The issue lies in an halachah discussed in the Tosefta and Avot de-Rabbi Natan (Version A, Chapter 39), where one of the ways Jerusalem is distinguished from other cities is that renting sleeping space is forbidden. As the Gemara notes in both Yoma 12a and Megillah 26a, this halachah depends on a larger question, whether Jerusalem was split among the tribes, with Binyamin taking one part and Yehudah another (meeting at the מקום המקדש, the Temple site) or was never divided, left as a national treasure, belonging to all.

Rambam rules the latter, which has other ramifications, such as that houses in Jerusalem cannot become subject to נגעים, the stains and blemishes that could lead to the need to destroy the house.  Included in that, though, is the assumption that living and sleeping space could not be rented, it belonged to all.

That that produced less than ideal living conditions is freely acknowledged in at least two responsa. The Gemara offers evidence that hosts weren’t always so pleased about this arrangement, leading to the Sages allowing them to take the hides of sacrifices by force. Abbaye notes it was the general polite custom to leave that for any host, which explains, according to Ritva, how the Sages would decide to make it an enforceable expectation (since Jerusalem hosts weren’t getting anything else).

Not So Much Fun for the Hosts

In responsa more than a century apart, Hatam Sofer and R. Meshulam Rath give a sense of just how unpleasant this could be.  Discussing different parts of the same Mishnah in Ketubbot, Hatam Sofer’s questioner wondered at a reference to parts of Jerusalem as being a נוה הרעה, a bad place to live.  Hatam Sofer, 2 (Yoreh Deah);234, notes that it was because of non-residents’ right to simply come to a random house and take living space (that might also explain why some parts of the city would be worse than others, because areas closer to the Temple would probably be in more demand).

Hatam Sofer uses this idea to explain a verse in Nehemiah that speaks of the general populace blessing those who volunteered to live in Jerusalem (in Nehemiah’s time, the city was underpopulated, much as some residents say it is during non-holiday times today); Rashi ascribes it to the general crowdedness of city life as compared to country life, and Hatam Sofer suggests the possibility of being invaded by tourists added to that.

In Responsa Kol Mevaser 1;26, R. Rath uses this same thinking to explain why Ketubbot 110b refers to this verse as only a help to the opinion of R. Yose b. Hanina, that living in cities is difficult. As R. Rath notes, if the verse means what Rashi says, does that not prove city living is harder than country living? The answer is that it would have been possible to argue that living in Jerusalem had special challenges, the vulnerability of unwanted visitors.

Mitigating the Problem

One way to respond to this information is to dismiss it, to claim that when the Temple is rebuilt, the whole issue of land and property will be so altered it does not pay to consider it. Support for this position comes from the end of the book of Yehezkel, whose vision sees a radical re-division of the Land, with the area around the Temple (and, depending on your reading of his measurements, possibly miles around the Temple) given to the priests, the Levites, and only then a section for ordinary Jews.  In that section, however, it might still be true that hotels could not charge for sleeping space, possibly not for bedding, would have to try to make it up in incidentals like food.

Another suggestion is that of Ritva in Yoma, who assumes the whole reference to not renting houses is only for those who are coming on the three major holidays, fulfilling the obligation to appear before God on those special days. If so, the hotel industry could thrive at other times, but the holidays would be off limits for charging for lodging.

Perhaps the most workable option for those committed to the hospitality industry, though, is raised by R. Yerucham Fischel Perle in his discussions of R. Saadya Gaon’s Book of Mitzvot.  In the course of discussing whether the obligation to bring an eglah arufah– the ceremony of the breaking a heifer’s neck to atone for having failed to protect a murder victim whose assailant is unknown– applies even to victims found within cities or only between them—R. Perle wonders about a question of direct relevance to our discussion: if we add on to the city of Jerusalem, do the halachot that apply to the original city apply to the added parts as well?

In asking the question, R. Perle already gives a boost to most existing hotels, since, halachically, they are not part of Jerusalem.  Adding to the city, I note, involves an halachic ceremony that cannot occur until the return of several missing institutions, such as a king, a prophet, the Urim ve-Tumim, and the Sanhedrin (see Rambam Hilchot Beit haBechira 6;11), so that hoteliers are safe for awhile at least.

On the larger question, though, R. Perle is inconclusive, suggesting that if a future king decides to formally add the newer neighborhoods to the original city, a whole industry could be in jeopardy.

For this Pesach, though, they would seem to be safe.

The issue is safely academic enough—because we don’t have any tsaraat today, and we tend to build buildings without all those materials, anyway—to raise two interrelated questions about how God wants us to experience the system of Torah and mitzvot. 

Making Halachot Irrelevant: Good, Bad, or In Between?

First, as I just noted, most of our modern homes do not consist of all three of those materials, meaning that in that  house, tsaraat wouldn’t be an issue.  But is that good or bad for a religious life? While we have avoided the annoyance and financial loss of that tsaraat, it would also mean that we have closed off an avenue to God teaching us about how and where we need to improve our lives (or, according to Rashi, an opportunity for God to reveal to us hidden wealth in the walls of our houses).

If we insist the loss is worth it, does that mean we should also favor those garments made of materials that are not susceptible to clothing-tsaraat?  The two questions, then, are: when is a command of the Torah telling us how to handle a negative situation, one we should avoid if we can, and when is the possibility of handling such a situation valuable even if painful?

I think, for example, we would all prefer not to administer the death penalty, but that cannot be taken to mean that if two people were about to witness a capital crime (in a time of functioning Jewish courts) they could consciously refrain from giving hatraah, the warning that would render the sinner(s) liable.  There are some halachot, in other words, that we prefer never to see put into action, and some that we very much want to put into action (the offering of a Paschal sacrifice, for example), and then there are many in between. It is that latter category that I want to explore a bit more.

To take one more academic example and then move on to more practical ones: household items made of certain materials are susceptible to ritual impurity, and others, made of other materials are not. If it were possible, would there be a problem with religious households making use only of that latter kind? 

My answer is that whatever the ultimate answer, I think we need to remind ourselves that doing so would ease our religious lives in some ways, but would impoverish them in others.  For the two examples I mentioned thus far, tsaraat and ritual impurity, it seems likely that aside from the technical aspect of those laws, there was a religious/spiritual one. In the case of tsaraat, Hazal seem fairly clear that it was supposed to be seen as a message from God about our sinful state; ritual impurity is a more difficult discussion, but I think it accurate to say that there, too, the laws are not purely technical, that we are meant to learn something from them.

If so, constructing lives in which those laws do not (or cannot) play a role means we have lost touch, by our choice, with an area that God deemed religiously worthwhile.  And, I would add, we have done so not only in practice, but in theory—by having these laws rendered impossible to act on, we have also made them more difficult to understand even as a question of Talmud Torah, of understanding God’s Torah. Let me turn to more practical examples to demonstrate.

The Eating of Meat and How Far It Is From How the Torah Thought It Would Be

Many of us no longer remember that the Torah commands giving certain parts of every animal we slaughter to a Kohen, a priest, a law that is rarely observed now because we have professionalized the production of meat, and they have (I believe) found legitimate halachic ways of avoiding losing so much of the animal to priests.

Similarly, the whole area of terefot, animals that have suffered a wound that renders them unkosher, has withered in recent years, because shechitah, ritual slaughter, has been professionalized and made corporate so that, first, only butchers have any involvement with the questions that arise.  Equally important, the urge to investigate the intricacies of these laws is significantly reduced, since the cost of being stringent is relatively small (animals rejected by the kosher butchers go straight to the non-kosher ones, with a small financial cost easily passed on to the consumer).

The two examples allow us to see what is lost even as we gain greater access to meat.  In the first instance, the fact that we no longer give those priestly gifts, we have lost what would seem to be part of how the Torah envisioned our building our sense of God in our lives. If, as is clear from numerous sources, the priests serve as God’s representatives among the people (aside from their service in the Temple), these gifts seem at least partially geared towards insuring we think of God when we eat meat, by including God’s representatives in each of those occasions.  While there is no reason to doubt the legal efficacy of how we avoid that, I think the cost bears taking into account.

With terefot, there is another loss as well.  When each terefah came out of a Jew’s pocket, there was pressure on rabbis to study the matter carefully before ruling.  Now, it is simpler to just throw the animal or bird onto the non-kosher pile, so that we may cease to recognize the options and leniencies we might otherwise have taken advantage of.

