You shall make a breast piece of judgment, worked into a design make it in the style of the ephod, make it in the style of the ephod, of gold, blue, purple, and crimson wool, and twisted fine linen shall you make it.

(Shemot 28:15)

 

You shall make a breast piece of judgment, worked into a design - Scripture mentions design only with regard to the ephod and the breast piece, because it denotes that the atonement it grants is for a private sin in which thought is equivalent to action. This exists only in the case of avoda zara - idolatry - as explained above with reference to the ephod; the breast piece atones for perversion of judgment, for judgment is determined by the heart of the judge, for the judge has only that which his eyes see, and it is in his power to call right left and left right, depending upon the case and the person and the times and the place, and if the judge says that this is the way he sees it. Who can contradict him other than God alone, who investigates the hearts of men? Therefore the breast piece was worn on Aaron's heart, for judgment is assigned to the heart, and therefore it was a creation of design to atone for the thoughts of the judge [In Hebrew "design" and "thought" are related] as is written; a breast piece of design; make it in the style of the ephod, to teach that perversion of judgment is the equivalent to idolatry, as the Sages said, "Appointment of a dishonest judge is equivalent to planting an asheira - a tree used in idolatry" (Sanhedrin 7). That is why it says that the breast piece of judgment which atones for [the sins of] judges will be in the style of the ephod, which atones for idolatry. Similarly, the Sages expounded upon the verse, You shall not make [images of anything that is] with Me. Gods of silver, saying it refers to an immoral judge (J. Bikkurim 3:3), because the principle part of that sin is also dependent upon the judge's thoughts, as it is written, the thoughts of the righteous are just (Proverbs 12:5). For they are perfect in justice also as regards their thoughts, and this is fourfold: Each judge has to be perfect in the four things listed in the verse, But you shall choose out of the entire nation [men of substance, God fearers, men of truth, who hate monetary gain] (Shemot 18:21), and it is doubled, for his sin is doubled, for he injures this one monetarily and the other spiritually [because the latter] will possess his fellow's property illegally. This is the conclusion of the midrash (Eikha Rabbah 1:57): they sinned twice over and were punished twice over, because they sinned in corrupting judgment, as it is written, in which righteousness would lodge,[ but now murderers] (Isaiah 1:21), and they sinned with idolatry, for that is also a double sin, as it is written, They left Me, a source of living waters, to hew for themselves broken cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13). All of this teaches us the similarity of corruption of judgement to idolatry; that is why the breastplate was made in the fashion of the ephod, a zeret long, because corruption of judgment causes destruction of the world, but when it is reformed, that is as if one has been made a partner to the Holy One, blessed be He, in the work of Creation, for regarding these it says, [ Who measured water with his gait,] and measured the heavens with his zeret (span), [and measured by thirds the dust of the earth, and weighed mountains with a scale and hills with a balance?](Isaiah 40:12).

 (Kli Yakar, Shemot 28: 15)

 

 

Purim's Unacceptable Mask

Mordechai Beck

The desire for revenge is compelling yet just as equally circular, endless and invariably self-defeating. In the Bible, its roots lead us back to Cain's slaughter of Abel. Although the rabbis offer at least three reasons for this first fratricide - economic competition, ideology and sexual jealousy (Bereishit Rabbah 22) - in the final resort, nothing really justified it, the reasons coming as an afterthought because we - the readers - cannot accept that such an act has no motivation, let alone justification.

In the Scroll of Esther, revenge is a powerful theme, but just as clearly one that leads to confusion and tragedy. At the very outset, King Ahashuerus would have his royal anger vented on his stubborn wife Vashti for refusing to appear before him and his merry guests (1:12-22). But no sooner has his will been done - either by divorcing the lady or, if the rabbis are to be believed, her execution - than the king's anger subsides and he regrets his earlier decision. Unfortunately for him, he finds there is no way back. Even God cannot change the past; how much more so a king of flesh and blood.

Haman's rage at Mordechai's refusal to bow down to him - the newly appointed Prime Minister - bursts with such fury that instead of wishing revenge on just one man, he immediately seeks to destroy the entire people from whom this obdurate protester springs. (Esther 3: 1-7). Interestingly, Rashi explains here that Haman considered himself as a god; his rage was thus compounded by being a jealous deity.

However, the text informs us, that this hatred is not merely a personal whim, but has historical roots. For Haman is "the son of Hamdata the Agagite" (ibid 3:1) thus linked to the enemy of Saul and, further back yet, to the vicious Amalek who attacked the recently released Israelite slaves from Egypt. It is these Amalekites who provide the halachic basis for the festival of Purim, since the Torah itself commands the Children of Israel "to remember the Amalekites... and you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under the skies" (Exodus 17: 8-16; Deuteronomy 25: 17-19). According to this, the whole basis for recalling Purim reeks of revenge, if not indeed of genocide.

