Surplusage

Artscroll is the Microsoft of Orthodox Jewish publishing. People use it because it's everywhere, not because it's particularly good.

When I say it's not particularly good, I mean that it doesn't really translate the text as much as it spoon-feeds the reader its preferred interpretation. Sometimes I'll be reading it -- even modern Orthodox shuls have succumbed to the monopoly -- and I'll say to myself, "That can't possibly be what the Hebrew means," and I'll turn to the Hebrew and think, "How in the world did they get that from it?"

The most extreme example is with shir ha-shirim, the Song of Songs. This book is a love poem, and the rabbis decided eons ago that it was really meant as the expression of love not between a man and a woman but between God and the Jewish people. Fine, I guess it has to be that way, or else it would not have been made part of the tanakh. But Artscroll goes a step further. Not only does it inform its readers that this is the true meaning of the book but it refuses to translate the text. In place of a translation, it provides what it calls an "allegorical" reading attributed to Rashi, the great commentator who lived in France in the 11th century and early 12th. The allegorical reading is based on the same idea that the text refers to God's love for the Jewish people. But it drifts into bizarroworld in a few places, like when it "interprets" the line "your breasts are like twin fawns" to be referring to Moses and Aaron. Michael Wex, in his book "Born to Kvetch," has a little aside about young yeshiva boys using "Moses and Aaron" as a euphemism for breasts. Artscroll's insistence on perpetuating this as the only English version it provides is pretty silly.

But that's not what led me to write this piece about Artscroll.

Yesterday, at the end of the Torah reading, God tells Abraham to have all his men circumcised and to circumcise newborn males at eight days. The Hebrew text says "b'sar orlato," which means "the flesh of his foreskin." After initially translating it that way, Artscroll switches abruptly and begins to translate it as "the flesh of his surplusage."

His surplusage? I thought only lawyers used that word. ("We must construe the statute to avoid surplusage.")

So when an uncircumcised man goes to the doctor, does the doctor ever tell him, "You need to keep your surplusage clean"?

And more seriously, when Moses deflects God's order that he speak to Pharaoh by saying, "va-ani aral s'fatayim" (I have uncircumcised lips), is he really saying, "I have extra lips"? No, he's saying "uncircumcised lips." This forces us to confront what the Torah's text could possibly mean by "uncircumcised lips." There are roughly a gazillion pages written on the subject, with all the great commentators weighing in. So why can't Artscroll -- which translates it as "sealed lips" -- simply give us the actual meaning of the text and refer us to the commentary in the notes below? Why does Artscroll think it has to spoon-feed us so that we can't possibly get the "wrong" idea by taking the text literally? And is Artscroll really so prudish that it runs from the f-word "foreskin" as soon as it possibly can? I've been to a lot of brises in my life, and I have never once heard the mohel speak of the boy's "surplusage."

The Artscroll siddur (prayerbook) is another story entirely, but I can't end this screed without citing to the most famous Artscroll publication of them all: the Artscroll Shakespeare. (Warning: it's probably funny only if you've used the Artscroll siddur, but then it's hilarious.)

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Another day, another environmentalist rabbi

I'm not going to say much about this Torah commentary from the Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative Judaism's rabbinical academy), because it's really a self-parody. The commentary was written by Rabbi Abigail Treu, described as the director of Donor Relations and Planned Giving for the Sem. That is, she's a fundraiser, but a rabbi at the same time.

To give you the flavor of the commentary, in case you don't want to click on the link, here's the opening paragraph:

Golda Meir famously quipped: “Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us forty years into the desert in order to bring us to the one place in the Middle East that has no oil!” Well, the folks living atop the Marcellus Shale have the opposite gripe. Underneath this formation, which stretches from the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York through Pennsylvania and Ohio to Virginia, there is oil. And with the price of oil being what it is, the oil companies have new incentive to drill there and have come calling. Which presents the farmers and landowners in this four-state stretch with a dilemma: what is more important, the beauty and health of their land or their economic security?

I know! Call on me! The farmers should preserve the beauty of their land, despite their relative poverty, so that rich liberals can enjoy the natural beauty.

Oy, vey! Rabbi Treu's commentary goes on to discuss what she sees as environmentalism in this week's Torah portion, culminating in her tribute to the idealism of Jewish law (about which see my discussion of the prosbul).

Most of us curmudgeons are strong believers in conservation, but that's not what we're talking about here. In case you were still doubting that the great project of environmentalism is to destroy the economy and reduce our standard of living, consider the way Rabbi Treu closes her commentary. We should learn, she says, from the mistakes of the Children of Israel in the wilderness, adding:

We too are poised on a threshold, contemplating how to react to our own scary reports of an uncertain future. We would do well to take the mantle of tikkun ‘olam onto our own shoulders, so that our children may be blessed to recite one hundred blessings a day, and live in a world in which the lack of oil is a source of celebration, not regret.