Should Jews Be Farmers?

Another application of the same question comes in the area of agriculture, where the Torah ordained many laws for the farmers about to enter the Land.  As society has moved away from agriculture (although, truthfully, even in the Torah’s time, only some of the tribes were primarily farmers), the question of the value of those laws becomes more pressing.  If they are purely utilitarian—a way to make farming a religious experience if you happen to be a farmer—there would be no reason to encourage doctors, lawyers, etc. to strive to cultivate at least a small plot of their own land.

The other possibility is that farming the Land was vital to the connection the Torah wanted each Jew (with the exception of priests and Levites) to experience.  Tithing, leaving some of the crops for the poor, bringing first fruits to the Temple, leaving the Land fallow during shemittah and yovel, these might be laws the Torah thought valuable for all Jews to experience, not just those who made a living as farmers.  But maybe not; a question I think deserves discussion.

The Study of Torah

Rendering certain areas of halachah largely obsolete has another damaging affect on our religious lives, in that it makes it harder to understand the Torah’s system of laws and values.  As I noted before, our knowledge of terefot today is worse than in decades past not only because fewer people need to study those laws, but because in many cases they need study them only relatively superficially, without the deep knowledge that would qualify them to find appropriate leniencies.  This is true in other areas as well, where our desire to be careful not to violate God’s law can also lead us to lose sight of the full intricacies (and, therefore, the full message) of that law.

To the extent that Torah is intertwined—so that laws regarding putting up a mezuzah in a house might depend on the definition of a house for tsaraat purposes, or an opening for eruv purposes, or vice verse—when we lose sight of those areas, we also make it harder to understand even the areas we are still actively working on. The giants of each generation, of course, have walked confidently in all of Torah, but the rest of us make understanding the religion and the God Who gave that religion more difficult in our so doing.

One lesson of house tsaraat for me, then, is the extent it shows us not aware of simple aspects of our religion: what parts of it are ideally supposed to be an active reality in our lives (agricultural laws?), what parts are simply mechanical (if you do this, do this—should we be eating meat and using the shechitah laws, or it’s there if you need it), and what parts should we really hope to avoid putting into practice ever (the exact laws of how to conduct a stoning)?

And the stakes are not small, since they shape our vision of our relationship with God, our understanding of how to create that relationship, and our awareness of the full richness God hopes will infuse that relationship.

In the context of describing some far-off Sukkot, Zechariah 14;17 says that those nations that do not come to Jerusalem to bow to God on Sukkot will not get rain.  There are many ways to understand the verse, but I was led to wonder about the following scenario: what if God was predicting a time when rain would be necessary for access to safe and clean water, and recognizing God necessary for rain?

 We could argue that such a prophecy, in its negativity, might be amenable to people changing themselves and avoiding the decree.  Perhaps the prophecy predicts the future based on people’s ordinary actions, and adjusting our use and misuse of water would be enough to avoid that outcome.

But suppose the prophecy was more than that (as it seems to be): suppose it was declaring God’s intent to bring about a time when the need for rain would propel people to Jerusalem to worship God once a year (as the Sefer haChinuch thinks the laws of maaser sheni and neta revai were for Jews). Aside from what that would suggest about global warming and the other causes of our water shortages, I think the text presents a challenge we often shy from considering.

Suppose, to repeat, Zechariah is telling us there will come a time when rain will be necessary for water needs, all over the world, and the only way to secure rain will be by worshiping God in Jerusalem on Sukkot.  Obviously, those who don’t accept that God acts so directly will reject the possibility; but I am wondering how else to read the verse, and its ramifications.

My question is, when would we feel was the time to broadcast that message? The world, after all, would roundly reject it, at least at first, would get angry at us for thinking ourselves so special as to be the locale for such a pilgrimage, would resent our assumption that our religion is truer than theirs, and so on.  So when do we mention it?

Much of the world, theoretically, should know it, because they, too, study the book of Zechariah (some of them more assiduously than we ourselves). But they have already re-interpreted it so as to be immune to its intent, have modified it to fit their purposes, so they would never see it that way. Leaving me, again, with my question.

Even if you reject my reading of Zechariah, the questioin stands for other circumstances as well: what would you do if you knew someone’s rejection or ignorance of some central Jewish belief about God was hurting that person or those people in the immediate and painful moment? If you saw an idol-worshipping nation (literally, and there are such even today) suffering a plague or other disaster?

I choose the example here because it seems safely theoretical, so we can take some of the rawest emotion out of the discussion.  Let’s start by agreeing we wouldn’t say anything now, because there’s no Temple, and world-wide water shortages aren’t nearly severe enough to open a door to that kind of a conversation (although large percentages of the world’s population do today lack secure access to clean water)?

If people were dying daily from thirst, and Sukkot was around the corner, would we still not say anything, because some would object and even, perhaps, hate us for it? What if dozens were dying, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands?  Would there come a point where we would feel we had to say, “you know, God tells us…”?

My question, I hope obviously, is not only about rain, it is about the balance between maintaining our usual polite silence about our beliefs and when our pain at others’ suffering would lead us to at least broach the topic, however gingerly.  It is about whether we’d ever have the self-confidence to suggest God’s answers are true in the same way science is true (or more so), and try to help others see when their stubborn denial hurts them.  When does the trouble get so severe we feel we must speak?

I don’t pretend to know the answer, but I know the question, and that’s a start.

Old age, what is it good for? When the Temptations and then Edwin Starr asked that question about war in the early 1970s, they opened us up to remembering that there are aspects of life we take for granted that might bear further inspection.  I don’t have to accept their answer about war (absolutely nothing) to appreciate their reminder that just because this is how it has been doesn’t mean this is how it must be.  I want to apply that kind of consideration here to the question of old age.

In the early years of life, old age is so distant from us, that perhaps we do not think about it at all. It is what our grandparents experience, or the people next door, and we may do all we can to help those others, but is not something we truly expect to happen to us.

My father, a”h, passed away before he reached old age, so that even as I reached my own middle age, I had and have none of his modeling to build from, as I do in so much of the rest of my life.  I have relatives, friends, and friends’ parents and grandparents, and they have set me to pondering what would constitute a good old age, how we might best maximize the later years of our lives. I hope my thoughts here start a conversational ball that will roll in the direction of helping all of us think clearly and carefully about how we can best utilize all the years God grants us, in good health or ill.

Think of a man or woman, looking in the mirror every morning.  In her teens, the woman may be checking for acne or other imperfections, worried about the impression she will make on friends or members of the opposite gender.  As she ages, she may check for wrinkles, anxious to stave off the physical effects of creeping years.  And so for a man.

At some point, that man or woman looks in the mirror to see an old person staring back.    Where that point arrives perhaps changes over historical eras and from person to person.  The Mishnah in Avot 5;21 that lays out one vision of the rhythms of life suggests that sixty is old age, seventy advanced old age, and eighty remarkable, heroic old age.  With advances in medicine, we might push those numbers off by a decade or two but at some point, people get old.  It is as a separate stage of life that I’d like to think about old age, from within a Torah perspective.

Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Many seem to assume that we should push old age away, to ignore it as much as possible, try our best to continue living exactly as before.  These are people who never retire from their jobs or occupations, whose day to day activities in their 70s and 80s are, to the extent possible, just about the same as they were in their 50s and 60s.  They may work slightly less, shorter hours, as an accommodation to the creeping physical decline but, largely, life continues as it always has.

For an example from the world of Torah, the Rov and his brother R. Aharon Soloveitchik, zt”l, were models of fighting against any limitations their physical infirmities placed upon them.  Each continued flying in to New York weekly to deliver shiurim at Yeshiva University long beyond where everyone would have understood if they said it was too taxing, that they were simply too infirm to make the trip.

Beyond the resistance to physical old age, in the hespedim, the eulogies delivered on the Rov’s passing, I remember one speaker recounting studying Baba Kama when the Rov was in his 60s.  When this student mentioned that to someone in the more yeshivish world, the reaction was surprise, since—in that world— the deep analysis of such a difficult tractate was usually undertaken by younger men.

Similarly in other occupations, I know more than a few men of advanced old age still maintaining a busy business schedule. There are men in their 90s still going in to their office every day; I once met a doctor who admitted he was 88, but asked me not to tell, because he was afraid patients would stop coming to him if they knew how old he was!

