April angst

Well, our faux Passover has come & gone. I had hoped to be able to go up to Aargareezem to pick some of the wild lettuce that the Israelite Samaritans use for the bitter herb but we were very busy at home & my wife would not, I think, have approved. The boys, who were home, would have asked questions that I would prefer not to answer. The wild lettuce grows just about everywhere in Israel but how spiritual would that be? From Aargareezem it would have been very spiritual and the local stuff would have been a pale imitation. So horseradish it was.

 

It will be easier to go up to the Mountain late this summer, before our "Rosh Hashanah", like I did last year. Our eldest boy will be in the IDF & our youngest will be back in school.

 

I am counting the omer because I am frequently called upon to lead the Saturday evening prayers at our synagogue & when our youngest son is home my wife likes me to count with him. Each night I say to myself before I count I that I am doing so under compulsion.

 

The Israelite Samaritans will begin counting on Saturday night, May 9, I believe. I have asked my IS friend how I must count & what I must say.

 

I finished Gerald Russell's book. Very good, all chapters. I detected one mistake. Mr. Russell wrote that the Israelite Samaritans believe that the Torah was given on Aargareezem not Mt. Sinee. I read where he referred to the Sullivans. What a pity that things did not work out for them. I must admit that I fantasized about Mr. Russell referring to me, the Israelite Jew who became an Israelite Samaritan. May it be Shema's will!

 

I wish everyone a happy & healthy new year. May Shema shower His blessings on you!

February ramblings

I've posted what I think about Esau, that he gets a bum rap, & how I think that our Jewish Sages love to demonize him. I asked my Israelite Samaritan friend how Ishaab (to use the IS style) is seen by the IS community. He replied, "As holy as his brother, seeker of peace and pampered by the Almighty, so human and so compassionate." How wonderful!

I saw a review of Gerald Russell's book "Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East" & ordered the book. I had it shipped to my parents in the US & Dad forwarded it to me here. I am almost finished with the first two chapters, on the Mandeans & the Yazidis. I am reading the chapters in order & will get to the (5th) chapter on the Israelite Samaritans eventually. It is a very good read so far. My IS friend said it is "good and accurate."

I first became aware of the "Samaritans" way back after my (Conservative) bar mitzvah. I received from the synagogue a Hertz chumash which I still have (actually I have my brother's; maybe he has mine?) In his commentary on Genesis 49:7, Yaaqob is giving his blessing to Shehmoon and Libee. The Masoretic Text version reads: "Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath for it was cruel; I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel." The Hebrew for "Cursed" is arur. Rav Hertz writes in his commentary: "It is characteristic of the untrustworthiness of the Samaritan Text that instead of the reading arur, 'Cursed be their anger,' it has adir, 'How splendid is their anger!'" The IS Version of the Torah reads "Great is their anger, for it is strong, and their wounding, for it is so hard. I will disperse them in Yaaqob and scatter them in Yishraael."

His sneering condescension aside, I think that Rav Hertz completely misreads the Israelite Samaritan version. Adir also means great or mighty, which is clearly the meaning it has in the Israelite Samaritan version. I don't get that Yaaqob is praising or commending his sons' anger at all. Otherwise he would not "disperse them in Yaaqob and scatter them in Yishraael." That Yaaqob wasn't praising their anger is also obvious from Genesis 49:6, which reads not all that differently in the two versions. The Jewish version reads: "Let my soul not come into their council; unto their assembly let my glory be united; for in their anger they slew men, and in their self-will they houghed oxen." The Israelite Samaritan version reads: "In their secret my soul will not be involved, and in their assembly my honor will not be angry; Because in their anger they slew men. And in their will they lamed an ox."

So until I discovered the Israelite Samaritans and their version of our faith, I would read Rav Hertz every year and think "Those poor benighted Samaritans..."

A few Shabbats ago at our synagogue, as we were waiting for 10 men to show up so we could say the afternoon prayers, the discussion turned to whether Jews should or should not go up to the Temple Mount. The guys looked at me and I said that I don't go up there. I wanted to shout, "BECAUSE IT IS NOT THE HOLY PLACE CHOSEN BY GOD!!! THAT IS AARGAREEZEM!!!"