What's really scary is that the head of fundraising for the Sem is so clueless about why donors have money in the first place: They have money because they engage in commerce. Of course, if she had her way, there would far less commerce. I wonder whether she would then declare that the ensuing drop in donations to the Sem was a source of celebration, not regret.

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Karnei farah and yerach ben yomo

This is a little inside baseball for the relatively small fraternity of Torah readers and the even smaller fraternity of Torah readers who read mattot-mas'ei (or this year masei alone).

Three years ago, I wrote about reading mattot-mas'ei, and since that time, I've had quite a few visitors go to that post. I suspect some are Torah readers looking for help in reading the karnei farah and yerach ben yomo, two rare notes that are read exactly once a year, in the same verse of mas'ei. (Numbers 35:5) Another, slightly less rare note is the mercha ch'fulah, which occurs something like six times, including once in mattot.

For those of you who are looking for last-minute help before this shabbat, when we read mas'ei (and for those of you looking to prepare for next year), I've created a WAV file of chapter 35, verses 4 and 5. I've included verse 4, which doesn't have any of these rare notes, for the following reason: There are numerous traditions about how all the notes are sung. While the traditions have many similarities, there are also differences, and it might help you to hear my particular tradition so you know what I'm starting from. I learned the yerach ben yomo from a sheet music version I found some years ago. And from that sheet music, I learned that the karnei farah is, just as it appears, simply a t'lisha k'tanah followed by a t'lisha g'dolah. I've applied my own tradition for those two notes. If there's interest, maybe I'll include the mercha ch'fulah next year.

So feel free to click here for the WAV file.

And if you think I'm wrong about how these notes are sung, call me pisher.

Meanwhile, I'll simply quote a friend who says: Don't worry; 98% of the congregation won't realize it's a mistake.

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Visitor of the day -- 7/1

Doing the jobs Americans won't do? Nah, can't possibly be.

Mild content warning, so it's going in the extended entry. If you go there, don't forget to click to, er, enlarge. The image, that is.






(In case you're wondering, shacharit is what the morning prayers are called. And there is undoubtedly an answer, as there is to virtually any question.)

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The use and misuse of Tikkun Olam

My old quip: "When I hear the words 'tikkun olam,' I reach for my wallet."

"Tikkun olam" is the Jewish concept of repairing or perfecting the world. It's been misappropriated by the Jewish left as a justification for trying to impose certain left-wing doctrine and policies on the rest of the world. (Hence, the reason for concern about theft of my wallet.)

In the new issue of Commentary magazine, July-August 2008, Hillel Halkin writes an extremely important article about this phenomenon: "How Not to Repair the World." Commentary usually makes its content available while it's current, but the magazine just came out and this is not yet available online. If you've been around Pillage Idiot long enough to read my rare serious posts, you'll realize I tend to understate things. But I don't want to understate this. The Halkin article is important enough for you to go out and buy the dead-tree version of the magazine, or at least, to go read it in the public library. Assuming a link becomes available, I'll update this post with it. [UPDATE: Sorry to report that Commentary is making only an abstract available, a short part of the opening of the article. UPDATE: Soccer Dad points out that many libraries have online access to Commentary if you have a library card.]

Halkin takes off from a collection of essays by Jewish leftists, many of whom invoke tikkun olam in support of their goals. But Halkin explains that there are several concepts of tikkun olam in Jewish thought, none of which supports the leftists' version. First, there's a religious, messianic version in the aleinu prayer, which is recited near the end of the morning, afternoon, and evening prayers. We pray that eventually, all the people of the world will recognize God's will. "We hope for the day when the world will be perfected under the Kingdom of the Almighty."

The second version of tikkun olam is a more pragmatic version found in the Talmud, a version Halkin describes as equivalent to the Jewish public interest. An example of it is the talmudic rule that if you are ransoming a kidnapped hostage, you must not, for reasons of tikkun olam, pay an excessive ransom. If you pay an excessive ransom, you'll "jack up the price" that others must pay to ransom their hostages. The public interest overrides your own.

Yet a third version is a spiritual one that was offered by the kabbalists of the 16th century. The idea was that the world was fractured at creation, and that individuals, through prayer and other spiritual activities, can help to repair it. As Halkin explains, this concept of tikkun olam is appealing to the political left, because it is open to reinterpretation.