There is heroism to this approach that I want to pause and admire before I note where I think it can be excessive.  Some of these people are enjoying a robust old age, with few health problems, so that the challenge of maintaining their schedules is not significantly more difficult than it had been before. But many of them are, in fact, aging in visible and demonstrable ways, and yet push themselves to resist giving in or giving up, resist fading away into an aimless, rootless existence.  And we should admire those efforts, respect their (absolutely correct, it seems to me) awareness that life is meant to be lived, that every moment should be taken advantage of.

I have long been struck by a comment cited in the name of R. Yosef Eliyahu Henkin zt”l, who was, I believe, blind and almost totally deaf by the end of his life.  While I forget the exact Yiddish—which makes it sound even more powerful– it went something like, “azoy a Yid lebt, er mussen willen leben”, as long as a Jew is alive, he must want to live.  People who struggle to do that which they always have, to maintain their routines with few concessions to frailty, are living examples of recognizing the gift God gives us daily, and making the best use of it possible.

Even the Good Can Become a Trap

Where this approach can go wrong, it seems to me, is captured in a story I heard about the Rov’s encounter with former President Carter (that the two met is a matter of public record; the interaction as I heard it is less certain, but the story is instructive).  Carter, a Bible student, asked the Rov about the verse in Tehillim that readsואם בגבורות שמונים שנה, and if with heroism, eighty years.  Carter asked the Rov to explain the גבורה, the heroism, of being eighty.  And the Rov responded, to know that you are no longer fifty.

The comment issues a new challenge to us as we age: aside from not giving up on life, not allowing ourselves, at any point, to assume that all we have left is to loll around playing cards, the Rov seems to be saying that we should also not think that life is all of a piece.  From our early to middle years, we instinctively know this: there is the time of being a student, learning how to function in the world, the time of building– a family, a career, a legacy.  As that Mishnah in Avot captures it, there are the years of study, of running, of attaining full strength, of attaining insight, of giving advice.

But then what? When we reach the time of old age, if we are to take the Rov’s advice to heart, what does it mean to, at 80, understand that we are no longer fifty?  I don’t pretend to have an ironclad answer, but I think I can lay out some basic approaches by borrowing a valuable distinction Dr. Muriel Gillick makes in her The Denial of Aging.

Robust, Frail, and Demented Elderly

Dr. Gillick introduces her three-fold view of the elderly to promote the idea that medical care should vary according to how a patient is aging.  The robust elderly, she notes, are largely indistinguishable from the young and middle-aged, except that they have lived a few more years, might be a step or two slower, have a bit less energy. 

In medical terms, she notes, such people’s care will also be very similar to younger people’s.  A robust ninety-year-old diagnosed with cancer might choose the same aggressive chemotherapy as a younger person, since the experience of the side effects and the lure of extra years of active, vibrant life are largely the same.

The frail, in her model, are often best served by other choices.  While the usual treatment might be the best way to avoid certain complications or death, for some frail elderly, the side effects of treatment (like the confusion that comes to many from being hospitalized) are serious enough, and their medical condition tenuous enough, to suggest that a more moderate course would, on balance, be a better choice.

I have no medical expertise, and no insight on her medical ideas.  But her model transfers well to the question of how to maximize the years God gives us on earth.

Robust Old Age in the Service of God

The robust elderly might be those most likely to act as I mentioned above, continuing their patterns for as long and as fully as they are able.  Two caveats bear raising: First, is what that person has always done worth continuing, and, second, are there other valuable endeavors the person has neglected until then but might now choose to make time for?

For the first, I recall meeting a man who was 97 years old, and still going into his accounting practice every day.  This man was also extraordinarily charitable, so it was perhaps true that he saw his continued business involvement as a way to be able to continue giving.  But it seems to me equally possible that he had just gotten so used to that routine that he had allowed himself to get stuck in it.

The job we have always held might be one we see as so continuingly valuable that we would want to do it forever.  If an accountant finds his contribution to insuring the health of the economy a sacred task, he may wake up with a burning desire to go to the office every day, and more power to him.  If it is only because that is the routine in which he has become enmeshed, old age may be a time to consider other possibilities.

Which leads us to that second question, are there other valuable endeavors crowded out until now?  A poignant example to me was the shiva call I paid to a man in his 80s, whose wife had passed away.  He commented that these were supposed to be the years in which they would travel and enjoy each other’s company.  I asked whether they had gotten a chance to do any traveling before she had become ill, and he said that, no, he had been busy with work.  I asked him how many days a week he worked, and he said, six.

It is possible that he saw work as so important that he, in his 80s, still needed to be there six days a week.  But I suspect he had allowed routine to crowd out other important activities, that the pressures of raising children and grandchildren, of having funds to give to charity, of being deeply active in building the world, had helped him lose sight of other endeavors.  It would not require retreating into irrelevance to suggest that as we age, perhaps especially for those fortunate enough to do so robustly, we remember to make time for that which we have pushed off.

In the same vein, the story is told of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch traveling to Switzerland in his old age; when asked why, he said he wanted to see the Alps, that he feared getting to Heaven to have God ask him “Has du mein schone Alps gesehen (have you seen my beautiful Alps)? 

Clearly, R. Hirsch did not mean that he was going to now travel the world to see all its beauty; he meant that, as part of his old age, he was going to incorporate some more involvement in appreciating God’s world, until then pushed aside by other involvements.

Nor am I pushing travel per se; I am suggesting that adjusting our sights, broadening our scope, to see what we may have failed to do as servants of God.  Many find more time for Torah study, which is wonderful but again reminds us of the heroism of eighty, knowing that we are not fifty, and therefore undertaking study projects we can still meaningfully accomplish.  Instead of sitting fruitlessly over a text we can longer conquer, the heroism of old age might be to take on that which is within our reach.

Similarly, while those of us not in education might see our Torah study as primarily an exercise in self-growth, in old age, we might reasonably convert that into insuring it is transmitted to others, making time to study with our grandchildren, perhaps, or volunteering to teach whatever Torah we can to others, and so on.

What is true for Torah study is true for service of God generally.  Whether a person continues his or her professional life, reduces those hours, or leaves formal work entirely, the exciting aspect of robust old age is how to use these years, relieved of many other burdens, maximally, how to channel them into a time of expanding personal horizons, of finding the best ways to contribute to the perfection of the world in the recognition of the Kingdom of God.

I have several times suggested to men in their late 50s and early 60s—financially secure and bored with their work life—that instead of retiring, they consider moving in to the nonprofit world, taking their executive and administrative skills and applying them, without the pressure of financial privation, to causes in which they believe.  None have taken me up on it, but I still see it as a piece of aging that can be neglected, the ability to give in ways we would not have been able until now.

The Gevurah of Frailty

Some of us are not blessed with a robust old age or, I should perhaps say, are given a different set of challenges with which to cope.  The word “frail” can encompass a range of infirmities (physical or intellectual), from something as relatively minor as needing a cane to being largely wheelchair bound and prone to disorientation by minimal changes in surroundings or routine. 

Broad as the term is, we should not expect a simple prescription for how a well-lived old age would look.  Without pretending I can prescribe, I do note that the experience of frailty can lead some elderly to despair of being active players in the world.  For all the frail aged who still manage to get around and partake of events outside their homes, there are others who allow the difficulties of life to overwhelm them.  And yet, it seems to me, even fairly frail people can find ways to continue to make their mark.

First, the evaluation of frailty has both an objective and a subjective component.  A man who can no longer walk without a walker—but could, with effort and practice, get around fairly well with it—has a choice to make about how assiduously he will work to maintain that function (with repercussions for how often/easily he can get out of the house, attend worthwhile events, and so on).  Similarly with those who choose to stay home rather than be seen in public in a wheelchair.

Second, though, whatever the level of physical frailty a person experiences, it seems to me crucial that we remind ourselves that the capabilities still left are ones to try to use in productive, God-focused ways.  I already mentioned the Rov and R. Aharon Soloveitchik’s insistence on coming to New York despite their ailments; some Holocaust survivors tour the country in even more frail conditions, determined to get their story out before they pass away. 

That same commitment might help others also find a cause, a passion, a commitment that would drive them forward through those physically difficult years as well.  That is not a call to ignore ailments, or to act in medically contraindicated ways.  But I hope it reminds us that if every moment of life is precious, it is precious because of the opportunities it offers us for service of God; that service might be restricted to using the phone or Internet to connect with others, or with using a wheelchair to get out and do so, but the value of the moments resides in using them as best possible.

