction from other nations in any respect. The merit of the patriarchs stood them in good stead, the merit of their steadfast devotion to God’s will, and the merit of their perseverance in struggling with their evil urge in order to perform His command. It is thus clear that Israel was not chosen on account of their being substantially different from the other peoples, but precisely because they were a typical representative of other peoples both in their spiritual 3

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See especially the views on Jewish uniqueness of Judah Halevi in Kuzari and of R. Judah Loew (Maharal) of Prague.

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qualities and in their sinful temptations, and it was all on condition that they strive to correct themselves to the best of their ability out of fidelity to the commandments of the Torah. It thus turns out that according to the Biblical story the distinctive quality that raises Israel over the other peoples is found in their Torah, not in themselves. They are required to rise above their natural state and distinguish themselves from the other nations by fulfilling the commandments, and it is important to re-emphasize that this distinction will be realized, according to the teaching of the prophets, on the plane of realization of the universal spiritual-ethical dimension of their culture. Thus is created the paradox of a universal particularism and a particular universalism. The root of this paradox is based in a fundamental awareness: the awareness of a small nation created by the separation of one clan from one of the great nations that preceded it in the land of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The great nation, from which the “Hebrews” emerged, saw in its particular culture a culture that deserved to rule over all nations and to unite them under its rule. This was an idolatrous particularism that strove for universal sway, like the Egyptian culture that strove for the same kind of world-rule. Not so the small people that broke away from idolatry in order to establish its own “garden” in Canaan. As opposed to this egocentric particularism, striving for universal sway by force of arms, the patriarchs and Moses put the universal dimension first in defining their nation’s destiny: worship of the one and only God of Heaven, who is God of the whole world, God of all human beings and of all peoples. He is thus in actuality, because He is the creator of the world and its legislator. As opposed to the idolatrous nations that strove to make their gods (the “princes” who were appointed over them) sovereign over the whole world, this people did not intend to enthrone their God, but to receive themselves the yoke of His sovereignty that stands and endures in actuality forever despite the revolt of the idolatrous nations against Him. There is thus generated a double opposition to the idolatrous culture from which the “Hebrews” (and later the Israelites) separated themselves: on the one hand fidelity to YHWH, the one and only supreme God who unites all humanity under His rule, and on the other hand fidelity to the idea of the unity of all human beings and all nations under the dominion of God their Creator, and therefore the recognition of the equality of all human beings and the equality of all peoples. In both these respects the patriarchs of Israel and Moses gave priority to the universal viewpoint of God over the world that He created and the human race that He 199

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governed, as against the egoistic-particular viewpoint, which generally holds sway for most people, who see their destiny in the attainment of their individual happiness. If the nations generally gave priority to the particular dimension over the individual dimension in defining their destiny, Israel differed from them and put the universal dimension first, and thus shaped the particular dimension of their existence as a people, both in respect to their equality to other peoples and their difference from them. We emphasize again that from the divine viewpoint, the universalistic consideration of the relation to the world and to humanity not only justified but even necessitated the individual-particular existence of all nations on the basis of their equality before God, including the individual existence of the people of Israel. The importance of this assertion lies in the egalitarian and democratic implication that stems from it as pertaining to the relations among the nations in general, and between Israel and the gentiles specifically: an absolute rejection of the aspiration of the idolatrous nations to raise their particular culture to universal status by oppressing other nations, subjugating them, forcing them to the choice of accepting their conquerors’ culture and serving them or being annihilated; rejecting every form of tyranny, political or religious; and rejecting universalistic imperialism, whether on the political or the religious level. We saw that according to the universal ethic of the Mosaic law, it is the right of every people to maintain itself and to develop its own culture in its land, while respecting the rights of the neighboring peoples. By that principle, each people enacts its own covenant with its gods, and thus the Mosaic law was enacted with Israel and applies to it alone. The same kind of logic — that gives priority to the universal dimension, from the divine viewpoint, over the particular dimension, from the human viewpoint — can be seen in its attitude to the creative cultural activity of each people: from God’s viewpoint the purpose of human cultures is defined on the basis of the universal covenant that was enacted between God and Noah’s family, i.e. all humanity. From this aspect the kingdom of God over humanity is one, but the covenant is based, as we said, on the will and freely-assumed obligation of all its partners, and therefore the implementation of universal principles that God demands of all peoples is not only oriented to the needs of each and every people, but it is itself the work of those peoples. It is the right and duty of every people before God to express itself, its needs, its abilities, its thought and vision, and its special circumstances. Thus, just as 200