Halkin then analyzes the essays I mentioned above, which he says are easy to caricature, because many of them caricature themselves. "They represent the ultimate in that self-indulgent approach, so common in non-Orthodox Jewish circles in the United States today, that treats Jewish tradition not as a body of teachings to be learned from but as one needing to be taught what it is about by those who know better than it does what it should be about."

There is much, much more of interest in this article, but I want to close the way Halkin closes, with a discussion of the prosbul, a subject I've ruminated about often and even written about myself. The prosbul (Halkin spells it "pruzbul") was a pronouncement from the great rabbi Hillel that created a huge loophole in the Torah's law of remission of debts. Halkin quotes a source I'd been unaware of, and he puts the entire issue into perfect clarity for me.

The Torah (Deuteronomy) states that in the sabbatical year, all debts will be cancelled. The sabbatical year is earth-centered, not loan-centered, so this doesn't mean you can always have six-year loans. If you lend in the sixth year of the cycle, the loan is cancelled the following year. The Torah itself recognizes that this is an idealistic law and contrary to rational economics. Deuteronomy 15:9-10 states:

Beware lest you harbor the base thought, "The seventh year, the year of remission, is approaching," so that you are mean to your needy kinsman and give him nothing. He will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will incur guilt. Give to him readily and have no regrets when you do so, for in return the Lord your God will bless you in all your efforts and in all your undertakings.

In an attempt to make this law cancelling debts work, God Himself issues a threat (you will incur guilt) and makes a promise (He will bless you) in order to motivate people to overcome their natural and rational economic behavior. But even when God speaks, the law doesn't work. People don't want to lend money in the sixth year.

So the law, which was clearly designed to protect the poor from incurring permanent debt, had the unintended result of hurting the poor by totally drying up credit as the sabbatical year approached. (You don't have to have a vivid imagination to note the parallel with modern social legislation.) Hillel's prosbul allowed the loan to be assigned to the court so that it could be enforced past the end of the sixth year, in spite of the remission of debts in the seventh year.

What I didn't realize until reading Halkin's article was that the Talmud described Hillel's prosbul as having been enacted "for the sake of tikkun olam." Imagine that: The great idealistic legislation of the Torah, which was supposed to benefit the poor, was changed (or, I suppose, more accurately, was "loopholed" out of existence) by a pragmatic rule that seemed to favor the wealthy but actually helped the poor. And the justification for that change was tikkun olam, in the pragmatic sense of the Jewish public interest.

It is critical to keep this in mind whenever we hear the modern Jewish left invoking tikkun olam.

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Unintended consequences

The Freakonomics guys, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, take a look at well intended laws with unintended consequences. As if it is somehow an insight that such laws exist. We all know that laws can encourage behavior that is undesired and, in most cases, unexpected. It happens all the time.

One of the most famous examples (which is not in the article) is the Aid to Dependent Children program: "During the New Deal, President Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, argued against extending federal benefits to unwed mothers because she believed that subsidizing illegitimacy would lead to the breakdown of the family. Ms. Perkins was right."

Of course, people don't want to look back and see how they screwed things up. Instead, they look ahead without self-recrimination. Every mistake just creates a new need for further intervention. As I sometimes joke, being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry. But that's not my point here.

My point is that the Freakonomics article discusses three laws that had unintended results: the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Endangered Species Act -- and the rules about the sabbatical (shmita) year in the Torah. They do this to show how long this problem has existed, but, in my view, they don't quite get to the correct conclusion.

The rules in the Torah are quite relevant now, because it's generally accepted that this year is the sabbatical year. As the article notes:

As commanded in the Bible, all Jewish-owned lands in Israel were to lie fallow every seventh year, with the needy allowed to gather whatever food continued to grow. Even more significant, all loans were to be forgiven in the sabbatical.

Naturally, the result of mandated loan-forgiveness is that people won't lend as the sabbatical year approaches. And the Torah makes clear that this is what happened. So the Freakonomics guys shouldn't, strictly speaking, include this within the rubric of unintended consequences, because while the consequences were unintended, the law clearly anticipated them from the outset.

Deuteronomy explicitly recognized that people would be inclined to refuse to lend money as the sabbatical year approached, because they wanted to avoid the remission of debt. If they lent in year six, whatever wasn't repaid by the end of the sixth year was, by force of law, forgiven.

Thus, Deuteronomy 15:9-10 states:

Beware lest you harbor the base thought, "The seventh year, the year of remission, is approaching," so that you are mean to your needy kinsman and give him nothing. He will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will incur guilt. Give to him readily and have no regrets when you do so, for in return the Lord your God will bless you in all your efforts and in all your undertakings.