I stress that I don’t mean these comments as a judgment on anyone; I do not know whether a person can really only get out of bed at eleven, or could, with effort, have been up and out at minyan by 7:45.  I do not know who could volunteer for a local organization and who could not, who could study with a less knowledgeable Jew, who could still have guests over at their home (even if it would involve catered food and hired help) to share their lives and experiences.

I write not because I think I have the answer, but because I think I have the form of a question that is not yet as commonly asked as would seem valuable.  I write because, in my experience, people too often go to one extreme or other, seeing old age as just more of the same or, when choice or necessity force it to differ, retreating into a retirement that completely ceases productive activity.  And I believe both have truth, but both miss vital points. I write in the hope that we learn to ask ourselves, from age 13 until God takes us from this world, what is the best way I can, at this point in my life, with whatever God has given me, serve God, contribute to making this world the best it can be?

The Demented

This becomes even more challenging when we consider those no longer mentally capable of grappling with any of these issues.  It is one thing to imply that even the most frail might still find ways to construct their days to serve God; it would be quite another to extend those expectations to those who are, literally, no longer in their right mind.

And, often, the problem is not diagnosed early enough to allow for consideration of how to cope with it.  I once eagerly bought a book written by a man in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, in the hopes of being edified about the course and impact of this awful condition.  Sadly, while his motives for writing the book were laudable, and his struggles with his encroaching dementia admirable, the book showed that his capacity for meaningful reflection had already largely left him.

That would seem all the more true for the service of God; early stage dementia might allow for continuing old routines, especially the relatively passive ones of attending minyan or shiurim, of treating people politely, but it is hard to imagine a person in this condition able to adjust his or her service of God as appropriate to the medical reality.

Dementia, it seems, might be a case where the patient’s constructive role in God’s world really has come to an end.  Are we to see such people as just waiting around for death to take them?  Aside from all the end of life issues that viewpoint would raise, does it mean we no longer look at that person as a servant of God?  And, if not, do we see anything to that person other than a leftover body waiting to be taken from this world?
I think we might answer partially in the affirmative and yet recognize an important role these people play in other’s lives.  First, let me stress that I am speaking of those people whose minds have stopped working so extensively that we can no longer imagine God holding them responsible for anything they do, good or bad.  It would seem odd to think that God expects such people to pray when they cannot, to study Torah when they cannot, to act nicely towards others when they do not have—and will never again have– any realization or understanding of what they are doing.

If so, however, why does God leave such people in the world? I think Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis suggests an answer.

The Metamorphosis and the Function of the Demented Elderly at the Present Time

I came to the novella with only the knowledge that it was the story of a man who wakes one morning to find that he has turned into a grasshopper (or, I think, cockroach, depending on the translation).  While it has been many years since I read it, I vividly remember my shock at realizing that that description missed the point.  It was, as far as I understood it, not about the title character at all; it was, instead, about how his change forced a metamorphosis in those around him. Before the event, the other family members had been stagnant, relying on him to carry their load in addition to his. With him no longer functional, they were forced to take action for themselves.

I wonder whether the same might be true of the profoundly demented elderly—and, on a sliding scale, of those whose limitations, physical or intellectual, reduce their ability and responsibility to fully partake of the world.  In the areas where such people can no longer function, I cannot imagine they are being judged, or that they are expected to grow, develop, or contribute.

But they challenge the rest of us every moment of every day of their lives, with a myriad of questions and choices: how will we handle that person’s care? With what level of personal involvement? With what level of cheer and sympathy for the inconveniences the person faces, the discomfort that person may be feeling?

There may come a time, I am suggesting, when the person’s self-awareness and consciousness are so limited that it is hard to imagine God expecting or judging him or her for anything that occurs (for whether s/he eats pork, violates Shabbat, or almost anything). But such people present the rest of us with opportunities we would be well-advised to meet.

Old Age: A Stage of Life, Not a Decline Into Death

To summarize, then, I write here to propose that we today too often give up on ourselves too soon.  If, as the Gemara tells us, people can acquire their share in the World to Come in a moment, they certainly can do so, in many cases, in the decades of physical decline we call old age.  If old age means a person no longer wants or is able to work at an ordinary job, or can only put in twenty productive hours a week instead of forty, I write in the hope that we will remember to find ways to channel those twenty as well as we used to with the forty.  To be sure that if we choose to travel, we do so in search of a greater relationship with our Creator. To fill our later years even more with that which we often had too little time for when we were more vigorous, not less.

Those who reach the age of 65 today can expect two more decades of life, time enough to reshape who we have been, to refine whatever rough edges we still have left, to repair where we have done wrong, and so on. The first two decades of life grow a baby from being almost completely nonfunctional into a young adult, responsible in God’s eyes for his or her own actions.  The next two take that young adult, usually, through marriage, developing a career, bearing and raising children.  Twenty years at the end of life, I believe, can be as formative and as productive, and have us meet our Maker more ready than had our lives stopped earlier.  As long as we try.

This week’s Torah reading, the first after telling us of the greatest mass revelation claimed by any people, starts with the laws of slaves.  Especially considering our current revulsion for the whole institution, we might find it odd verging on problematic that the Torah would open its presentation of Jewish law with this.  Stranger is Nachmanides’s claim that we start with it because of its significance. 

The Incident

The haftarah opens with the story of a covenant made by the people and Zedekiah, the last king of the First Temple, in which they agreed to free their Jewish slaves (who were being held longer than the prescribed term).  Soon after, though, the people violated the pact and took their slaves back.

The first part of God’s reaction, verses 12-16, recaps the events—the original violation of Torah law, the covenant, and the reneging on the promise.  At the simplest level, the text portrays the richer, stronger class of the era of the Destruction as so addicted to slavery that they could not resist re-enslaving their poorer brethren despite their best intentions and stated commitment otherwise.

The Talmud adds an element by assuming that the freeing of slaves here was actually the yovel freeing, which came once every fifty years.  Since those laws only apply when all the tribes are living in their section of the Land of Israel, the Talmud has to also assert that Jeremiah brought back members of each of the Ten Lost Tribes, exiled by Assyria many years earlier.

That yovel is in effect only when we have שבטים במקומם, the Tribes resident in their parts of the Land, shapes the meaning of the requirement to free slaves in that year.  Moderns tend to read the yovel obligation as expressing an avoidance of permanent slavery, at least for Jews.  If that were the whole truth, making it apply only when all the tribes are in their assigned regions is counterintuitive.

It seems more reasonable to say that the freeing of slaves at yovel depends on the context of a certain kind of society.  In contrast, truly fundamental Jewish obligations—loving God, imitating God’s Attributes, studying Torah— apply to all social circumstances.  To be living a full ideal Jewish life in the Land, apparently, means subsuming oneself, somewhat, to tribal affiliation.  Something about that experience makes it important to free slaves every fifty years.

Who Cares About Yovel?

Without the Talmud, it seems clear we would have read this incident in Jeremiah as a case of inappropriate buying and holding of slaves, without any connection to yovel.  Assuming they did not have a specific tradition to that effect, I think the text might have signaled the Sages that yovel was relevant here because of the text’s using the word deror for the freedom to be given the slaves. 

When the prophet uses that same word in announcing that God will release sword, pestilence, and famine as punishment for their failures, it emphasizes this connection.  The Jews failed to give deror, so God will give deror to forces that are ordinarily kept in check.  As the Liberty Bell made famous, the word deror is how the Torah describes the yovel release of slaves.

The Talmud in Shabbat gives one more element to the word deror.  In discussing the prohibition of hunting on Shabbat, the Talmud refers to a bird as deror, by which it means that the bird flies freely both in the fields and within houses. This suggests that indifference to distinctions of types of space or, perhaps, personal status plays a role in the freedom referred to as deror.  That we only achieve such deror, according to Torah law, when the Tribes accept their assigned places of residence (meaning: they do not have such deror) highlights the dialectic in a Jew’s experience of boundaries.

The Meaning of Freedom

Deror freedom, the ability to throw off the yoke of slavery (or of a prior sale of land), is only properly given to those who operate on a backdrop of a deeper awareness of the lines that need to be drawn in society. 

It is not freedom to do as one wants, it is a freedom to contribute freely while knowing which boundaries are inviolable.  In a society that respects limits of places of residence, the more restrictive realm of slavery—which, after all, also teaches limits, just in a more drastic way, with significant other costs—can be made temporary rather than permanent.  In a society that does not have that sense, there is less push for freeing slaves.

