More on Temples and Tabernacles

In a previous post, I wrote:
 

So, we went to the Western Wall a few weeks ago for a friend's son's bar mitzvah and I felt like it was just another place. I contrasted the grandiosity of the Temples that stood there, huge monumental buildings, with the simplicity of a tent (i.e. the Mishkan, according to the Samaritans) stretched over the bare rock of Givat Olam. (Quoth Thoreau: "Our lives are frittered away by detail; simplify, simplify, simplify.") For me at least, the latter is a much bigger draw; I find the former off-putting. (Who needs the big, grandiose, colossal buildings? God or our us?)

 A few Shabbatot (Sabbaths) ago, we (Jews) read Exodus 25:1-27:19 in synagogue, including Exodus 25:8-9:

And let them make Me a sanctuary (mikdash), that I may dwell among them. According to all that I show you, the pattern of the tabernacle (mishkan), and the pattern of all the furniture thereof, even so shall you make it.
 

O'dox Judaism views these verses as the mitzvah to build the Tabernacle and its successor, the Temple[s]. Linguistically, mikdash is a general word here, while mishkan is the more specific term; I think this flows from the plain reading of the text. God's subsequent, very specific & detailed, instructions (Exodus 25:10-27:19) are about the Tabernacle (mishkan) only! Where does it say anything about building a (huge, grandiose & imposing) Temple? Ah, that's our O'dox interpretation based on our concept of the Oral Torah, Torah Sh'ba'al peh, which, I've come/am coming/ to the conclusion, can be made to say just about anything but which in this case (as in many others) assumes facts not in (the written) evidence.

I go back to the simplicity of a tent (i.e. the Tabernacle/Mishkan) stetched over the bare rock of Givat Olam. Worship God on this mountain!

Back to the House of Rimmon.

Sigh

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Mascara from Hell

I saw this (Satmar Rebbe Blames Cancer on Make-Up) in the Forward the other day. I don't know what's worse, that someone with enough Torah-learning to have acquired the title 'Rabbi" can actually spout such primitive rubbish or that the sheep who follow him actually believe it. Are they the same religion as me? In Deuteronomy 4:6, God bids us adhere to the Torah & its precepts, "for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, that, when they hear all these statutes, shall say: 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.'" Only when people see that the Satmar Rebbe blames cancer on cosmetics, they'll say 'Surely this nation is a bunch of fu--ing idiots." I love it (not) when the Torah is made into a thing to be mocked and jeered at. What a terrible desecration of God's Name! Like the Talmud says (Berachot 19b, to be precise), "Wherever the Name [God's] is desecrated, one does not honor the rabbi."

Aside #1: Having proudly served for 11 years in the IDF reserves and being the proud father of a 17-year-old who is in the process of registering for his eventual conscription into the IDF, I have zero sympathy for the Satmars' virulent anti-Zionism and xenophobia toward just about anyone who is not like them or pretty close to being like them. Too many centuries in exile, in the Diaspora, away from the Land of Israel our mother, physically and conceptually, has warped their view of Torah, as it has nearly all o'dox Jews, them worst of all.

Aside #2: The little (110 gram) container of local cottage cheese I had with my fresh fruit & veggy lunch has three kashrut certifications on it!

And o'dox Jews thing the Israelite Samaritans are weird??!!

The books that I ordered are still at my parents' house in the US. Mom is not doing so well & Dad hasn't gotten around to mailing them off. At least I know where they are & that they're not lost in the mail in transit somewhere.

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Good for Gital and what our rabbis do (or do not)

I see in today's New York Post that Gital Dodelson's now ex-husband finally gave her a get. That's another area in which I think we (o'dox) Jews have lost our way. That a recalcitrant husband can condemn his [ex-]wife to vitual slavery by witholding a get is male bovine excrement. A friend of mine, who is much more learned than I am, tells me that back in early Mishnaic times a beit din could, if the husband or wife was being recalcitrant, declare the marriage dissolved. As my Israelite Samaritan friends would say, where in the Torah is it written that a husband can extort a divorce from his wife? With them, while any cohen can officiate a wedding, only the Cohen Gadol can issue a divorce.

On another note, all of their cohanim (remember, the Israelite Samaritans never developed a lay rabbinate, their cohanim are their spiritual leaders and their spiritual leaders are their cohanim) work, even the Cohen Gadol. The previous Cohen Gadol, who passed away a few days before the Passover offering last year, was a nurse. I believe the present CG is a businessman. The CHship with them always passes to the eldest cohein who is capable of performing the office, so politicking (I should say, nauseating politicking of the kind that surrounded the recent elections of our 2 current chief rabbis) is basically nil.

I am waiting for the books I ordered to arrive. I hope that they haven't been lost somewhere between my parents' house in the US and here.