Here, God asserts a threat (you will incur guilt) and a promise (He will bless you) in order to motivate people to overcome their natural and rational economic behavior. I call this a literal deus ex machina. This kind of economic law can't possibly work unless God commands the law and people believe in Him.

And it actually didn't work even when everyone believed in God; people still would stop lending as the seventh year approached. As the Freakonomics guys point out, it took the great rabbi Hillel to devise the solution:

His solution, known as prosbul, allowed a lender to go to court and pre-emptively declare that a specific loan would not be subject to sabbatical debt relief, transferring the debt to the court itself and thereby empowering it to collect the loan. This left the law technically intact but allowed for lenders to once again make credit available to the poor without taking on unwarranted risk for themselves.

It was the prosbul that encouraged people to engage in economic behavior that the idealistic rules of the Torah discouraged.

A similar legal fiction was established to deal with the rules requiring land to remain fallow during the sabbatical year. This legal fiction of temporary sale of the land to a non-Jew, by the way, is the cause of much consternation in Israel today, with many of the religiously right-wing orthodox declaring that food grown on land that has been temporarily sold should not be eaten. (Far be it from me to be critical, but anyone who uses a "shabbos clock" shouldn't be so concerned about legal fictions. But that is not my point here, either.)

We see something different, but analogous, in the of another economic law of the Torah, the prohibition of charging interest to fellow Jews. In Leviticus:

Do not lend him your money at advance interest, or give him your food at accrued interest. I the Lord am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, to be your God.

As moderns, we have to ask: How could people have lent money for an extended period of time without interest? Again, the answer seems to be that they did so, because God commanded them to. "I the Lord am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, to be your God."

There's a very interesting passage from Paul Johnson's wonderful book, A History of the Jews. Johnson, a Christian philo-semite, offers Jewish history from an interesting perspective, given that nearly all Jewish history has been written by Jews. What Johnson says is this:

One of the greatest contributions the Jews made to human progress was to force European culture to come to terms with money and its power. Human societies have always shown an extraordinary unwillingness to demystify money and see it for what it is – a commodity like any other, whose value is relative. * * * Men bred cattle with honour; they sowed grain and reaped it worthily. But if they made money work for them they were parasites and lived on "unearned increment," as it came to be termed.

The Jews were initially as much victims of this fallacy as anyone else. Indeed, they invented it.

So the Jews eventually understood that prohibiting interest couldn't possibly work as an economic matter and "force[d] European culture to come to terms with money and its power."

My point, finally, is that the economic laws of the Torah and the legal fictions that have been developed to get around those laws are proof that idealistic economic laws having no relationship to real economic behavior have severe limitations. They don't even work when God commands them.

As the rabbis might say, how much more so do they fail to work when imposed by humans.

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Two-run omer

Yesterday's Torah reading was Beshallach, which relates the crossing of the Red Sea and features the Song of the Sea. Heady stuff.

So, naturally, I looked at the most important verse: "An omer is a tenth of an ephah." (Exodus 16:36). The Soncino Chumash cites Rashi as saying: An omer is equivalent to 43-1/5 eggs.

43-1/5 eggs? Say what?

I did some research and found this:

one tenth of an ephah The ephah equals three se’ahs, and the se’ah equals six kavs, and the kav equals four logs, and the log equals six eggs. [Hence, an ephah equals 3 x 6 x 4 x 6 = 432 eggs. I.e., the space displaced by 432 eggs.] We find that a tenth of an ephah equals forty-three and a fifth [43.2] eggs. This is the amount for challah [the minimum amount of flour that requires the separation of challah] and for meal offerings. — [from Eruvin 38b]

So, yes, it's 43-1/5 eggs. Now, just how do you measure 1/5 of an egg?

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What's with you?

Each year, I read Torah at shul on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. The reading is Genesis chapter 21, the story of the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael.

And each year, when I read verse 17 in preparation for my reading, it cracks me up. Here's the first part of verse 17 in English (my rough translation): "And God heard the voice of the boy, and an angel of God called out to Hagar from the heavens, and he said to her, 'What's with you, Hagar?'" The verse then continues.

What amuses me is the Hebrew. The word for angel is "mal'ach"; the word for what's with you is "ma-lach." It's an obvious play on words.

By the way, I'm way less than fluent in Biblical Hebrew, but I've picked up a fair amount from reading the Torah. This past shabbat, I had an unusual experience. I was reading the translation in English to myself, and, I'm embarrassed to admit, I didn't know the English word "imprecation." I looked at the Hebrew, saw the word "alah," and realized that imprecation meant curse. I can't remember ever before figuring out the English from the Hebrew.

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