The ideal Jewish society re-makes itself every fifty years, gives a renewed chance to all its inhabitants to contribute and succeed, by freeing slaves and repatriating land.  Failure to undo those restrictions, God says, will lead Him to undo other restrictions, the ones ordinarily placed on the destructive forces of Nature. 

In the Talmud’s reading, Jeremiah’s plainsense complaint about re-enslaving people becomes a broader indictment of their failure to use their social differentiations—by Tribe—to allow them to periodically give a new chance to society’s failures.

The Closing Verses

The closing two verses surprise us by going back to chapter 33.   The commentators agree that the verses mean to correlate God’s faithfulness to His covenants (day and night and heaven and earth, or, according to some statements in The Sages, circumcision) to His concern with having a ruler for the Jewish people descended from David, and, perhaps, a priest from the family of Aaron.

The idea that the rule of David and his descendants signals the proper workings of Nature fits well with the themes we have already seen.   When people order themselves properly, God orders the universe properly, preventing the advent of chaos.  A king from the family of David likewise contributes to insuring the proper ordering of the (human) world and is therefore intimately connected to God’s promises to maintain the order of the natural world.

All of which supports Nachmanides’s claim that slavery is put first because of its significance.  In our haftarah, slavery is problematic in its practice, but not in theory.  Just as Nature needs limits, and the Davidic king provides them, slavery can work when operating within a yovel society, one with sharp limits woven into its fabric. The failure to adhere to those limits can, in the extreme, lead to the loss of other important limits, bringing on us the destruction that comes with that loss.  Shabbat Shalom.

Why is This the Haftarah for Parshat Beshalah?

We might be tempted to assume this haftarah was chosen because it contains a song of praise to God, like in the Torah reading itself.  Indeed, Sefardi custom limits the haftarah to the Shirah, the Song.  Ashkenazic custom, which reads the story leading up to the Song, seems to add another element; along these lines the Mechilta says the salvation of Devorah’s time, not just the Song, is parallel to that of the Splitting of the Sea.

Within the space I have here, the best way to show how the events, and not just the Song, somewhat replay what happened at Yam Suf is by focusing on three aspects of the haftarah—the scorn Devorah displays for Barak when he insists on her coming with him, the role of Yael and her killing of Sisera (as shown by her figuring prominently in the Song as well as in the story), and the Song’s negative reaction to those who neglected to join the battle against Sisera.

The Call to War

After introducing Devorah, the text tells us that she sent a message ordering Barak to take ten thousand men of Naftali and Zevulun to Mount Tabor, where God would cause Sisera—whom we were earlier told was the general for Yavin, the king of Canaan who had been troubling the Jews—to come fight.

Barak conditions his willingness to go on Devorah’s coming with him.  She accepts, but notes that his reluctance to act on his own has forfeited his share of any glory the victory is about to produce.  His hesitation, his insistence on better support in conducting the war, is apparently both bothersome to her and worth our while to know.

Yael’s Prominence

Of the ten verses the text devotes to telling the story of the victory, seven are devoted to Yael’s interactions with Sisera, ending with her showing his corpse to his pursuers.  Four verses of Devorah’s Song praise Yael’s role in his death.  Despite recognizing how impressive it is that a woman took upon herself to lure an Assyrian general to sleep and then killed him with a tent-peg and a hammer, I still also suspect the prophet is celebrating more than just the fact of her killing Sisera.

Denigrating Those Who Failed to Join

The key to understanding our focus on those two parts of the incident lies in the Shirah’s also taking time to curse those who did not come to help Barak fight against Sisera.  In today’s world, that kind of behavior would be criticized as unseemly; once a battle or effort is won, the winner is supposed to thank those who helped, not speak against those who did not. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, contemporary society holds, and respect involves not looking down on them for holding to their views.

Regardless of whether that is true in ordinary human interactions, it is decidedly not true when a prophetess issues a declaration.  At that point, it becomes incumbent upon all—Jew or non-Jew– to contribute to the success of the prophet’s endeavor.  The tribes that failed to heed her call—and, in the Talmud’s reading, the celestial stars that did the same—deserve blame for failing to further God’s cause.

Seeing God’s Hand, Running to Take Part—The Haftarah’s Theme

Phrasing it that way also explains Barak and Yael’s role.  Barak should have immediately and unhesitatingly followed Devorah’s directions, since she spoke in God’s Name.  Had he done so, he would have been the vehicle of God’s saving the Jewish people and celebrated as such; his insistence on her joining him is itself a mark against his character.

Yael, on the other hand, had no obvious obligation to join in the defeat of Sisera, so her decision to intervene, in ways not at all characteristic of women of her time, was all the more impressive.  It was not so much that we needed Sisera dead, since he’d been defeated already, as that we revel in someone else’s recognizing the truth of our God and our prophets and acting on that truth at great personal risk.

Taking all three together, we see that a subtext of the haftarah is the question of joining, of when and how people in the world, Jew or non-Jew, are willing to cast their lot with God, Creator of Heaven and Earth; at the Sea (in the Torah reading), no one had a choice because of how clear the Hand was.  In the rest of human history, the challenge is more complicated, and thus what Devorah sings about in her Song.

Famous Verses From the Haftarah

1) Pesachim 66b uses Devorah’s call to herself (verse 12: “עורי עורי דבורה, awake, awake, Devorah”) to prove that if a prophet acts arrogantly, his/her prophecy will be removed.  Devorah had previously (verse 7) said that Jews were afraid to live in border cities, until she came and made it safe.  That arrogance deprived her momentarily of prophecy, so she had to revive it by saying “awake, awake.”

2) Verse 23 starts with the words “אורו מרוז, curse Meroz,” (Rashi says it’s either a star or an important person), from which the Talmud derives the right to excommunicate a person who refuses a summons from a religious court, a Beit Din.   Devorah’s call to war, in other words, was binding on all Jews; refusing it lay one open to communal sanctions.  That verse ends by saying that they did not come to the aid of God, from which the Sifrei understands that helping the Jewish people is the same as helping God.

3) The Sages understand Yael to have helped Sisera fall asleep by more than just giving him milk rather that water.  Based on verse 24, the Talmud famously declares her act an “עבירה לשמה, a sin undertaken with perfectly pure purposes” which the Talmud says is greater than a “מצוה שלא לשמה, a mitzvah performed with lesser motivations.”

4) The haftarah speaks of the cries of Sisera’s mother, from which the Talmud, Rosh haShanah 33b, derives that the blasts of the shofar on Rosh haShanah should sound like crying, since Onkelos translates יום תרועה, a day of blowing as “יום יבבה, day of crying,” the same verb as describes Sisera’s mother crying for her son.

5) The last verse in the haftarah serves as the crux of a famous Talmudic declaration (e.g. at Yoma 23a), that those who “are insulted and do not insult, hear themselves reviled without replying, act out of love and are pleased with the travails [God sends them]” are the definition of the lovers of God whom our verse describes as “the going out of the sun at its full strength.”  May we all merit reaching that lofty level of personal perfection.  Shabbat Shalom.

The haftarah we read this week records the words of God spoken to Yirmiyahu “when Nevuchadnezzar the king of Bavel came to smite Egypt.”  That seems to mean that this prophecy occurred relatively soon after the prophecy from Yehezkel that we read last week.  Apparently, Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Egypt inspired both prophets, living hundreds of miles apart, Yehezkel in Bavel and Yirmiyahu still in Israel.

That fact alone raises the question of how naturalistically we view prophecy.  Some Jewish thinkers saw prophecy as mostly a function of the prophet’s personal perfection.  For such views—Maimonides seems close to this one—if a person achieves the requisite personal perfections and God does not choose to intervene to interrupt the flow of prophecy, prophecy comes almost automatically.  While a metaphysical event, this understanding sees prophecy as part of the natural makeup of the world—God is always communicating in some way, and those who become worthy of it will receive such communications.

Even so, it is clear both that such people cannot always attain this level—they can’t prophesy on demand—and that there is a personal element, in that they receive those aspects of God’s messages for the world for which they are ready.  For people who understand the workings of prophecy this way, our two haftarot suggest that both Ezekiel and Jeremiah were so moved by Bavel’s conquest of Egypt as to have a prophetic vision.  As we will note in a moment, their foci differed, but it does suggest that this was a momentous occasion.