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within Israel the realization is collective-individual in accordance with its individuality as a nation, so among other peoples the realization will be collective-individual, i.e. particular — a realization that will express their special identity. Therefore it is forbidden to force cultures, regimes or religions on peoples. One must respect their freedom to create them for themselves and to express in them their special contribution to the perfection of creation in their “gardens.” The unity of God’s requirements in His covenant with the family of Noah thus obligates all peoples to honor the basic law of a single sovereignty, but not one of flesh and blood, but that of God, to whom the Israelites are consecrated to minister. The Torah did not seek to impose this truth by means of a single religion that should unite all nations under its authority. The kingdom of God stands and endures whether people acknowledge and obey it or rebel against it. Israel is not considered a people that establishes the kingdom of God in any sense — it is God who established His kingdom when He created His world. God forbid that Israel pretend to usurp the king’s role, nor are they required to spread the faith of the One God among the nations as an organized religion in the manner of a universal church. In this context it is proper to emphasize again: according to the Biblical narrative the belief in the One God is not a discovery that the people of Israel brought into the world. The innovation of the patriarchs, of Moses and the prophets was in Israel’s consciousness of being a kingdom of priests, who serve YHWH to be an example to the nations. They were not a kingdom of missionaries for spreading His worship among the nations. It is the profound significance of this fact that no human rulers, no kings, no prophets or religion-founding priests — i.e. no self-righteous kingdom or church righteous in its own eyes — is needed to force the faith in the One God and the recognition of God’s kingdom on other nations. The Mosaic law itself is neither an imperial law nor a universal ecclesiastical dogma. It is the law of a people that was appointed and willingly chose to live in accordance with it for the sake of its own righteousness and its own happiness. How, then, will all the peoples come to know their king when the time is ripe? From what was said above, it follows that the knowledge of the kingdom of YHWH has its roots in the creation of the human race. It was established at the dawn of each people’s development of its own culture, and in that respect it was and still is the primary faith of every individual, of every people, of all humanity. All individuals and all peoples carry at the bottom of their legacies the memory of the covenant 201

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of Noah and his family. Deeper than this: all human beings were created in the image of God, and therefore they know their Creator in the deepest understanding of their hearts and in their deepest wisdom, and so their return to Him will be a return to their higher identity. As we said, this assumption has its roots in the narrative of creation, in the historical narrative of humanity, and in the historical narrative of Israel. This is highlighted not only by the Bible’s mention of great individuals of the gentiles who were priests or prophets to YHWH the God of Heaven, but also by the fact of a peculiar omission whenever the patriarchs, Moses or the prophets turn to the folk or the kings and leaders of other nations in the name of YHWH the God of Heaven, to chastise them for the evils that they did to their peoples and to Israel. In so addressing them, they seem sure that the members of these nations know the God in whose name they speak, and that the righteous among them worship Him alongside their worship to their people’s national god. A striking confirmation of this is found in the epithet that Jeremiah bestows on Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon — “servant of YHWH” (a term associated with Moses — see Jeremiah 27), in Jeremiah’s confidence that the king of Babylon will willingly bring back the exiles of Judah to Jerusalem, and afterwards in the fulfillment of this prophecy by Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord God of Heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and has charged me with building Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Anyone of you of all His people — may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem that is in Judah and build the House of the Lord God of Israel, the God that is in Jerusalem… (Ezra 1:2–3)

Concerning the words of Cyrus’s prophecy we add the testimony of the prophet Malachi from the same period: For from where the sun rises to where it sets, My name is honored among the nations, and everywhere incense and pure oblation are offered to My name; for My name is honored among the nations — said the Lord of Hosts. (Malachi 1:11)

The moral superiority of the Mosaic law over the laws of the idolatrous kingdoms and religions is thus rooted in the priority of its universal visionary dimension, from the divine viewpoint, over its particular implementation as state law for one people among the nations by its 202

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own work. But from this ethical advantage there developed tensions and contradictions among divisive tendencies within the people of Israel in its relation to itself and its Torah, and in its relation to other peoples and their cultures. In different periods of Jewish history these tensions were manifested in the alternating dominance of one tendency or its opposite, but they always worked together, clashed with each other, restrained each other, and sometimes even succeeded to arrive at a balance through compromise agreements. We saw that the priority of the universal destiny, from the divine viewpoint, tended in the direction of openness to the positive universal achievements of the cultures of other nations and toward an egalitarian relation to them. But the same penchant for destiny tended in the direction of aspiration for spiritual and ethical distinction that had a whiff of pride and even arrogance. In the aspiration for distinction there came to expression the consciousness of Israel’s chosenness to be a special treasure for God, vis-à-vis both the nations and Israel. Vis-а-vis the nations — the consciousness that Israel surpasses the other nations not only because Israel is the special servant and treasure of God, but also because of its universal spiritual-cultural achievements; a consciousness of superiority even in respect of their absorption and development of the universal elements of culture that Israel learned from others. Indeed, the same tendency was manifested also internally in the relation of the aristocratic Torah-learned elites to the strata of the ordinary people on whom they looked down as am ha-aretz (common, unlearned Jews). It is nevertheless proper to emphasize that the consciousness of superiority, whether in relation to other peoples or to the ordinary strata of Jews, was expressed out of a sense of obligation and special responsibility before God, before whom all human beings, as human beings, must stand equally in absolute humility. Human greatness is expressed in the determined desire, in the fidelity and measure of one’s ability to persevere in following God’s ways and imitating the attributes of beneficence, kindness and mercy that are manifested in God’s relation to His creatures. The paradox of humility in human greatness was embodied in the literature of the oral Torah in the image of Moses, “the servant of the Lord,” of whom the Torah testified, “Now Moses was a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth.” (Numbers 12:3) In the rabbis’ view, precisely for that reason he was privileged to have God’s Torah called by his name, not only as the prophet who transmitted it to his people, but as the servant whose life was an example of its fulfillment. 203

