"A half-shekel by the sanctuary weight"

(Shemot 30:13)

 

In the midrashim are found several reasons for the [tribute of the] half-shekel, and I intend to add three more. The first - because the sin of the calf caused the breaking of the tablets into two, therefore must they donate a beka (half-shekel - beka means a break) which is a shekel broken in two. The second: inasmuch as this was atonement for the soul (kofer nefesh - literally "covering' or protection against punishment) and it is known that as far as the soul is concerned no person has any advantage over his fellow, because the vital soul is equal among all, and therefore rich and poor are equal in this atonement, and because every person is a whole shekel, and every half is included in the number 10, so calculated our sages of blessed memory (Niddah 31a) in their teaching that 'three are partners in the creation of Man; 10 parts come from the father and mother, and 10 are provided by God', hence a complete man is 20 gera (20 gera equals one shekel) and a half of him is an offering to God to atone for that part which is the soul...

God said that the atonement is mainly for the root, that is to say, for that component which was the cause of all these sins, and that was surfeit of gold and the coveting of money which led them to this sin, as the Sages taught (Yoma 81b) "and they made for themselves gods of gold" - Said Moshe before the Almighty: You caused them [to transgress] because of the abundance of gold which you showered upon them, etc. The explanation of this is, that because he gave them so much gold, they became covetous and their eyes could not be satiated, and they asked for it in the form of an ox … and they thought that the constellation Taurus grants wealth and will bestow upon them even more gold, as is written (Mishlei 14:4) "But a rich harvest comes through the strength of the ox". And because Joseph was the provider for all the land, he was called a "firstling bull". Therefore God commanded to give a half-shekel to atone for the craving for wealth, because one never has more than half, as the Sages taught (Kohellet Rabba 1;13) "If he has 100, he craves 200, and if he has 200 he craves 400, thus we find that one never has in hand more than half a shekel".

(Kli Yakar, Ibid. Ibid)

 

 

Chanting, explaining, concealing and revealing

Dalia Marx

The parasha 'Ki Tissa' relates one of the most embarrassing stories in the history of the young Israelite nation. After a chain of miraculous occurrences - the salvation of Israel from Egypt, the splitting of the Reed Sea, the provision of the manna, and then, after the founding event of the giving of the Torah at Sinai - the Children of Israel act with a lack of faith, fashion a golden calf, bow down to it, offer it sacrifices and even proclaim: "These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt" (Shemot 32:8). Harsh words are exchanged between God who wishes to annihilate the people in his anger, and Moshe who succeeds in deflecting the Lord's anger but smashes the Tablets of the Covenant in the presence of the calf ritual. The slaughter of three

thousand members of the nation quiets the divine fury, but the scars of the event remain etched in the national consciousness forever.

I propose to deal with the ways in which the Torah's expressions of censure of the Jewish people or its leaders are read and taught. Underlying the discussion are questions regarding the function of Torah reading. Is it just a ceremonial act? Is the purpose of the reading the learning of the past? In what way does it come to strengthen the people and to buttress its identification with its legacy? And what about problematic content such as that of story of the calf? What are the educational dimensions of this content? In other words, how are we to relate to those texts so difficult in terms of theology, ideology, values, and aesthetics?

First of all, we may assume that the Biblical text before us has undergone editing, some matters reaching stage front, while other remain behind the scenes. Hidden mechanisms oversaw the process of creating the Biblical canon. For example, the numerous stories about David reveal a modicum of censure of the important king, criticism which is not expressed directly but which peeps out between the slits (and even earned fascinating expressions in modern literature. In this context it is advisable to also consider which texts were privileged to enter the Biblical canon, which gained entry only after controversy - for instance, the Scroll of Kohellet and the Esther Scroll - and which remained outside. What can be learned from Chazal's complex position regarding those external books? In the following line we deal with methods of coping with uncomfortable issues in the Bible.

One method of coping with embarrassing phrases is to replace them with 'laundered' language:

The Rabbis taught: All offensive texts written in the Torah are to be read as praise, such as: 'yishgalenah' (will ravish her) is to read aloud as 'yishkavenah' ('will lie with her') (Devarim 28:30); for 'ba'afalim' ("with posteriors") read   ba'tehorim' (hemorrhoids); for 'heryonim' (dove's dungs) read 'divyonim' (decayed leaves) (II Kings 6:27); for 'to eat their hareyhem' (excrement) and to drink 'meymey shineyhem' (waters of their teeth), read 'to eat their tsoah' (deposits) and to drink 'meymey ragleyhem' (waters of their feet' (ibid.28:27); for l'merhaoth' (privies), read 'l'motzaoth' (retreats) (ibid.10:27) .(Bavli, Megillah 252 and also Tosefta Megilla 4, 39, Translation from Soncino edition)

In most editions of the Tanakh, the 'tainted' word itself (the k'tiv - "as written") appears in the text, whereas the replacement which is to read aloud (kri - "as is voiced") appears in the margins. The offensive word is never expunged from the holy text, but it is not voiced in public.