The Other Option: God-driven Prophecy

Others see prophecy as mostly God-driven.  For them, many great people who were of a stature to achieve prophecy did not, simply because God did not “choose” to communicate with them, for whatever reason—perhaps there was no need, perhaps the generation was not worthy.  These thinkers have to accept that prophets must meet a minimal standard to achieve regular interaction with God, but still see the central factor in whether a person becomes a prophet as being a function of God’s decisions.

For that group of thinkers, it would seem that God chose to communicate with two different prophets about the conquest of Egypt, with slightly different messages, raising the question of why God would not simply give the whole prophecy to one of them.  One possibility, it seems to me, is that each prophet was serving a different Jewish community, and this event was significant enough that God wanted both major communities to hear God’s perspective without delay. 

Another option is that God recognized that complex messages are difficult to absorb, both by prophets and by people.  Instead of trying to layer a prophecy to Yehezkel or Yirmiyahu with multiple messages, perhaps God chose to split up the prophecies, two clear messages, each with its own focus, being easier to understand than one complicated one.

Either way, the two prophecies do show how repercussive an event the conquest of Egypt was, world-shaking, reflecting a major change in the fabric of God’s relationship with the world.  We saw some of what that was about last week, but Yirmiyahu will help us flesh it out further.

I note also that, as selections read in parallel to our Torah readings (the Exodus, the Egyptian failure to understand the need to listen to God), the haftarot seem perfectly sensible, in their original context, they fit in less well.  Yehezkel is a prophet already in exile, Yirmiyahu one who is tasked with overseeing and accompanying the Jews’ descent into destruction of the Temple and exile.  Yet each is told to pause, as it were, to note Egypt’s mistakes and their consequences.  At a most basic level, it reminds us that for hundreds of years, what happened to Egypt was of pressing concern to any God-focused person, since Egypt—from the Exodus through then—had a lasting role as a vehicle through which God repeatedly demonstrated His supremacy.

One Voice, Two Messages

For all that their prophecies reflect the words of the One True God—whose Unity means that the messages must somehow come together into one whole—Yehezkel and Yirmiyahu present slightly different messages.  Last week’s haftarah focused on Egypt’s overweening view of herself and the comeuppance headed her way.  Nebuchadnezzar as the vehicle of that destruction was only mentioned briefly at the end, his reward for destroying Tyre.  For Yehezkel, the lesson in these events is that  God strikes down those who deny or ignore Him, such as Egypt and Tyre, and rewards those who serve as God’s agent in so doing.

Yirmiyahu focuses instead on Egypt’s experience of conquest, on her once having been filled with power and grace, and it all being taken away and sent into exile.  To me, it is also striking that we include the next two small sections of the book, assurances to the Jews that God will not abandon them, will redeem them from afar, will not visit upon them the kind of full destruction Egypt and other nations will.

Where You Stand Depends On Where You Sit

I wonder whether the different foci relates to where the two prophets were living. For Yehezkel, already in Bavel, events in Egypt were less directly impactful; the kingdom might be excited about them, but speaking to Jews living in a foreign land, they might have been interesting mostly for what they said about how God was running the world on a large scale, less urgent or directly important on the personal level.

For Yirmiyahu, though, the fall of Egypt was a significant step towards the Destruction itself, taking away one of the political and military allies some Jews had relied on.  He elsewhere also mentions that the Jews repeatedly turned to Egypt for assistance with attackers, protests how Jews of the eighth through fifth centuries saw Egypt as a source of salvation, forgetting that they were, rather, an ancient enemy.  For Yirmiyahu, their defeat drives home a very practical point about allies and who the Jews should turn to for protection, more than some philosophical ideas about world control.

The Whole Message May Take More than One Sitting

Seeing the two messages, we can perhaps understand better why God would separate the prophecies.  Egypt challenged Jews’ relationship to God in two ways: as a world power whose attitudes about its power were in opposition to the claims of monotheism (as we saw last week), but also as a political ally, whose promises of assistance misled many Jews into forgetting that our salvation always comes from God, whatever form it may take. 

These two qualities show the value in each prophet’s message, in particular for the audience who might first hear it.  In Bavel, where they had lost their political autonomy, Egypt’s role as an ally was almost irrelevant.  For them, the fate of Egypt was of more theoretical interest, as a question of where and how God’s rule would be revealed.

In the Land of Israel, the defeat of Egypt dashed many actual hopes and brought the destruction of the commonwealth and the Temple one step closer.  Yirmiyahu’s listeners were, likely, more personally distressed by the event.  Egypt’s loss, for them, might inspire complete despair (hence the reminder that we Jews need not fear, in the long term, because God is with us). 

At the same time as the Jews of Israel would be more emotionally involved in the defeat, their closeness might blind them to the broader implications, to what the decline and fall of a reigning superpower was supposed to teach them (and us) about where true and lasting power resides.  If Yirmiyahu showed the people how to view the trees, Yehezkel reminds us of the forest, of the cosmic and historic significance of Egypt’s defeat.

Hence the two haftarot give us both immediate and general perspective of Egypt, thus also enriching our understanding of the Exodus, redemption, and its multiple meanings for Jewish history.  Shabbat Shalom.

This haftarah is a complex piece of writing, with many themes, but one of its central concerns is how and when nations should see world events as connected to the hand of God, a question that figures prominently in our times as well.

Many today instinctively recoil from the topic, since it is so widely abused.  Almost every time a calamity strikes the world, some religious leader, Jewish or not, confidently announces the exact, specific reason it happened.  Worse, those reasons often strike others as problematic, to say the least.  In reaction, many go to the opposite extreme, denying that we have any way of knowing when events in this world stem from God.

I believe the haftarah teaches us that that, too, is not a solution.  The main body of the text records God’s complaint that Egypt sees itself as all-powerful, God’s threat that Egypt will be fully destroyed, lie desolate for forty years, and then return to spend the rest of history in subservience to those around it. Egypt is called the “Great Alligator,” proud of its Nile as a source of its power.  In addition, the Midrash thinks the punishments promised to Egypt here parallel the Ten Plagues begun in the Torah reading.

In the parallel Torah reading, Moshe Rabbenu tries to convince the Egyptians they cannot hold on to the Jews against God’s Will; they ignored the message and bore the consequences.  Egypt in Yehezekel’s time repeats Paroh’s error, seeing itself as fully independent, all-powerful, god-like. An implicit issue raised by the haftarah is how nations will ever learn to submit to that Will. 

Punish Them Until They Learn

God seems to opt for repeated warnings and punishments.  When Egypt will be laid waste, it will show the survivors and surrounding nations the folly of ever thinking of oneself as all-powerful.  Forty years is a traditional time of reeducation—think of the Jews in the desert after the sin of the spies, which proved they could not shift their mindset from that of slaves to that of free devotees of God—so Egypt’s time of desolation would seem to be geared towards teaching them a lesson.

That last point is made even more strongly by a Midrash that says that those forty years will be repayment for the five years of famine the Egyptians avoided in the time of Joseph.  (Tradition has it that once Jacob came to Egypt, the famine ceased, after only two of the predicted seven years).

Since forty years is many more than five, I suspect the Midrash is making a thematic connection—in Joseph’s time, when the famine had been directly predicted and prepared for under his guidance, the five years would have fortified their understanding that God rules many world events.  At a later juncture, when the Egyptians have ignored all the various prophecies and been punished for that, they will need a fuller dose of re-education before they can return.

Failure Leaves a Mark Which We Might Hope Will Teach Others

Even then, having failed twice to react appropriately to God’s power, they will be doomed to subservience to other nations.  Lord Acton famously said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but God expects it to be used wisely, judiciously, and with humility.  Those who cannot will find their power taken away, never to return.

The introduction and conclusion to the haftarah flesh out the importance of trying to understand how and when world events can be traced back to God.  It opens with the concluding verses to an earlier prophecy, which tell of the Jews’ returning to their land, building homes, planting vineyards, and living securely.

There can be many reasons for a prophet to promise that, but the emphasis here is on the example it will set for other nations, which makes the prophet’s singling out vineyards worth pondering.  While it may simply reflect his time, I suspect that planting a vineyard is also seen as an inherently religious activity.  Aside from the mitsvot connected to agriculture and to wine, farming is one of those human endeavors most reliant on factors out of human control.