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Defining distinction in terms of responsibility stemmed from the covenantal principle that imposed on the people the obligation to fulfill YHWH’s commandments out of choice, and as an expression of individualparticular identity. But even fidelity to this principle, which focused on the study of Torah and fulfillment of its commandments as exclusive values, generated a tension between contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, it can lead to openness to gentile cultures and interest in all the realms of creativity that express the prosperity, happiness and wealth of the people. On the other hand, it may lead toward striving to focus on what distinguishes Israel as a chosen people, which tends in the direction of closing oneself off from the cultures of the nations, in order to prevent their assimilating and corrupting influence; to excessive caution against innovations that are liable to lead to straying from the eternal principles of the law of the Mosaic Torah; and as a result, to a prejudicial attitude against other peoples and their members, and in favor of Jews, because they are distinguished from other peoples from birth. Again — egalitarianism, openness and creative development on the one hand; arrogance, closed-mindedness, dogmatic and halakhic petrification on the other hand. From a survey of the periods in Jewish history, including those documented in the Biblical narrative, it turns out that at the start of every new period the Jewish people, bearing its religious and cultural legacy as it had crystallized at its hand through the previous periods, encountered the great culture of another people that appeared on their horizon, which became either a compelling factor through conquest or influential by virtue of the attractive force of its advantages. Sometimes the encounter was brought about by exile, sometimes by imperial conquest, and sometimes by the development of relations as a result of proximity or treaty ties. But they were always the occasion of a deep crisis that was a test of the people’s leadership and forced them to decide between a response of openness, for the sake of strengthening themselves through the advantages of the other culture and reciprocal relations with it, and two other responses, extreme but in opposite directions: the desire to assimilate to the point of being absorbed into the culture of the other people on account of its advantages and power, or segregation out of absolute fidelity to the values of Israel’s universal-particular identity. Furthermore, thorough research will establish that the compelling and attractive power of the foreign culture will have had its effect also on those who chose the path of segregation, preserving the halakhic formulation of the Jewish legacy. In fact, segregation and fixity are 204

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ways of critical acceptance of influence, through a double process of sorting out those elements of the dominant culture that are deemed idolatrous and those that are not, i.e. what can be reconciled with the eternal legacy through the instrumentality of oral Torah and what cannot be reconciled and so must be rejected. Through this selection has begun a creative process of reworking the influence that was absorbed from the outside, so that this influence is perceived as a product of internal development of the essential legacy. The interpretive tools of the oral Torah made it possible to transform those contents that were absorbed from outside the continuing basic legacy into Sinaitic Torah: it all came from one source, not from gentile cultures. Incidentally, a parallel process of cultural transformation was developed by the assimilated and acculturated Jews who encountered great difficulties both among themselves, against the background of their legacy, and in their environment, because of the opposition to them. In this way, too, innovative movements were developed on a universal plane within the Jewish people or in the peoples among whom they lived, a typical example being Christianity. Thus openness and innovation prevail, in a way that appears as a repetition of the foundational process of the patriarchs’ emergence from their ancestral culture in the land of the Tigris and Euphrates, and the Exodus of Moses and his people from the culture of the land of the Nile, to proceed to Canaan and realize the vision of the future — stabilization at a point-of-departure within a great “general” culture, in order to implement the values of universal truth in it and to realize them in the particular life of the people — on the basis of its previous distinctive legacy, that shapes the continuity of its identity and the unity of its destiny — as a particular culture, different, separate; for this is the inner logic of the process of differentiation, which strives to realize the higher values that the “parent” culture failed to realize. This is a distinctive developmental dynamic. As we said, it does not proceed, as the majority of national cultures do, from the particular to the universal, but the opposite. Therefore, after a primary formative influence has been absorbed, caution and restraint of the creativity manifested in its absorption is required. For after the stage of selection, absorption and internalization, the continuing influence of the external culture will be expressed through the flow of additional developments and new directions — from a culture that was left behind because of its failure to realize its universal values. Clearly such an influence would undermine and contradict what was already absorbed and incorporated 205