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Esau, the Second Son & Vashti

Esau gets a bum rap. Boy-oh-boy, do Chazal just love to pick on him! I heard an interesting dvar Torah once in which the speaker said that the Tanakh's two posterchildren for ADD/ADHD are Esau and David (who happen to be the only two personalities explicitly referred to as having ruddy complexions/being redheads). Esau, the man of the field (as opposed to his twin brother Jacob, the quiet man who dwelt in tents), is all restless action. The story of him, the lentil pottage & selling his birthright is very telling, ADD/ADHD-wise. Esau says, "'Behold, I am at the point to die; and what profit shall the birthright do to me?'" He was not about to die. Exaggeration & the use of superlatives in speech is characteristic of ADD/ADHD. Esau shows no regard for the future & is focused solely on gratifying his (exaggerated) need of the moment. Genesis 25:34 ("and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way. So Esau despised his birthright") loses something in the translation. In Hebrew, the five verbs here immediately follow eachother ("...vayachal, vayesht, vayakom, vayalech vayabez..."). Esau ate and drank until he was satiated, then rose and left. He was all verbs. It hit me a while back that his threat to kill Jacob (two chapters later) may have been/probably was his ADD/ADHD-typical florid speech, which he did not mean literally, but which Rebecca took literally, with all the fateful consequences. Our Sages, in the midrashic literature, love to come down on and demonize Esau. I wonder if the obvious rabbinical animus toward Esau is no more than the inability of our Sages, who were themselves quiet men who dwelled in tents, to understand this "man of the field." And what one cannot understand, one dumps on, of course. Which leads me to...

Chazal also love to beat up on the Second Son at the Seder, the so-called "Wicked Son". I'm more convinced than ever that he also gets a bad (and undeserved) rap, that the author of the Hagadah mapil alav tik (is framing him) as the Hebrew slang goes. I do not think that based on his question one can conclude with any degree of certainty that he is excluding himself from the whole. To do so, I think, is to assume facts not in evidence, and reflects more onn the baggage of the one doing the accusing. He asks a personal, intimate and out-of-the-box question that riles some people, the author of the Hagadah for one, who utterly misunderstand him and, of course, what one does not understand...(see above)

So, with any further ado...
_____

This is what you hurl at me?
I am not satisfied.
You neither understand nor see
and presume to be my guide?

Perchance I do not fit your mold
But that does not wicked make.
Nor does it cast me from the fold
My faith Hashem will take.

Set my teeth on edge you would?
Your stock phrases have no bite.
Complacent and untried you've stood
too long; will it end tonight?

I know what's on the pages
Please don't read it back
And neither quote the Sages
Take a different tack.

"What mean you by this service?"
My intention do not skew!
(Or do I make you nervous?)
The one excluded might be you.

Hamster-like, do you run the wheel
because it's all you know to do?
Tell me what you love and feel;
what does the service mean to you?

Which leads me to...
 
To complete the dumped-on trilogy, we've got Vashti, the malicious, evil bitch according to Artscroll, Aish Hatorah (at least their website), etc. I should add: Vashti, the monochrome, made-out-of-cardboard, malicious, evil bitch. (It always gets me about how certain folk, usually of the more orthodox/haredi bent, see the Tanakh as an adult version of a first grade reader, i.e. with everything and everyone simple & simplistic, and with shallow, uncomplex characters, who are more caricature than character. The Tanakh is the Book of Life & real life just isn't like that.) So...

Dance naked before a rabble of drunks

I said "Get lost!" the lousy skunks!

My "tail" was fine, that's what they wanted to see

I wouldn't be his toy, I wanted to be me.

 

What you see with me is what you get

I am an equal, not a pet

Daughter of kings, I won't be shut

Within the palace, that gilded hut.

But for some that's not cool

So they made me a freak, they made me a ghoul

With tzara'at, green skin, warts and a tail.

I want to scream, I want to wail!

Esther's their queen: Passive, demure

Manipulative, that's for sure.

She led Achash' with bit and bridle,

herself the perfect matinee idol.

They called me brazen, but that's absurd,

just because I won't follow the herd;

The scorned sister of the misunderstood son,

Why deal with a challenge you'd rather shun?

 

Do not consign me to the fringe

In your nice pat world, let me impinge

My heart is open to the One who sees,

I am Vashti; hear me please.

I think it's also characteristic of midrash that Chazal have to knock the "bad guys" (Esau, the Second Son, Vashti) in order to note the contrast with the "good guys" (Jacob, the Wise Son & Esther). This, of course, aside from being grossly unfair to the "bad guys" does no justice to the "good guys."

 

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II. Alphabet Soup

(...)

One can easily see that the Israelite Samaritans use a different script which is alot closer to the ancient Hebrew script, the so-called ktav Ivri. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 21b) records no less than three opinions on how the alphabet in which the Torah was originally written (they disagree on that too) was changed. This is a longer, more detailed article; this is a short-and-sweet bare bones summary. Who or what gave Ezra, or some other Sage, the right to change the alphabet?

So, I've come to the conclusion that the script of our version of the Torah is plenty suspect.

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I. Text Twist (not)

One of o'doxy's sacred cows that I've had to shecht over the past year or so is that "that the entire Torah that we now have is that which was given to Moses" (to quote item #8 from Maimonides' 13 principles).

Both we and the Israelite Samaritans claim that the other's version of the Torah is suspect and unreliable. I have discovered our notion of tikunei sofrim and done some research.

Look at the Rashi on Genesis 18:22.

What is a "scribal emendation" or, to use the Hebrew (singular), a tikun soferim?

Read here & here. 

Just like our Sages played fast and loose with calendar (fixing it so that, ferinstance, Yom Kippur will not fall on a Friday or Sunday; for the SIsraelite amaritans, if Yom Kippur falls on a Friday or Sunday, that's that and they deal with it), they have also, apparently, played fast and loose with the text of the Torah itself both in regard to "scribal emendations" and to the alphabet itself.

(...)