Indeed, Rambam thought all idol worship had its roots in farmers’ attempts to gain greater control of the supernatural factors that would affect their harvests.  (In defense of farmers, it is only in the last few hundred years that agricultural yields have been good enough to make food plentiful in most years in most parts of the world; until then, good years were good enough to keep everyone alive, and bad years were disastrous.  The temptation to seek any possible advantage in securing a better harvest must have been overwhelming).

World Leaders as Servants of God

The end of the haftarah points in the same direction.  God suddenly speaks of Nebuchadnezzar, who is seen as having done God’s work in destroying Tyre, despite the likelihood that he did that for his own reasons.  As part of that reward, God says that the Babylonian king will replace Egypt.  That reminds us that Egypt had a role to play in world history which, had it done so successfully, would have earned reward.  Its failure created the need for a replacement. 

Possibly, God envisions the world as always having one or two superpowers, entrusted with directing the course of world events, and, ideally, seeing their job as given to them by God, for Godly purposes.  Our haftarah shows us a superpower that instead became intoxicated with its power, leading to its eventual, but certain, downfall.

Nebuchadnezzar would follow that route as well, becoming too sure of his power, too confident of his security.  We are left to question whether we would do any better, but also how we differentiate those leaders who are instruments of the Divine Will from those who put themselves in opposition to it.  In this context, the verse from Proverbs, 21;1,פלגי מים לב מלך ביד ה’, like waves of water is the heart of a king in the Hands of God, tantalizes us with the suggestion that God limits the freewill of world leaders.  The verse does not clarify, however, how to distinguish when those leaders have their freewill and when they are being compelled to execute God’s plan for the world.

In concert with the Torah reading, the haftarah reminds us that political events, especially those of great import for the Jewish people, often have a component of Divine Providence.  The search for an exact definition of when that happens, as well as for a superpower that understands its job to be an extension of God’s impact on the world, that humbly and honestly seeks to do what God would want, continues.  Shabbat Shalom.

In obvious parallel to the Torah reading, the haftarah discusses redemption, starting with the actual fact of the Jewish return and “rooting” in their Land, but focusing more on the (sometimes unpleasant) steps leading up to the redemption.

For Jews stuck in Exile, the promise of return might itself be attractive enough, but the Talmud and Midrash expand it.  Shabbat 145b quotes R. Yosef as reading the first verse’s mention of יציץ ופרח, sprouting and flowering, as referring to Torah scholars, who make fringes and decorations for Torah.  Shir haShirim Rabbah 7;3 takes the verse as evidence that the Jewish people are rooted to their Land in a way other nations are not.

Putting the two together, tradition seems to be suggesting that our greatest redemption involves attaching to and beautifying the Land, as Torah scholars do with Torah.  Without belaboring the point, that nods in the direction of Bnei Akiva-type views of what it means to be Jewish in Israel, combining Torah study and performance of mitsvot with active concern with building up the Land of Israel.

After starting with the unequivocally good, several verses refer to punishment for our sins as readying the Jews for salvation.  Exactly how that works is a matter of debate, as we’ll see when we take up a few specific verses below.  Here, I would want to stress Yeshayah’s insistence on full and proper repentance as a prerequisite to redemption, and his assumption that some element of punishment will (sadly and unfortunately) be necessary before we will get to that repentance. 

I stress those because we live in a time when many try to escape one or both of those truths. To many, God should redeem us without the unpleasantness of confronting our past failures or having to bear their consequences. Sadly, neither claim is true.

What Does Redemption Look Like? The Redeemer

Shmot Rabbah 1;26 reads verses 10-11 as relating to Moshe and Mashiach, both of whom, according to tradition, will have grown up in non-Jewish environments (Moshe in Pharoah’s palace, Mashiach in Rome).  At least according to this Midrash, it sounds like the redeemer has to be someone raised in a not-specifically Jewish environment, who learned significant lessons from non-Jewish society, and only then came to take the Jews to their land.

Possibly, the Midrash implies that attachment to our Land should not exclude an awareness of other nations.  A leader raised in a foreign milieu will be more likely to lead us in a continuing engagement with the world.  Or, for those of us who push the value of combining Torah with other forms of wisdom, the Midrash’s point is that redemption will not involve closing ourselves off culturally or intellectually, but will involve enriching Torah with the appropriate aspects of non-Jewish forms of wisdom as well.

What Does Redemption Look Like? The Different Places of Exile

Verse 12 says that God will take us out of the middle of the rushing stream, bring us back from the river of Egypt, and take the Jews back one by one.  Rashi reads it as referring to three types of exiles—the Assyrian, the Egyptian, and a future one.  Radak identifies the river as Sambatyon, which spews stones from the strength of its flow, except for Shabbat, when it rests.

Either version makes the point that our exiles are more than geographical, they affect who we are and how we approach the world.  Some exiles find themselves in the middle of a rushing stream, part of an exciting, vibrant society which may not be particularly antithetical to observance.  Other exiles are in places like Egypt, the paradigm of a culture hostile to Torah observance.  Finally, some Jews live in small groups or in places where so many will assimilate that only individuals will survive (spiritually) to reach redemption. 

Aside from promising that God will take Jews back from all types and locations of exile, then, the verse also suggests that one challenge of redemption will be to forge a unified society out of Jews who have had such different exilic experiences.

Keeping It All About God

Verses 7 and 8 of Chapter 28, almost a digression, point out the Kingdom of Judea’s overinvolvement with wine, and note that that itself deserves punishment, even as it is clear that this is less severe a sin than those of the Northern Kingdom.  Allowing any commitments to compete with God is a problem; even just too much of a focus on drinking wine loosens our connection to God enough to obligate exile and postponing redemption. 

While the prophet’s example was wine, the principle would seem equally applicable to Scotch, material possessions, or any personal endeavors or attachments that distract us from focusing on God, regardless of whether they are inherently sinful.  Similarly, Avot 3;3 cites verse 8 as proof of the need to include words of Torah at any meal where 3 people eat together.  I understand this to mean that eating without mentioning Torah would turn food, like the drinking of wine in Judea, into an attachment that competitive with our attachment to God. 

The Mishnah’s likening it to idol worship suggests that the but share the basic flaw of idolatry is as much in the break in the relationship to God, however it occurs, as in the idolatry itself.

What Will Redemption Look Like? The Challenge of Change

Starting from verse 9, Yeshayah comments that God’s wisdom can only be taken in little pieces.  Rashi thinks he means only babies will be able to absorb that wisdom, while Radak thinks even adults might, but only in bits and pieces over long periods of time. 

Either version reminds us of the chasm between what we think and God’s Truth.  For Rashi, only babies and small children retain the kind of openmindedness, of intellectual flexibility and readiness to accept that we were wrong, necessary to be able to accept the divine Wisdom.  For Radak, adults can do so as well, but only bit by bit. 

Just that might require that redemption take several generations, each generation moving in small steps towards absorbing enough of God’s wisdom to merit the ultimate redemption.  If so, those who see our times (starting, perhaps, in the late 1800s) as the beginning of the redemption could point to this claim of Yeshayah’s for support.

Specific Verses and Their Ramifications

As mentioned above, 27;8 speaks of God measuring out our punishment, “בסאסאה, בשלחה תריבנה, in that measure, when God sent them out, did they (the enemies) contend with them” which Sotah 8b-9a took two ways.  First, it read the verse as meaning that God’s punishments respond directly (middah ke-neged middah, measure for measure) to the sins committed; the Midrash adds that the same is true in reverse, that God rewards in a way directly related to the good we did.

This, to me, seems to say that when we receive punishment, we should be able to, in some ways, understand what we did to become liable for that—and vice verse for when we receive reward.  Perhaps not all times of trouble are punishment, perhaps not all successes are reward, but those that are, the verse seems to say, respond directly and correspondingly to our sins.

Rather than being an incomprehensible black box, the verse and the Talmud see Divine actions in this world as open to our rational inquiry and understanding.  Approached with a clear mind, we should be able to understand why God has rewarded us (from the nature of the reward) and why God has punished us (from the form the punishment takes).

Second, the Talmud notes God’s kindness in frequently punishing the Jewish people.  Other nations, the Talmud notes, are left untouched until the weight of their sins becomes so heavy that they abruptly exit from the world stage.  Our steady punishment helps us in two ways, making us aware of our sins before we become too ensnared in them, but also allowing us to expiate them in small pieces instead of all at once.

Shabbat Shalom.