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into the cultural self in the first stage, both because it is external and because of its intrinsic content. In a similar way, free and independent creativity is likely to lead to deviation from the norms of the cultural self that were already internalized and sanctified. The inevitable result is increase of the oppositions between Jewish culture and the surrounding culture, and increase of the inner divisions. These have strengthened the conservative tendency, that sanctifies separateness and fixity, and have shaped it in a strategy of survival by withstanding the trial of martyrdom. But the dedicated readiness to undergo this trial as witness to the kingdom of God in the world carries with it the potential of transformation to openness to the cultures of the nations at whom the mission is directed. Within the Biblical narrative, two great crises stand out, as a consequence of which the culture of the people and the oral Torah that guided them underwent development, out of a clear confrontation with the profound influence of another culture of universal stature. The first crisis centered on the struggle between the Israelite elders and Samuel (and later between Samuel and Saul), that concluded with adoption of the monarchy, and with it the political civilization that supported it, following the examples of the nearby monarchies (especially Egypt and Tyre). The second crisis centered on the struggle between the prophet Jeremiah and the last kings of Judah against the backdrop of the involvement of the kings of Judah in the wars of the two great powers — Egypt and Babylonia — and their entering into a treaty with Egypt, a policy to which Jeremiah objected. Jeremiah thought that the solution was willing submission and consolidation with the Babylonian state. He trusted that the younger kingdom would be victorious, that it was still at the height of its moral strength, at the height of its universal cultural achievements, and he saw in its culture a great similarity to the legacy of the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. On the basis of this similarity he thought that under Babylonian protection Judah could renew its independent identity as a kingdom of priests in peace and security. On the other hand, Egyptian culture was in his view at the height of its idolatrous degeneracy. Jeremiah in fact led his people into the Babylonian exile before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, which he predicted, and afterwards instructed the exiles to settle in Babylonia, to reconstitute themselves and become integrated there, and to pray for the peace and welfare of its king. In effect he instructed them to draw closer to Babylonian culture, to study its great legacy of wisdom, and especially its jurisprudence, so that when they returned to 206

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Judah, with the consent of the king of Babylonia and under his military protection, they would bring a revitalized legacy of Torah that would provide a foundation that was broader, purer, stronger and more deeply ensconced in the souls of the people than the foundation on which the kingdom of Israel rested in the days of David and Solomon. We have ample testimony to the realization of Jeremiah’s program — its openness to the Babylonian legacy of learning and language, the development of a new stratum of oral Torah on the basis of this learning, the return to the land of Israel under the protection of a world power — from the books of Daniel, Esther, Ezra and Nehemiah, and from the literature of the oral Torah, which had its beginning in the work of Ezra and the men of the “Great Synagogue.” The culture of the people, which from that period on was called “Jewish,” was imbued with the formative influence of Babylonian culture that was expressed in language, law, learning and liturgy. We know that only some of the exiles returned to their land with Ezra and Nehemiah, while the majority remained in Babylonia and thrived after striking deep political and cultural roots there; but the formative influence of the Babylonian legacy on the oral Torah was strong even in the land of Israel. This was thus a process which began with a third exodus of the people from another people and culture. But in contrast to the two prior exoduses, the third exodus expressed a deep positive relation to the culture of the foreign nation, a relation that allowed a manifest openness toward it and broad absorption of what it had to offer, bordering on linguistic and cultural assimilation: speaking and writing in Aramaic, adoption of the “square” Hebrew script, adoption of the yearly calendar as well as molds of legal thinking. Nevertheless, already in Ezra’s enterprise we see expressed a tendency to extreme segregation: not towards Babylonia and its culture, but towards the previous inhabitants of the land of Israel, including the Samaritans, who saw themselves as part of the same people that was returning to its land, the part that did not experience exile. Together with the extreme demand to receive the Torah that had been renewed in Babylonia and to internalize it in the people’s hearts as oral Torah, there was established the tendency to fixity, that sanctified this Torah as eternal, as if it had been given a second time by Ezra to his people, in the manner that Deuteronomy sanctifies Moses’ Torah as if it had been given to the people from his hand. The conflict with the “people of the land” strengthened these tendencies, and they increased in prospect of the next cultural conflict, that set the leadership of the people in the face of the critical challenge of yet another great 207

Chapter 4

culture, rich with high universal values and yet steeped in idolatry — the challenge of confrontation with the culture of Greece. The Jews of the land of Israel came under its rule after Alexander the Great conquered the land, and there began again the process of openness and receptivity for the sake of self-differentiation and segregation. The pattern of crisis and upheaval that repeated itself cyclically in a myriad of forms in Judaism’s encounter with the great cultures became the law of development and variation of the culture of the Jewish people throughout the generations. It continues to our time and is occurring today in all its power, marvelously creative and worryingly divisive, between the tendencies of openness and the tendencies of seclusion, between striving after the universal and dedication to the particular. And yet it is worth emphasizing again in the final statement the foundation that characterizes and unites these diverse tendencies, as they complement each other on the plane of their destiny: the obligation to a path of concrete implementation, a path that does not amuse itself with a vision of the future but demands its practical realization in the present. It is for this purpose that they are all directed — the absorption of universal values from the cultures of the nations, as well as the striving to differentiate and separate from them, as a people whose unique particular identity is embodied in realization of its universal destiny.