But I didn't. Shouting rarely does any good.

In Exodus 24:7, the Jewish Masoretic Text says, "...we will do and we will hear," whereas the Israelite Samaritan Text says, "...we will hear and we will do." Our Jewish Sages make such a big deal that we declared that we would do God's words even before understanding ("hearing") them & that without doing there can be no understanding. Now that I think about it, I think our reading makes little sense. How can we do God's words if we do not know what they are & what God in fact wants?

Ramp (not Stairway) to Heaven

We (my wife and I) went to the Western Wall for a bar mitzvah this past Monday morning & I felt the nothing that I have felt there previously. I didn't touch it & didn't feel the slightest inclination that I should. I said the IS prayers that I say every day & recited the Shma in IS mode as I now do. What an irony - the would-be Israelite Samaritan praying at the Western Wall.

 

The Shabbat afternoon before last, at the lesson that the Rabbi always gives over the third Shabbat meal at our synagogue, we discussed this classic Chassidic text, specifically the last paragraph. Where the English in the link uses the word "level", the original Hebrew (the lesson was in Hebrew) uses the word madrega, which can mean "level" but it is also the modern Hebrew word for "step" as in to go up or down steps (but not to take a step). An insight just came to me & I said that the problem with that text is that the Torah never talks about steps, only ramps. True Torah spirituality is not akin to going up (or down) steps, but a ramp. I cited Exodus 20:22 (see parallel Hebrew & English texts): "Neither shalt you go up by steps to Mine altar, that your nakedness not be uncovered thereon." From this, the Rabbis taught that the priests went up to the altar via a ramp. (Click here.) What "nakedness" is the Torah talking about here? It cannot be, I said, actual nakedness because the priests wore short pants (i.e. "linen breeches", Exodus 28:42) specifically to cover their nakedness! I said that I heard once that Exodus 20:22 must be referring to spiritual nakedness, i.e. that of going up a step and stopping as it were on one's spiritual journey to get closer to God. When it comes to such a spiritual journey one is either ascending or descending, going forward or going back, there is no standing in place, which steps would allow you to do. And standing in place on a ramp is much more difficult than on steps (try it without a pronounced lean). I said that the Chassidic text's use of a steps analogy is faulty; it should have used a ramp.

 

Why am I telling you all this? What I didn't say at the lesson at the synagogue is that I think classical rabbinic (orthodox) Judaism is like steps but that the Israelite Samaritan (version of our) faith is like a ramp and, therefore, closer to the Torah. One can rest, possibly for a long time, on steps as one climbs. There can be landings on the way. These stops & halts can facilitate change. Look at how classical rabbinic Judaism has changed and evolved over the centuries and millenia. Extra books (the non-Torah parts of the Tanakh, which is what we call what Christians call the "Old Testament") were added on. We built Temples. Then we developed a non-priestly clergy (i.e. the rabbis), then we articulated an Oral Torah, which eventually gave rise to the Mishna & Talmud. Then the Chassidic movement was born. All of these developments were made possible, or at least facilitated, through classical rabbinic Judaism's step-by-step (every pun intended) progress up historical/spiritual steps. (And remember, steps are alien to the Torah.) The Israelite Samaritan (version of our) faith has, by contrast, changed but very little over the centuries. Because its spiritual journey has been up a (Torah-true) ramp, where it is much harder to stand in place to stop and refit for long, its history has been marked by an enduring sameness. There's a famous rabbinical legend in the Talmud (Tractate Menachot) that God plopped Moses down in Rabbi Akiva's study hall one day & Moses was quite bewildered & didn't understand what Rabbi Akiva & his students were talking about. I would venture that if, say, Moses, as the ISs understand him, or Baba Rabba, were to visit an IS synagogue today, they would fit right in. 

 

Ramps vs. steps.