Prophecy Among the Sages

In bBaba Batra 12a, R. Abdimi of Haifa says that once the Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to the Sages.  That later rabbis such as Abbaye, Rava, and R. Ashi sought to prove that claim, and since rishonim and aharonim explicated it, this suggests that they saw this as expressing a continuingly valid Jewish idea. I would like to rehearse some of their ideas, which suggest that in one view, we have continuing access, of sorts, to God’s communication with the world.

Abbaye suggests that he can prove that sages are now repositories of at least some form of prophecy from the fact that sometimes two sages, separated by great distance, arrive at the same idea.  Such “coincidental” discoveries, he seems to be saying, can only occur if God sent this idea to the two scholars.

Rava responds in a way that I think has a very modern tinge, although it is expressed in classical terms.  He dismisses Abbaye’s example by noting that the two might simply be בני חד מזלא, bearers of the same luck, or astrological sign.  It would be easy to read that as saying that they have the same supernatural forces operating on them, but for the well-known fact that we hold אין מזל לישראל, the Jewish people are not controlled by such forces. 

More importantly, I think Rava was anticipating a fact recognized in many circles today, especially science, that intellectual achievements are often already primed to occur, and therefore can be reproduced in multiple places by different scholars.

If so, Rava was saying that perhaps these rabbis were not demonstrating prophecy, but had similar intellectual bents; based on the knowledge they had in front of them, they could reach similar conclusions.

Rava himself suggests a different proof, that occasionally a sage will come up with an idea which we later discover was originally said by R. Akiva.  Considering Rava’s reason for rejecting Abbaye’s proof, his statements shows us something about the Talmudic attitude towards R. Akiva—it was, Rava means us to understand, impossible that a sage had the same “mazal,” the same intellectual background and makeup as R. Akiva, so that coming up with such an idea was proof that it was given to the sage by God, not by ordinary intellectual achievement.

R. Ashi disagrees because, he says, the sage might have had the same “mazal” as R. Akiva for that one topic.  In my translation to modern terms, I think that R. Ashi was saying that R. Akiva’s genius was not in each particular idea he had (so that another sage could, conceivably, have arrived at such an idea on his own, without prophecy), but in the sum total of them.  R. Ashi then argues that the proof of prophecy among sages lies in their occasionally articulating ideas that later turn out to have been given to Moshe Rabbenu directly from God at Har Sinai.

Full Prophecy or Prophecy-Lite?

Some scholars seemed to take the Gemara at face value, saying that sages are really the prophets of our day (and that would seem to apply throughout history).  In the introduction to Halachot Gedolot, Behag juxtaposes a Talmudic saying that ascribes the death penalty for willfully violating Rabbinic law with the saying we have been discussing, that says that sages, post-Temple, have prophecy. Behag does not explain further, but I think he meant to imply that since the Sages are the closest thing to prophets we now have, violating their words incurs the same penalty that violating a prophet’s words would, death at the hands of Heaven.  In another passage, Hovot haLevavot characterizes the highest levels of achievement in any discipline as akin to prophecy.

In his commentary to Baba Batra, Ramban makes a point about this passage that I think both goes far to putting it in the kinds of modern terms we are able to accept, but also serves as a reminder of the awe in which we need to hold Torah scholars and—at least according to Hovot haLevavot—those who excel in many other disciplines besides.

Ramban assumes that the Gemara does not mean Torah scholars now have prophecy in its classic sense of a vision or dream, of a direct communication from God; that was lost with the destruction.  In his view (and Hatam Sofer expands on it in his commentary), ordinary intellectual efforts only take us so far, and that is not prophetic.  The greats of Torah, however (and, perhaps, of all disciplines), arrive at ideas that are such a jump from what had come before, we can only see it as having an element of prophecy—or, better said, Divine spirit– to it.

I don’t know if the analogy is fully apt, but it seems to me similar to the concept of “prior art” in current patent law.  Patents are not awarded for discoveries already latent in the existing literature of that discipline; as my wife once told me, “prior art” means that if we were to take all the existing human knowledge on a topic, put it on scraps of paper in a room, and it would lead ineluctably to some idea, that idea is not patentable. It is for leaps of intuition, advances that were not already obvious, that the US offers patents.  I think Ramban is saying that is what the Gemara is calling the prophecy given the sages.

If so, the Gemara is actually two-pronged, giving us a sense of continuing prophecy, but not of the kind that we see as “real” prophecy; for the sages, their prophetic realizations will only come within pre-existing discussions.  A Torah scholar can, on occasion, be inspired with an idea we could not have imagined, but is limited to doing so within the purview of topics he encounters in his studies.

The Prophecy of Children and Those Not in Their Right Minds

Once we see that the prophecy of sages did not mean the exact experience of prophets, another Talmudic statement about prophecy becomes more understandable. In contrast to R. Abdimi of Haifa, R. Yohanan declared prophecy to have been given to שוטים (delicately, those not in their right minds) and children.  In the Gemara, it is not clear whether R. Yohanan is adding to R. Abdimi or contradicting him.  Either way, we are left to understand what that would mean and how it would work. 

Torat Hayyim, an early 17^th century Talmud commentator, writes that this statement explains the occasional Talmudic practice of turning to a child and asking for the verse of Scripture he learned that day, and then applying the verse to the questioner’s situation (incidentally, a practice Rema Yoreh Deah 179:4 allows today). 

Since prophecy was taken from prophets and given to children, Torat Hayyim says, this is a way of accessing that prophecy.  Note, though, his assumption that the prophecy is not a conscious process for the child, but that the words that will come out of a child’s mouth, in certain circumstances, will be those we are meant to hear.  That leaves us with the challenge of knowing which words we are to take as prophecy and which not, a challenge that continues when we turn our attention to the other Talmudically-designated “prophets,” those not in their right minds.

Torat Hayyim suggests that this is part of the punishment of the loss of prophecy. That is, since we so long ignored the messages of the prophets, who were impressive and worthy people, God took those messages and put them in the mouths of those who seem wholly unfit.  While we might struggle with the idea that someone who is not fully sane would be a prophet—for example, Rashba rejected a late 13^th century claim of prophecy partially because the putative prophet was so obviously unworthy of it—it does suggest Torat Hayyim’s view that sometimes our punishment is to have the truth become less accessible rather than more.  Not all that an insane person will say will be prophecy, but some of it might be.

Along similar lines, Hatam Sofer suggests that God’s goodness is so great that even with the loss of prophecy, God continues sending messages to people. When ordinary people receive those communications, they ignore them (or refuse to say them out loud), for fear of seeming so odd or out of line with the mainstream (not Hatam Sofer’s casual assumption that the messages God really wants us to hear will be out of the mainstream).

The only ones willing to say what comes to their minds are those who always speak so, who are often out of touch with what polite company allows, those we call crazy.

It’s Out There, Although Harder to Notice

Hatam Sofer challenges us to consider whether God might be communicating with us more often than we would like to admit, that in our certainty that we know what God really wants, our readiness to reject truths that are too far from how we view the world, we lose the opportunity to hear what God actually wants us to hear.

In sharing these ideas with my class at the Webyeshiva, an attendee noted that some people claim that autistic savants (particularly in Jerusalem) are revealing exactly such prophecies.  Certainly the Gemara and Hatam Sofer would urge us to be alert to the possibility; at the same time, the Gemara does not claim that all the words of those not in their right minds will be prophecy, only that they might be.

We are left with the challenge of all times of hester panim, of God’s hidden face.  The Gemara would seem to be telling us that even now, even in these times, God is still communicating.  While there was a time when God did so relatively directly—although even then, we found ways to deny the truth or accuracy of the prophets bearing those messages—now the messages come in packages that make it all that much harder to distinguish which are from God and which are childish or mad ravings.

It reminds me of a scene from Field of Dreams, where a young Doc Graham is standing at the plate, and an older ballplayer is giving him advice about the kind of pitch to look for. They agree that it’s likely to be outside, but that he had better be on the lookout for “in his ear.” 

The Gemara in Baba Batra, I suggest, is reminding us that while most of the statements of the sages will be ordinary intellectual accomplishments, most children’s ramblings will be just the cute process of growing to adulthood, and most pronouncements of those challenged with mental illness will be “high and outside,” not requiring any more than the ordinary attention they each deserve in their own context, we had better be on the lookout for “in our ear,” for truths God is trying to get us to hear, even in this time bereft of the more direct contact we would prefer, and for whose return we long.