Index

A

Aaron Exodus, 1–2, 9, 11, 14–15, 17, 25, 27 Moses and, 86, 118 priests and justice system structure, 74, 75–76 Abel, egalitarianism, 138 Abihu, 9 Abraham, 25, 82, 90 Acquisition, gender relations, 155–166 Action, learning and, 133–135 Adaiah of Bozkath, 126 Adam and Eve, 43, 138, 143–144, 152, 180–188 Adonai-nissi (altar), 83 Adultery, gender relations, 156–162 Ahashuerus, 196 Amalek, 27, 83, 91, 95 Amorites, 192 Animals creation, 139–141 hierarchy, 145 sin, 146–147 Ark of Testimony Moses, 108 Tabernacle, 13 Ten Commandments, 37 Ark of the Covenant, 101, 102 Army composition of, 73–74 Joshua, 101–102, 104 national relations, 80–96, 189–208 priests and justice system structure, 76 Astarte, 84

209

Authority Deuteronomy, 97 freedom and justice, 36 priests and justice system structure, 72–80 Ten Commandments, 37–45 Torahitic law, 22–24 Autonomy, narrative and law, ix

B

Baal, 84 Babel. See Tower of Babel Babylonia, 96, 206, 207 Balaam, 89, 90, 91, 93, 97–98, 191, 193 Balak, 89, 90–91, 93 Bialik, Haim Nahman, viii Bible, stereotypes, vii–viii. See also Torah Bloodshed, creation, 139–140 Book of the Covenant (Mispatim), 42, 48–49, 64, 86 Bribery, judicial justice, 48

C

Cain and Abel, egalitarianism, 138 Caleb, 27, 74, 78 Canaan Deuteronomy, 122–123 Exodus, 2, 12, 27 Joshua, 101 national relations, 80–96, 196–197 religion of, 191–192 scouting of, 76–79, 85–86 warfare, 189–190 Capital punishment, 140 Choice, covenantal law, 36–37

Index Chosenness, national relations, 90 Christianity Mosaic law, 49 national relations, 205 Circumcision, Exodus, 4 Civil law Deuteronomy, 112–115 freedom and justice, 34–43 judicial justice, 45–54 Community, individual and, reciprocity, gender relations, 149–151 Courts. See Judicial justice Covenantal morality Ark of Testimony Moses, 108 Tabernacle, 13 Ten Commandments, 37 Ark of the Covenant, 101, 102 Book of the Covenant (Mispatim), 42, 48–49, 64, 86 choice, 36–37 Exodus, 5–6 freedom and justice, 34–45 gender relations, 145–146, 149–151 judicial justice, 45–54 Mount Sinai, 6–9, 31–33 national relations, 80–96, 200–208 Noahide covenant, 81, 90, 94, 138– 139, 189, 201–202 politics, 21 Sinaitic covenant God-human relationship, 26–27, 28 politics, 31–33 sovereignty, 7–9 statutory law and social justice, 66–72 Cover, Robert, viii–ix Covetousness, Ten Commandments, 43–44 Creation narrative. See also Genesis animals, 139–141 bloodshed, 139–140 covetousness, 43 ecology, viii freedom and justice, 34

210

gender relations, 138, 163–165, 179–188 hierarchy, 139–143, 147–148 judicial justice, 47, 53–54 justice, 54–60 social justice, 56–57 Cyrus (king of Persia), 96, 131, 132–133, 202

D

Daniel, 196 David, 107, 191 Davidic dynasty, 106–107 Death penalty, 140 Debt, social justice, 55–56 Democracy, Bible, vii–viii. See also Politics Deuteronomy, 1, 7, 28, 29, 41–42, 45, 48, 65, 67, 72, 73, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 89, 94, 95–96, 97–137. See also Oral Torah authorship and historical place of, 121–131 Ezra the Scribe, 131–137 gender relations, 157, 170, 172 legislative innovations in, 112–115 mythical and historical planes, 115–120 as Oral Torah, 108–112 slavery, 169 Differentiation, universalism and, 189– 208 Divine name. See also God-human relationship Deuteronomy, 122, 125, 127, 135 freedom and justice, 34–43 gender relations, 180–188 Joshua, 100, 103–104 judicial justice, 47, 48 kingship, 10, 11 Moses, 98–99, 109, 116, 136–137 national relations, 80–96, 194 neighborly love and poverty, 61– 62 priests and justice system structure, 72–80