Tanaic literature presents another technique for coping with troublesome texts:

"Some are read and explained, [some are] read and not translated, [some are] neither read nor translated" (Tosefta, Megillah 3, 31)

As is known, the Torah was read aloud in the synagogue in the original Hebrew, and clarified on the spot in Aramaic, the lingua franca in the days of Chazal. These were the words which were 'read and explained', namely the major part of the text. The Mishna, the Tosefta and the Bavli, offer lists of texts which are to be read but not to be explained:

Reuven's action is to be read but not translated:

Tamar's action is to be read and translated:

The first story of the calf is to be read and translated

And the second one is to be read but not translated. (Mishnah Megillah 4:10)

The ritual public reading of these texts establishes their presence in the life of the synagogue, but refraining from translating them prevents their comprehension by most of the people. Each the aforementioned texts requires a separate discussion; we will concern ourselves briefly with the story of the calf which appears in our parasha. The Mishna differentiates between "the first story of the calf" and "the second story". The Talmud explains: "What is the second story of the calf? From "And Moses said" (Shemot 32:21) until "And Moses saw" (ibid. 25). This is to say that the story of the making of the calf, its worship and the smashing of the tablets are not censored, they are read and translated, but the tough discussion between Moshe and Aharon is not explained. Moshe asks: "What has this people done to you, that you brought upon it great offense?" and Aharon answers, "Let not my lord's wrath flare. You yourself know that this people is in an evil way (Alternate translation: "in a bad state")… And they gave [the gold] to me and I flung it into the fire, out came this calf." (ibid.22-24). In other words, the sin which caused the silencing of the story is not the story itself but its telling.

In his explanation of the discussion in the Bavli, Rashi holds that the description "And I threw it into the fire and out came this calf" is liable to imply that "there is substance to false worship", and indeed the Talmud, basing itself on this passage, states: "One must always be careful in wording his answers, because on the grounds of Aharon's answer to Moses, the unbelievers were able to deny [God]" (Ibid.) In contrast, the Tosafists, opining that the refraining from interpretation was out of respect for Aharon, accept the words of the Jerusalem Talmud: "The public shaming of an individual cannot be compared with the public shaming of a public." (Megilla 4, 10; 74:3). Or perhaps someone thought that the repetition of Aharon's story might imprint itself upon one's consciousness more than Aharon's report itself. The silencing of the story (and not the event itself) teaches that speaking about something may sometimes have more effect than that something itself.

A third - and more far-reaching - way for coping with embarrassing matters in the Bible is the ruling not to read them publically at all:

The Priestly Benediction and the story of David and Amnon, are neither read nor translated.

We do not read the Chariot portion for Maftir; Rabbi Yehudah permits it.

Rabbi Eliezer says, we do not read for Maftir "Proclaim Jerusalem['s abominations]" (Mishna, ibid)

We cannot know what the exact criteria for exclusion of some passages from public reading are, while others, which also have an embarrassing or troublesome dimension, are dealt with in this context. For example, the denunciation of Jerusalem in Ezekiel 16 ("Proclaim Jerusalem") is not to be read, but the censure of Jerusalem and Shomron in Ezekiel 23 is not banned. Many explanations are suggested for the prohibition against the reading of the Priestly Benediction - the most refined and pure blessing in our tradition--but we feel none of these really solve our problem.

In this case the changes are not out of aesthetic considerations, such as the kri-ktiv changes. There is also no limitation on exposure only to those fluent in Hebrew, the more educated, so we may rightly assume that that they knew how to cope with the complexity of the text. In this case there is total refraining from presentation of these passages in the ceremonial and public dimension of reading the holy texts.

Another method employed by Chazal in dealing with problematic texts is reinterpretation.( *For a survey of various interpretations see: Moshe Zipor, "The Blessing of the Priests Is Not Read and Not Translated?" Textus, 24 (2009) pp. 221-238) Such is the case in the section enumerating Biblical figures presented by the Tanakh as flawed characters:

Said R' Shmuel bar Nahmani in the name of R' Yonatan: Whoever claims that Reuven sinned is but mistaken... Whoever claims that the sons of Eli sinned is but mistaken… Whoever claims that the sons of Shmuel sinned is but mistaken... Whoever claims that David sinned is but mistaken... Whoever claims that Solomon sinned is but mistaken... Whoever claims that Yoshiyahu sinned is but mistaken. (Bavli,Shabbat 55b-56b)

On the level of pshat (plain-reading) this section deals with the progeny of great personalities (Reuven, the sons of Eli, the sons of Shmuel) and with important kings of the Davidic dynasty. It acquits them of the severe guilt ascribed to them, and teaches that their transgression was considerably less serious than one might conclude from explicit texts. Reuben, for example, is cleared of the guilt of incest with his father's concubine, and is accused only that "he removed her couch, and Scripture stigmatized his action as heinous as though he had lain with her".