All these examples of revenge culminate in the plot by Haman to destroy the Jews, a plot that is uncovered at the last moment through the dramatic interventions of Mordechai and Esther.

However, immediately after this, the Jews themselves are caught up in an act of revenge, unparalleled since their decimation of the Canaanites in the time of Joshua: "And in the capital city of Shushan, the Jews murdered 500 men." (Esther 9: 6), "and also the ten sons of Haman" (ibid 12). "And the Jews assembled on the 14^th of the month of Adar and killed in Shushan 300 men but took no spoil. And the rest of the Jews who were in the king's dominions assembled and defended themselves and gained respite from their enemies and slew 75,000 of those that hated them, but took no spoils." (ibid. 16-17).

Such a response may be considered natural and possibly inevitable. The rabbis seek solace in the historical parallel with Amalek. Just as the memory of Amalek had to be wiped out for its cowardly and unprovoked act so, too, must the Children of Israel learn to respond appropriately. Indeed, the result of weakening one's resolve on this issue - as with king Saul, when he refused to kill Agag the descendent of Amalek (Sam.1: 15: 4-35) - has dire consequences. Martin Buber could never reconcile himself to this response, opining that Samuel had simply misunderstood God's word. Contrariwise, a midrashic tradition states that if you show mercy to the cruel, you will invariably end up being cruel to the kind. (Kohelet Rabbah 7:36)

Another way the sages responded to the Scroll of Esther was to ignore it. According to Dr Elhanan Reiner of Alma and Tel Aviv University's Jewish History Department, rabbinical commentary on Megilat Esther is uncharacteristically sparse, especially chapter nine, which focuses on the Jews' revenge on their enemies. "This is a sign," says Dr Reiner, "that the rabbis were uncomfortable with the subject, and sought to ignore or neutralise it."

Even latter commentators - including the medieval ones - are almost totally quiet on this ninth chapter. Was it a question of not wishing to excite their non-Jewish neighbours in the Diaspora? Was their own silence a parallel to God's hiddenness in the scroll itself?

Among the hassidic masters, most rely on the well worn Amalek-Haman nexus. Yet, occasionally, there is a comment that addresses the specific issue of revenge. In his book Tiferet Shlomo, Rabbi Dov Zvi HaCohen makes a distinction between simple evil and that of Amalek. The former, whatever its appearance, always contains some 'holy spark' - usually a reference to the sparks of holiness that fell from the cosmic 'breaking of the vessels' at the beginning of time. Whatever alien body they fell into, these sparks always yearn to attach themselves to something holy. By contrast, Amalek possesses no such sparks. They are pure evil, exhibiting no desire whatsoever to connect themselves to the sacred. The Jews of Shushan thus not only wiped them out but also refused to touch their possessions or take spoils, which would surely contain spiritually contagious material.

This theory of radical evil is highly provocative. There is even a certain attraction in knowing that absolute evil exists, totally devoid of human feeling, and that it is incumbent on the rest of humanity to uproot and destroy it. Moreover, something so obvious is presumably easy to recognise. Reality, however, is often far more complex than such black and white assumptions. It is easier to speak of evil in the abstract than to know how to react to it in real life. For response to evil reflects not only on the carrier of the evil but also on those who would extinguish it, on whatever grounds.

Closer to our own day, Michael Elkins in his book "Forged in Fury" describes the activities of the acronymous group DIN which carried out acts of revenge against known Nazis and their collaborators in the debris of post-Holocaust Europe. However, their most daring plan - to poison the water of a major German city containing 1,380,000 men, women and children (with the tacit help of the then retired chemist Chaim Weizmann) was scratched at the last minute, apparently by the Haganah.

If this story is true - and there is much evidence to suggest that it is - then it shows that some Jews at least learnt the lesson of their own history, and were more concerned for their own integrity than teaching their mortal enemies a lesson.

Interestingly, in the story of Esther each instance where a decision about revenge is to made the individual making it - Ahasueras, Haman or Mordechai (1:16-22; 3:9; 5:14; 9:14) seek confirmation from some outside source - the king's adviser's, Haman's wife or Ahasueras himself. Even the most devious of politicians seek some outside authority - some wise man or adviser - to justify their deeds.