Index Sinaitic covenant, 7–8, 26–27, 30–31 social justice, 54–60 sovereignty, 106–108 statutory law and social justice, 66–72 Tabernacle, 12, 112

E

Ecology, Creation narrative, viii Eden. See Garden of Eden Edom, 88, 91 Egalitarianism gender relations, 138–148 social justice, 57–59 statutory law and social justice, 66–72 Egyptian slavery. See also Slavery Abraham, 82 Deuteronomy, 134–135 idolatry, 22–24 judicial justice, 48 national relations, 93 Sabbath, 41–42 sin, 82, 83 social justice, 55 Eleazar, 75, 98–99, 104 Elijah, 84 Ephraim, 74 Esau, 89 Esther, 196 Ethics, poverty, 60–66 Eve, 43, 138, 143–144, 152, 180–188 Exodus gender relations, 155, 174 idolatry, golden calf, 15–18 judicial justice, 48 Moses, 109, 116–117 mythical and historical planes, 24–33 national relations, 93 neighborly love and poverty, 64 politics, 1–9 priests and justice system structure, 73 Eye for eye, judicial justice, 50 Ezekiel, 96, 117, 142

211

Ezra, 95 Ezra the Scribe, 131–137

F

Fairness, judicial justice, 48 Faith, Tabernacle, 13–15 Family, mother/wife status, gender relations, 176–179. See also Gender relations Fear of God, Ten Commandments, authority, 37–45 Fidelity, Ten Commandments, 43 Flood, 15, 84–85, 191 Fox, Everett, 158n9 Freedom Exodus, politics, 1–9 justice and, covenant, 34–45 Sinaitic covenant, 38 slavery and, 15–24

G

Garden metaphor, freedom and justice, 34–35 Garden of Eden, 15, 182–183, 186, 187– 188 Gender relations, 138–188 Bible, viii creation, 138, 163–165, 179–188 egalitarianism, 138–148 female autonomy, 172–176 hierarchy, 143–144, 151–155 ownership, 155–166 reciprocity, 149–151 sexuality, 151–154 slavery, 42, 166–172 wife/mother status, 176–179 Genesis, viii, 15, 43, 139, 146–147, 163, 175, 179–188. See also Creation narrative God-human relationship. See also Divine name authority, 22–24 creation, 141–142 death penalty, 140 Deuteronomy, 122, 134–135 Exodus, 5–6

Index gender relations, 152–164, 167–168, 180–188 hierarchy, 147–148 historical plane, 24–33 idolatry, 15–18, 191–192 Joshua, 100, 103–104 judicial justice, 47, 48, 53–54 kingship, 9–15 leadership, 26–33 Moses, 29–30, 98–99, 103–104, 109, 116, 136–137 narrative and law, ix national relations, 80–96, 194–208 priests and justice system structure, 72–80 Sinaitic covenant, 26–27, 36–45 social justice, 54–60 sovereignty, 7–9, 106–108 statutory law and social justice, 66–72 Tabernacle, 112–115 women, 172–176 Golden calf, idolatry, 15–18, 24–25, 29, 62, 75, 76, 99 Gomorrah, 25, 35 Goshen, 1 Government, priests, justice system structure, 72–80

H

Haman, 196 Hierarchy animals, 145 covenantal law, 36–37 creation, 139–143, 147–148 gender relations, 143–144, 151–155 Hilkiah, 126 Historical plane. See also Mythic plane Deuteronomy, 115–120, 121–131 judicial justice, 53 prophecy to wisdom, 24–33 sovereignty, 9–15, 100 Holiness Code, 65 Homicide. See Murder Hosea, viii, 147, 155 Hur, 11, 14–15, 27

212

I

Idolatry Canaanites, 88 dynamics of, 191–192 Egyptian slavery, 22–24 golden calf, 15–18, 24–25, 29, 62, 75, 76, 99 national relations, 90 Sinaitic covenant, 33, 38 Individual, community and, reciprocity, gender relations, 149–151 Isaac, 11–12, 25 Isaiah, 96, 117, 191 Isolation, national relations, 189–208 Israel, national relations, 80–96, 193– 208

J

Jacob, 25, 89 Jealousy gender relations, 156–162 Sinaitic covenant, 38–39 Jedidah, 126 Jephuneh, 74 Jeremiah, 96, 129–131, 202, 207 Jethro, 5–7, 28, 90, 191 Joshua, 9, 27, 29, 74, 78, 79, 80, 97–105, 107, 112, 124, 133–134 Josiah, 95, 126 Jubilee year, 67–72 Judah, 74 Judah Loew (Maharal) of Prague, 198n3 Judges, 102, 110 Judicial authority, Torah, 28–29 Judicial justice, covenant, 45–54 Justice. See also Law; Politics; Social justice creation, 54–60 freedom and, covenant, 34–45 judicial justice, covenant, 45–54 national relations, 93–94 priests, justice system structure, 72–80