Only the third method, the refraining from reading certain texts, forswears parts of the culture and conceals them, even though they remain in the Biblical canon. The other methods actually call attention to the problematic text, perhaps even more than if it were read without special treatment; if problematic words are 'cleaned up' in marginal notes of the Chumash, the reader is encouraged to check out the uncensored version; if a particular portion is not explained, the result is special attention; citation of the names of Biblical personalities together with the claim that they did not sin, accompanied by a deep and detailed discussion of the transgression they did not commit, raises the (seemingly?) rejected accusation to the reader's consciousness and highlights its presence for the student and reader.

How much human effort is spent in avoiding coping with that which arouses anxieties and threatens. But the Torah does not recoil from laying before us a rich human picture of the great and the commonplace, of courage and cowardice, of vision and pettiness, unafraid to deal with their revelations. It seems to me that Chazal, too, did not want to hide the troublesome texts. Perhaps they actually wished to arouse curiosity about the unexplained texts or about the character whose behavior is not free of criticism, or to show - by presenting the differences of the kri and the ktiv - that there is more than one way of saying something. Perhaps the goal of 'silencing' a certain text is actually to accentuate its place in the dialogue.

Dr. Dalia Marx teaches Liturgy and Midrash at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.    Her book "When I Sleep and When I Wake: On Prayers Between Dusk and Dawn" was recently issued by Yedioth Sepharim.                       

 

 

They said: These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of the Land of Egypt.

(Shemot 32:3-4)

 

These are your gods Israel who brought you up -        Were they then fools who did not know that this calf which was created today did not bring them up out of Egypt? But all those who worship falsely know well that our God in heaven created the worlds, but this then was their mistake, that [they believed that] the idols possess a spirit of impurity, just as the prophets have the holy spirit, and they thought that the calf who spoke with the spirit of impurity spoke with the holy spirit from above, and therefore they said "These are your gods Israel who brought you up", that is to say it possesses a holy spirit and this holy spirit leads us... and in order to try Israel he gave it the impure spirit of sorts of witches. And he gave the inquirer of ghosts or of familiar spirits power to deny the celestial company of above and to foretell the future, to know if they will be whole with the Lord their God and there will not be among them neither soothsayer nor diviner nor sorcerer, nor believer in signs or omens as among the prophets of the impure spirit, as is written 'because the Lord your God will be trying you to know whether you love the Lord your God…"

(Rashbam, Shemot 32:4)

 

These are your gods Israel - There is none so foolish in the world as to believe that this gold which hung from their ears until today and was fashioned into a calf is he who delivered them from Egypt, but they said that the power of this form and the spirit in it brought them up from there.

(R' Isaac Shmuel Reggio, ibid. ibid.)

 

Rise up and make for us a god which will go before us - They presumed that Moses had had an accident and was dead, and so they asked Aharon to give them a "Moses" whom they could not lose,. But that they had the idea at all, that for them to have an assured future had to had to be linked with the presence of a "Moses", and the erroneous idea that Man can make, may make, must make a "Moses" for himself, these are just the conceptions which are diametrically opposite to the fundamental Jewish idea of God, and of the mutual relationship between God and Man.

(R' Shimshon Rafael Hirsch, Shemot 32:1, Trans. By Isaac Halevy)

 

And no man shall go up with you: The first tables which were given amidst noise and alarm, and in the presence of a vast assembly proved abortive... there is nothing better than modesty.

(Rashi, Shemot 34:3)

 

Midrashei tsafon - from the pen of Ronen Ahituv

"That Moshe delayed…" (32:1)

Inasmuch as they had been told the parasha of Shabbat, Israel said: Moshe is like our god. About this one (God) Scripture says "that in six days" (32:17), and about this one (Moshe) it says "that Moshe delayed" ["in six" and "delayed" are both spelled with the consonants B'Sh'Sh' - and, lacking vowels, can be read alike] Do not read 'Boshesh ("delayed") but rather B'shesh ("in six"). About this one it is written "who took you out of the land of Egypt (20:2) and this one took us up from Egypt, for it is written "And sent a messenger and brought us out of Egypt.'(Bemidbar 20:16). And from where do we know that they said so? For it says "This man Moshe who brought us up from the land of Egypt ..."

They said: Moshe is a man and a god. We do not want a god-man, as is written "God is not a man" (Bemidbar 23:19) They came to Aharon and said, "Rise up and make us a god."

 

 

 

 

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