 

The two Jewish Temples, of course, had steps but the Temples are a post-Torah development. The Torah itself talks only about the Tabernacle, in which there was no steps, only a ramp.

Weird dream

I had a weird dream earlier this week. I dreamed I was with a group of other men waiting to be circumcised. I said (to whoever was in charge) that I am already circumcised and I even showed him. (Despite my showing my penis there was no sexual or erotic content to this dream whatsoever; it was not that kind of a dream.)

I know that circumcision is a sign of one's being inducted into the Jewish faith, whether you're born into it or converted. Israelite Samaritan males are, of course, circumcised at 8 days just like we are. I imagine that someone who isn't circumcised (a non-Jew) who wished to adopt the IS (version of our) faith would have to be circumcised & I also imagine that a Jew who wished to adopt the IS (version of our) faith would be OK as is (no drawing a drop of blood with a pinprick as a symbolic circumcision).

I wonder what this dream means in terms of attachment to the IS (version of our) faith. Any ideas?

Henry V & the latest mikveh scandal

Last Shabbat (of Chol Hamoed Sukkot, the third Shabbat of the month), I read prayer #2 in shul (I keep a printout in my tallis bag, sneaky me) and noticed the lines

...Come to us and let our forsaken peoples return to us and gather all our brothers among the Israelites, and return them to the land of our forefathers...

Going back to what my IS friend told me on Aargareezem, that they see us (Jews) as brothers, I looked at this line from the prayer & I thought, the ISs regard us as brothers and pray for us, and how do we see them? Our attitude toward them is like the Duke of Exeter's remarks (in Henry V, Act II, Scene IV) regarding King Henry V's attitude toward the Dauphin:

Scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt,

I don't know about defiance but we certainly look at them with scorn, slight regard & contempt. Ugh!

I am reading about the latest o'dox mikveh scandal in the US. Yuck! I can't help but think that such a thing could not happen in the IS community simply because the ISs hold that a wife after her seven (not 12!; rabbis made up the extra five days; the Torah specifies only seven days) days of separation may bathe in the privacy of her own home (with only God looking her over) before resuming relations with her husband. It seems to me that the ISs thereby do something radical: They trust the wife & don't make it super-complicated, which in turn requires lots of rabbis to explain it to the rest of us, build & maintain the mikve to exacting specifications, which gives them even more control, Keep it simple and trust the wife. Wow. How radical.

"...who has not made me a woman."

Months ago I stopped saying the morning blessing in which we praise God, "who has not made me a woman." I've seen more than a few of the o'dox apologetics for this, some of them by o'dox women, and they just don't wash. They all seem to be a variant on theme of "Since men are spiritually weaker than women, God gave us lots of particular mitzvot & that is what we are thanking Him for." Even if one accepts this idea (I don't, not any more), it still doesn't sound right ("...who has not made me a woman"). In fact, it sounds rather horrible. Our Sages could have & should have found a better way to express the idea. So I've been saying what women say & thus praise God, "for making me according to His will." Works for me.

By the way, the ISs reject the o'dox Jewish idea of women being exempt from time-bound positive mitzvot (scroll down to the bottom of the first section). Where is that written? (as my IS friend would say.)

It's a lock

OK, the title of this post is a pun on the Hebrew word ne'ila, which in modern Hebrew means "locking." It is also the name of the final prayer service that ends Yom Kippur. So yesterday as everybody shouted the Shema (see the foregoing link, scroll down to "Final Affirmations"), I shouted it in the IS mode. Nobody heard me (due to the noise of over 100 people shouting all at once) but I heard me (and God, of course) :-) When we next shouted "Adonai hu ha-Elohim" seven times, I shouted "Shema u-Eloowenu" seven times. Again, I heard me (and God again; He's a good listener).

I've noticed that at synagogue on the Shabbat & on holydays, I now invariably stand against the wall with my arms folded, almost out of reflex. I guess this is my way of showing that I would so rather be somewhere else & I'm trying to minimize my presence, as it were.

Now I've got to go build my faux sukkah...

Sabi a-Libee