Index

K

Kavod (presence, glory), God-human relationship, Moses, 29–30 Kings, 110 1 Kings, 84, 192 2 Kings, 130 Kingship. See also Leadership; Sovereignty covenantal law, 36–37 Deuteronomy, 108, 112–115, 124–129 messianism, 190–191 national relations, 189–208 Samuel, 106–107 sovereignty, 9–15 Korah, 27, 75

L

Land, Creation narrative, viii Language, Deuteronomy, 108–111, 121–131 Law. See also Justice; Politics Exodus, 4–9 freedom and justice, 34–43 gender relations, 155–166 judicial justice, 45–54 narrative and, viii–ix priests, justice system structure, 72–80 statutory law, 66–72 succession, 97–108, 112 Tabernacle, 13 Law of freedom. See Freedom Leadership See also Kingship; Sovereignty God-human relationship, 26–33 Joshua, 97–105 Moses, 19–21, 26, 30, 79–80, 89, 97– 105, 116–117 Learning, action and, 133–135 Legislative innovations, Deuteronomy, 112–115. See also Politics Levi, 94 Leviticus, 41, 52, 61, 62, 67–69, 73, 109, 117, 175 Lex talionis, judicial justice, 49 Love. See Neighborly love

213

M

Maharal (Judah Loew of Prague), 198n3 Malachi, 202 Manna, 5, 18 Marah, 4. See also Sea of Reeds Melchizedek, 191 Men. See Gender relations Men of the Great Synagogue, Deuteronomy, 131–137 Mesopotamia, 96 Messianism, kingship, 190–191 Midianites and Midian, 1, 89, 94, 95, 97 Miriam, 27, 174 Mishneh Torah, Deuteronomy, 108, 111. See also Deuteronomy Mishpatim (Book of the Covenant), 42, 48–49, 64, 86 Moab and Moabites, 89–90, 90–91, 97 Monarchy. See Kingship; Leadership; Politics Monotheism, national relations, 195, 196, 201 Moral obligation national relations, 93–94 Torah, 44–45 Mosaic law. See Torah Moses. See also Sinaitic covenant Aaron and, 86 army, 74 Deuteronomy, 108–115, 134, 135 Exodus, 1–9 historical plane, 24–33 idolatry, golden calf, 15–18, 75, 76–77 Joshua and, 97–105 Joshua compared, 103–105 kingship, 9–15, 37, 189–190 leadership, 19–24, 26, 30, 39, 79–80, 89, 97–105, 116–117 moral obligation, 93–94 national relations, 85–87, 192 neighborly love and poverty, 61 priests and justice system structure, 73, 75–80 sin, 97–98 social justice, 58

Index Mother/wife status, gender relations, 176–179. See also Gender relations Mount Ebal, 124 Mount Gerizim, 124 Mount Moriah, 11–12 Mount Nebo, 110 Mount Sinai Covenant, 6–8 Deuteronomy, 119–120 sanctity, 11–12, 13 Murder creation, 141–142 egalitarianism, 138–139 judicial justice, 50 Mythic plane. See also Historical plane Deuteronomy, 115–120 judicial justice, 53 prophecy to wisdom, 24–33 sovereignty, 9–15, 100

N

Nadab, 9 Narrative, law and, viii–ix National relations, 80–96, 189–208 Nebuchadnezzar (king of Babylonia), 96 Nehemiah, 131–137 Neighborly love, poverty, 60–66 Noah, 191 Noahide covenant, 81, 90, 94, 138–139, 189, 201–202 Numbers, 28, 58, 73, 75, 77, 78, 88, 89, 91, 92, 97, 99, 106, 109, 123, 159, 171, 172, 175, 192, 193, 203 Nun, 27, 74, 102

O

Oaths Adonai-nissi (altar), 83 Ten Commandments, 39 Og, 88–89, 95 Oral Torah. See also Deuteronomy Deuteronomy as, 108–112 mythical and historical planes, 115–120 narrative and law, ix

214

national relations, 107, 206 statutory law and social justice, 72 Ownership, gender relations, 155–166

P

Particularism, universalism and, 189– 208 Paschal sacrifice, Exodus, 3–4 Passover, Exodus, 3–4 Patriarchs, historical plane, 25 Pedagogy, Deuteronomy, 111 Persia, 96 Pharaoh, Exodus, 1–2 Philosophy, narrative and law, ix Phinehas, 75, 91–92, 93 Plato, ix Politics. See also Justice; Law Bible, vii–viii covenant freedom and justice, 34–45 judicial justice, 45–54 Deuteronomy, 109, 111–115 Exodus, 1–9 kingship, 9–15 priests, justice system structure, 72–80 slavery and freedom, 15–24 succession, 97–108, 112 Poverty, neighborly love, 60–66 Pregnancy, judicial justice, 50 Priests Deuteronomy, 125–126, 127–128 judicial justice, 50–51 justice system structure, 72–80 Property ownership, gender relations, 155–166 Prophecy Moses and Joshua, 100 wisdom and, mythic and historical planes, 24–33 Punishment Deuteronomy, 85 freedom and justice, 35–36 sin, 143–144 Ten Commandments, fear of God, 38