If all this were confined to a Biblical story, this would be a mere abstract discussion. But the fact that it is Biblical ensures that its impact reaches across the generations, with different people learning different lessons from it. In his book Jewish Renewal for example, the contemporary thinker, Michael Lerner observes that since 1994, Purim has taken on a far more ominous meaning. On that Purim, Dr Baruch Goldstein entered the mosque inside the cave of Machpela and gunned down 29 praying Moslems. Noting that the extremists who supported this act quoted precisely the passages about Amalek and chapter 9 of the scroll of Esther, he observes that the Biblical passage "does not order the blotting out of Amalek but only the memory of Amalek. And where does that memory live? Precisely in our tendency to act out on others what was done to us... Torah seeks to make the unconscious conscious by instructing us to remember what happened to us so we don't act it out unconsciously. The point of remembering is to disentangle us from the pain and thus to ‘blot out the memory.' The memory remains with us as long as it is unconsciously shaping our actions."

Professor Lerner's psychological analysis of revenge powerfully echoes those of Rambam (Sefer HaMitzvot) who emphasizes that the "remembering" is to be expressed in words, and the "not forgetting" in the heart. Rabbi Shimson Raphael Hirsch, too, in his comments on the Amalek passages in the Bible, interprets the remembering of Amalek as meaning never repeating his cruelty.

The tension between these interpretations and day-to-day realities, especially in Israel, help explain why the late Professor Nehama Leibowitz, the great Bible pedagogue, was able to say of Amalek, that it was "the most difficult passage in the Bible. And woe to the teacher whose students do not read this passage in trepidation!"

The Megilah appears to show a sharp distinction between fate and eternal recurrence and free will. While much of our lives are determined by forces outside our control, it suggests that we are just as capable of exercising free choice, if we wish to do so.

The Mei Marom (Rabbi Yaacov Moshe Harlap) observes that the Megilah demonstrates that ultimately there is no difference between these forces, and that what appears to be fate and chance is in fact divine providence, even if its roots are as hidden and inscrutable as the laws that govern human love and hatred.

Mordechai Beck, an artist and writer, lives in Jerusalem

 

The Indwelling of the Divine Presence Reflects Human Attitudes Towards God

One man used to say: When our love was strong, we could lie together on the edge of a sword; now that the love between us has weakened, a bed 60 cubits wide is insufficient for us. Rav Huna said: This idea is found in Scripture. In the beginning it is written, I will arrange My meetings with you there, and I will speak with you from atop the ark cover (Shemot 25), and we learned that the Ark was nine handbreadths, and the cover one handbreadth, making a total of ten, but [later] it is written, And the house which king Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof (was) sixty cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits (I Kings 6). And in the end it is written, So says the Lord, "The heavens are My throne, and the earth is My footstool; which is the house that you will build for Me, etc.? (Isaiah 66).

(Sanhedrin 7a)

 

To raise up an eternal lamp

This terminology for the lighting of the lamp appears in the Bible only in reference to the service of the menorah. The language is precise, for the mitzva is to light the wick "until the fire burns on its own" (Shabbat 21), meaning: The task of the Torah teacher is to make himself superfluous! The priest should not place the laity in a status of perpetual dependency upon him. From this we hear a warning to teachers and student to practice mutual patience and forbearance.

(Rabbi S. R. Hirsch on Shemot 27:21)

 

Or [leather] and Or [light], Clothing and Culture: Make Holy Clothing

Clothing is not only protection against cold, is not only decoration, it is the first and essential distinguishing factor of human society; it is - in man's moral sensitivity - man's superiority over the beast. The rank and honor of man are recognized by the signs attached to his clothes. Clothing is an expression of respect for Man. The priests were given special clothing, for dignity and adornment.

...In His glory, God gave man and his wife garments and dressed them. Thus we are told that a garment is not only a consensual convention; it is an addition to the act of creation, a kind of second skin given man, a more noble sort of physicality. How beautiful is Rabbi Meir's teaching comparing man to his Creator: "Garments of light - [The Hebrew for "skin" sounds very much like the Hebrew for "light"] - for in reference to The Holy One, Blessed Be He, it is written: He wraps Himself in light as in a garment (Psalms 104:2)" (Bereishit Rabbah, 20:29).

(From Benno Jacob's commentary on Bereishit, quoted by Nehama Leibowitz, z"l)

 

Rava asked: Which takes precedence, reading the Megillah or [burying a] meit mitzvah [a deserted corpse]? Does reading the Megillah take precedence because it involves the publicizing of the miracle, or does meit mitzvah take precedence because of [concern for] human dignity?

After asking the question, he answered it himself: Meit mitzvah takes precedence, for the sage said: Great is human dignity which overrides a Torah prohibition.

(Megillah 3b)

 

 

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