Index

R

Rashi, 50 Reciprocity, gender relations, 149–151 Retributive justice, judicial justice, 48–49 Reward Deuteronomy, 85 freedom and justice, 35–36 Ten Commandments, fear of God, 38

S

Sabbath Deuteronomy, 114–115, 135–136 Exodus, 5 priests and justice system structure, 73 social justice, 56 Ten Commandments, 39–43 Sabbath year, 67–72 Sacrifice Exodus, 3–4 Tabernacle, 13 Samuel, 76, 80, 95, 106–107, 110, 125, 190 Sanctification Deuteronomy, 123 Mount Moriah, 11–12 sacrifice, 13 Sarah, 25 Saul (king), 95, 107 Scribes, Deuteronomy, 131–137 Sea of Reeds, 4, 18, 48, 134–135 Second beginning, 15 Segullah. See Kingship; Politics Sexuality, gender relations, 151–154. See also Gender relations Shaphan, 126 Shechem, 89, 94 Shiloh, 101 Sihon, 88–89, 95 Simeon, 89, 94 Sin. See also Wilderness of Sin animals, 146–147 Davidic dynasty, 106–107 Egyptian slavery, 82, 83 Garden of Eden, 182–183, 187–188 idolatry, golden calf, 15–18, 24–25

215

judicial justice, 47 Moses, 97–98 punishment, 143–144 slavery and freedom, 15–24 Sinaitic covenant. See also Moses; Ten Commandments God-human relationship, 26–27, 28 politics, 31–33 sovereignty, 7–9 statutory law and social justice, 66–72 Slavery. See also Egyptian slavery gender relations, 166–172 law of freedom and, 15–24 national relations, 190 politics, 1–9 Sabbath, 41–42 Sinaitic covenant, 38 social justice, 55 Tabernacle, 14 Social justice. See also Justice creation, 54–60 egalitarianism and, statutory law, 66–72 Sodom, 25, 35 Solomon, 107, 191 Sovereignty. See also Kingship; Leadership historical plane, 9–15 Sinaitic covenant, 7–9 succession, 97–108, 112 Ten Commandments, 38–39 Spies, scouting of Canaan, 76–79, 85–86 Spinoza, vii Statutory law, social justice and egalitarianism, 66–72 Stereotypes, Bible, vii–viii Succession Deuteronomy, 112 law, 97–108

T

Tabernacle Ark of Testimony, 37 Deuteronomy, 112–115 kingship, 10–15

Index leadership, 27 priests and justice system structure, 73 Temple in Jerusalem, 191 Taxation, priests and justice system structure, 80 Temple in Jerusalem, 191 Ten Commandments. See also Moses; Sinaitic covenant authority, 37–45 covetousness, 43–44 creation, 141–142 Deuteronomy, 119–120 fidelity, 43 gender relations, 157 idolatry, golden calf, 16 Moses, 29, 31–33 national relations, 85 neighborly love and poverty, 61–62 Sabbath, 39–43 social justice, 54–60 Tabernacle, 13 Tent of Meeting, 28–29 Tests Garden of Eden, 182–183, 187–188 Moses, 3, 4 Sinaitic covenant, 25–26 Tabernacle, 14–15 Torah. See also Deuteronomy; Exodus; Leviticus; Numbers; specific other books Deuteronomy, 97–137 judicial authority, 28–29 judicial justice, 45–54 moral obligation, 44–45 national relations, 80–96, 190–192 neighborly love and poverty, 61–62 priests and justice system structure, 72–80

social justice, 54–60 statutory law and social justice, 66–72 stereotypes, vii–viii Tower of Babel, 15, 35 Truth judicial justice, 45–54 oaths, Ten Commandments, 39

U

Universalism, particularism and, 189– 208 Usury, neighborly love and poverty, 64–65

V

Vengeance Adonai-nissi (altar), 83 Midianites, 94 Violence, judicial justice, 49–50

W

Warfare. See Army Wife/mother status, gender relations, 176–179. See also Gender relations Wilderness of Sin, 18–19, 97–98, 109, 134–135. See also Sin Wisdom, prophecy and, mythic and historical planes, 24–33 Women. See Gender relations

Y

Year of Remission of Debts, social justice, 55

Z

Zechariah, 94 Zedekiah, 130 Zelophehad, 58 Zimri, 75, 91–92, 93